Headlights(9)

“Wanted to make me wait, did you?” She looks no different than she did when I left. Still way too pretty for this job. Still way too certain of herself for anyone to really feel comfortable around her. I thought I’d dodged this bullet, at least for today, Jack said she was out on a call.

But here she is. Here we are.

“Hey, Josie,” I say. And her name on my tongue rips me open again. In just this second, all the work of the past four years undone.

“Hey yourself.” She stares at me through the open window, bites the inside of her cheek the same way she has a thousand times before, squints through the rain. “Murphy filled me in.”

I don’t know what to say.

“Guess I shouldn’t be surprised you’d come,” she says.

“Yeah. I didn’t, uh…” An emotion threatening, I don’t know what. I clear my throat. “I didn’t mean to. It’s been a long day.”

“Yeah,” she says. Same way she always says it, like she’s laughing a little bit at me with whatever internal monologue she’s got running. Even now. Even with this. I can’t believe I was ever married to her. Even more can’t believe I’m not married to her now.

“Where you headed?”

“I—” I have no idea. I missed my flight to California. Book another flight? Find a hotel for the night? I sure as shit am not heading to my parents’ house. “I might go for a run,” I say.

She squints at me again, looks out into the night, the rain. “Hop out,” she says.

“What?”

“Hop out, Stansfield. I’m driving.”

“Josie, I’m really not in the—”

She reaches through the window and unlocks the door, opens it. She grabs my arm and pulls me out of the car. I let her because it’s the way it’s always been with us.

The car ride is quick and silent to the edge of town, save for the rain on the windshield and the roof. The tight space filled with the crisp citrus soap scent of her. We don’t speak. My whole body is tensed, and I try not to breathe in too deeply. Finally, she parks, and I nearly throw myself out the door and into the rain to escape it.

It’s cold.

If the rain came in another week or so, it’d be sleet, maybe even snow. But tonight, just a bitter cold rain in a bitter cold town. This whole place telling me to turn around.

Still, I look to the neon roadhouse in front of me. Lit up like a red, green, orange beacon in the night. We step inside.

Just like the Bureau office, Mama Tried hasn’t changed at all in my time away. The same roadside dive, same flickering neon signs and pool tables and tin beer logos. Antlers, skulls, and taxidermy hanging in the spaces between everything else. Same jukebox in the corner, Skee-Ball machine, and pool table. Same Leslie behind the bar top. She smiles as we shake the water off us, hair piled on her head the way it always is, shirt lifted and tied above her belly button like always, providing half her tips. A Colorado flag behind her and all the liquor bottles.

“No shit.” Leslie throws her rag down on the bar and plants her hands on her hips. “Daniel and Josie Stansfield in my bar again. Never thought I’d see the day.”

“Hey, Les,” I say.

“Maynor,” Josie says.

“What’s that?” Leslie says.

Josie clears her throat. “It’s Maynor. Now.”

My feet stop for half a second, and Josie brushes past me.

“Well, that makes more sense, I guess, Josie Maynor. Suits you.” Leslie pours two glasses of Wild Turkey, neat, pushes them toward Josie, who’s reached the bar. “How you been?” Leslie’s asking me. It’s very warm, suddenly. Having trouble breathing. I take off my jacket.

“Oh, yeah. Been okay,” I say.

She nods the nod of someone who’s kept bar for a very long time. “I’ll keep ’em comin’.”

We sit at the same corner booth we’ve always sat in, neither of us hesitating. Elk and caribou antlers hanging on the wall above us, and a taxidermy fox holding a bottle of Odell IPA. Fat Tire and 90 Shilling metal signs, an old framed Avalanche jersey, the original Broncos D logo in a frame. Photographs of Leslie around Colorado, on mountains, at Nuggets games. It’s the only place we would sit. We are both, Josie and me, if nothing else, creatures of habit. I take a deep breath and brace myself against the music playing through the bar. Tell myself it’s fine, clench my jaw. I can be normal and sit in a bar with music playing just like everyone fucking else.

“So,” I say, once we’ve both settled and she’s leaning back against the leather of the booth, her chin jutting out a little, exposing the perfect smooth dark skin of a throat I haven’t run my fingers over in years above the neckline of her gray hoodie. Her jacket and mine strewn over the side of the booth, both wet. Her hair wet, and curlier, because of it.

Josie’s always been one to slouch when off the job. College athlete. She wears her title like a trench coat, and the second it’s off, you see she’s only ever a sweats-on-the-couch kind of girl beneath it. The sweatshirts hiding a single butterfly tattoo over her heart for the mom she lost ten years ago, the same spot she presses her palm to now, always does when she’s uneasy.

Her hand squeezing mine when she got that tattoo, tears streaming down her face, shop lights overhead flickering.