Lost Along the Way (9 page)

My first thought was because of what had happened between us, but by midafternoon, I had to dismiss the idea. After all,
nothing
had happened between us. I’d taken a shower. I’d masturbated while thinking about him. So what?
If masturbating was cheating
, Chase had once said to a friend of ours,
there wouldn’t be a single intact couple in the world
. It’d never been an issue between Chase and I. He knew I did it. I knew he did it. Hell, we’d occasionally done it together, although not recently. We were men. We liked doing it, and neither of us was foolish enough to believe we only thought of each other when we did. That was basically the entire point of masturbating to begin with, right? To have sex with somebody other than your partner without actually betraying them? No matter how real it had felt, Landon hadn’t actually been in my shower. It had only been me, my sexual frustration, and my very vivid imagination. Whatever connection I’d dreamed of as I’d touched myself was nothing more than that:
a dream
. A strangely realistic dream, to be sure. But it existed only in my head.

I had nothing to feel guilty about.

That’s what I told myself, over and over again, at any rate.

Obviously, I’d been dehydrated when I’d gone jogging. Or my electrolytes had been low. Or some other dumb thing that would explain my wayward hallucinations. That was all. No more jogging in the morning, I vowed. Not on a mostly empty stomach. Not while in Laramie, at least.

I worked the rest of the day, sorting through more paperwork. My parents owned land I hadn’t known about, held stocks they’d never mentioned, and had apparently purchased a time-share condo in Vegas. I cooked one of my dad’s frozen meals for dinner, and afterward I called Chase. I was nervous about talking to him after our fight, but I needed to hear his voice. I needed to ground myself back in the solid reality of my relationship with him.

“Hello?” He sounded hurried.

“It’s me.”

“Oh. Hi.” The line went strangely quiet for a moment, as if he’d covered the mouthpiece of his phone. I thought I heard voices.

“Is somebody there?”

“Of course not. It’s the TV. What’s going on?” He spoke as if this were a business call. As if he couldn’t wait for it to be over.

“Nothing, I just….”
I need you. God, I need you to listen to me and understand me, and I need you to need me back.
I wanted to feel connected to him, the way I’d felt connected to the man in my fevered shower dream, but instead I felt as if I was intruding. I regretted the phone call already. “I wanted to talk to you. To see how you’re doing.”

“I’m actually on my way out the door.”

“Going to work?”

“Yes.” I thought I heard a door close and another muffled whisper.

“How’s Chili’s so far?”

“It’s the same as every other restaurant I’ve ever worked at. Hot and sweaty and stinky and frantic. Listen, honey. I’m sorry to cut you short, but I really have to run.”

“I thought I’d come home early tomorrow,” I said hurriedly, wanting to catch him before he hung up. “Maybe we can have dinner?”

“Don’t bother. I work until eight.”

“Oh.”

“I really have to go.”

“Okay. I love you.”

But he’d already clicked off. I sighed, setting the phone aside, feeling more alone than ever. I’d wanted to connect with him, but my heart still ached. I had no idea how to fill the empty hole inside my chest.

I went to the mantel and found a picture of my parents and me. We were at Disneyland, caught in the trademark pose they get everybody in, standing in front of the castle. I’d been thirteen, trying hard not to be impressed by kiddie things, but secretly thrilled at everything. My parents stood on either side of me, my mother smiling happily, my dad scowling at the camera because he knew the photo would eat into our vacation funds. The simple sight brought tears to my eyes.

I missed them. Fifteen years and I suddenly missed them more than I had in my first year of college. I wanted my mother to tell me everything would be okay. I wanted my father to shrug and tell me this too would pass. If they’d been buried in Laramie, I would have gone to their graves immediately. I would have sunk into the grass. Touched the cold stones of their markers. Cried my tears silently there, for them to see. But driving to Omaha wasn’t exactly practical, and after all, this was my home. Laramie was where I remembered them most keenly.

“I gave you up for him,” I said to the tiny version of my parents in the photo. And it had made sense at the time. I’d loved Chase, and he’d loved me back. My parents had been so rigid. So determined to misunderstand. So sure that what Chase and I had couldn’t last.

Now, it seemed Chase and I were about to prove them right.

“I wish you could tell me what to do.”

But they couldn’t. My mother continued smiling. My father glowered.

I went to bed thinking of Chase and of my parents. Thinking about what I needed to do to make things right.

The first thing I had to do was get back to Denver.

I slept later than usual on Sunday. I didn’t go for a run, but made myself a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs with mushrooms. I washed the dishes by hand—no sense in using the dishwasher for so few things—and began cramming my clothes into my duffel. I was halfway to the door when the doorbell rang.

It was Landon, standing with his hands behind his back and his head bowed. My heart burst into motion at the sight of him. A stir of arousal twinged in my loins, followed by a wave of shame.

Don’t be an idiot
, I told myself.
Nothing happened.

“Hi,” I said awkwardly.

“Hey.” He sounded as unnerved as I felt. A few feet away, his metal birds whirred in frantic circles on the gusty Wyoming wind. Landon stared at the duffel bag in my hand. “Heading back to Denver already?”

“Yes.”

He nodded. “I had a feeling.”

My palms suddenly seemed sweatier than was entirely necessary. “I need to get back.”

“Back to Chase?”

“Yes.”

“Are you in a hurry for some reason?”

“I just want to get home.”

He looked up at me, finally meeting my gaze, and my heart missed a beat. His cheeks were red, his expression somehow accusatory and pleading at once.

He gnawed nervously on his lower lip. “I thought maybe you’d begun to think of this as your home.”

The birds circled faster. I tried to swallow, but my mouth was too dry to do it right. God, was it possible the shower incident hadn’t all been in my head?

No. It wasn’t possible at all. Not even remotely.

And yet the way he was watching me made me wonder. The hint of confrontational embarrassment in his eyes….

It didn’t matter.

“I can’t,” I said. It made no sense, and yet he nodded stiffly.

“I know.”

“I’m married.”

A second’s pause, and then, “Not really.”

“Not legally maybe, but….”

He nodded again, turning his gaze upward, toward the sky. “I’m sorry.”

Sorry?
Sorry for what? Because I was married? Or because I wasn’t? Or did he mean sorry about the thing that had happened but hadn’t happened at all?

“I have to go,” I said quietly.

He took his hands from behind his back to hold something toward me. It was the cookbook.

“I think you should have this. I think it was meant for you. I think….” He took a deep breath, still staring down at it. “I shouldn’t have it.”

I stared at it, trying not to notice his strong, scarred hands as I did. Trying not to think about how his forearms looked when the water ran down them in sweet, clear rivulets. Trying not to remember how it felt when our bodies and our minds became one. And then it hit me.

Granny B’s cookbook.

Jogging.

Landon’s bread.

And then the shower.

“Oh my God. Did you—”

“No.”

“But—”

“Not really.”

“Yesterday—”

“I’m sorry.” He thrust the cookbook into my chest, forcing me to take it. “I know you love him. Maybe there’s something that will help. Something that will take you back to where you think you need to be.”

I had no answer. My thoughts flew faster than the metal birds, trying to find a place to land. The bread. Or the shower. Or Granny B. Or Chase.

Or Landon, who lowered his gaze as though he couldn’t bear to face me.

The birds spun in mad circles, unable to break free.

“Good-bye, Danny.”

I
REPLAYED
my strange encounter with Landon as I drove out of Laramie. Or was it my
second
strange encounter with Landon? It depended on whether or not the shower counted as an encounter.

Did it?

The question brought me right back to our conversation that morning on my parents’ doorstep. Everything about our awkward dialog hinted that the shower had indeed been an incident of some sort. A shared hallucination perhaps brought on by Granny B.

But that was absurd. I didn’t believe in magical food. And just to be sure, I pulled over somewhere near the Colorado state line to check the recipes. I found pumpkin bread “for stormy nights.” Banana bread “for mourning.” Something called chocolate slab “for hard times.” But absolutely nothing labeled “to induce mutual masturbatory fantasies.”

Well, so much for the shower being real
, I thought with some relief as I pulled back onto Highway 287.

I thought again of our discussion earlier that morning. At the time it had felt like we were on the same page. Like we were both talking about the same thing. But as I rehashed it in my mind for the hundredth time, I realized nothing about our conversation truly verified that Landon knew anything about the shower at all. That was how I’d interpreted it, standing there with my head full of my imagined memories and my heart full of guilt. But going over it again now, it seemed nothing short of ridiculous. I began to feel like an idiot for blurting out some of the things I’d said. He probably thought I’d lost my mind.

Maybe I had.

Forget it. It didn’t matter. Whatever had or hadn’t occurred in Laramie, it was over. I was going home. Back to Denver. Back to Chase. And I was determined to make things right.

The house was empty when I arrived, but I’d known it would be. I spent the evening flipping through Granny’s cookbook, reading the notes presumably written by whoever had photocopied it and left it on Landon’s door. One recipe in particular caught my eye: meatloaf with mushroom gravy. The heading written by Granny B said “for finding what was lost along the way.” But the previous owner had crossed it out and written in bold, jagged letters, “for cutting through the bullshit.” They’d underlined it twice, so emphatically it appeared the pen had torn the page on the original sheet.

I wasn’t sure about bullshit, but finding what had been lost? That seemed perfect. Maybe Granny B could help Chase and I reclaim the passion we’d once shared. At the very least, maybe we could rekindle a bit of romance. Remind ourselves of how much we’d once loved each other.

By the time he came home, I had a plan. I went to him as soon as he was in the door, pulling him into my arms before he even had a chance to hang his keys on the hook. I buried my nose in his hair and held him tight, comforted by the simple familiarity of his body pressed against mine.

“Daniel?” he said without returning my embrace. “Is something wrong?”

“I missed you. That’s all.”

“I missed you too.”

It was said automatically, though, with no real feeling. I pulled back enough to meet his eyes. “I mean it. I miss you all the time. Even when we’re together. Don’t you ever miss me?”

He smiled, lowering his lashes in the seductive way that had once made me weak in the knees. “Of course I do.”

“I hate being gone every weekend.”

“I know. I hate it too.”

He put his arms around my waist and nestled closer, and my heart swelled. The empty place inside of me suddenly felt like it didn’t have to be there forever. A little fledgling bird of hope breathed its first bit of life. Maybe we really could fix this.

“I’m sorry about last week,” I told him. “I didn’t mean what I said about breaking up.”

“Oh, honey, I know. Don’t even worry about it. You’re under so much pressure right now, with your parents’ house and your job. And we’ve hardly seen each other in forever. It’s no wonder you’re feeling stressed.” He kissed my cheek. “It’ll get better.”

“Do you mean it?”

“Of course.”

He started to pull away, but I held him there. I cupped his cheek in my hand and gazed into his eyes.

“Do you still love me?”

“You know I do.” His forehead wrinkled in confusion. “Daniel, what’s this about?”

“Do you have any days off this week?”

“No. Why?”

“You don’t have any evenings free at all?”

“I work the lunch shift on Tuesday. I’ll be home by five.”

“That’s the Fourth, right?” It was the day we were to have gone to Laramie together. The day he would have finally been welcomed into my family by my parents. Now it would be the night we found each other again. It felt like fate. “No gym that night, okay? I’ll make you dinner. And we’ll go see the fireworks. And then….” I hoped we’d make love like we once had. I didn’t care if I had to get down on my knees. I’d beg if I had to. I’d let him have me any way he wanted if it meant we could find some shred of comfort in each other again. “We’ll come home and go to bed and pretend I don’t have to be up at the crack of dawn, okay?”

He smiled. “It sounds wonderful.” He kissed me quickly before wiggling free of my embrace. “Now let me shower. I smell like hamburgers and cilantro. It’s driving me mad.”

O
PTIMISM
BUOYED
me through the next day and a half. We loved each other. We’d fix this. We’d find our way back to each other. We’d start anew. I refused to think of anything else.

The Fourth of July arrived, hot and dry as the Sahara. I planned the evening carefully. My boss complained I was leaving early, but I didn’t care. Some things, I told him, were more important than work.