Chapter 16

The rebuilding site turned into almost a party as people who’d been working earlier came by. A few were even hauling ice chests of beer. It didn’t get too rowdy, but everyone had a good time. I spent some of the time with Rosita, but between her continued work trying to get people to contribute and donate to the rebuild project, we didn’t really get to spend much time together.

She did surprise me by asking me to go to play put-put on Sunday at a place she’d seen in Summersville. Her restaurant was only open for lunch on Sundays, which meant she didn’t have to ask Julie to cover the place again.

Since I was once again carless, I walked up to her shop and she drove us there after she locked up.

“So, I hear you were telling Orville I didn’t really want to be a gym teacher?” I asked when there was a lull in the conversation as we drove.

Admittedly it was far from the smoothest way to bring up the subject, but it had been on my mind since Orville had brought it up. I wasn’t mad at her, but I wondered what made her seem to think I didn’t want to move on from just being a bum around town.

“Yes, although we weren’t gossiping about you behind your back or anything. He was by the shop the other day while you were up in Summersville doing the investigation, and we were just talking. He asked if it was true you were planning on leaving in the fall to be a gym teacher and I told him yes, but I didn’t think that was something you really had your heart set on. He didn’t ask me to elaborate and we switched the conversation to something else. Honestly, it was so short I really didn’t even think about it to mention to you.”

“Why don’t you think I want to teach?”

“Because you don’t light up when you talk about it. Sometimes, it almost seems like you are being forced to do it. Not like you regret the decision or are angry about it, but compared to how you’ve talked about the investigation, it has become very apparent, probably to anyone who knows you.”

“My eyes light up when I talked about the investigation?”

“Yes, every time. You were engaged, interested, and almost eager to get back to it. It’s the most alive I’ve seen you since we’ve met.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely.”

“So you think I should take his job offer?”

“I wouldn’t try to tell you what to do, Henry. I didn’t mean for it to sound like I was trying to convince you to stay. Would I like you to stay? Yes. We’ve gotten to know each other and I really like you, but I also want you to be happy. If going off and being a gym teacher is what will really make you happy, then I think you should do it. I just got the impression that you aren’t doing this because you really want to, but because you felt like it was the only direction you had available. When you started with it, you were living with your parents and you talked about living here like you were trapped. Lately though, since you moved out and had something to focus on, you’ve seemed almost like a different person.”

“Really?” I asked, surprised. “Hopefully not too different.”

If I was being honest with myself, her description of feeling trapped and using my degree to go teach gym wasn’t that far off. I had felt trapped and all I could think about was escaping.

“Not different in a bad way. You were still all of the things that I like about you. You are still smart and funny and have a good heart. If anything, since you started helping with the investigation, you’ve just been more of those things. I don’t know the word in English, but it’s like when you hear music from outside, and you can kind of make it out, but can’t really hear all of it until you step outside.”

“Muted,” I offered.

“Yes. Muted. You were a muted version of you, and over the last week or so, you’ve been the full sound version of you.”

I went quiet, staring out off into space, thinking. I’d actually thought a lot of these things to myself, at night, when I tried to picture where’d I’d be in a year or five years. Not the muted part, but when I thought of myself, was it being in some random city getting kids to run around a track or whatever. If I tried, I could force it, but she was right, it didn’t really make me feel anything, other than maybe resigned that it was the best I could do.

I had, however, been thinking about her a lot recently. Part of me knew that whatever we had going wasn’t long-term, because I was only going to be here a few more months, but I’d basically been ignoring it. I really liked spending time with her and most days it was the only thing I really looked forward to, so contemplating that it wasn’t going to last had been too much of a bummer to think about.

She was also right about how things had been different for the last week or so. Although I hated seeing what George Cooper had gone through and that night in the burning building had been terrifying, I didn’t remember feeling this focused on anything in a long time. That didn’t, by default, mean that I would feel the same about being a cop again. While there were times that an interesting case or event really got me engaged, I’d spent a lot of my time on the force doing routine, mundane, and frankly boring work, all the while getting shit on.

Of course, things would be different here, at least to some degree. For one, in New York City I was just a cog in a huge machine with a several billion dollars a year budget ... and a small one, at that. Maybe if I’d stuck it out and made detective or something similar, I would have been more engaged, but that didn’t mean it would be the same here. There would only be three of us if I took Orville up on his offer, which meant everyone would have to do everything. It would also be a lot less faceless than it was in New York City, since I already knew most everyone in town. I was, even if unwillingly at the moment, a part of the community and this was where my roots were.

“Are you okay?” Rosita asked after a while.

I’d been quiet, looking out the window, but not really seeing where we were. Snapping out of the trance, I saw that some time must have passed because we had stopped. We were in Summersville, sitting in the parking lot of the put-put golf place.

“Yeah. Sorry, I know we were coming out to have fun and spend the day together. I didn’t mean to go quiet for so long.”

“We can go back if you want. I know you’ve got a lot to think about.”

I knew she meant it. Not in a ‘we can go if you’re going to be a killjoy’ kind of way. It’s one of the many reasons I liked Rosita so much. She was one of the most thoughtful people I’d ever met.

“No. No. I’m good. I swear I’ll snap out of it. Let’s go play some put-put,” I said, giving her a smile.

I’m not sure if she believed me, but we both hopped out and went through the brightly colored gate that led inside.

Overall, it was a good time. I did learn a couple of important lessons, however. One was that, although I’d been an athlete in high school and kept in shape ever since, even with my leg injury, those abilities did not translate in any way to playing miniature golf. The other thing I learned was that Rosita had a killer instinct when she was competing and wasn’t against trash-talking, especially when she was winning.

She still kept it clean, which is something I’d noticed since the first day we’d met. It wasn’t that she didn’t curse, because she did, but she reserved it for when she really felt passionate about something. She didn’t curse just casually like pretty much everyone else I’d ever known.

She also proved again how sneaky she was. Halfway through, after basically destroying me at every hole, she suddenly had trouble with a shot that I’d finally managed to do good at. She’d convinced me the only way to solve the problem was to have me help her with the shot, asking me to help her with her stance and grip on the small putting wedge, which basically ended up with her pressing her body up against me while I wrapped my arms around her, placing them on top of hers while she held the putter.

I recognized the steps to this dance and had been the one to instigate it when I’d been with Terri, although she’d set up the opportunity much like Rosita had by inviting me to play mini-golf. We were talking about put-put, but neither of our minds were on what we were saying, both of us keenly aware of each other’s bodies as she pressed her butt into me.

It only lasted for a few minutes as we heard a family coming around a corner from the previous hole and we broke apart. This wasn’t the place to do anything more than tease each other when we were out of view, and it was then that I noticed she’d waited until we were at a hole in the corner of the place, blocked from the other players by a windmill thing.

The rest of the game was mostly the two of us watching each other and looking away when they turned around or made eye contact. It was exhilarating and for a little while, I felt like I was a teenager again.

Rosita was cool as ever. As we returned our clubs, balls, and little pencils, she invited me back to her house so she could cook me dinner. Even if I wasn’t completely revved up by her, I would have accepted. She had proven time and again that she was a far superior cook, and I’d be a fool to pass up that kind of offer.

Thankfully, the rest of the drive was back interacting as we had been. No more talk about the future or what I wanted to do, and no more staring out the window in silence. The tension on the drive-up had passed and we talked just as easily as we ever did, reminding me of the other thing I liked about her so much.