I think Barb is teasing Connor, because her tone is light and she's got a mischievous look on her face, and trust me … that's a look that's so at odds with her nature that it stands out. But her words point out a scary truth about Barb. She was a young girl that had her innocence brutally destroyed. She went from Disney to Steven King in a nanosecond.
I glance at Connor, seeing he's horrified by what she said, and more importantly, at how he made her go there with his own teasing about Disney.
"Barb," he croaks, his voice heavily laden with guilt. "I didn't mean-"
"Relax, kiddo," Barb says as she pats him on his knee a few times. "But while I appreciate the offer, sitting around watching Disney movies just isn't my thing, you know?"
Connor nods, but I can see he's uncertain as to whether he's offended Barb or flayed open some raw wounds.
Barb pushes off the blanket, stands, and brushes a bit of sand from her pants. "I'm going to head back to the campground."
"I'll come with-" Connor says as he starts to stand up, but she holds a palm out to stop him.
"No offense," she says in a clipped voice even though she graces us with a small smile. "But I'm all kumbayah'ed out. Need some alone time."
She turns and marches across the sand toward the main road that runs parallel to the beach. Our campground is on the other side, about a quarter mile north of where we are now.
Connor slouches back down and lets out a sigh.
"Hey, don't worry about her," I tell him good-naturedly. "Remember, she's more bitch than human. She'll come around though."
Connor tries to put on a brave face, but Jillian manages to knock it right back off again. "No, she won't."
"Pardon?" I ask as I turn to look at her.
"She won't come around," Jillian says in a sad voice. "It's too much for her."
"What do you mean?" Connor asks with some trepidation.
"She cares for you," Jillian tells him pointedly. "But she's fragile. She can't continue to build a friendship with you knowing you're going to die. She doesn't have it in her."
Connor's head snaps toward the western part of the beach where Barb had headed. "But … she's the toughest one out of all of us."
"No, she's really not," I say, agreeing with Jillian's assessment.
While Jillian and I are down with movie nights at the McCann household so we can spend time with Connor before he dies, Barb isn't going to get on board with that. She's protecting herself because she doesn't want the pain that his death will cause her. I guarantee when we get back to Raleigh, Barb will be in the wind. We'll never see her again.
Chapter 31
My eyes pop open, and I'm instantly alert and awake. I've always been an early riser and that was only reinforced into me when I was in the Marine Corps. The pressure on my bladder spurs me into action, and I extricate myself from my sleeping bag and get my prosthetic on. In the pre-dawn light, I see Jillian and Connor are dead asleep in their respective sleeping bags. We'd stayed up late last night on the beach, gazing at stars and talking.
It was that easy type of conversation you have with friends who know all your weaknesses and forgives you for them without a second thought. I've never had friends like Jillian and Connor before. Soon, it will only be Jillian.
Outside of the tent, the cool air causes me to shiver and I rub my arms briskly. It had dropped down into the fifties last night, but our sleeping bags kept us nice and toasty. I'm not sure how Barb fared in the SUV as she only has a blanket in there, but she seemed fine when we walked into the campsite last night. She was on her side with the blanket pulled up to her chin, fast asleep, when I'd peered in the window last night.
After walking to the community bathrooms, I take a long piss, my bladder sighing with contentment as it empties. I growl at myself for not grabbing my toiletry kit as I could have knocked out a thorough scrubbing of my teeth at least. I run my tongue over them, thinking they feel vaguely furry. Still, even a morning-breath kiss with Jillian is better than any other kiss. I smile at myself in the mirror and head out of the restrooms.
I think I'll go ahead and get everyone up so we can get an early start to the day. We're going to head straight to San Francisco. Last night as we sat on the beach, we'd thrown about the possibility of staying a day in Portland, but ultimately decided against it because seeing the San Diego Zoo is high on our agendas. Given the fact that Connor's parents are anxious to have him back, we decided to hit San Francisco for a day and then head to San Diego for a day at the zoo. From there, Connor decided Vegas needed to be on his bucket list, and Jillian and I laughingly agreed to it.
So Portland was out and Vegas was in, then we'd head home.
Now we have to inform Barb of our plans and hope to God she's on board with it. I think she will be. As much as she made clear that she needs to distance herself from Connor when we get back home, I know deep down she isn't going to begrudge him this trip. She might put on a cold, hard outward appearance to keep people at arm's length, but I know Connor has wormed his way into her heart, just as he has mine.
Little fucker. He's going to cause me a world of hurt when it's all said and done, but I've accepted that burden.
I approach the SUV, deciding to go ahead and get Barb up. She's the crankiest and slowest in the morning. When I open the back door, I'm surprised to find it empty with the blanket that had been covering her last night tossed to the floorboard.
Looking around the campsite, I don't see her, but I suppose it's possible she got up and went to the bathroom while I was in there doing my thing.
Shrugging, I shut the door and walk back to the tent. Opening the flap, I call out to Jillian and Connor. "Okay lazy butts, get up. We need to hit the road."
Jillian's head pops up, her eyes heavy with sleep as she tries to focus in on me. "What time is it?"
"About 6:30," I tell her, having looked at my watch just a bit ago.
She nods, yawns, and then nudges Connor in the sleeping bag beside her. "Time to get up, Connor."
He groans, burrows down deeper into his sleeping bag, and mumbles, "Five more minutes, Mom."
"Get up now," I say in an authoritarian voice. To my surprise, Connor's head pops up. He looks at me with wide eyes, and I grin back at him. "Come on … I'm starving. I want pancakes."
Jillian shakes her head with a smile, completely enjoying the new and improved Christopher Barlow, and I must say, I'm enjoying her enjoying me. With a smile at her, I back out of the tent and wait for them to emerge. When she does moments later, Jillian gives me a kiss on the corner of my mouth and a breathy, "Morning, handsome," before she and Connor walk off toward the restrooms.
Yes, pride swells through me that she called me "handsome," and I hope I never get used to this feeling of euphoria that she produces inside of me. I don't know why I trust it so much, but I do and I'm running with it. Now that I've committed to seeing where Jillian can take me, and I've opened to the possibility that I can have an amazing life just as I am, I'm riding this bitch as far as it will take me, even if at the end, more hurt is waiting. I have to take this chance.
I pull the sleeping bags out of the tent and efficiently roll them up. I'm about halfway done dismantling the tent when Jillian and Connor come strolling back into camp.
"Hey, did you tell Barb we're heading out and going to get pancakes?" I ask Jillian.
She frowns at me. "She wasn't in the bathroom."
"Huh," I say with confusion, wondering where in the hell she is. I drop the poles in my hand that I'd just pulled free from their trappings and walk back over to the Suburban. Opening the passenger door again, I look for her backpack. I see nothing but the blanket and her pillow, so I check the rear of the SUV. No backpack.
"What's wrong?" Connor asks as I swing the tailgate shut.
"Barb's gone," I say as I scratch my head. I turn back to Jillian. "Are you sure she wasn't in the bathrooms?"
Jillian's brows furrow as she shakes her head. "I'll go check again."
"I'll go check the beach," Connor says helpfully with a confident smile. "I bet she's just on the beach."
"Yeah, you're probably right," I agree, shaking off the feeling of unrest within me.
He takes off trotting down the small trail that cuts through to the beach, and I make my way back to the tent to finish packing it up. My eyes sweep around the campground and the unsettled feeling increases, causing the hair at the back of my neck to stand on edge.
There's the thick row of trees bordering one side with the opening to the trail that Connor just took to the beach. A double row of campsites, almost all of them filled with tents, but there's no people milling around because it's so early. A gravel drive for vehicles, then the community buildings, and then a small field with waist-high brown grass. There's a large shade tree with huge branches that stretch out like arms with a tire swing. I hadn't seen it last night when we pulled in, but I imagine plenty of kids in the campground have played on that tire. My eyes move past the tree, finishing their three-hundred-and-sixty-degree perusal as they reach the forest edge, but something stops me.