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Me: Hi Bruce, could you forward me Oscar’s cell number so I can text him if there’s any delays with my bus, please?
Bruce: Of course, sweetheart. Here’s your brother’s number. 718-333-6782
Me: Thanks.
Pulling in a deep affirming breath, I copy the number and save Oscar as a contact, then I open a new message thread and start to type out a text. My hands are shaking so hard it takes me twenty minutes to write a message that makes sense, and I hit send before I can wimp out.
Me: Hi Oscar, this is Henrietta Jordan, Maureen’s daughter. I’m sorry to message you out of the blue, but I asked your dad for your number. Thank you so much for offering to allow me to stay with you in Montana, but I wanted to let you know that my roommate will be getting to town earlier than expected, so I’ll be staying with her. I appreciate you being willing to accommodate a stranger, but it won’t be necessary. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Henrietta.
My breath comes in short, sharp gasps that make my lungs hurt as I stare at my cell, waiting for the angry reply, or worse, for my cell to ring and for it to be him. There’s no way I can talk to him in person. Even though it’s been fifteen years since the last time I saw him, the idea of sharing a town with him and five thousand other people feels almost suffocating. There’s no way I could stand being in the same house as him.
I stare at my cell for another twenty minutes, wondering if I should text again, before I decide that I shouldn’t. I’ve done my part; I’ve been polite and declined his offer to stay with him. That’s it. I don’t owe him anything else.
For the next week, I obsess over my cell, waiting for something from him, but nothing comes. I should be relieved, but instead I find myself falling back into the pattern of dread I used to feel when I was a kid and I knew he was coming to visit.
My stomach is in knots, my anxiety is so tightly wound that I can barely sleep, and it’s all because of him. The stupid thing is that I don’t know him anymore. I didn’t know much about him even when we were kids, he was simply the boy who hated me. But now he’s a grown man, and hopefully his days of tormenting me for simply existing are over.
I can share a town with him. I have to, because Rockhead Point is where my new job is, it’s where Octy is. It’s where my future is, and I refuse to allow him to spoil that, simply because we were forced to know each other fifteen years ago.
I try to relax, but since the bus drove past the “Welcome to Rockhead Point” sign, my stomach has been anxiously churning. I’ve been riding the Greyhound for almost twenty-six hours now, and I’m more than ready to check into the hotel I booked and sleep for the next two days. My butt is numb, and my legs are cramped, even though I’m short enough to have significantly more room than the majority of the people around me.
For the hundredth time since I boarded my first bus in Las Vegas, I wish I was brave enough to actually get on a plane, because the flight from Vegas to Bozeman is less than four hours, instead of the multiple buses it’s taken me to get here.
But I’m not brave, I never have been.
The one and only time I ever tried to get on a plane was when Bruce booked us all a vacation to spend Christmas in Mexico. I was so excited to go, until Oscar spent the three days before we were due to leave torturing me with videos of plane crashes and all the horrifying ways people have died when the planes they were on malfunctioned. By the time we got to the airport, I was hyperventilating and crying so hard that I was struggling to breathe. I managed to get all the way onto the airplane, but the moment we sat down, Oscar forced me to watch a video of a plane just like the one we were sitting on crashing and then showed me pictures of the rows of body bags that had been retrieved from the wreckage. Keeping me pinned to the seat, he replayed it over and over again, until I had a panic attack and passed out.
According to my mom, the air stewardesses called an ambulance, and we were all escorted off the plane. Since then, even airports cause me to have a trauma response that makes my chest tighten and my vision dim.
As the bus pulls into the small roadside station, nausea pulses through me in waves until I have to suck in deep gulps of air to stave away the sickness I can feel rising in my throat. With my cell clutched tightly in my hand, I follow the two other passengers down the steps and onto the sidewalk. Circling to the luggage storage area, I wait for the driver to open the hatch, then grab my case and wheel it backward out of the way of the people milling around.
It’s only a little after eight thirty p.m., but it’s dark, and there’s a chill in the air that has me wrapping my newly purchased jacket around me to ward off the cold. There’s still plenty of people wandering down the streets as I pull out my cell and start to type the name of my hotel into the Maps app.
“Hello, Henrietta,” a deep male voice says from behind me.
Startled, I spin around, and my gaze lands on a broad chest. Tipping my head back, I look up into the face of an older but terrifyingly still-familiar Oscar Malik.
“Oscar?” I breathe, my voice barely a whisper.
“It’s Oz. The only person who still calls me Oscar is my dad,” he growls angrily, his beautiful full lips pressed into a hard line.
I feel my eyes go wide as I take in the very real man in front of me. During the years we knew each other, I did my absolute best never to look at him. Even before he disappeared from my life, I don’t remember the last time I’d been brave or stupid enough to look into his face. Fifteen years ago, I’d thought that hiding from him would lessen the risk of provoking him, but it never worked. For some reason, the less he saw me, the angrier he seemed to be when we were forced to be in the same room at the same time.
He looks different now, but I can still see the features of that boy in the face of the man before me. His hair is still a deep red color, and his cheeks are still dotted with freckles. His eyes are still that eerie shade of green, like a cat’s eyes, and his lips are still full and pulled down into a sneer.
But he’s not a scrawny teenager anymore. Oscar is a very tall, very muscular, fully grown man. In my memories, he always felt tall, but I’d wondered if he was as big as I remembered or if it was just his looming hostility that made him seem larger than he actually was. But now that he’s standing in front of me, so much taller than me that I have to tip my head back to look at him, it’s clear that it wasn’t just fear that morphed my memories.
Seeing him after all this time is weird. We’re both adults now. Fifteen years have passed since the last time we saw each other. We’re strangers. But even though he doesn’t look the same, what feels exactly like it did when he was the monster of my childhood is the rage that’s emanating from him in waves.
Familiar fear rushes over me, and before I can think better of it, I step back, pushing my case between us, like a suitcase full of my clothes can protect me from this hulking beast of a man.
I feel the heat of his eyes as they rake over me, his nostrils flaring as something that looks like disgust pulls down the corners of his lips into an even deeper scowl. “Let’s go,” he growls, grabbing the handle of my case, ripping it out of my hands, and pulling it with him as he turns his back on me and walks away.
“What?” I gasp, hating that I can’t seem to speak any louder than a whisper.
“I said, let’s go. I don’t have all night,” Oz growls, snapping his fingers at me like he expects me to rush to heel like a dog.
“Go where?” I ask, not moving.
