Clash (22 page)

“The airport, please,” I said, narrowing my eyes to better focus on the window I was looking into. A shadow moved suddenly away from it. “And please hurry,” I added, the ball reforming in my throat.

The cabdriver followed my request to the speed-defying T. In fact, he put NYC cabdrivers to shame. Less than a half hour after we’d left the hospital, we were pulling up to the airport’s curb. Having no luggage other than my purse, I handed the driver his money plus a nice tip for a job well done.

I hurried my way to the ticket counter, wanting to get off the ground here so I could think. My thoughts were stifled here in New York. I couldn’t think clearly.

Ticket in hand, I got in line at the security checks. Being Christmas Eve, I expected there to be more grumpy faced people and screaming children than there were, and before I’d had time to dig my phone out of my purse to call my parents to let them know I was on my way, a TSA agent was ushering me through the metal detectors.

Throwing my purse, phone, and boots onto the conveyor belt, I whisked through the metal detector. I breathed a sigh of relief when it didn’t beep. Last time I’d flown, I’d forgotten to take off my chunky sterling silver necklace and I’d had to endure an intense “pat down” from one very eager, very young male agent. I’d been the high point to his day as he’d been the low point to mine.

Snatching my belongings at the end of the conveyor belt, I heard it.

Well, I heard him.

“Lucy!”

My head snapped up. I couldn’t see him yet, but I could hear him like he was standing in front of me. The agents and others around me stopped what they were doing to look too.

“Lucy!” This time closer as Jude emerged from around the corner, in a full sprint, bare foot and a hospital gown streaming around him. His eyes latched onto me like they were trained to find nothing else.

“Lucy!” he repeated, charging the security gates. TSA agents were popping up in their seats, looking between one another.

He didn’t stop sprinting, taking out one, then two rows of nylon people-herders. He didn’t stop until a couple of large agents tackled into him.

My hands covered my mouth as the guards stopped him, each one grabbing an arm of Jude’s and throwing it behind his back. Jude didn’t fight back, or maybe he couldn’t; he just stared at me with those dark eyes, pleading with me to stay.

“You can’t leave, Luce!” he hollered, resisting the guards as they tried to remove him from the security area.

“I’m just going away for a little while,” I said, sure he couldn’t hear me since I couldn’t manage more than a whisper. “I’ll be back. I promise.” With an answer that would decide the fate of our relationship.

“You can’t leave me,” he said, his voice breaking, his face following as the guards pulled him away. Successfully this time. “You can’t leave me,” he said one last time, defeated.

I don’t know what was worse: watching Jude give up and be drug away or turning away and heading for my gate.

Both ate at me until, by the time my plane landed in Arizona, I wasn’t sure if anything was left of the old Lucy Larson.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Christmas came and went without me so much as noticing. Well, I noticed. You couldn’t help but notice when your entire extended family showed up to Christmas Eve decked out in some variety of red and green plaid, stripe, check, or polka dot Christmas sweater, flashing with lights and tinkling with bells. The ugly Christmas sweater was a new tradition, and one that I hoped died off with the department store sales that sold those monstrosities. Two hours into the Larson family shin-dig, everyone save for me was on an express train to Drunkville. Me, the only teenager there, was as sober as a nun about to take her vows.

Life didn’t make sense any more. I was about to stop trying to make sense of it in the first place.

I curled up in Grandpa’s old recliner, staring out at the cacti twinkling with Christmas lights, trying to imagine what Jude was doing at that exact minute. Experiencing a moment of weakness, I slipped my phone out of my pocket and typed, “Merry Christmas. XXX&O” and pressed send before I could rethink it. I waited up most of the night, checking my screen to make sure he hadn’t replied.

He never did.

Finding myself unable to sleep yet again New Year’s Day morning, I zombie walked into the kitchen, beelining for the coffee pot.

“And I thought I was the insomniac in the family.”

I didn’t even startle, I was that sleep deprived. Mom rose from her chair at the table and walked over to the cupboard where Grandma kept her coffee cups. Pouring one for me, she added the sugar and cream without asking.

“Thanks,” I yawned as she set the cup in front of my chair.

“You’re welcome,” she said, sitting back down and watching me, like she was waiting for something.

Too early to know what exactly, and with my mom, nothing was ever as it seemed. She might be waiting for me to share my every goal and dream with her just as much as she might be about to tell me that swept off the face hair style I’d been favoring lately wasn’t a good look for my heart-shaped face.

I’d burned through half a cup of coffee before she cleared her throat.

“So I’m officially done waiting for you to open up about whatever has got you so down you can’t possibly get any lower,” she said, setting her cup down on the table. “What’s going on with you, Lucille? I know it has something to do with you and Jude, I just can’t figure out what it is.”

I cringed first over her use of my given name and winced when she said Jude’s name. Even his name hurt me to hear.

I sighed, taking a deep chug of coffee before setting it down.

“I’m not sure if we’re supposed to be together,” I said, offering nothing else. This was, at the crux of all my concerns, the cornerstone.

My mom nodded her head, taking a few moments to think before replying. “You’re not sure if you’re supposed to be together, or if you shouldn’t be together?”

My brain wasn’t working well enough to have these kinds of conversations. “Is there a difference?”

“Of course,” she said, cinching the rope of her new bathrobe tighter. “To suppose is to assume. Should is an entirely different beast. Should implies duty and obligation. It’s a period where suppose is a question mark,” she said, watching me across the table. “So yeah, there’s a difference.”

Yep, I should have stayed in bed and continued to toss and turn. That would be better than having this conversation with my mom before the crack of dawn.

“I guess I don’t know?” I said.

“You want to know what I think?” Mom asked, her voice and face concerned.

“Sure,” I said, needing some solid mom advice. In the months that followed my senior year, we’d managed to rebuild a good portion of the relationship we’d lost after John’s death. She even snuck a few napkin notes into the care packages she and dad had sent me at school.

“From an outsider’s perspective, you and Jude probably aren’t supposed to be together,” she began slowly, watching my face for my reaction. “But at the same time, you two should be together.”

I shook my head, trying to clear it. I couldn’t keep up. This whole conversation seemed like one giant oxymoron.

“Okay, mom. That was clear as mud,” I said, narrowing my eyes as the start of a headache emerged. “Are you saying we should or shouldn’t be together?”

“You should,” she answered immediately.

Glad that was cleared up and, even though I wanted further clarification on the whole should/suppose mind maze, I couldn’t do that to myself without bringing on a migraine.

“How can you be so sure of that when I’m not?”

“Oh, honey,” she said, patting my hand. “It’s because you’re letting the fairy tales you grew up hearing in storybooks and the baseless ideals of love cloud your mind. Love isn’t easy. Especially the really good kind. It’s difficult, and you’ll want to rip your hair out just as many days as you’ll feel the wind at your back.” She paused, smiling to herself. “But it’s worth it. It’s worth fighting for. Don’t let what isn’t real blind you from what is. Life isn’t perfect, we sure as shit aren’t perfect, so why should we expect love to be?”

“I get that, I do. But come on, mom,” I said, trailing my finger along the lip of my cup. “Love just isn’t enough sometimes.”

“Baby,” she said, looking at me like I’d just said something very immature, “I’d sign my name in blood that it isn’t.”

I groaned, sinking into my chair. This little mother/daughter convo was getting me nowhere.

“I’m so damn confused right now, Mom. I’m so confused I don’t think anything you could say or explain would clear it all up for me.”

She stayed silent for a minute, her forehead lining along with the corners of her eyes as she worked something over in her mind.

“Love is what brings you together, Lucy. But it’s the blood, sweat, and tears of hard work that keeps you together,” she began, choosing her words carefully. “Love isn’t only love, sweetheart. It’s hard work, and trust, and tears, with even a few glimpses of devastation. But at the end of each day, if you can still look at the person at your side and can’t imagine anyone else you’d rather have there, the pain and heartache and the ups and downs of love are worth it.”

And the clouds of confusion started to part.

“Love is just as much suffering as it is sweetness. If it was perfect, that’s what they’d call it. They wouldn’t call it bittersweet.”

“Are you saying every relationship experiences the same kinds of highs and lows Jude and I do?” I asked, taking another sip of coffee. “Because I think more people would choose to be alone if that was the case.”

“Lucy, you’re a passionate, emotional person. Jude isn’t so much different. What do you expect to be the result when you two come together? You two don’t multiply the peaks and the valleys together; you exponentially affect them,” she said, getting up and grabbing the coffee pot from the holder.

“And there’s no doubt for some people, life would be far easier if they never fell in love. To never have to ache for a man like he was more essential than the air that kept you alive.” She filled my cup, then hers, before settling the pot between us. Gauging my mom’s loveathon lecture here, we’d drain it soon. “Life would be smoother and you’d know more what to expect from day to day if you kept love out of your life,” she paused, looking at the window as the first rays of dawn started shining through. “But you’d be alone.”

“So you’re saying I should choose Jude over the life of hermit-like solitude?” I asked, lifting my brows at her.

“I’m saying you should choose Jude if, at the end of the day, when the world is against you, you can say with absolute certainty that you want Jude at your side. Can you say the good times are worth the bad times?”

My body and mind were becoming more alert as the caffeine pulsed through my veins and my mind started making itself up after weeks of worry and uncertainty.

It was about time.

“When did you become Jude’s number one fan?” I asked, smiling over at her. Mom had gone from loathing Jude when we first met, to disliking him through the entirety of my senior year, to tolerating him since we’d been together in college. I hadn’t realized she’d crossed into the land of Jude approval.

“When he proved again and again that he’s yours,” she answered simply. “I can forgive a man’s past faults, his present shortcomings, and his future failures if every minute of every day he loves me like it’s his religion,” she said, taking a breath. “Jude loves you like that. It just took me a while to see that, so he’s got the mom stamp of approval now.”

I didn’t reply, my mind was so hard at work. Not so much rethinking things, but realigning expectations and assumptions and even a bit of my worldview. I’d been so focused on the reasons Jude and I shouldn’t be together, I’d been blinded to the reasons we should. And now that I’d “seen the light,” those reasons were worth every bit of hardship that came our way.

“Working things out over there, sweetheart?” Mom said, startling me. I’d gone so far and long down the paths of my thoughts, everything had faded away.

I took a slow breath, feeling confidence bleed into my veins, drowning out all the doubt. “All worked out, I think,” I said, feeling the weight vest I’d been wearing for too long lifted. “Thanks, Mom. For the coffee, for listening, and for the ‘come to Jude’ talk.”

“You’re welcome, Lucy,” she said, arching a brow as she studied me. “But what in the hell are you still doing in that chair?”

My eyes squinted‌—‌was she advocating for what I guessed she was?

Waving her hand at the back door, she said, “Go get your man. Go be happy and miserable together.”

Yeah, she was.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Flying on New Year’s Day had its advantages. Next to no one else was, so I had no problem getting my return ticket changed to the very next flight that left in an hour. When I started blabbering out my whole story to the poor lady behind the ticket counter, she gave me a knowing smile and upgraded me to first class.

The security checkpoint went a hundred times smoother this time, and a coffee stand was positioned right next to my gate, so by the time they called my flight, I was really buzzing like a live wire.

First class was everything people talked about it being. The seats were twice as big and at least ten times as comfortable. The flight attendants were eager to meet your every request, as opposed to almost snarling when you asked for a sip of water if you were choking on something back in coach. Choking on one of those nasty stale pretzels they liked to peddle.

Here, we got little nut and cheese trays, along with our drinks served in crystal glassware. It was high rolling at thirty thousand feet, but even at that, with my every basic and not so basic need met, I couldn’t wait until we touched down. I don’t think my foot stopped tapping once the entire flight.

I was the first person off the plane when those doors opened, and I was in a full run by the time I hit the terminal. I didn’t slow as eyes started tracking after me. I was getting used to these kinds of moments of mass public scruntinization and embarrassment. And I could consider this a prelude for what was about to come.