God, she really wanted me to keep the hits coming. “I would let Joan break my heart a thousand times, rewind reality, and ensure I never met her at all before I did what she wanted. She showed a frankly boggling desire to disregard my needs and my wishes, ones I explained several times while using very small words. What was her reasoning for trying to hurt me this way? ‘But we’d have money!’”
“It was a fair point!” Dana protested. “You’re throwing away so much! The two of you would be set for life!”
I leveled a stare on Dana. “What good is money when you have a life you hate, a family you loathe, and no happiness to show for it? I’m not naïve, Dana. I know what money does for you. There is not enough money in the world for me to do what she asked me to do.”
Her lemon-sucking face softened. “Your family can’t be that bad.”
“No. My family can be worse.” I jabbed a fingertip in her direction. “And the fact that you know why she left me drives the last nail in this coffin. I asked her not to share this with anyone else. This is my secret to share. She disregarded that. I could not be less interested in inviting her back into my life than I am right now.”
At last, Dana sighed, and banished the remains of her fit of pique. “I just thought you two made a wonderful couple. You were so good together. She thinks so, too, you know.”
“I’m going to disagree with you there, since she’s the one who walked out.” Where the hell was Jackson? I wondered if my phone had any charge for me to contact him with.
“I think she regrets it.” Dana folded her arms across her chest. “She talks about you sometimes. How she might have made a mistake.”
At last, I spotted Jackson’s blue truck as it pulled past the school and turned into the circular driveway that would bring him to the front where I waited. “I don’t think she made a mistake. I think she did us both a favor. Our values didn’t match. Our life goals didn’t match. At the time, she broke my heart, but I’ve come to see that as her putting a doomed relationship out of its misery.”
“I don’t think she sees it that way.”
“Then I’m sorry for her.” The truck pulled up to the curb a few feet from where I stood. I picked up my leather work satchel, and slung it over my shoulder. “I wish her nothing but fulfillment. May she someday be as happy in a marriage as I am in mine. That’s my husband, by the way. I’ve got to go. Take care, won’t you?”
I walked off before she could reply. Jackson leaned over to push the passenger door open for me. “Who was that?”
“Someone you’re welcome to run over on the way out, if you want,” I said as I flung myself into the shotgun seat. “That’s Dana Adams. Good friend of my ex. Introduced us. Wants us to get back together. Can go fuck herself with a cactus. Sideways.”
Jackson narrowed his eyes. “You want us to go to a nursery so we can buy her a cactus? We can put a bow on it.”
I laughed and buckled my seatbelt. “She can supply her own cactus. I’ve just mentally put her on my ‘avoid at all costs’ list and will do my best to miss her for the last few weeks of the school year. If I’m lucky, Joan will find a boyfriend over the summer and Dana will ignore me after that.”
“So, a cactus and a gift subscription to Tinder, then.” Jackson shifted the truck into gear and pulled out. “I’m on it.”
Jackson never fails to make me laugh. It’s one of the things I love best about him.
Take note! This was probably the first moment I started to realize I didn’t have to pretend to fall for Jackson. Real love had started to erode my battered heart and seep in like a basement leak.
I knew he didn’t feel the same yet. How could he? I hadn’t told him about the events of my life that had shaped me, molded me into the history teacher who happened to know the sun’s surface temperature. His path toward healing the damage his own ex had done remained half walked.
Had he told me he loved me in that moment, I would not have believed him. Still, I knew right then, as we pulled onto the main road that would lead us to the interstate, that I wanted to hear him say it. I wanted to earn it.
I wanted to love him with all my heart. And I wanted him to love me with all of his.
* * *
The car ride to Wyoming was beautiful, and relaxing, and did a lot of heavy lifting to ease my nerves about meeting his family. My folks had not left me with a warm, fuzzy feeling about interactions with parental figures who hadactualparental correlation to my existence. Add in the intense desire for Jackson’s family, the most important people in his life, to like me, and you get Anxiety Stew.
Jackson and I chatted about his childhood as the miles flew by. Well,hechatted about his childhood, spinning yarns about the time he had broken his arm jumping out of a tree or the afternoon when he’d decided trying to ride a pig would be a fantastic idea. (Guess what? It wasn’t.)
He also chatted about his father’s deployments. “My folks have always had money,” he said, as I poured a handful of trail mix into his outstretched hand. Driver picks the music, shotgun feeds the driver and shuts his piehole. “Dad didn’t need to join up. He saw all the fighting on TV as a kid, and he decided right then to do all he could to help the brave boys out there fighting.”
Somehow, I hadn’t expected less. “I can understand that,” I said, and I did. Better than Jackson realized.
“We’re all proud of him for that. We’d go see him off, trying not to cry because we knew he’d be gone for a long time and we’d miss him. And we always knew he might not come back. Mom said she worked extra hard at her job to be sure Dad had all the tools he needed to make it back home.”
“You said she’s a defense contractor.”
“Yep. They build out the power armor we use on Mars.”
Those exosuits I mentioned? The battle armor they fit on women because it’s lighter that way? That was what he meant. “Damn. That’s pretty cool.”