“What did you used to do together?” Layla asked.
“When we were younger, we figured out life together. We were barely out of high school when we got married, so we learned how to support and take care of ourselves. We figured out how to run a household and pay bills and we relied on each other.”
“Wow. That’s really young.”
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, and she was the only thing I was certain about. In hindsight, it was not my best decision, but I just couldn’t see it at the time.”
* * *
“How long you been here?” his boss asked when Josh was three weeks into the job. Josh had already checked over the tools and supplies they’d need and was sitting next to the van drinking a Coke.
“Twenty minutes or so.” He turned his head slightly so his boss wouldn’t see the stupid-looking grin on his face. Why had he waited so long to do this? Why hadn’t he realized how much better life could be if you could find work you enjoyed? He was twenty-one by then, and he was finally starting to feel like an adult who could make something of himself and not an idiot kid with no direction, no clue. The only downside of Josh’s new outlook was that the higher he soared the lower Kimmy sank. She had been calling in sick to work a lot, and sometimes when Josh got home at the end of the day, she’d still be in bed, asleep. He knew she was depressed and he had no idea how to help her, so he did the only thing he knew how to do and that was to keep going to work and doing whatever he could to cheer her up. He brought home pizzas for dinner and he stopped at the mall one payday and bought her a pink sweater because it reminded him of the one she’d been wearing in detention. He expected her eyes to light up, to show some kind of spark, because it had been a long time since there’d been enough disposable income to spend on new clothes for either of them. But all she said was “Thanks, Josh,” and then she stuffed the sweater back into the bag and fell asleep again.
Kimmy had told Josh that getting her stomach pumped had been traumatic and she never wanted to drink again. She’d made good on that promise and was clear about what she didn’t want, but what she struggled with was deciding what she did want. It was like she was stuck in neutral and had no clue how to shift her life into gear. Josh couldn’t do it for her; he was too busy celebrating the fact that he’d been able to do it for himself and wasn’t really in any position to figure it out for her.
She lost her job a month later. They fired her for not showing up, and after that she didn’t bother getting out of bed at all.
* * *
Josh put one of the trickier puzzle pieces into place. “Once we got a handle on things and got a little older, we had more time to pursue our own interests. And then we had Sasha and we poured everything into her. Toward the end, it was like we’d forgotten all about us. We never did stuff like this anymore.” He gestured toward the puzzle. “We stopped doing things together.”
“We always did what Liam wanted to do because everything was always tied in with his job. We went to the parties, the functions. Liam spent most weekends on the golf course courting more business. He always acted like it was a hardship to socialize with my coworkers because he had nothing to gain from it. Liam didn’t really like being at home. He had the biggest fear of missing out of anyone I’ve ever known. It was go, go, go, all the time. He never turned it off. It was like he was always looking for the thing that would finally make him happy. I’m not sure he even knew what that was. He only knew he had to keep looking.”
“We’re breaking the rules right now, aren’t we?” he asked. But he was only teasing, and he wasn’t sure he really cared about the rules.
Maybe she didn’t care either, because all she said was “Sometimes rules are overrated.”
It occurred to him that maybe you had to go through some big things in life in order to appreciate the smaller stuff, like a glass or two of good red wine on a cold night and the pretty woman sitting across from you who was concentrating on finding her next puzzle piece.
At nine he stood up and stretched. They’d made good progress on the puzzle, but there were still a lot of pieces scattered on the table. At least another two to three evenings’ worth, he thought. “I’ll be happy to keep working on it with you,” he said. “If you want company, that is. I feel like I’m invested now.”
“I would,” she said.
She handed him the plastic container filled with dog treats. “Don’t forget these,” she said.
He took them from her. “Thanks. See you in the morning, Layla.”
He thought about her as he drove home. They might have been two people who were mature enough to have a direct, adult conversation with each other about what they were looking for and what they wanted. But they were also two lonely people who were about to discover the answer to the question of what exactly it meant to be friends with the potential for something more.
chapter 30
Layla
By the time they finished the puzzle—which had taken them two more nights over the next week, and another bottle of wine, which Josh brought over—they’d become even more comfortable with each other. There was a formalness to their communication that had slowly faded away, and with it the tension you felt when you started spending time with someone new whom you also found attractive. She found him attractive, at least. She wasn’t sure what he thought of her. They talked about their days—Josh’s job, Layla’s students. Nothing too heavy or that could be considered oversharing. I want to keep spending time with him, Layla thought the night they placed the final puzzle piece and high-fived each other.
The second thing was that they were also texting each other. It started as a way to confirm when Josh was free to work on the puzzle again and had morphed into general chitchat. At lunchtime, when Layla checked her phone, there was often a message from Josh asking how her day was going. Not every day, which might have been too much for her, but enough that seeing his name when she checked her phone always put a little spark in her step. Layla had picked up on the custody schedule Josh and Kimmy followed, and Josh usually sent a message on his last day with Sasha asking if Layla was free the following evening, when Sasha would be at her mom’s. Layla started to anticipate those messages, and it made her happy when he asked if she was available.
Layla felt comfortable initiating text messages of her own: How was work? Tell Norton I bought some more of those treats he likes.
There hadn’t been another puzzle, but Josh had called around six o’clock on a Thursday night and when Layla answered he said, “Hey, I know it’s late notice, but I just found out the brewpub in our neighborhood has a trivia night. I thought if you were bored and felt like getting out of the house, we could check it out.”