Page 59 of Catcher's Lock
Something for after a nice, steamy shower.
Something for after a few drinks.
Unfazed by my overture, all he does is sigh and scowl. “I need to get home, Gem. I need to getyouhome.” He glances at his phone as if making a point—maybe about the time he’s wasting dealing with me and my shit. Maybe to remind me of who else is waiting in Mendo to rip me a new asshole and dredge up all my past mistakes in a “family discussion.”
Maybe because he’s built a whole life of his own to return to, while I was dicking around with rock bottom.
“Okay,” I say again, retreating. “But first wegotta get some weed.”
He lets me stop at a dispensary for a dab pen on the way out of the city, and when we grab gas in San Rafael, I buy three shooters of Cuervo and down them in the bathroom while he’s filling the truck’s tank. Then I go back and snag another box of orange Tic Tacs to cover up the smell.
It doesn’t help. The closer we get to Mendocino County, the more jittery I feel, fucking with the radio, rolling the window up and down, drumming my fingers on the dash, and generally driving us both crazy. To be fair, Josha does his best to distract me, telling me about the changes he’s made to his family property since his dad died and his plans to build a tiny house at the back tree line for his mom to retire to. He doesn’t mention how he’s supposed to accomplish all of this from Colorado, but even that faint wisp of hope isn’t enough to settle my racing nerves.
“Who were you talking to,” I blurt, interrupting his diatribe on the pros and cons of Douglas fir versus redwood for exposed ceiling beams.
“Um, you?” Raising his eyebrows, he shoots me a look. “How strong was that pen?”
“I mean this morning. On the phone. In the bathroom?”I sound totally normal, I swear.
He makes a face. “Rachael. She talked to Jeremy and figured out we might be driving up this way. She was trying to convince me to bring you by for brunch.”
“Oh.” Relief sweeps through me. “That’s not so bad. Although brunch with Rachael sounds vaguely horrible.”
He snorts and then, because of course he picks up on the shift in my mood, asks: “Who did you think I was talking to?”
I could blow it off and make some breezy comment about twinks with delusions of importance and steer the conversation back to somewhere fun and flirty. I could try to make him blush again or try to make him smile.
I could be honest.
The long game.
“My mom,” I confess. “I thought you were ratting me out.”
“Ratting you out?” The words drip with caustic disbelief. “Because letting your parents know you’re alive and coming home to them would be what? Some kind of betrayal of this fucked-up lost weekend you’ve fabricated?” His knuckles whiten on the steering wheel and a scowl furrows his brow. “Christ, you’re a fucking piece of work.”
This is why denial and deflection are so much easier than the truth.
“I know, okay? I know I’m a disaster, and it’s not just about you and me. I get that my shit is all wrapped up in my issues with my mom leaving and Big Top and flunking out of ENC—”
“And the drugs and the drinking.”
“And the drugs and the drinking. But I can’t separate the symptoms from the disease anymore. All that shit’s so fucking tangled I don’t have a clue where to begin unraveling it.”
“You could start with therapy. Or a rehab program you actually finish.”
“I started withyou, Rocket. Because you’re the only thing I can see clearly.”
“And you think that if you can somehow fix us, the rest of your life will magically fall into place?” He shakes his head in disgust. “Life doesn’t work like that,Quill. And this—” He gestures between us. “This isn’t something you can fix in three days.”
“Why do you think I’ve been angling for more time?” I cry,my own guilt-laced frustration splashing to the surface. “Once you dump me back at the lot, you’ll have a million reasons to ignore me. How many cast members are already on-site? How many jobs are waiting on your attention? How many production meetings and tech calls and airport runs?” My chest is heaving, and the truck has become a vacuum, sucking up all the air. I crank the window down and lean my head on the doorframe, blinking against the sudden sting of tears.
“Fuck,” he says into the broken silence. “You’re really freaking out, aren’t you?”
“Do not be nice to me right now,” I warn, eyes glued to the passing scrub. “Unless you want me to start crying like a fucking kid.”
I loved you at thirteen.
“Look. I get it. About the lot, at least. Maybe it’s too much to expect you to jump back into all that right away.”
