“Hey,” I said, greeting them both as my parents stepped out to let us talk. “What brings you guys by this early on a Saturday?” It wasn’tthatearly—just before ten o’clock—but for them to show up felt unusual.
“Well, now that Morgan is back home”—Wes tensed at the mention of her name because they were an entire shitshow of their own—“Callie is with her all day today doing wedding things that don’t need my so-called opinion, so my day is wide open,” Lucas replied with a chuckle.
“You mentioned last weekend that you might be looking into getting a new ride, so we figured, since we had nothing to do, and Gabe is busy schmoozing a client in Charleston today, maybe we could go out and look with you. Something to do, and it gets you out of the house. And then we’ll just go to The Sandbar tonight.”
And there it was.Gets you out of the house. As if I needed to be managed,pitied.
I must not have schooled my expression fast enough because Lucas straightened up, clearing his throat. “If you want, that is. You don’t have to. We were just…looking for something to do, ya know? And now that you’re back home–”
“The Three Musketeers are together again,” Wes interjected with a sarcastic grin.
“Don’t ever say that again,” Lucas and I said in unison.
I knew they meant well, just trying to keep me occupied, maybe help me open up. I hadn’t talked about what I was dealing with. For all they knew, it was just deployment and losing Noah. That wasn’t completely wrong, but they didn’t know the depth of it. The guilt I carried. Why I carried it. What I’d done…or rather, what I’dfailedto do. And I wasn’t ready to talk about it. I didn’t know if I ever would be.
“Yeah,” I said with a nod. “Yeah, we can do that.”
I could tolerate keeping everyone satisfied if it meant avoiding their searching, anxious glances, the ones that made me feel as if they thought I might shatter any second.
A few hours and two dealerships later, I slid into my brand-new black Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. Lucas and Wes both tried to get me to look at cars like they had—a Maserati and an Audi—but I’d never been the sports car kind of guy. The closest I ever had was the Mustang I just traded in, but I considered that more muscle than sport. Plus, I liked driving on the beach and in the mountains—my family had a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains that I hadn’t been to in years, but hoped to go now that I was back home—and a Wrangler was perfect for that.
“It suits you,” Wes said as he peeked in through the open passenger window. “It’s very rugged. Very Blake.”
I chuckled, shaking my head. “Shut up.”
“Hey, since you rode with him in the Mustang all day,” Wes said to Lucas, “I call dibs on being passenger princess in the Jeep on the way back.”
Lucas shook his head with a grin. “Fine.” He held his hand out, and Wes dropped the keys to his Audi into his palm. “Want to grab something to eat and take it back to my place? We can just hang out before we meet up with the others later.”
They both looked at me. “Yeah,” I said. “Sounds like a plan.”
While I followed Lucas, every nerve was stretched tight. At each stoplight, my eyes darted around, scanning. Every vehicle, every stranger, every unexpected sound. I’d love to blame the new car, but I couldn’t. Even at the dealerships, I’d been on edge. This was the new normal, an invisible vice tightening around me wherever I went. Hypervigilance was another relentless gift from my PTSD.
“It’s green, man.”
Wes’s voice pulled my attention away from a truck that pulled into the turn-only lane beside me, and I cleared my throat, pressing my foot to the gas.
“You good?”
I glanced at him, giving a nod. “Yeah, yeah. Just zoned out for a second.”
I could feel his eyes still on me as I kept my focus on the road. “So, how’s it been since being back? Everything going okay?”
“Yeah, I mean, other than the fact that I’m thirty and living with my parents,” I quipped.
“I can see how that would be a little rough,” he said with a laugh. “You could always relive your heydays and sneak girls in through the basement like back in high school.”
That earned a chuckle from me. “Eh, doesn’t sound as appealing as it did back then. It was more exciting when the risk of getting in trouble for it was there.”
“That’s very true,” he replied with a grin. He looked at me again. “But for real…how are you doing?”
“Good.” I nodded. “Started therapy last week. Just trying to get some things in order before I find a job, and then I’ll start house hunting.”
I made it sound so simple. Easy. But Wes seemed to know I was soft-peddling. “You know…you can talk to me…if you need someone to vent to or whatever.” He was also soft-peddling, trying to keep his offer as casual-sounding as possible. “Just saying…I’m here.”
“Yeah, I know,” I said with a nod as I glanced over at him again. “And I appreciate that. But really, I’m good,” I lied.
It was easier to convince everyone else around me that I was fine. Part of me kept insisting that nothing was wrong because I didn’t want them to worry even more.
