When she turned her attention back to Sue Ann at the podium, he looked around the room and still had a hard time accepting that this was his life.
Unlike most people that grew up in Hope Falls, he hadn’t wanted to settle down and live his life here. He’d promised himself as a kid that the day he turned eighteen he’d be out of there. And he was. He’d joined the Army and spent seven years serving his country. He was an EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) specialist. Ultimately, his time in the service was cut short by an undetectable IED that detonated and ended his career. After a few months stay in the hospital he was medically discharged.
Without having another plan, he’d returned to his hometown a broken man. He ended up taking over the reins of his family business Pine Auto Shop after his father passed away just a few weeks after he came back. The timing of his dad’s death was shitty, not that there was ever a good time for someone to die.
Josh shifted in his seat trying to relieve some of the pain in his lower back.
Beside him, Nonna reached into her purse, pulled out a butterscotch candy, unwrapped it, not caring that the crinkling noise was loud, and popped it in her mouth. She offered one to him, just like she used to do every Sunday when she’d drag him to church as a kid and he was getting antsy, but he declined.
In church he used to get antsy because he was bored. His restlessness now had nothing to do with boredom. Whenever he sat or stood in one place for a prolonged amount of time, his back rebelled. His pain ranged from good days being about a four and bad days being a full on ten on the pain scale. Since the explosion that changed his life forever, there hadn’t been one day where he was pain free. And the physical pain was only part of it. After returning to the States, he’d fallen into a pretty deep depression that was exacerbated by night terrors and debilitating anxiety.
Not that he had the right to complain. He was alive. He was breathing. He was one of the lucky ones. Or at least that’s what he kept telling himself.