“I can see that,” she said, nodding a bit solemnly. “It never gets easier,” she said, shrugging, “watching all you kids learn about the harsher shit in life. I guess we all want to think that we could shield you from all of it. That’s naive, of course, but it’s what we all hope for.”
“Hey,” I said, moving toward her, giving her shoulder a little squeeze. “We’re all doing alright.”
“But are you?” she asked, and it felt like a bigger question than I could ever answer. Because it didn’t feel like it was just about me. It was about all of us.
“Maybe not,” I admitted, shrugging. “But you have to at least put your faith to rest that you gave us all the tools we could possibly need to deal with our shit, right?” I asked.
To that, she let out a small, airy laugh.
“With you, darling, I’m a little worried about just how many tools I’ve given you. Not to mention your father,” she said, cringing a bit. “And how you might choose to use those tools. And on whom,” she finished.
“Oh, come on Lo,” I said, turning to leave, walking backward as I added, “a little castration never hurt anyone,” I told her, turning away at the sound of her laughter.
Oddly, I felt better about my decision after talking to Lo. As much as she was kind of hands-off with all “her girls,” she would absolutely say something if she thought we were being completely stupid.
That said, it was no secret that Lo was a complete hopeless romantic. When we were really young, we used to steal her steamy romances that she would leave around the gym and read the totally inappropriate for our ages material.
She loved a love story.
And I could totally see her urging me to go through with my plan because she had some misguided notion that it might end up with Valen and I somehow ending up together.
Which was just about the most ridiculous thing I’d heard in years. Which was saying something because I’d recently been told when staying at a lady’s house that if I put a knife under my pillow, it would stop my bad dreams.
Little did she know, I slept with a knife under my pillow every night.
But, yeah, my plan wasn’t going to end with Valen and I getting back together.
Oh, no.
That was dead.
Dug up by scavengers, eaten to the bone, then re-buried by the sands of time.
It couldn’t be revived.
I just wanted him to pay a little bit.
I wanted him to know that you couldn’t go around being that much of an asshat and not have someone make you suffer for it.
I wanted him to suffer.
Then I wanted to move on with my life.
Finally.
At least, you know, that was the plan.
CHAPTER THREE
Valen
Being back in Navesink Bank was both familiar and unfamiliar, somehow at the same time.
A part of me figured that once I was done with all my traveling around, my Kerouac days behind me, that my hometown would feel like it had always felt.
In ways, it did.
Most of the stores and restaurants were the same. But they’d been renovated, and most were run by the next generation of owners.
The people were, for the most part, the same. But their faces were different, less familiar.
I guess I thought I’d done a good job keeping in touch. I wrote letters. I made phone calls. I stayed up to date with most of the familial shit. Especially because Vi was entrenched in most of the shit, even if she was out of town as often as she was in it.
But something about not being there in person made it infinitely clear that a lot of things had fallen through the cracks, little details that, when you accumulated enough of them, made up a big picture that I didn’t get to see.
I felt a bit like an outsider, even in the club, surrounded by people I spent damn near every day of my life with for eighteen years.
The fact of the matter was, though, that time had gone on without me. My friends that had been something more like brothers and sisters had grown, had gotten their own adult lives, had forged close connections.
And I wasn’t a part of any of it anymore.
I understood, logically, that I would be. Eventually. Once I was around for a while. Once I settled in. Once everyone got comfortable with me again.
“What?” Voss rumbled at me in that familiar, gruff voice of his.
It seemed strange that Voss, who I had known for such a short period of time comparatively, seemed much more familiar, more comfortable to be around.
But, well, my family and friends, they knew me as the kid I’d been when I’d jumped town.
Voss knew me as the man I became along the way.
That knowledge made our situation different.