“Okay,” he said. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.”
She’d left without saying another word, and then Sasha and Norton had come bounding back into the room, and he tried to put it out of his mind. But the niggling worry was still there.
If Josh’s parents had strong feelings about the split, they’d kept it to themselves. But one night, when Josh and Sasha had gone over for dinner and he was in the kitchen alone with his mother shortly after he’d broken the news, she was rinsing dishes in the sink and she said, “I just never thought she’d be the one who’d want to leave.”
Josh and Kimmy’s love had burned brighter and for far longer than anyone could have ever guessed it would. He had once loved her more than he’d ever loved anything in his life, but all he said was “People change,” and he left it at that.
* * *
Josh had been standing next to Kimmy’s locker after the final bell rang on Friday. He’d been there the day before, and the day before that, too, and then he’d driven her home. Since she’d given him her number last week, they’d tied up the phone for hours every night, hanging up only when someone else in the house needed to use the phone, usually one of Josh’s brothers. And now the weekend was finally here, and when Kimmy spotted him standing there waiting for her, she lit up. “Hey,” she said when she reached him. She reached out her hand to spin the dial and open her locker.
“Hey, yourself. Want a ride?”
“Yeah,” she said. One day in the future she would tell him that riding home from school with him had become so important to her that she’d started turning in all her assignments so that detention would be a thing of the past. She joked that even back then, Josh was helping her to reach her full potential, even if all she wanted at the time was to be near him.
* * *
Kimmy shared his self-awareness about her place in the social echelon of their high school. She was not popular and had never aspired to be. She was as invisible at school as she was at home, because no one really cared very much about what she did in either place.
But she wasn’t unattractive. Not at all. There was something very wholesome about her, with her peaches-and-cream complexion and long blond hair. There wasn’t enough money in the budget for her to wear the latest fashions, but there was nothing wrong with her figure, and by the time she reached puberty, she knew how to accentuate her long legs and tiny waist with a simple pair of Levi’s purchased secondhand from Goodwill, and one of the white Hanes Tshirts she bought in packs of three. The other girls could have their Benetton and Guess. Kimmy learned from an early age to embrace “less is more.” With her limited clothing budget, she really didn’t have a choice other than to make it work for her. Josh liked her look and he liked her social standing. Kimmy was the female equivalent of Josh, and for once he didn’t have to see the look of disappointment on a girl’s face when he admitted that sports weren’t really his thing. Kimmy let Josh be himself, and that was something he’d never experienced before.
That Friday, when Josh pulled into her driveway, he shut off the car. “Do you want to go to Mikey’s garage with me tonight?”
Kimmy’s face fell. “I have to babysit.”
“How about after? I can pick you up if you give me the address?”
“You wouldn’t mind picking me up?” she said.
“No, not at all.”
“What’s Mikey’s garage?” she asked.
“It’s just my friend Mikey’s house. His parents are cool. They let us hang out in their garage.”
“Okay.”
“So, you’ll call me?” he asked. “When you’re ready?”
“Yeah. They said they’d be home by nine thirty or ten.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
* * *
Josh pulled into the driveway of the address she’d given him. Kimmy had called him right before the parents were due home and he’d headed over. He’d only been there a minute or so before the front door opened, and Kimmy hurried down the steps and into his car.
He’d showered and changed clothes and was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. She’d changed her clothes, too, and it looked like maybe she’d curled her hair or something. She smelled good.
The faint haze of cigarette smoke hung in the air when they entered the garage. A boom box in the corner pumped out pop hits at an earsplitting volume. Candy wrappers and chip bags littered the concrete floor, which was stained with some sort of automotive fluid, although there were no cars parked inside at the moment.
Everyone was already there, and some of them had undoubtedly been hanging out from the minute they had escaped the confines of the school. They were a harmless, if somewhat unmotivated, group of kids, who enjoyed each other’s company while they marked time until graduation, the way Josh was. But that didn’t mean they didn’t have futures. The people Josh introduced Kimmy to that night would go on to be the diesel mechanics and carpenters. The plumbers and HVAC experts. A few would go on to the community college and study computer programming or fashion merchandising. A couple more would join the armed forces. In time Kimmy would come to know Josh’s friends well and become an important member of their close-knit group. Back then, it was unfathomable to imagine that your peer group would ever change.
A couple of the guys were smoking cigarettes, which he wasn’t crazy about. “Do you smoke?” he asked Kimmy. He’d smelled it on her clothes a few times, but she never mentioned it.
“No. My mom smokes all the time and I hate it.”
All the kids in that garage were holding a drink of some kind, beer mostly although one of the girls sipped punch from a red Solo cup. His friend Jacob handed Josh a beer. “Do you drink?” Josh asked Kimmy.
“Yeah,” she said. She told him that her best friend Angie’s parents entertained a lot and when they did, they didn’t keep a close eye on what the girls were up to. Kimmy had slept over many times when Angie’s parents had guests, and they loved cruising through the kitchen and helping themselves to whatever was chilling in a big glass pitcher in the fridge. Plus, they’d also raided the liquor cabinet of all the stuff Angie’s parents ignored like the cordials and brandies and some weird peach-flavored liquor.
Kimmy’s mom rarely drank alcohol. Kimmy and Angie had once found a dusty bottle of gin in Kimmy’s kitchen, shoved way back in one of the cupboards. But when they snuck a glass of it up to her bedroom, they discovered it tasted awful and poured it down the bathroom sink. Kimmy’s mom preferred coffee and she drank it all day long, a cigarette in one hand and a cracked travel mug of instant Sanka that she carried everywhere with her in the other.
Jacob came back with one of the red Solo cups and handed it to Kimmy. She took a sip.