Just A Friend: Small Town Stories Novella #3 Read online

  What if the stress tricked her, and she misinterpreted his kindness as interest? Pam didn’t have a good reason for the sense of loss that weighed on her heart, but it was there. For the entire drive home, she held two conversations. In one she gave Jorgen the directions to her house. The other took place between the lines. Earlier, she believed there was something between them. But, it came straight from the man’s mouth. There was nothing between them. Weary from the stress of the collision she gave up the argument. There was no point in worrying about what never was.

  They had one more turn until they reached the block she lived on. Pam sighed in relief. She was minutes away from a warm shower and a cozy blanket.

  “This is your house?” Jorgen asked.

  Pam blinked to make sure what she saw was not a figment of her imagination. If she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, she wouldn’t have believed it possible. A humongous cottonwood tree rested in the middle of her roof. She motioned to speak, but the only sound she produced was a squeak. Pam set her hand on her chest, took a deep breath and tried again. “Tell me I’m having a hallucination,” she pleaded. This had to have been a bad dream.

  “I’m sorry to say Gary Turner’s tree is on your roof.”

  Before she rented the house, Glenn, the homeowner boasted the history of the tree. "My grandfather, Gary, planted the tree when my father was born seventy-five years ago.” Glenn tapped the trunk with his weathered hands as though the gesture validated the landmark’s longevity. “This tree, right here, is an official Ashbrook, Montana landmark. They even added it to the map painted on the old mill.”

  And it was true. When people gave directions, they referenced the tree. “You want to turn two blocks after Gary Turner’s tree,” or, “if you reach Gary Turner’s tree, you’ve gone too far.”

  Her first explanation of where she lived to Jorgen only proved the point further. She said, “I live on the corner of March Street and First Avenue.”

  Like everyone else, Jorgen responded to her description with a wrinkled brow. When she clarified by saying, “I live in the house that has Gary Turner’s tree in the front yard,” he nodded in recognition of what she had said the first time.

  The tree was not supposed to topple. But there it was. The trunk inclined up against the front of the house, and the leaves had to have been hanging down the other side.

  Jorgen barely had time to shift the pickup into park when her next-door neighbor, Claire, opened her door. She clutched her plaid housecoat close to her body. The snow in the yard between the two houses was deep enough to alter her walk into a mini march. Claire’s pink paisley Muck boots rose and fell in an awkward yet familiar cadence.

  She approached the passenger side of the vehicle and waited for Pam to open the door. Somehow Jorgen had run around the front of the pickup and opened the door before Pam had a chance to find the handle. He offered her a hand to help her step down from the cab. Inwardly she sighed at what she lost before having the chance to find it.

  “I tried calling you about a half hour ago to tell you what happened.” Claire’s voice was breathy. She held her hands on her hips as she inhaled to recover from the march across the yard. “We had a really bad windstorm that started up about an hour ago. I thought for sure it was a tornado. The weather stations said it was a microburst.” She paused for a second. “Anyway, one minute the wind was howling like a coyote looking for its partner. The next minute we heard a creak that was almost like a scream, followed by a crunch. When we came out to see what happened the old tree was perched up against the house.”

  All three of them, Claire, Jorgen, and Pam processed the events as Claire had told them. Their eyes started the journey with the roots that hung from the upended tree, traveled the trunk to the roof, and the returned to the roots.

  Claire shook her head. “And this had to happen when Glenn decided to take a trip to San Diego. We called and told him. Either he was in shock or had too much sauce with his clam chowder. It was hard to tell. But he took it better than I thought he would.”

  She searched for what to say, but nothing came to mind. Shock had rendered Pam speechless. Her now dead phone laid somewhere on the side of the road under inches of snow. Now, this had happened. Pam fell back, and Jorgen caught her.

  “I’d offer to let you stay with us, but my son is here with his wife and two kids.” Claire turned to the window and waved at the faces peeking out.

  Pam had no pickup, no phone, and she wasn’t sure if the house was sturdy enough for her to stay. “That is okay,” Pam said it because that is what she was supposed to say. But it wasn’t. Her ankle was screamed in pain, and her head throbbed from a tension headache that lobbied for her attention.

  She wondered if the house was safe enough to enter to get her toiletries. “I hate to be a bother since you already have done so much for me. But, would you mind taking me to the motel?”

  “How about this?” Jorgen said, “I have a guest room. You can stay at my place for the night. It would give you time to figure out what you’re doing.”

  “I don’t want to intrude…” she began her objection to get cut off first by Claire and then Jorgen.

  “You don’t want to go to a motel alone,” Claire gasped, “that is what ladies of the night do.”

  “I have an empty guest bedroom ready for a visitor. Unless you want me to take you to Nancy’s house.”

  Nancy was at her house with her husband and teenage son. The last thing she needed was for Pam to crash on her couch. And, her friend was scheduled to be at the hospital in the morning. Odds were Nancy had already gone to bed.

  “Are you sure?” Pam asked.

  “Let me talk to her a minute,” Claire sided up to Pam and shooed Jorgen away. She half whispered, half hissed. “Are you kidding me? The town’s most eligible bachelor invites you to stay at his house.” She threw a smile in Jorgen’s direction. “If I didn’t have my children in my house, I’d be in the seat of that pickup faster than New York minute.”

  The smirk on Jorgen’s face gave away that he heard more than Claire intended. Pam could tell that he was pretending to be interested in something off in the distance.

  “Now, go tell him you’d be happy to stay with him.”

  Pam never had a chance.

  Using her matronly voice of authority, Claire called out, “She’s going to stay with you.”

  The street light shone enough for Pam to see the amusement from Jorgen’s smile extended to his eyes. The effect of the smile jarred Pam's heart. If she didn't know any better, he won a bet she didn't know about.

  Safe With Me

  Old ladies on a Sunday drive were faster than Jorgen who carefully navigated his pickup down the country road. Pam didn’t say anything, but it did surprise her a little. Usually, playboys loved hard and drove fast. So far, Jorgen proved to be guilty of neither.

  “Bad weather blurs the lines between safe and tricky terrain,” he explained. “I know most of this area like the back of my hand, but a simple distraction like a beautiful woman in the passenger seat is enough for me to forget where I am.”

  How could she find fault with that argument? Pam sat still and listened to the sound of the windshield wipers going back and forth as they pushed aside the falling snow. One minute the skies were clear and the next it seemed like nature dumped a bucket of the flurry white over their heads.

  Her head pounded hinting at an impending migraine. She forced herself to focus on what he was saying. “Another thing,” Jorgen interrupted her thoughts. “You are safe with me. Nothing is going to happen when you’re at my house. Contrary to what people say about me, I know how to treat a woman.”

  She appreciated how he didn’t let what other people said about him get in the way of how he conducted himself. Pam wished she could be more like him.

  After a couple of minutes of silence, Jorgen continued his explanation. “I had this friend Gina. She came by the house for dinner one time. Things got hot and heavy. I liked her. She felt the same
about me. And, one thing led to another. While we were getting to know each other a little better, William. He’s her father. Was in a rollover accident. I wondered if it was life’s way of saying that it was my turn to take care of her. Anyway, this other guy was interested in her too, and we found out at the hospital that William and his dad had some sort of agreement that his family would take care of her.”

  Her eyes darted to the dashboard, and she noticed their speed had dropped to ten miles per hour. She looked out the window and noticed the visibility was worse than before. Sasquatch could have been in front of them, and they would have been none the wiser.

  “So, I told her that we should take a break. You know, give us time to sort out the issues. As soon as I said it, I knew it was wrong. But she stopped returning my calls. Stopped talking to me. I found out through the ‘he said—she said line’ that Gina was pregnant. It got complicated. William told me that it was better for Gina if I let her go.”

  Jorgen sighed. Pam felt his eyes watch for her reaction. When she remained silent, he continued where he left off. “After that, I promised myself that the next time I bring a woman to my house for anything hot and heavy, it’s for a long-term living situation. If you know what I mean.”

  “That’s a lot of truth,” Pam said. “Thank you for sharing it with me.”

  She was humbled by how genuine he was with her. He hadn’t tried to present himself as a knight in shining armor. And, her earlier assessment of him was right. There was more to the story, and after hearing Jorgen’s side of the story, it made sense. He was trying to figure out life and messing up like every other person. Perhaps them being friends might have been the right decision after all. Would he have been quick to divulge his truth if they were going to date? She watched the road ahead of them to see where they were going and allowed the silence to absorb the cab of the pickup. Like a thin blanket, it surrounded them and provided just the right degree of comfort.

  Jorgen was the first to interrupt the silence. “Why aren’t you married, or at least hooked up with someone?”

  “I was,” she admitted. “In a relationship. That is. It’s how I ended up here. My boyfriend, Mark, and I moved here to make a clean start. I got a job, and he didn’t. After two months, he left. He said I was too good for him.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Idaho. I think.” She shrugged and added, “Nancy helped me pull it together. She’s been like a sister to me.” When the nurse known for her no nonsense bedside manner heard about the breakup, she refused Pam the time to wallow in her misery. For the first two weeks, ranging from invites to dinner to outings at the high school sports events, Nancy kept Pam distracted from her loneliness.

  “Your family is okay with you being out here by yourself?” He turned the pickup down a road. The snow drifted in swirls around them. How he knew where they were headed eluded Pam. Then a solitary beam of light broke through the flurries. She imagined that Jorgen’s house was attached to the light.

  “I never told them. They didn’t think I should have moved in the first place. I didn’t want to hear I told you so.”

  “Sometimes 'I told you so’ is a family’s way of saying they love you enough to see the future for you,” Jorgen replied.

  He spoke the truth. She nodded to acknowledge what he said and promised herself that she’d call them when she got a phone. With that being the end of their conversation, they rode in companionable silence for a couple more minutes. Jorgen pressed on the remote control attached to his visor. At the same time, Pam noticed the house in front of them. The garage door opened, and the pickup crawled into the haven. When Jorgen shifted the gear to park, he pressed the button, and the door closed behind them.

  The first thing Pam saw when they walked in the house was a brown plush sectional. Directly across the room, a large screen television hung on a wall made of wood paneling from the 1970’s. Pictures of farm equipment and people she assumed were Jorgen’s parents dotted the top of a shelf beneath the television. In front of the pictures, he had the controller for the satellite television, a DVD player, and three gaming systems. The room screamed single man without the intention of changing anytime soon—yet it was clean.

  "I can show you the guest room, and you can go to sleep. Or, I can make some coffee, and we can play a game."

  Before she had time to respond, Jorgen walked to a door at the edge of the room. He opened it to reveal shelves of board games. His eyes traveled the shelves and stopped when they found what they were looking for. He reached in and pulled out a wooden board a little larger than his hand and a deck of cards. “A game of cribbage would get us through this frigid winter night.”

  He set the game on the coffee table and crossed the room to grab one of the remote controls beneath the television. He pressed the button, and an in-wall fireplace lit to show the LED flames. The fan blew coziness into the otherwise coolly furnished room. It took everything in Pam to not fall in love with Jorgen Backman then and there.

  The last time she played cribbage was when her grandmother was alive. They stayed up until all hours of the night scoring the fifteens and runs. Pam loved the times when she lived them; she missed them even more now that they were gone.

  One time after her grandmother had passed, Pam invited her ex Mark to play a hand of crib. Rather than accommodate her request to share a memory, he added the app to her phone. As an explanation, he said, “Now Gigi,” which was her nickname for her grandmother, “is with you all the time.”

  Without provocation on her part, Jorgen recreated her warmest memories. As they sat down on the couch and played, she found herself miserably failing at keeping Jorgen an arm’s distance away from her heart. Other than having an unfairly earned a bad reputation there wasn’t much for her to find him disagreeable. Also, fighting the feelings had grown tiresome; like she was carrying an armful of groceries, she’d never use. Pam relented and embraced the fact. She had it bad for Jorgen Backman. The only thing she could do was hope that when the snow cleared, and she went home, he’d feel the same way about her.

  I Don't Believe You

  The pulsing pain from her ankle throbbed and demanded that Pam give it the attention it deserved. She ignored the pain for too long. At the same time she commended herself for handling the pain like a warrior, her ankle gave out on her. Pam caught herself by placing her hand on the wall and gasped to mask the pain. Through the sharpness, she heard her nurse’s voice in her mind. “Discomfort is a temporary and natural response to distress.” In this instance, her ankle was not happy with her for landing on it incorrectly. Her head wasn’t pleased with all the discombobulation that occurred in such a short period of time. She told herself what she hoped. In a couple of days, everything will be back to normal.

  If she were in her house or near her pickup, Pam would have access to the supplies she needed. Simple things like a cold pack and an ace bandage to keep things stabilized always worked with sprains and minor muscle injuries. Pam promised herself she’d ask Jorgen for both when she finished her shower and took the next steps to the bathroom.

  “I saw that,” Jorgen placed one hand under her elbow and the other one around her waist for support. “We can try to get you do the doctor.”

  It took them an hour to drive the five miles to Jorgen’s house. She imagined the drive to the hospital ten miles away. Zach’s warning of other drivers being stuck in ditches because of the poor visibility peppered the vision. “Going through all that trouble for a sprained ankle. They’d tell me to ice it and take it easy. I’m not paying someone to tell me what I already know.” Pam replied.

  “Okay, at best, I’m sitting outside the shower. That way I’ll be right there if you need me.”

  “That just isn’t right,” she complained.

  “What isn’t right is you being the poster girl for I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up.”

  There was the smirk. The one that said he had her right where he wanted her. If she said no, he’d call her out for being in
timidated.

  She was a bundle of nerves, but she didn’t want him to know it. “If you promise not to look.” She kept her voice light to let him know she was joking.

  Jorgen chuckled in response.

  A sense of relief came over her. He got her jokes. Trying to keep up the humor she suggested, “I have a better idea. You go first.”

  “What if I catch you looking?” He taunted with the same tone she used on him.

  “I’m a nurse there isn’t anything I haven’t seen on anybody else.”

  “If that’s the argument, I can say the same thing.”

  The red crawled up Pam’s cheeks so fast she didn’t know if there was a way to tamper the fire. He was downright attractive. She was normal at best. Sure, she looked good with a touch of makeup and the right clothes to accent the better qualities. Jorgen needed no corrective attire or cosmetics to make him appealing. The last thing she wanted was him seeing her undressed.

  “Gotcha,” he joked. He pulled out two towels and a washcloth and passed them to her. “I’ll stay outside the door. If you need me holler.”

  She thought she’d be fine. It was a typical bathroom with a typical shower. Shampoo and conditioner were placed precariously on the edge of the tub and lotion and toiletries were on the counter. Pam moved the shampoo and conditioner to the floor, so they wouldn’t fall and stepped into the shower. The water warmed quickly and soothed her muscles. The tension she refused to acknowledge melted away.

  Another bottle of shampoo and conditioner were on the shelf beside the shower head. “How many bottles of shampoo does one guy need?” she called out the door. As soon as she asked, she regretted it. What if he had a secret girlfriend?“

  My cousin sells those fancy cosmetics.” He answered through the door. “She asked me to try it and tell her what I thought. I liked it, so she let me keep it.”