“Yeah,” I said, “I get it.”
We both exited the car and went opposite directions. Him to a GMC Yukon, me to a Ford F-150 truck with a bed cover. I stopped behind the truck and looked at the sealed cargo area. Glancing across the parking lot, I saw Damon standing outside his vehicle, looking at me. I gave him a thumbs-up and got in the driver’s seat.
28
“Speak to me, Julian. Speak to me honestly.”
“I am.”
“You are not. I can feel your insincerity. I don’t fault you for it. But it’s there.”
“It’s not.”
“Tell me, my dear. What is it?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Do you take me for a fool? Do you think I don’t see the way you’ve changed? You’re distant. You’ve withdrawn.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Is it me?”
“Of course not.”
“Is it something I’ve done? Should I give you more space?”
“It’s not…it’s fine. Nothing’s wrong, Suz, okay?”
“I told you not to call me that.”
“I’m sorry. Suzanne. Nothing’s wrong.”
“You do take me for a fool.”
“I don’t.”
“I can handle you withdrawing. I don’t like it, but I can handle it. But I cannot handle a man in my life considering me a fool. I am not a fool, Julian.”
“I know you aren’t. Listen…I’m just trying to figure it all out. Everything happened so fast, you know? It wasn’t long ago I was married, living in New York. My life changed. It’s hard to deal with.”
“Are you unhappy?”
“No. I wouldn’t say that. It’s just a lot to take in. A lot to think about. Maybe I need a little time to adjust.”
“You need space.”
“I…maybe. A little. Just for a little while.”
“Very well. I don’t like it, but very well.”
“It’s not a bad thing.”
“Again, a fool. I’m beginning to wonder how you’ve thought of me this whole time.”
“Don’t be silly. I adore you.”
“Possibly. But I know what this is. This idea of space is only a precursor to the end.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“Perhaps. But we both know it. At least I admit it.”
“We don’t. Stop it, Suzanne. I care about you. I just need some space.”
“And as I told you: very well.”
29
I visited that coffee shop every morning for the next week. Every morning I hoped to see her, but felt relief when I didn’t. I had no idea what I’d say if and when she showed up again. I had no idea if she would ever come to that coffee shop again. I just had to see her, even if I was happy every time I didn’t.
On the sixth day, at 9:15 a.m., she walked in. She wore a wool sweater and the same knit cap. My eyes locked on her as she walked to the register, and immediately my heart beat faster. I looked twice to make sure, but I knew it was her the first time. I briefly considered putting my head down, pretending I didn’t see her. Hiding out for a little while, until she left. Avoiding the situation altogether. What was there to gain? What was my goal with this game I was playing?
Nothing. I had none. But still, there I was. Something made me go there every morning, and on that day, something made me stay. I was powerless over it, and powerless over her.
She made her order and I gave her a halfhearted wave, trying to grab her attention while still playing cool. She sat down across from me and said hello.
“Fancy seeing you here again,” she said.
“I come here a lot.”
“Apparently.
We made small talk and she sipped her fancy steamed mocha concoction, me my black coffee. She was a runner. We discussed hiking spots, and she let me in on some new ones. Vince came up, and Adeline rolled her eyes.
“I don’t get him sometimes.”
My heart jumped. I took a sip of coffee. “Meaning?”
She shook her head. “Relationships. You’ve been married, right?”
I nodded.
“Sometimes it feels like that. A marriage. Even though we both said we wouldn’t.” She looked at the table. “It was exciting once. At the beginning. Now he’s so damn into his work all the time.”
“That does sound like marriage,” I said, and we laughed.
“I shouldn’t be saying this,” she said. “You’re his employee. That’s one of the rules.”
“Rules?”
“That’s another thing. There never used to be rules. I bet that’s how it is with Suzanne. No rules.”
“We’re on a break,” I said. I couldn’t wait to tell her.
30
It was at the end of August when I finally found it. The air was cold and the leaves were changing, and in the pitch black of night I drove a dusty Dodge Intrepid east down I-70. It was a normal run, with Damon miles ahead of me, the boss’s girl on my mind, and Grand Junction ninety minutes in my rearview. It was that night, for some reason, my curiosity overcame my fear, and my romantic longing for Adeline clouded my head enough to make me think I could get away with it.
We had gone hiking earlier that day. Just the two of us; Adeline and me. We met at a trailhead she liked called Mitchum Pass, and followed above the tree line, far higher than I had ever been. It took all I had just to keep up with her, and I gasped and heaved as the air thinned. The temperature at the top—after two hours of hiking up—was in the fifties, and the view was splendid. We spoke quietly and looked out over Otter Ridge canyon while I caught my breath, the two of us side by side. She leaned on me then. She leaned on me slightly as a cool wind blew.
“I like hiking with you,” she said.
Then, we started down.
It was the intoxication of this moment replayed in my head that fooled me into thinking I was invincible, and made me do the stupid thing on that run that night.
I pulled off the interstate near the same spot I had those weeks before. It wasn’t the same road, but it might as well have been. Frontage road, turn off into the forest, two miles down a poorly maintained side road blanketed in pines. Dirt road, lights off, trunk open. Sweat, bewilderment, second-guessing, and the final realization that I was completely and totally alone.
It was heroin. I couldn’t pinpoint it exactly right away—just knew it was drugs of some sort—but through some research later, I confirmed that was what it was. It was heroin, and a lot of it. Smack, right there in my trunk. I’d been hauling heroin underneath those consumer electronics, not just this time, but every time. Dozens of times. Fucking heroin.
Heroin. If it had been the white stuff, I would have confused it for coke. I know I would have. But it was brown heroin, neatly wrapped into little packages, stuffed into the spare tire compartment in the trunk of that Intrepid. There must have been twenty little bricks, sealed in cellophane. I was afraid to touch them.
When I opened the trunk, I saw a scene similar to last time: a mound in the middle of the space, covered by a blanket. Under the blanket were smartphones this time, not laptops. It almost ended there. I almost just put the blanket back, scolded myself for snooping again, got in the car and drove off. I actually did three of those things. But when I sat in the drivers’ seat, I couldn’t take it out of park. Something pulled at me; premonition or subconscious or some meddling deity. It was the same pull that drew me to Adeline, violently and irrationally. The same thing that woke me up at night with images of her. It was the same pull that brought me to Colorado in the first place—the one that opened my eyes when I heard that Ray Lamontagne song that summer morning and convinced me to leave my life in New York. It was the pull that had become the guiding hand of my life, and I realized there, in that Dodge Intrepid in the woods off I-70, that in the end, it made the decisions for me. I hadn’t even tried to fight it, ever, because I hadn’t wanted to. I didn’t want to this time, either. I got out and opened the trunk again.