Thread of Hope

TWENTY-ONE

My foot was heavy on the accelerator as I drove away from Jordan’s home. There was something about refusing to stand up for a friend that angered me more than maybe anything else in the world. In Chuck, I had a friend who had never backed away from me, even when it would’ve been easy to do. I had no doubt that if any of these other people had been accused of the crime, Chuck would’ve been shouting from the rooftop in their defense, regardless of how the circumstances appeared. The fact that they wouldn’t return the same show of faith was garbage.

That anger was percolating inside me when my cell rang. I barked hello into it.

“Joe?” Lauren said. “Are you alright?”

My ex-wife’s voice caught me off guard and sapped the anger for the moment. “Hey. Yeah. Sorry. I’m okay.”

“How’s Chuck?”

“The same. I saw him this morning. No change.”

She didn’t say anything and the line buzzed with white noise.

“Lauren? You still there?”

“Yeah,” she finally said. “So I was thinking…you wanna have dinner tonight?”

I guided the car over to the side of the highway. Between my anger and Lauren’s surprise phone call, I was the last person in the world who needed to be driving. Having dinner with her would no doubt bring up things I wanted to avoid, things I’d spent the past few years avoiding. It was hard enough being back in San Diego physically, but I’d managed to keep the mental things in check. Sitting down with Lauren would be a good way to uncheck them.

But I knew that it must’ve taken a lot for her to ask and being afraid just didn’t feel like a good enough reason to turn her down.

I took a deep breath. “Um, sure. I guess.”

“I don’t suppose you’d wanna come to the house?”

My fingers folded tighter around the phone. I cleared my throat. “I’d rather not.”

“I figured,” she said. I couldn’t decipher what else I heard in her voice.

“I’m staying across the bay,” I said, and told her the hotel. “You wanna come over and we’ll eat somewhere there?”

“Sure,” she said. “Around seven?”

I said that was fine and we hung up.

The car idled quietly beneath me as I sat there for a few minutes, staring out the window, watching the traffic and memories fly by.