Just for the Summer(104)

Nobody in this world still possessed the ability to break me like Justin did. Justin looking me in the eye and telling me he didn’t love me anymore or didn’t think I was someone he wanted around his family would destroy me. It would be worse than Mom. It was taking everything in me to be that brave and that vulnerable just to show up.

I didn’t know where he was with his life. Maybe he’d moved on.

I never saw anything in Sarah’s Snap stories that made me think he had a girlfriend—at least nobody serious enough to bring around the kids. But he might be dating. That was a very real possibility. Someone else’s fingers tangled in his thick hair. Him laughing with his head on their pillow.

Forehead kisses.

This was somehow the worst image of all, him pressing his lips to someone else’s head.

But even if that was the news I’d get when I got there, it was still worth trying, because I wanted to go home.

Grant House was where I lived, but it wasn’t home. Justin was home. The kids were home.

Justin was right. Home wasn’t a place, it was a person. For me it was a whole family.

I wanted to hold Chelsea. I wanted to help Sarah and Alex grow up. I wanted to wake up next to Justin and plant things in his yard, stay in one place and let things take root. Make traditions. Have birthdays and Christmases with these people, even though they weren’t mine. I was strong enough for that now, if he’d let me. For the first time in my life, I was capable of love—and the loss that came with it. I could handle it now. I’d healed enough for it.

So I got in my car and I started the journey back to him.

Toilet King billboards peppered the whole drive to his house like highway markers, letting me know I was headed in the right direction. I was less than half an hour away when out of nowhere, like I’d somehow gotten a signal on my phone that I hadn’t gotten in the past six months, Sarah called.

I stared at the caller ID for a solid ten seconds before I hit the answer button. “Sarah?”

“Can you come get me?”

I wrinkled my forehead. “Come get you? From where?”

“School.”

“Are you sick? Where’s Justin?”

“I don’t want him. The nurse says you’re still on the emergency contact list, you can come pick me up, they’ll let me go with you. Just come.”

“You’re going to need to give me a little more information than this,” I said.

“I got my period, okay?”

Ahhhhhh…

“I’m not telling my brother to help me get pads. And I’m not calling Leigh. She’ll throw me a period party. I’d rather die.”

I laughed a little. Yes, Leigh would definitely do that.

I was close. I could be there in twenty minutes. But then the nervousness sank in.

For some reason seeing Sarah felt as hard as seeing Justin.

Harder.

I didn’t just break up with Justin when I left. I broke up with all of them.

Alex would forgive me. He went with the flow and he’d probably be fine with whatever Justin decided. Chelsea was too small to know or hold a grudge. But Sarah… she would tell me exactly what she thought of me for leaving, and she wouldn’t sugarcoat it. She probably wouldn’t sugarcoat what Justin had been up to over the last six months either. Especially if it involved someone else. Just because she called me for help didn’t mean Sarah wanted me back in their lives. She didn’t forgive easily. She was hard on people and she didn’t forget. It would be a tough conversation and I didn’t have the bandwidth for it.

It took everything I had just to come and see him.

Also he wouldn’t be alone now like I’d planned, we wouldn’t have the privacy I’d hoped for if Sarah was there.

For a split second I thought of telling her I couldn’t do it, to call her brother to pick her up and I’d try this talk with him another day. Turning around and going back to Wakan.

But I also remembered what it was like to get my first period without a mother to help me.

I’d been alone, I didn’t know what to do. My cramps had me doubled over and I’d bled on my clothes. I didn’t want Sarah to have any of the small traumas I’d been forced to endure because of an absentee mom. So I made my decision.

“I can be there in twenty minutes.”

I came and I felt like an imposter when I signed her out of school. An adult she trusted enough to call in an emergency, but one who hadn’t been here in half a year and had to answer for it.

“Does Justin know where you are?” I asked her as we came out to the parking lot.

“No.”

“Okay, well we need to tell him. Text him right now.”

“He’s not gonna get a phone call or something telling him I’m gone. I’ll just tell him when I get home, it’s already embarrassing enough.”

I opened the door on the driver’s side and stood there to talk to her over the roof. “Sarah, I don’t feel good about taking you from school unless your guardian knows I’m doing it.”

She opened the passenger side and threw her backpack into the back seat. Then she leveled her eyes on me with the most annoyed teenager glare I’d ever seen. “He’s not gonna care. It’s you.”

She got in and slammed the door.

I sighed. She was probably right, he wouldn’t care. If he cared, he would have taken my name off the emergency contact list. Still.