I’ll Meet You There (6 page)

I texted her back:
Shut up.

JOSH

Why did I say I’d go? I’m gonna look like an idiot. This isn’t the kind of stuff they
help you with in rehab. There aren’t fuckin’ dance lessons for gimp Marines. I couldn’t
even dance when I had
two
legs. Remember when Gomez decided that he wanted to make his wife a video of our
squad doing Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” routine for Christmas and so we all had to learn
it like a bunch of homos? (
Don’t say homo, Josh,
you tell me.
That’s fucking bigoted
.) Still, you have to admit, we looked like a bunch of homos. You asked a medevac
to film it with the crappy camera you bought off one of the translators in Kandahar
and somehow the video ended up on YouTube, so we were kinda famous for a week or two.
When I get home from the Paradise, I decide to watch it, don’t know why. Just need
to. Guess Sky asking me to go dancing made me think of it—this shitty video was the
last time I danced on two legs. Last time I danced, period. I find it on my computer
and even though the video’s all wobbly, it’s like I’m right back there. I’m off to
the side, fucking up the dance and laughing so hard and Sharpe is getting way too
into it and Harrison is wearing the bra his girlfriend sent him to help him get off
on thinking about her. At the end we all just start dancing like idiots. I’m doing
some cowboy rodeo thing and you’re pretending to slap my ass and Gomez is humping
the floor like it’s his wife or something. And here I am sitting alone in my room
in the States, cracking up and it feels so good to laugh, man, but then the laughing
turns to something else and before I know it I’m on my feet and punching the wall,
which hurts like a bitch, but I do it again and again until my mom opens the door
and says,
Jesus Christ, Josh
, and then slams it closed. My knuckles are bleeding and the video is finished. We’re
frozen on the screen. And now I’m looking at Sharpe and you, posing like trannie models,
and at me with my two beautiful goddamn legs and it doesn’t make sense, doesn’t make
any fucking sense that you’re both gone. How can you do some dumb dance like that
and then not exist anymore?

chapter four

“Mom,
please
. You can’t sit here all night. Come on. I made you the pasta you like—the squiggly
kind. And a salad.”

She didn’t even look at me, just kept her eyes glued to the TV.
CSI
was on, and they were cutting up a body while calmly discussing the atrocious rape-slash-dismemberment
of the victim.

“My ride’s gonna be here any minute, and I really need you to eat something before
I go.”

She reached for her cigarettes, but I darted out and grabbed them. In our house, cigarettes
meant a day when Mom couldn’t stop thinking about Dad and how he’d gotten into his
truck that night when he should have let someone drive him home. They didn’t help
her forget. They helped her remember.

“You’ll get wrinkly. Then George Clooney will never have sex with you.”

Her mouth twitched, but she beckoned for me to give the cigs back. “Don’t you have
to finish getting ready for your date?”

“It’s not a date.”

It wasn’t. It was … a thing. An outing. Whatever. What was I thinking, going dancing?
It was wrong to leave her, but just being inside there for too long made my chest
feel like someone was pressing against it as hard as they could.

I heard Josh’s truck roar into the little patch of dirt in front of the trailer that
served as our driveway, Kid Rock blaring. My face reddened as I imagined myself in
Josh’s truck, looking like some girl he’d picked up for the night.

Mom looked at the door, as if she could see through it. “That Chris?”

She knew it wasn’t. Chris didn’t listen to loud music, and his dad’s old Chevy sounded
nothing like Josh’s flashy truck.

“Josh. Did you want bread or—”

“Josh
Mitchell
?” she asked.

“Uh-huh.”

I put some ranch on her salad and threw the bottle back in the fridge, then dished
out her pasta.

Mom frowned. “Maybe you should stay home tonight.”

I heard the door of Josh’s truck slam shut. There was no way I was canceling on him,
even if these past few hours with my mom had worn me out more than my whole shift
at the Paradise.

I reached over to squeeze her shoulder. “Why don’t you give Crystal a call? I bet
she’s babysitting Seanie for Dylan tonight. You could go over there for a bit.”

Crystal was Dylan’s mom. Their trailer was practically across the street from ours,
and other than a few of the women at work, she was my mom’s only friend.

Josh knocked on the door.

“I won’t stay long,” I said. “And I’ll have my cell if you need anything.”

Mom pursed her lips, and her eyes slid to the TV. She grabbed the remote and turned
it back on. When I opened the door, Josh was leaning against our rickety railing,
his hands in his pockets. Only a few tiny beads of sweat near his temples gave away
his difficulty getting up the steps. Even so, I had to admit he looked good. He wore
long cargo shorts and a plaid button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled, his sunglasses
in his front pocket, and a Marines baseball cap. I was sort of angry at him for looking
so good. Because this wasn’t a date, and I was suddenly wishing—against all my better
judgment—that it was.

He smiled. “Hey.”

The sun had just gone down, so the sky was purple and the first stars were coming
out. It was a warm twilight, an exhalation after the intense heat of the day. Creek
View almost seemed pretty.

“You found me.” I frowned. What a stupid thing to say. Of course he’d know where the
trailer park was, and it wasn’t like it was a particularly complicated neighborhood
to navigate. Was it the leg thing that made me so dumb or was it that he was standing
on my doorstep, which was strange enough in and of itself?

“Yeah,” he said.

We sort of stood there for a moment, my palms getting sweaty, and then I motioned
inside. “I’m just gonna grab my purse, okay? I’ll meet you in the truck?”

“Cool.”

When I shut the door behind me, Mom was still staring at the TV. I grabbed my purse.
“Love you.”

She nodded. “Have fun.”

I blew her a kiss the way we always do, pressing my lips to my fingers then raising
my hand in a wave as I shut the door behind me.

Josh’s truck was a thing I’d only seen from afar, except for the one time Blake drove
me home in it. It was a red Ford F-150 with extra-big wheels and two annoying stickers
in the back window of naked female silhouettes looking in opposite directions. There
was also a Marine Corps decal and an American flag sticker.

“Josh, on behalf of women everywhere, I demand that you remove those skanky stickers
from your back window.”

He turned around and fixed me with a look of mock horror. “How dare you call the flag
of the greatest country on earth
skanky
!”

I punched him on the arm. “You know which ones I’m talking about.”

He rolled his eyes and handed me his MP3 player. “You can pick the music.”

I scrolled through his albums. “Gee, how’s a girl to decide between Fifty Cent and
Metallica?”

He grabbed it out of my hands. “Never mind.”

We went back and forth like that all the way to Leo’s, me feeling surprised that he
was so easy to talk to, him trying not to make it obvious that he was checking me
out.

On top of his dashboard was a black, leather-bound journal. It would have been number
one on my Things Josh Would Never Own list. I was about to ask him why he had it when
he beat me to an uncomfortable question.

“So, what’s with you and my brother?” he asked, as we turned into the packed parking
lot.

“Nothing.”

“At the party you two seemed kinda … you know.” He wiggled his eyebrows.

Ugh.

“Blake needs to remember that he has a girlfriend, and last I checked, that girlfriend
isn’t me. You know how he is when he gets drunk.”

“You mean he acts like any dude in the world?” he said.

“Eww.”

Josh snorted. “When Blake e-mailed me about you, I was seriously like, what?
Skylar?
”

I laughed, but not in a ha-ha way—more in a bitter what-the-hell-was-I-thinking way.
“I don’t know, Josh. It was only a week—just spring break. And I guess I was feeling
like, why not? We weren’t a couple or anything. We were just … it was dumb.”

I didn’t tell him how that had been one of the worst weeks of my life or that I’d
never done anything with a boy, not really, and that, after each afternoon with Blake,
I’d go home and cry in the shower and wonder what was wrong with me. And then I’d
meet him by the creek the next day and it would happen all over again. It wasn’t like
we even went that far—it just felt far to
me
.

“Wow. That’s romantic.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Would you prefer
your
version of relationships?” I asked.

“You mean the ones where the girl actually wants to be with me? Um,
yeah
.”

He parked the truck, and I sighed, wondering if we were still joking or not.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing. You ready?”

“Oh, no. You’re pissed. I said something wrong.” He shook his head. “This buddy of
mine always tells me—” He stopped for a second and tapped his key against the steering
wheel. I waited for him to finish his thought, but it was like he’d already gotten
out of the truck. Like Mom, he wasn’t there.

“Josh?” I reached out to touch his arm, but he jerked away.

“I’m fine,” he snapped.

“Okay,” I said, my voice soft.

We sat there for a minute, sharing air, the music from Leo’s slipping through our
slightly opened windows.

I cleared my throat. “I know we’re not, like, best friends or whatever, but if you
need someone to talk to…” His whole body seemed to tense up, so I stopped and opened
the door. “C’mon. I’ll buy you a beer.”

He gave me a sideways glance. “You don’t drink.”

“Yeah, but I bet the only way I’ll get you on the dance floor is if
you
drink. Besides, Leo’s doesn’t card.” Leg or no leg, the dude needed to have some
fun.

He shook his head. “I’m not dancing.”

I shrugged. “Okay.”

“Seriously.”

I gave him a we’ll-see smile, then jumped out of the truck and came around to his
side.

“Do you need any he—”

“No.” He shifted his good leg around to jump down from the truck, which was way too
high up because of the extra-huge wheels. He slammed the door and grabbed my hand.
“Let’s go.”

I didn’t know how that happened—my hand in his—so quickly, and why wasn’t I pulling
away? He opened the door, and that’s how we walked into Leo’s, looking like a couple,
but he let go as soon as we got past the dark entryway. It was like this little secret
that I knew would hang over my head all night. And Dylan would see it right away;
I knew she would. It was probably written all over my face, this feeling in my chest
that was tight and loose at the same time. I let Josh walk ahead of me and I put the
hand he’d held against a pillar just inside the entryway, letting the cold seep through
my skin and up my arm. I told myself I wouldn’t stay long.

And I’d get a ride home from Chris.

*   *   *

The restaurant-turned-dance-hall was packed, as usual. The walls were covered in sombreros
and black-and-white photographs of people in traditional Mexican dress. Colorful piñatas
in all shapes and sizes hung from the ceiling, their thin paper blowing in the breeze
from the air-conditioning vents. The wooden tables that covered the floor during the
day were pushed against the walls, stacked on top of each other. In the far corner,
Chris’s cousin Carlos was spinning. One of my favorite reggaeton songs was playing,
that familiar
buh-buh-bump-bump, buh-buh-bump-bump
thumping, and I focused on the music, letting it massage my brain until all I could
think of was getting that beat inside me for the rest of the night.

“Dance?” I asked Josh. I’d decided he needed to, bum leg and all.

“Beer,” he said.

We went over to the bar, but before we’d even made it, Ricardo, Chris’s incurably
flirtatious older cousin, was catching me up in his arms.

“
Mi hija!
Congratulations!”

I let him twirl me around for a minute and then I was back on my feet, dizzy but laughing.

“It’s just high school graduation, Ricky.”

“Yeah, but around here, that’s a big thing.” He looked over at Josh, and I started
the whole Josh-Ricky-Ricky-Josh introductions and then we were at the bar. Josh wouldn’t
let me buy him a beer, and he handed me a Coke before I could say anything.

“Ohmygod,
Josh
?” A gorgeous girl I didn’t know pushed between us, and in seconds, he was all up
on her, which was so par for the Mitchell course.

“So, is this, like … a date?” Ricky whispered.

The girl had her hands on his waist and was leaning into him, laughing at something
he’d said.

“No!
God
.”

How did girls do that? I mean, how did they manage to have a guy’s full attention
in less than a minute?

Ricky raised his eyebrows. “Well, in that case—”

“Aren’t you supposed to be spinning?” I pointed to the DJ. “You just left Carlos up
there all by himself. That’s cold.”

He laughed and started toward the turntables just as Dylan shimmied up to me. I wouldn’t
have to be Josh Mitchell’s third wheel all night, after all. Awesome.

“Hi!” Dylan said, already a bit tipsy.

“Hey, Mama.”

“When did you guys get here?” She kissed my cheek and leaned across me to give Josh
a thumbs-up. “You clean up good, soldier.”

“Hey, Dylan,” Josh said, turning away from the clingy goddess. “You want a beer?”