Page 51 of See You at the Sunset

“Okay, everyone, let’s go,” she said. And she didn’t bother to look back. And she didn’t bother to offer him the Kleenex she had in her pack. He could figure out his own shit. Pun intended.

She started off faster than she should have. She was just annoyed by Henry’s lack of empathy. She understood he had a thing about following rules. But sometimes he had to understand that rules could and should be bent and broken. It frustrated her...

“Hey there, speedy. Wanna wait for the rest of us?”

Jia looked back over her shoulder and saw the Walking Club at least twenty feet behind her. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry. I was lost in thought,” she said.

“Honestly, Jia. Feel free to go on and walk ahead of us. It can’t be fun slowing yourself down to a snail’s pace just because the rest of us can’t keep up. You’re young and strong and flexible. Don’t let us hold you back,” Eugene said.

He’d meant it as encouragement... to push forward at herown pace... to get something out of this time for herself as well. But what he didn’t realize, none of them did, maybe she hadn’t either until this very moment, was that the pace Jia had been living life was too fast for her. That the pace life was moving right here at The Sunset was just right. At least for now. And she loved it. She loved the lack of judgment.

She needed the freedom to figure stuff out for herself. And maybe what she was figuring out there was that slower worked better for her.

“I like walking alongside you all. That pace is just right,” she told the group. “Let’s take a water break at the corner,” she suggested. “Humans and furry friends all hydrate at the halfway point.”

“One of us will have to remember about stopping to hydrate once Jia’s gone.”

The words hit her like a ton of bricks. Of course Jia had thought about eventually having to leave the desert and go back to New York. But she didn’t realize that maybe her friends, the residents there, were also thinking about it. Her chest felt tight, and the sudden pressure of a timeline made it feel like she was carrying fifty pounds of stress on her shoulders.

“You guys can’t get rid of me that quick,” she said. She tried to keep her voice light, joking.

“We’d keep you here forever if we could,” Gladys said.

A chorus ofyeses andyups andyou betchas followed. Tears welled up in Jia’s eyes. She’d never felt like she belonged anywhere. And suddenly, after living among a bunch of seniors in a retirement community, she’d felt like she’d found a home.

But this couldn’t be her home, could it? Jia needed a job. She needed a place to live. She needed a life. And none of those things were available to her here at Sunset Hills, what withage restrictions, financial burdens, and overbearing parents with their own expectations of her.

And the sense of loss weighed the heaviest on her of all.

“Hey, Dennis? Do you remember where we put the toolbox?” Henry rummaged through the garage looking for where he’d put the stuff he didn’t think Dennis would need on the regular.

“Yeah, it’s out in the garage. What do you need it for?” Dennis asked.

“Thought I might try to make something, an instrument of some kind. Wanna help me figure it out?” Henry asked.

Dennis’s eyes lit up at the offer. “You betcha, I do,” he said. He came and sat next to Henry at the kitchen table. Henry had a pen and paper and began drawing.

“Okay, so this is what I was thinking...”

20

The now-familiar knock came at the front door—two knocks, pause, three pounds. It was the code derived from the neighborhood watch to signal a friendly person was there. Its pattern set itself apart enough that it couldn’t be mistaken for anything else and was a loud-enough combination that residents who were hard of hearing could easily make it out. Not a solicitor, a scammer, or someone with bad intentions. Henry liked the idea of a secret knock. And he really liked how everyone took care of each other and watched out for one another at The Sunset. Though, with the way the neighbors always came to visit his granddad on the regular, Henry had had a hard time concentrating on his work since he arrived.

But if he were being honest, it was the best, most relaxing, most fun time he’d had in a long time.

Henry opened the front door and there, standing behind the screen, was Jia, in a brown-and-blue checkered muumuu. He wondered if she was ever going to go to the airport to pickup her own luggage, but by this point, it was pretty obvious she wasn’t in a hurry to do so. The airport was a ten-minute drive away, so it didn’t seem like something too hard to do. He should ask her. Maybe offer to take her.

But the more he got to know Jia, the more he realized how deep her waters flowed. There weren’t just willy-nilly reasons for how she was. She was thoughtful and emotional, empathetic and purposeful. The reasons she’d likely share about her luggage and her clothing would probably go deeper than Henry wanted or needed to know about his neighbor, so he always held back. Rather, he found it an amusing game seeing what new piece of her grandmother’s wardrobe she’d be sharing that day.

But after their kiss the other night at sunset, his curiosity about Jia had only grown. He wanted to know more. Because her quirkiness, her zest for life, and her pouty bottom lip were incredibly sexy to Henry.

“Hey there,” he said, as he opened the screen door. “Come in.”

“I wish I could, but I have to get these invitations out for the rest of the street,” she said.

Jia just stood there.

Henry stood back.