Joe

Joe Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: Joe Read Online Free PDF
Author: H.D. Gordon
way too quick for him to do a damn thing about it. “Hell
yeah!” he all but shouted.
    Roses bloomed behind his cheeks, and
people passing by gave him a slightly strange look and continued on their way.
He was grateful that at least she couldn’t see him. When he heard her
laugh again, that deeper, throatier version of what he remembered so clearly,
of what he’d replayed over and over again these past six years on the nights
that, no matter how much he tossed and turned or masturbated or read, he could
not shake his thoughts of her, made his heart seem to tug itself together
again, but his stomach was in his shoes.
    “Okay ,” she said. John thought he heard another sigh. Of relief?
He couldn’t tell. “ What do you got goin’ on on Monday?”
    John had school on Monday, and work, but
his automatic response was, “Nothing. Monday? Nope. Nothing going on on
Monday.”
    Jodie laughed again, and the long hair on
John’s head seemed to tingle with joy. “ Okay. I get in at eight pm and I’m
driving from the airport. You want me to pick you up?” she asked. “ Could
be there at like nine. That okay?”
    John reached up to scratch his face,
realizing only when his fingers touched wetness that a few tears had escaped
his eyes. He quickly cleaned them off with the sleeve of his green army jacket.
    “I mean, you don’t drive, do you? I
don’t mind picking you up.”
    He realized he hadn’t replied. “No, I
don’t drive,” he said. Of course she knew that. Jodie had seen John after his
car wreck his freshman year of high school. She had taken care of him, really.
She just had no idea how very much. Even still, he hated driving. “Yes,” he
continued. “Pick me up. Pick me up on Monday. I—” He cleared his throat. “I
can’t wait to see you.”
    “Me too. I’ll see you then, Johnny.”
    “Yeah, I’ll see you then,” he said, and
then he hung up.
    John sat on that bench for the next half
an hour, even though it was going to cause him to miss the early bus and not
get home until after the sun had set. It didn’t matter. The day was so warm and
the birds were whistling sweet music in his ears. Jodie was coming home. He
just couldn’t believe it. Jodie was coming home and everything was going to
be all right.
    Come Monday, after a day of classes and
work, he would get to see her again, to hold her maybe, to hear that laugh of
hers again. And, maybe, just maybe, it would help to erase his last sight of
her, where tears had streaked down her face and she had called out and then she
was gone. That was how he remembered the girl he had fallen in love with, and
now the woman that girl had become was coming back, and she wanted to see him.
    He sat on the bench, under the warm sun,
which seemed to him to be shining just for him—when truly it was utterly
indifferent—and felt as though he was in a fairytale and everything was going
to be all right. Yessir and holy schmokes. It would be all right.
    Come Monday, that was.
    What he didn’t understand was that life
was no fairytale, and there is often no smoke before the fire.

Chapter
Seven
    Claire
    Claire
sat watching the smoke dance and float out the window, feeling pangs of envy.
What a wonder it must be to move so freely, to let the wind take you, to dance away
with it. She was not a stupid girl, but she was a pretty one, so the former was
often presupposed. But, she was smart enough to know that she had spent most of
her life feeling trapped.
    Mid-terms were coming up. She should be
studying. That is what everyone expected her to be doing. Instead, she was
smoking. Not cigarettes, though she had a half-empty pack of Marlboro Reds
sitting in the desk drawer beside her. No, she was smoking the good stuff: pot,
weed, marijuana.
    Claire was not a social smoker. She
preferred her solitude. In fact, no one she knew was the wiser about her
smoking habits. They couldn’t know. Not even her “friends”. What would
they say?
    She knew. They would shake their
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