“You’re a shit mechanic.” Relief washes over me at his easy, nonviolent, greeting.
He nods and leans against the doorframe of the rusty truck, the paint peeling off the antiquated structure. “Truth. But that’s why we’re friends. You’re not.”
“Asshole,” I laugh, grasping his shoulder as I pass deeper into the barn.
“What made you decide to bless us with your presence?” The caution is there, the yellow flag warning me to proceed carefully. That he’s Elin’s brother before he’s my friend.
I knew coming back to town would mean answering for things. Looking into the eyes of the people I care about and seeing fury or annoyance . . . or a broken heart. Imagining how to handle the judgement was easier in the farmhouse, fifty miles away.
“You gonna answer me, Whitt?” His work gloves come off and go hurling across the barn. “I’m glad to see that ugly mug of yours, but you have some explaining to do.”
“I know.” Cringing and gathering whatever pride I can find lying around, I suck in a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”
“Not good enough.”
“What do you want to know?” I ask, unsure where to even start. Everything is so scrambled, I don’t know which way to go.
“Where the hell you been?”
“North of Terre Haute. Cecil Kruger’s farm. He was a friend of my dad’s back in the day.”
“You didn’t think to call? To answer any of our thousands of fucking calls?”
My head drops, my gaze landing on a discarded pop tab in the dirt floor. “I smashed my phone and didn’t replace it. I was going to . . .” My chin lifts. “I’ll be honest with ya, Jiggs. The quiet was nice. No fighting. No reminder of how fucked up I am or how fucked up everything is.”
“So you just fucked it up worse?” he laughs angrily.
“I figured it might do Elin and I both some good to take a break. To, you know, have some time to think about things.”
Dust covers my boot as I kick the ground, waiting on him to reply. I’m at his mercy. Whatever he doles out, I deserve.
“Why did you come back? Why now?” he asks finally.
“Because it’s time.”
Our eyes meet over the hood of the truck. He searches mine, looking for the meaning of my words. Together, our heads begin to nod in understanding.
“You can’t expect things to go back to the way they were,” he says, picking up a wrench.
“I don’t.”
“Then what do you expect?”
It’s a simple question. One I can’t answer. I don’t even know what I have to come home to. My wife hates me. My best friend is skeptical of me. I even resigned from coaching the high school basketball team before I left, the one true passion of my life. What’s left?
“Why didn’t you come talk to me? Or to Cord, if you didn’t want to talk to me about things with my sister? Why let it get like this, Ty?”
“I wish I knew,” I mutter.
Jiggs sighs, resting his forearms on the truck’s frame. “We worried about you. No one could get ahold of you. Elin was a fucking disaster, Ty, and I honestly thought she was going to have a breakdown. The only person to see you was Pettis—”
“Woah, wait. Pettis?”
“Yeah. Said he saw you in Rockville a couple weeks ago.”
Racking my brain for where Pettis would’ve seen me, I come up blank. I didn’t see him. I wasn’t anywhere to see him to begin with. Before I can think it through, Jiggs speaks.
“Part of me wants to kill you and toss you in the lake back there,” he says, jutting his thumb over his shoulder.
“Might be easier.”
“Oh, it would. Which is exactly why I won’t do it.”
“Pussy,” I tease.
Jiggs laughs, shoving away from the truck. “Why did you leave?” Before I can answer, his gaze narrows. “The real reason, Ty. Cut the shit. Give it to me straight.”
“You know what it was?” I ask, a burn igniting in my chest. “It was like getting smashed by the timber at work destroyed my entire life.”
The pain in my core smolders, taking the loneliness of not having Elin, the loss of my team, the fury of losing everything I’ve ever wanted and worked for, and stokes the flames until it’s scalding.
“You can’t go through all that, Ty, and not come out affected. Your leg was snapped in half a couple of hundred yards below the surface of the earth. We carried you out on a stretcher.” His tone is somber. “We thought you were going to fucking die. That’ll mess with you.”
I nod. “Yeah, but I could’ve stayed sane. I could’ve managed everything better, but I didn’t. I let my marriage go to shit. I walked away from the team.”
They should’ve started practice this week. I looked at my watch at exactly five-o’clock on Monday and imagined them lined up at half-court, wondering why Reynolds was in front of them and not me.