I’ll Meet You There (22 page)

He reached out a hand, and I hesitated for a second, then took it. He pulled me up
in one quick, fluid motion. I wondered if I smelled.

“What the hell are you thinking, sleeping on the side of the road—you’re lucky some
crazy serial killer didn’t come and kidnap you.”

His voice was hard, like he was genuinely angry with me.

I shrugged. “Who would want to do that? I look like a bag lady. Plus, I know self-defense.”

He frowned again, then reached out a hand and touched my cheek. I stood absolutely
still, my entire world whittled down to those few centimeters of skin under his fingers.

“Were you crying?” he asked, his voice soft.

I turned away and reached down to pick up my purse and the blanket.

“Just a little,” I admitted. “Tears of frustration, though. Not wimpiness.”

“I would never accuse you of wimpiness.”

He smiled, and I made the mistake of looking into those eyes. They were epic. Blue
blue blue. The storminess from the Fourth was gone, and they were gentle and so what
I needed. And didn’t need. Needed. God, I didn’t know anymore.
Hell.

He took another look at my face, then gestured to his truck. “Let’s go.”

I let him help me in and then I pretended to search inside my bag for something while
he got in, and the only way I knew he was struggling a bit was a muttered curse. God
forbid he take off the huge-ass wheels. I looked back at my car—now that I was working
at the gas station, I needed it more than ever. I turned away from it and stared out
the windshield.

Josh started the truck and blasted the air conditioner. I leaned back and sighed as
arctic air shot out at me.

“Oh my God, that feels so good,” I said. My car was already feeling like a bad dream.

He eased back onto the highway, then glanced over at me. “I think we need to get you
to Dairy Queen stat.”

“Those are the best words I’ve ever heard.”

He gestured to my outfit. “So, this is interesting.”

I smoothed my wrinkled, dirty skirt. Total mess.

“Yeah. Can we not talk about it?”

“Sure.”

He fiddled with the radio until he got to the classic rock station. The truck filled
with an insistent beat and familiar words—an old Rolling Stones song my dad had loved,
“Paint It Black.”

Josh drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and nodded his head, his lips moving
with Mick Jagger’s growl.

“You’ve seen
Full Metal Jacket,
right?” he asked, turning to me.

I shook my head. “Vietnam movies aren’t my thing.”

“It’s not the most accurate movie, but the guys and I used to watch it all the time—the
first part’s pretty good. I had this friend who used to quote it, did the voices and
everything.” He was quiet for a minute, and it was like a cloud had passed across
his face. So fast that I thought maybe I’d imagined it. “Anyway, it’s pretty good
for what it is.”

“My movie tastes are more boy meets girl, girl falls in love with boy, and everything’s
happy at the end,” I said.

His lips turned up a little. “Okay. But still. It’s a classic. Anyway, that song’s
at the end of it. It’s … Dairy Queen.”

“It’s Dairy Queen?”

“No.” He laughed and pointed off the side of the road.

“Oh. Right. That was fast.”

He swung into the drive-thru, and we ordered Blizzards, trying to goad each other
into getting as many flavors as possible. When I tried to pay for us, he swatted my
hand away.

“Josh—you rescued me! I’m, like, a damsel in distress. Let me buy you a Blizzard—it’s
the least I can do.”

“Skylar, shut up.”

I wanted to be annoyed, but I just laughed. Maybe it was a post-crisis adrenaline
rush, where everything’s slightly hilarious.

He handed me my Blizzard, and we pulled back onto the road. I took a bite.

“I think if I could only eat one thing for the rest of my life, it’d be this,” I said.

He scrunched up his nose. “I don’t know about that.”

I held up a spoonful for him. “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”

He hesitated for just a second, then leaned over and took a bite. I knew it was dumb,
but seeing my spoon in his mouth made me so happy.
Damn Florence Nightingale.

“That’s disgusting,” he said. “It should be illegal to put Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
and mint together.”

“Yes, because your combo of pineapple and Snickers is a real winner.”

“You know, I’m starting to feel like you’d rather walk home.” He changed lanes to
get closer to the shoulder.

“Okay, okay.” I held out my hands in surrender. “Pineapple and Snickers are a match
made in heaven.”

He switched back to the fast lane. “That’s what I thought.”

We drove in silence for a while or turned up songs we liked and talked about how great
they were, unless it was one of Josh’s heavy metal songs, in which case I pointed
out all the ways it was appalling. Sometimes we stared out at the fields as we drove
past them, talking about Creek View and whatever popped into our minds.

“Writing poetry?” I teased, pointing to the black leather journal sitting on top of
his dashboard that I’d noticed the night he picked me up for Leo’s.

Josh took a bite of his Blizzard, shrugged. “Just something my therapist is making
me do. God, that sounds so gay.
My therapist
.”

“Are you coming out of the closet right now? Or are you saying all gay people have
therapists?”

“Oh, you know what I mean. Don’t get all PC on me,” he said, lightly shoving my shoulder.

“Well, somebody has to.”

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, okay. It’s not gay, it’s …
bleh
. I don’t know. It sucks.”

“That’s where you were before you picked me up, right? Blake said something about
a doctor in Fresno.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I go a couple times a week. I have rehab and therapy and … just
stuff.” He cleared his throat.

“So it’s shitty, then?” I asked.

“Yeah, pretty much. It’s better when I go to San Diego, to the military hospital.
There’s a dog there.”

“A dog?”

I knew about his trips to San Diego, but he’d never told me much about them.

“Yeah. He’s a Lab, totally awesome. He chills with us, hangs out when we’re talking
and stuff. This one dude lost both his arms—his Humvee went over, like, three IEDs.
So he pets the dog with his feet.” He shook his head. “Guess I’m lucky, huh?”

“You do have nice arms.”

He snorted, and I looked out the window, biting back a smile.

“The dog in San Diego … he sort of reminds me of this one we had in our regiment—Buddy.
He was this black Lab, a bomb dog. A killer in the field, but a total softie when
he was off duty. He’d come out with us when we were patrolling, sniffing out IEDs.”

I took the cover off my shake and spooned it into my mouth. It was thick and sweet,
and I felt like I could eat ten of them. It was so good I almost forgot my whole life
had just blown apart.

“It’s kind of hard to imagine a dog out there.”

“I know, right?”

I thought about the night of the Fourth, the look in his eyes when the fireworks went
off.

“So, the therapy is helping? The dog and stuff?” I asked.

“Sort of, yeah. A friend of mine bit it this week, so I was feeling all…” He sighed.
“He had a little girl. Just sucks, you know?”

“God, yeah.” I wouldn’t have known unless he’d said something. Sometimes he was a
complete mystery. How did he hold it all in? I thought of that little girl, growing
up without her dad, and my heart hurt for her.

Josh looked over at me. “Let’s talk about something else. Your day’s been shitty enough.”

“It’s okay. I mean, you can talk to me about … whatever. Honestly.”

“I know.” He brushed my arm and smiled. Such a little thing, that act, but it felt
huge. Seismic.

I tried to think of something as far away from Afghanistan as possible. “Do you believe
there’s intelligent life on Mars?”

“You are one weird chick.”

“Yeah, but you’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” I said, grinning. “Alien attacks
and all that.”

Josh grunted. “Yeah, I am.” He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. “Okay.
There has to be intelligent life on Mars. Humans kind of suck at life.”

I laughed. “Yes. Please don’t let us be the last word in evolution.”

“Amen, sister.”

I held up the copy of
Shantaram
sitting on the seat between us. It didn’t seem like a very Josh book. For one thing,
it was, like, a million pages.

“What’s the deal with this?”

His eyes slid to the book, then back to the road. “Friend of mine made a list of books
for me to read. This one’s about an Australian con man in India—it’s pretty cool.
Did you know Indians do this with their heads when they talk?”

He wiggled his head from side to side, and I laughed.

“What number is it on the list?” I asked.

“Thirty-nine out of a hundred and twenty. I had a lot of time to read in the hospital.”

Wow.

“What will you do when you finish all of them? Is he gonna give you another one?”

Josh gripped the wheel, stared straight ahead. The look on his face made me want to
take the words back, snatch them out of the air.

“No,” he finally said.

Oh.

I wondered if it was the guy he’d told me about that night we threw the bottles. Or
someone else—the one who’d given him
Slaughterhouse-Five
. How many friends had he lost?

“Well … maybe I can make a list for you—if you want.”

He looked at me, surprised. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I’ll start you off with
Green Eggs and Ham
, and we’ll work up from there.”

“You’re just pissed because I read more than you do.”

I nodded. “Guilty. Lately all I want to do is work on this collage I’m making for
Marge. But I like
Slaughterhouse
so far.”

“Nice.”

“Was that on the list?”

“Number one.”

He cleared his throat a little, and when he glanced at me, I saw that his eyes had
clouded over again. “Can I … can I tell you something?” he said suddenly. “It’s a
secret—probably shouldn’t even be … but I’ve gotta—I want you to know.”

It made me happier than it should have that he trusted me, but the look on his face
turned me cold inside.

“Yeah. Whatever it is, I won’t tell anyone.” I tried to smile. “Cross my heart.”

“You know how Marge’s son was in the Army?”

“Yeah. He died in Iraq, right?”

“No.”

And then Josh told me the truth about Marge’s son.

I sat there, stunned, trying to reconcile the image I’d always had of her hero dying
in battle with this new one of a severely depressed kid lying in a bloody bathtub.

“—and sometimes she’ll look at me like … I don’t know, Sky, I just … it’s intense,
you know?”

He frowned at the road in front of him.

“Yeah,” I said, my voice soft.

I wanted to tear this picture of Marge’s son out of my mind, him in that bathtub.
I couldn’t imagine Josh ever—

“You’re not him,” I said. Did I sound strong? Certain?

Josh looked at me. Nodded. “Damn straight.”

He said that in a case-closed kind of voice, and so I sat there, grieving for Marge
and this kid I’d never met and worrying about the one sitting beside me, the mess
of it all swirling around my head, dizzying.

More silence, but after a while it was the good kind, like the blanket I had on my
bed that was so soft, just touching it made me sleepy.

We passed the Taco Bell where my mom used to work and the gas station where I now
spent my weekends. I could see Chris’s truck outside, and I imagined him in there
with his bright orange shirt, selling candy bars and huge fountain sodas. We’d be
home in a few minutes. The thought of seeing Josh’s red taillights made me feel unmoored.
It was different than the gnawing sadness from the social services parking lot. But
it was still there.

He turned into the trailer park. Knowing I wasn’t leaving it after all, I felt like
I was seeing it for the first time. The chain-link fence surrounding the property,
the sagging hulks of metal, the kids hosing one another down because the only pool
in town was at the Paradise.

“What a shithole,” I murmured.

Josh reached out and grabbed my hand and lightly squeezed before letting go. Suddenly
I didn’t know which way was up.

“The real question,” he said, “is if there
is
intelligent life on Mars, would you rather live there or in Creek View?”

“There,” I said automatically.

He nodded his head. “Yep.”

chapter twenty

When Josh pulled his truck up to my trailer, Billy’s red pickup was in the driveway.
He parked behind it.

“Thanks,” I said.

He looked at the steering wheel for a second, then turned to me. “What happened today?”

I shook my head and put my hand on the door handle, keeping my back to him. Before
I could do anything, Josh shut off the ignition.

“I’m walking you to the door this time,” he said.

“It’s cool, I can—”

“Nope.” He pointed to Billy’s truck. “That dude is seriously bad news, Sky.”

He was out of the truck before I could say anything else. I sighed and grabbed my
bag, then slid out.

As we started up the steps, I turned to look at him before I opened the door. “My
mom’s not doing so well,” I said. “So don’t think … I mean, she’s not usually like
this.”

“Have you
seen
my family?”

“Yeah, but…” I didn’t really know what to say except
go home
, and he obviously had no intention of doing that.

“I just want to make sure you’re okay,” he said.

That look again. The one he’d given me when he’d found me sleeping under the tree.

I nodded and when I opened the door, I could feel the heat of him behind me, lending
me courage when I saw the half-empty boxes all over the floor.