We make a beer run just after eight and keep driving like the days he might recall as the good old days. I’m not feeling nostalgic quite yet, but I can get on board with a few good times we had. I look over at Billy, and suddenly, I feel like I’m eighteen again with the world at my feet. “Remember when we used to go fishing every Sunday? The sun hadn’t even come up, and we’d be heading out.”
“We were still drunk.”
“Were we ever sober?”
“I don’t know,” he replies. “I was too drunk to remember.”
His Dodge slows to a crawl, and he switches the headlights off. I don’t have to look out across that field to know where we are. I know this route better than any. I know her like the back of my hand.
The truck stops, and he turns off the engine. I take a long pull of my beer before I turn my attention to the farmhouse. The living room and kitchen lights are on, and the TV casts a blue tint across the corner windows.
Letting my gaze wander up a story to the second floor, I see her bedroom light on and the bathroom connected to it lit up. She owns that farm now, her parents long passed. Does she still sleep in that room? The one with pink-striped wallpaper and a full-sized bed atop a squeaky metal frame? I can’t see the side of the house where I used to climb up the trellis to the roof and run across to sneak into her bedroom. Wonder if that trellis is still there?
He looks at me, his jovial mood wiped from his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
“I took her to the emergency room once.”
I’m not ready to dig this deep, but since he’s brought it up . . . “Why?” My stomach tenses as my grip around the can tightens, crushing the aluminum before I toss it out the window into the bed of the truck.
“I should have stopped him.”
“Were you there?”
“No, but my warnings weren’t enough. I knew he had a drinking problem. He’d picked a fight with me earlier that night outside Red River. She’d just gotten back into town, so I guess he decided to take it out on her later.”
Staring out the window, I avoid looking at him. I don’t want to hear his confession. I don’t want to see his guilt. Because then it’ll become mine, and I don’t owe anybody anything.
Lies.
Lies.
Lies.
I owe her. I owe her better than she got. I was across the country when I first heard the rumor. Cutler hit his wife. The same girl he claimed to want enough to screw me over.
Back in school, Cole never struggled to get a girl’s attention if he wanted it. He’d tell everyone how he hooked up with the popular girls and then ventured across county lines for what he called fresh meat. He was the guy who bragged in the locker rooms and teased you relentlessly if you didn’t score with a girl.
Except for me.
We had a silent agreement—the bullshit put on for others didn’t fly between us. I knew beneath that attitude he was a good guy. He’d only slept with two girls, but I kept his secret safe to protect his rep.
“He knew we had a fight. He was waiting for that moment and then pursued her. But after kicking my heart to the sidelines, why did she want him?”
She still owns parts of me that others will never see, and I’m left wondering why. Why him over me? Why didn’t she fight for us? Those questions were packed away with the baggage I carried with me. The details weighing down my rucksack with emotional bullshit I’ve tried to shed across the miles.
“I don’t know.” Billy says, “The night he hit her, he only spent one night in jail for it.”
“One night?” I repeat. One fucking night for hitting the love of my life.
Why’d she fucking stay?
She had eight hours to get the fuck out of there, but she stayed. I rub my hand over my forehead in frustration. “I don’t understand why you didn’t get her out. He hit the woman I love.”
He glances my way but then turns toward the steering wheel. “Love?”
“Huh?”
“You said the woman you love.”
Love. Present tense. Shit. “Loved. Anyway, this is about you. He hit a woman you’ve been friends with for years.”
“Delilah’s forgiven me.”
“I haven’t.”
“Join the club, because I haven’t either.”
The cicadas fill the air, and we’ve drank enough. Too much has been stirred up for one night. “We should go.”
6
Jason
The love of my life has bounced around my head since the errant thought last night.
The love of my life.
The love of my life.
What the . . .? No.
It makes no sense. I loved Delilah, but the love of my life? I’m twenty-six. I have a lot of life left to live. It’s a stretch to call the girl I started dating when I was seventeen the love of my life. My logical side can argue that it was nothing more than teenage lust mixed with hormones. That makes sense. But love of my life? Not so much.