Today his Suburban is parked a few spaces away from Kat’s truck, and he’s nowhere to be seen either. Again that twinge of jealousy tugs at me, and I push away the foreign possibility that they could be together. I flash on how close they were in the hall this morning, what she said later about me not stepping up yesterday, and I check my phone again. No text.
I don’t want to think about it. And I don’t want to be mad at her when she shows up, because we have a lot of planning to do and only a few days to get it done. So instead of walking back in or texting her again, I get in my car and head over to Kismet, wondering if I really did miss my chance with Trevor, and hoping that she didn’t decide to take it.
Josh is hanging a painting when I push through the door, and I very nearly turn around and walk right out.
“Be with you in just a sec,” he says over his shoulder. He pushes up on his toes to get the frame in place high on the wall. Then he glances back at me. “Oh, hey. Come to order a chai you’re not going to drink?”
“No.” I force a laugh, but it comes out nervous. “I’m meeting my friend here for . . .” I stumble when he turns around and waits for me to finish. In the golden light of the afternoon I can see it again. That flash of him as Julianna saw him. “We’re doing a project. Town history. Sort of.”
“Exciting. Want something while you wait?” He smiles, and his eyes warm, and I can’t help but imagine how they’d look if Julianna were the one who had walked through the door—if somehow I was right, and I could find her and tell her that he’s been here all this time, and that I don’t think he ever moved on. I’m getting ahead of myself, I know.
“Maybe just a water,” I answer.
“Sure.” He nods and walks back around the counter to grab me a bottle. I reach for my wallet, but he shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it. You pretty much keep me in business these days.”
“Thanks.” I smile and take a nervous sip, awkward in the silence that follows.
“So what’s your project about?” Josh asks. “The mine? History of the resort? What?”
I could lie and keep the conversation completely surface and safe, but he just gave me a wide open door for so much more than that. I decide to inch my toe over the threshold. “No,” I say carefully. “It’s actually not for school. It’s a lot more . . . important than that. I mean, it could be.”
“Yeah?” He wipes down the spotless counter. I decide to go for it.
“You know that billboard at the edge of town? With the two kids who disappeared a long time ago?” He seems to tense, just slightly, but it passes quickly and I wonder if I imagined it.
“Sure,” he answers. He ducks below the counter, comes back up with two packages of paper coffee cups even though the stacks already tower far above the register.
“Well, the girl—Julianna . . .” I pause and watch as he adds more cups to each stack without looking at me. “She left a journal.” His hands stop moving, hover empty in the air between us. And now his jaw tightens and he avoids my eyes completely.
I take a step forward and lean across the counter so he has no choice but to look at me. “She wrote about a guy in it,” I say, timidly at first. But then I get brave with what I know. “A guy that seems like he could’ve been you a long time ago. Except she called you Orion in her journal. She wrote about the first night you met, and how you made her feel like someone new, and how you swam in McCloud and sketched her on the beach, and kissed her under the stars—”
I stop, shocked at myself. Josh’s face has gone white, and his eyes blink repeatedly in the silence that stretches dangerously tight between us.
The cups he’s stacking topple. If they were glass, they’d go crashing to the ground, shattering and sending shards flying in every direction, which is what it looks like has just happened inside of him.
“You loved her, didn’t you?” My voice is barely above a whisper, and I have no idea where the nerve to say any of this is coming from, but it courses through me strong, like it’s the truth, and as soon as I look at him I know it has to be.
Josh fixes his eyes somewhere beyond me, out the window and maybe all the way back to the past and to Julianna. I wait for him to answer. Bend to pick up the scattered paper cups. Hope that Kat doesn’t walk in at that moment and give away the fact that I’m not the only one who knows. That I didn’t keep their secret.
“She was . . .” Josh clears his throat. “She was one of those people that just kind of shine, you know? Everybody thought so.” He smiles, but the edges of it are tinged with sadness. “She was just . . .” Finally, he looks at me. “Yeah, I loved her. Whatever that means when you’re nineteen years old. From the second I met her I did, but—you already know she wasn’t mine to love. And I don’t think it was mutual.”
The words you’re wrong want so badly to burst out of my mouth, but I hold them back. He’s leaned against the counter, arms crossed over his chest, and is now looking at me like he wants to keep talking. And I want to hear what he has to say.
“She told me that after a little while, and I was so messed up over it I just left town. I had to get out of here. I didn’t tell her I was leaving or bother to say good-bye.” He looks at the cups scattered over the floor. Chews his bottom lip for a moment. “But, um, I came back as soon as I heard. Drove all night long so I could help search and rescue, even though the last thing I wanted was to find her out in the snow or under the ice.”