Finding June (3 page)

“Tomatoes are fruit.” Oh yes, I totally said that. Hit a hot man in the balls and then correct him; always a great way to make an impression. I knew at that moment I had a deer in the headlights look. Hearing my name in the window being called for hot food, I briskly turned and walked away, completely avoiding him and the situation.

The sun had barely set as I unlocked the stubborn door to my apartment. I had survived my first day back to work, barely, and avoided Reece at all costs for the rest of the shift. I still couldn’t believe I had hit the poor guy in the balls. I swear, this shit only happened to me.

I told Jolene she could come over and tell me what the hell was going through her head, but only if she brought wine, of course. After throwing my keys on the small side table, I turned to the right and went down the narrow hallway—with the small kitchen to the left—and went into the open living room.

I changed out of my work clothes and threw on blue sweats and a T-shirt with the lodge logo from where I worked this summer. Glancing in the mirror, I undid the braid in my hair as I heard a knock on my door, knowing it was Jolene.

“I brought more booze, I figured we would need it.” Jolene stood on my doorstep with two bottles of wine in each hand. She looked like a wine angel, my beautiful wine goddess.

Since I didn’t have to work till four the next day, I welcomed her extra bottles of wine.

“First I want to hear all about your summer! Meet any rugged hotties?” Jolene asked, opening the bottle of wine and pouring us each a glass.

I took a drink of the cheap white wine. “Nope,” was my short answer. I sighed. “I don’t know, Jo, I just don’t know if I’m there yet. It’s only been about four months since Owen kicked me to the curb.”

“Junebug, Owen was a dumbass for ever getting rid of you. He will probably spend the rest of his life in his bland lab living a bland life. If anything, he was holding you back. He was lame with a capital L, but this isn’t anything new from me. I have been telling you this for years. You are worth more than Owen, you deserve only the best.” She gave me a pointed look, and I rolled my eyes.

I heard Jolene, but her reassuring words went through me. The stinging words of me being a mess echoed in my head. It was like my mantra and it kept saying,
“June, you have no direction and you work at The Shack. You will end up with at least four cats and two ferrets. All. By. Yourself.”

I loved Jolene for trying to cheer me up, but I didn’t want to talk about me. I gave her a small smile. “Anyways, tell me what’s going on at work. What did I miss this summer?” I asked.

Jolene knew I was deflecting, but let me. Instead of forcing me to speak, she began to tell me about the summer, “That bitch Jane finally got fired. That was an amazing day. I wanted to clap as she walked out, but I decided not to. Really, it was a pretty calm summer. Bethany is still pretty slutty; I guess she is dating some bartender …” Jolene paused and I knew it was coming. “So, Junebug, you’re gone for the whole summer and I get two emails. Two. Both vague as hell. I thought I was your bestie?” I heard the hurt in her voice and I immediately felt like shit.

“I know, I’m sorry. Of course you’re my bestie, you’re my Always Friend.”

“Always Friend?”

“You know, you have Sometimes Friends, who are people you like to hang out with sometimes when the occasion arises. Then you have your Always Friends, who are people that you never get sick of their company and they always have your back. You’re my Always Friend, Jolene. I should have been better about communication, but I was also trying to separate myself from everything here. I thought it would help, but pushing my bestie away was wrong. Do you hate me?”

Jolene threw her arms around me, gripping me tightly. “Of course I don’t hate you! I just worry about you.”

“I know.” I hugged her back, happy to see my best friend after being gone. I broke away and took another drink from my wine. As I set my glass down I looked at Jolene and said, “But I do have to say something, so remember you don’t hate me … Reece? What the hell?”

Jolene laughed as she took a drink of her wine. “You should be thanking me for that one.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Why?”

“I have been talking about you the whole summer!”

Oh fuck. No wonder he was looking at me strangely today. “You didn’t.”

“Oh. I did. You are
so
welcome.”

“I am
not
saying thank you, Jolene. Are you insane? I just got out of a three year relationship only four months ago and you want me to hook up with this guy?”

She simply shrugged her shoulder. “Girl, Reece is delectable and might be the perfect distraction for you right now.”

“Then why are you not trying to get him in a dark corner?” Jolene was by no means slutty, but she did have a major case of flirting most times. It was like a drug to men, they couldn’t resist her and her sultry ways. Hell, if I was a man I didn’t think I could resist her either.

“I’ve known Reece since we were kids, I went to middle school with him. He was a couple of years older than me, but we went to different high schools. I guess I don’t see him that way.”

Jolene was a Boise native, unlike me who came here for college from Portland. We had met in our freshmen year when we were assigned as roommates. We lived in the dorms our first year, but ended up moving out and getting our own apartment. Jolene was the one who had gotten me the job at The Shack. She had been working there since high school, and continued as she finished college. Jolene had graduated with a degree in art and had no problem being a server while she worked on her art. She was a fixer and this was classic Jolene, trying to fix me.

I noticed my glass was empty and poured myself another one. “How come you haven’t mentioned him before, and why is this the first time I’ve seen him?” Reece was very good looking, and it didn’t make sense that she hadn’t mentioned him before, considering she never liked Owen.

“Reece moved back in May. Apparently he left after high school. He’s a nice kid from what I remember. He definitely grew up from middle school because now he is hot as hell. Like I said, I’m not interested. Though, for my Junebug, only the best. Which is why I feel to
really
get over that douche you call Owen, you should seduce Reece.”

I could only stare at Jolene. I loved the kid to pieces, but hot damn she came up with crazy ass ideas. For my twenty-first birthday, Jo decided it would be a better idea to ride our bikes downtown so I wouldn’t need to pay for a cab or worry about driving intoxicated. After many shots—I honestly lost count—I threw myself on my bike, literally, and tried to ride it home at two in the morning. I was almost home, so damn close, when I looked back and saw flashing lights. The officer was nice enough to give me the birthday present of a ticket for being intoxicated while on a bike. I had no idea that was even possible, but it was. Somehow, Jo, the lucky bitch, had amazing drunk biking skills and was able to avoid the cops. I had listened to her one too many times, and yep fuck that, wasn’t going down that road again. And I told her so.

“Fuck no.”

“June! You need to move on, and what better way than with Reece? Hello? It’s like I’m handing him to you on a damn golden platter. He’s heard so much about you that he thinks you’re a goddess. Well, of course you are, you’re my friend and I would expect nothing less, but you get what I mean.”

I decided to go with the original answer. “Fuck. No.”

Jolene looked at me with her smoky eyes. Those bedroom eyes would not work on me this time. We had a stare down, a whole conversation going on with our eyes, and I am sure it went down like this:
No, Jolene, I do not want to bring a man into my mess of a life so he can, also, laugh at me as I try to unsuccessfully find a job.

“Jo, I’m a total mess right now. I can’t do a hook-up or a relationship. He’s probably that guy saving cats from trees and I’m the girl who’s panicking in the corner.”

I saw Jolene clench the stem of the wine glass as she stared a hole into the counter. “I hate, absolutely hate, how Owen left you a shell of the girl I know. What happened to my feisty June? You can’t let this break-up define you because you’re so much better than that.”

“I hate it, too, but it’s more than Owen leaving me. It’s the combination of him leaving and the pressure I’m feeling to figure out my life. I have no idea what the next step is, and I hate that … not knowing what to do next.”

This time I saw sympathy on Jo’s face and I had to look away because that was something I really didn’t want to see. I didn’t need sympathy, I needed direction, and I knew Jolene couldn’t give me that.

“Listen, I know you just got back and things are really crazy so I won’t push this Reece thing. Maybe you should focus instead on living the life you want rather than the life someone else wants. Without Owen, you have an opportunity to really focus on what you want to do, not what anyone expects from you. You’re an adult; you don’t have to answer to anyone, only yourself. I’m not saying you should jump into another committed relationship and get married or anything, but Reece could even just be a friend. Someone to talk to, maybe shed some light on everything going on. He really is a nice guy and seems genuinely interested in you. I told him your story and he was understanding. He isn’t an asshole like Owen. Try to keep an open mind?”

Jolene was my best friend, and for her I would do anything. If it meant being civil to a guy I had sworn I wouldn’t give the time of day to, well I would suck it up and try. I could listen to what this guy had to say and be friendly.

Conversations after that moved to safer topics such as crazy Jo stories from the summer, including one that resulted in Jo getting a tattoo of a small humming bird on her ankle. It wasn’t really the fact she got a tattoo that was crazy, it was the fact she got it in a small farming town outside of Boise by a random tattoo artist named Bud after an impromptu road trip with a guy she had met while drinking the night before. Apparently said guy—because she couldn’t remember his name, only his poor attempt at a mustache—surprisingly enough also got a small tattoo of a humming bird, but it was most definitely not on his ankle. At that point I quickly stopped “Jo and June Story Time”.

Jolene left after showing me her tattoo. It was about midnight and I was wide-awake. I threw away the empty wine bottle and put the glasses in the dishwasher. I was filled with restless energy, so I made myself a cup of tea before going to bed, hoping it would help in calming me down. This was the first night I had really been by myself, and the silence was too much. I grabbed my phone and put it on my iHome, setting it to play Jose Gonzalez songs, and the sweet melodies eased the silence. Unfortunately, it was a different noise than what I was used to and just another adjustment. The white noise of the clinking of Owen’s laptop key’s cutting into the silence or the small talk of our day no longer filled the corners of our apartment. Our apartment. Now it was my apartment, my place, and my silence.

Sitting on the couch with my steaming cup of tea, I let the music flow through the apartment. I couldn’t decide if this silence was a good or bad thing. On one hand, I was used to having someone always sitting by my side. The awareness of a body next to you as you went along with whatever you were doing, and the comforting feeling it brought, was hard to remember when you were so used to it. On the other hand, I felt like I was slowly coming to the realization that while I missed the companionship, I didn’t know if I missed Owen himself. Owen was not the most passionate man; even his break up was delivered with detailed words he carefully placed in front of me, wrecking me with his precise delivery. Afterwards, I moved out quietly. There were no clothes thrown on the lawn or broken dishes, just a bowl full of silent emotions we didn’t know how to express.

Sitting on the couch, the blank walls stared at me. Our old place was filled with pictures of what I thought was a loving couple, along with a few of Jo and I, but mostly it was a lot of
our
stuff, not mine, and now the walls were bare, a life missing. What would this next chapter of my life look like? Did I even know where to start? Who would fill these walls with me?