And I knew I had to explain it all to her, if I was planning on staying here.
Lies had fragile, little legs. I wanted a foundation.
Clara raised an eyebrow as she leaned a hip against the counter, stretching her dark green, collared shirt with the name of the business above her breast. She’d brought me one of her old ones and promised to order new ones. “Are you going to?”
I shook my head. “No, because I know it will bother him. And there’s nothing he would need to tell me anyway.”
Clara scrunched up her nose, and I could see the questions in her eyes, but there were too many customers still around. “Did he try calling you?”
“He can’t because”—this was all part of Things She Could Know—“his mom disconnected my line the day after he said things weren’t working anymore.” Didn’t even give me a warning or anything. I had been packing up to leave when it had happened. “He doesn’t have my new number.”
She winced.
“My family and friends would never give it to him either; they all hate him.” Nori had said she knew someone who knew someone who could make me a voodoo doll. I hadn’t taken her up on it, but I’d thought about it.
Clara’s expression was still troubled, but she nodded seriously, flicking her gaze around the building quickly, like a good business owner. “Good for you. What a jerk—his mom, I mean. Him too. Especially after how long you were together. What was it? Ten years?”
True. Too true. “Fourteen.”
Clara grimaced just as the door opened and an older couple came in. “Hold on. Let me go help them. I’ll be back.”
I nodded, and I was lingering over my hope that his mom was sweating his career when I happened to glance up to find Jackie staring at me strangely.
Very, very strangely.
But just as soon as we made eye contact, she smiled a little too brightly and looked away.
Huh.
*
I spent the car ride back to my garage apartment thinking more about everything that had gone wrong in my relationship.
Like I hadn’t already done that enough and sworn not to do it again after almost every time. But some part of me couldn’t move on from it. Maybe because I’d willingly been so blind, and it bothered some subconscious part of myself.
It wasn’t like there hadn’t been signs leading up to his declaration that things weren’t working anymore. The highlight of that final conversation had been when he’d looked at me seriously and said, “You deserve better, Roro. I’m just holding you back from what you really need.”
He’d been fucking right that I deserved better. I had just been in some serious denial back then, asking him to stay, to not give up on fourteen years. Telling him I loved him so much. “Don’t do this,” I’d pleaded in a way that would have horrified my mom.
Yet he had.
With time and distance, I now knew exactly what I’d dodged in the long run. I just hoped my ultra-independent mom would forgive me for having stooped so low to keep someone around who obviously didn’t want to be there. But love could make people do some crazy stuff, apparently. And now I had to live the rest of my life with that shame.
Anyway, done again thinking about it, I followed my navigation carefully back to the garage apartment because I still didn’t have every turn memorized and the driveway to the house wasn’t exactly well marked. A couple nights ago, I’d tried to drive back without it and had gone about a quarter of a mile farther than necessary and had to pull into someone’s driveway to turn around. After that final turn off the dirt road, the crunch of gravel under my tires sang me a song I was slowly becoming familiar with. For one brief moment, it felt like a word started to take shape on my tongue, but the sensation disappeared almost instantly. It was fine.
I frowned as the main house came up through the windshield.
Because sitting on the steps was the Amos kid.
Which wouldn’t have been a big deal—it was a nice day out, especially now that the sun wasn’t directly overhead baking everything under its rays—but he was hunched over, arms crossed over his stomach, and it didn’t take a mind reader to know that there was something wrong with him. I’d seen him yesterday on the deck again, playing video games.
I watched him as I parked my car off to the side of the garage apartment, tucked in as close as I could get it to the building so that his dad wouldn’t be inconvenienced.
I got out, nabbing my purse and thinking about how the man, Mr. Rhodes, didn’t want to be reminded that I was staying here…