Page 52 of Zeppelin
I toe off my boots while lying down, though it takes some work to loosen them up before they pop off. I inch out of my jeans, careful not to put an elbow or my head through the canvas or bring down the tent around me. It already feels like a death trap. If it wasn’t for the thin canvas, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t be in this contraption without suffocating, but the night air and the sounds of the woods and the guys by the fire drift in, so I don’t have to talk myself down.
I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone. I have it turned off except for a few moments before bed. I didn’t want to be attached to it on this trip. Not that I normally am, but…
Okay. Fuck. Fine.
I didn’t want to keep checking it to see if Ginny had texted, only to be disappointed that she hadn’t.
Shit like that isn’t a great way to start the day. I have enough to feel hollow about before I go to bed as it is. Every single morning, I wake up with the knowledge that life has irrevocably changed. There’s no going back. This just is what it is now without Jack.
Ginny was a bright spot in all of that.
Not a bandage over a wound. I wasn’t using her to make up for anything or to fill the holes that life carved into me.
I honestly have no idea where we’re at.
It’s been almost two weeks since that night at the clubhouse. I miss her. I want to fix this. Even if I didn’t have the emotional intelligence of a dog turd, I don’t know how I woulddo that. I didn’t know if she was ready. If I was. I didn’t know how to take the mess in my head and untwist it into something usable. I have no idea what’s going on with me. I thought I should figure that out before I tried to solve whatever it was going on withus, in any sense of that word.
I still don’t know what I’m going to say, but it’s time to dosomething.
With Carver’s words pretty much sculpted into my damn gray matter, I power my phone on. The reception is shit out here in the middle of nowhere, and it takes a few minutes for the messages and texts to catch up. Not that there are many. The guys are all out here, so they have no reason to send me anything, and I don’t have friends outside the club. Know people? Yes. Friends? I would say that even using that term on my club brothers is pushing it by definition of the word.
How sad is that?
I need to do better.
No idea how, but I want to.
In this tent, lying on my back, staring at the thin blue canvas blocking my view of the stars above, but not the dappled outline of dancing leaves and other errant shadows, listening to the hearty laughter and lowered voices from the campfire mingling with the shrill whine of mosquitoes and other insects outside, I get a burst of something I can’t quite call inspiration.
It’s the nebulous, unfathomable desire to just do more. Be more. Figure out who the hell I even am. Starting now.
I swipe my phone back on, the light so bright that it burns my eyes. I’m about to power it off immediately, but a little red notification over the text icon stops me.
I suck in a breath and open it.
Ginny: I went for my first doctor’s appointment today. They’re going to book me in for a scan. I’ll let you know the date when they call me. The doctor gave me some pills for morning sickness, but I took a few and they made me super out of it. I don’t know who can take them and still function. I’ll figure it out, though.
Her text might be succinct to the point of obligatory, but she’snotobligated. She didn’t have to send that. She didn’t have to tell me anything at all. She could have waited until I got back, but instead she gave me this in real time. There’s nothing fancy about it, or anything but facts, but it still means the world.
I wonder if she was nervous? Was she thinking about Jack when she went in there? About her life now? About life that she’s growing? About me? Did she go to Seattle for the appointment? Did her sister or her mom go with her? Did they go home after, her to that asshole of a house without plumbing and electricity? Have her dad and brother done work there for her? Built the porch that I should have been doing? Replaced those windows I promised I’d also do?
I want to be out here on this ride, but I also want to be where Ginny is.
I can’t saywithher. I have no idea how to be the kind of man she’d deserve, especially when she’s made it clear she doesn’t see me that way. Does she? She made it clear that she didn’t, but after what Carver said tonight, I’m not so certain.
Change is inevitable, but change isn’t growth. I want togrow. Grow into the change and surpass it. I’m not ashamed of being the kind of man who was gut punched to the point of totalshutdown at Ginny’s words that night at the clubhouse, but I want to be the kind of man who gets his head on straight and can actually communicate why it blindsided me and why it hurt like a lethal blow.
I don’t understand much of what’s going on with me right now, but I do know one thing.
I want to be anywhere but here and right here all at once. I want Jack back more than I want to breathe. I undeniably want more from a woman who doesn’t want me the same way.
It feels like I’ve never been more alone in my life, even though I know that I’m technically not.
I power my phone off because I don’t know how to respond. It’s a problem I’ll save for the morning. Maybe by then the words will be there in my brain, ready and accessible. Probably not. If they haven’t come yet, I doubt they’ll appear by magic for me. Who the fuck knows, though. Stranger things have happened.
Like my whole damn life.
Chapter 14
