Chapter 21
CHAPTER 21
“T he guy said it’s going to take at least a full day to fix. He’s going to call in the morning to give us an update,” Blake says nervously as he rocks back and forth on his boots.
“Tomorrow? What are we supposed to do until then?”
“Well, he said there’s a motel up the road that we can stay in.”
I slump against the brick wall of the garage. The last few hours have been nothing short of awkward with a huge side of tension. I’m eager to get back to our conversation from earlier.
Before I can ask my next question, he answers it for me.
“We can get two rooms,” Blake mumbles and begins walking toward the ancient motel sign up ahead. I hurry on after him.
When we approach the rusty, teal-colored building, I quicken my pace to get closer to Blake. The smell of cigarettes and regret makes me turn my nose up at the old establishment. We have something similar in Honey Grove, but at least I know the names of every person who works there.
The first thing I notice when we walk into the small lobby is the ugly floral wallpaper plastered on all four walls. I can only imagine what the rooms look like.
My gaze falls on the cute old lady standing behind the counter smiling brightly at us. She almost looks like she’s been waiting for us all day.
Blake tells me he’s going to go get us checked in, so I scope the place for a vending machine. After realizing the closest thing to food in this entire place is an old gumball machine that looks very out of place, I sigh and set my sights back on Blake at the counter.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he shouts at the poor old lady.
I walk over to the front and based on context clues, I smartly say, “let me guess. Only one room?”
She looks up at me and l can tell Blake has upset her. “Y-yes. I’m so sorry, dear. There’s a Big Foot convention in town this weekend and we’re all booked up.”
A Big Foot convention? Where the hell were we?
“That’s fine! We’ll take it,” I reply, trying to stop her old hands from shaking. “I’m sorry about him. He gets a little irritable when he’s hungry.”
My quip at Blake seems to lighten her mood and color begins to swirl in her cheeks again.
“I know all about that. My husband is an absolute terror before he’s had his bacon and eggs. I’ve been married for sixty years, and it never gets any better, hun,” she says with a smile before typing away on her computer.
“Oh. We’re not married, we’re just—” before I can continue, she cuts me off.
“Here you are. Room 201. You two have a good night and let me know if there’s anything I can get you,” she says with a wink.
“I do not get irritable when I’m hungry,” Blake mumbles under his breath before stalking out of the lobby. “I wouldn’t object to getting a bite at that diner across the road though.”
I turn my head and sure enough there’s a vintage-looking diner across the street. I swear I can hear my stomach growl the closer we get to the shiny red doors.
Once we get corralled into a booth by an overeager server, we both focus on our menus and continue to ignore each other. I want to rip the Band-Aid off and continue our conversation from earlier, but I want him to initiate it.
I figure if everything goes to shit and we further damage our relationship, I can just sleep on the way home tomorrow. Or pretend to sleep. All I know is we need to talk about it. There’s no more ignoring how hurt I still feel after all these years.
I peek over my comically large menu and see Blake leaning over his menu as well. After a while, the waitress comes over to take our orders and steals the booklets back. Now we have nothing left to hide behind.
“So, weird day. Huh?”
“Went exactly how I thought it would,” I stammer before taking a sip of my water.
Blake uncomfortably shifts in his chair. I can see the gears grinding away in his head, trying to figure out what to say next. Soon enough, he breaks the silence between us.
“Now that I understand why you acted the way you did last week, I owe you an explanation. But first,” Blake says before waving the waitress over and ordering a beer and a cocktail for me. “We’re going to need it.”
“I know you don’t like beer,” he says when the waitress sets my drink down in front of me.
The foggy glass looks questionable, but I take a drink anyway. As soon as the well vodka hits my throat, my face scrunches up in disgust. I look at Blake before he can conceal the smile on his face.
“There’s some things you need to know about what happened between us six years ago,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Blake, when you didn’t get into the same school as me, I was devastated. I always pictured us leaving this town together and when that didn’t happen, I had to find ways to be happy outside of us. It was a hard decision, but if I had to do it over again, I would.”
Blake shifts nervously in the booth across from me. His body language is restrained, like he’s on the edge of saying something big.
“Wren, I actually did get into that school.”
He lied . The rest of the restaurant blurs into gray around me. A million different reasons race through my head at once. Each one more hurtful than the last. Rehashing the past is going to hurt a lot more than I thought it would.
“W-why,” I start to ask, but stop myself. “I don’t understand. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Yes,” he breathes, letting go of a long-endured confession. “I wanted to follow you, Wren. I really did. But I couldn’t leave my mom.”
A familiar sharp pain begins to prickle at the edge of my heart, and I’m transported back to that night when my world felt like it had shattered into a million pieces.
“I got the acceptance letter in the mail a few weeks after we had her remission party. I thought the letter would make me happy, but it just created all this guilt about leaving her after such a difficult time in her life,” he explains with glossy eyes. “It has been just us for so long and I felt like I was abandoning her.”
I can feel my palms begin to sweat and my heart thumping against my chest in perfect rhythm. I was hurt that he lied to me, but I was devastated that he felt like he couldn’t tell me why he chose to stay.
“I was there for you that entire year,” I state calmly. “Why couldn’t you just tell me that’s why you didn’t want to leave Honey Grove? Instead, you lied to me. After everything we’d been through.”
“I thought I was protecting you,” he admits. “You stood right by my side when my mom was sick and I was worried if I explained to you why I couldn’t leave, you’d find a reason to stay, too. I wanted you to go to school and find a life outside of this town. Outside of me.”
As my fingers dance across the cool surface of the glass in front of me, I let Blake’s confession wash over me.
I was young and in love. There’s a good chance I might’ve found a closer college or taken online classes just to be with him. When you’re young, you hold on to first loves. You hold on so tight, it’s hard to see anything else.
“That wasn’t your decision to make. Instead, you were a coward and pushed me away. If I knew what you were going through, I could’ve been there for you.”
My eyes shift around the room. Trying to find a reason not to get lost in the field of green in front of me.
But it’s not enough. I can’t help being pulled back into him like two magnets that have been pulled apart too many times. Our connection is inevitable.
“Wren,” he says, causing my eyes to snap back to him. “I’m sorry for how I handled things. I thought that pushing you away was the right thing to do.”
“That still doesn’t explain why you broke up with me,” I wince. “We agreed that we were going to make it work long-distance. We agreed that what we had was too important to let a couple hundred miles get in the way.”
Blake breaks eye contact with me when tears begin to outline my eyes. All the pain and hurt comes crashing back in one fell swoop. It’s like I’m eighteen again, trying to figure out why my best friend didn’t want me anymore.
“This is going to sound selfish, but seeing how happy you were those first few weeks of school was hard on me. I really thought I was going to be able to do long distance, but the longer you were away, the more I felt the strain on our relationship.”
I divert my gaze to my hands safely stowed away under the table. I want to curl into a ball and hide away from the hurt spreading in my heart.
“Do you remember the weekend I came to visit you at school? It was during homecoming, I think,” he says, scratching the scruff on his chin.
“That was the longest we’d gone without seeing each other, and I was so excited to see you. Then I got to your campus, and it reminded me of one of those colleges you see on TV or in movies. I was intimidated the second I parked my truck. But all of that faded away when I got to wrap my arms around you for the first time in weeks.”
Blake takes a sip of his beer before continuing.
“I remember how you gave me a tour of campus and introduced me to all your suite mates. You were glowing the entire time, and I could tell you were in your element. You were thriving away from home and selfishly, I hated it.”
I swallow hard and nervously shift in my seat. The first few weeks of freshman year were great, but after he broke up with me, I never really recovered.
If anything, I threw myself into the college experience. I drank too much and kissed too many strangers. I was constantly searching for a way to forget how much he hurt me.
I never did find a way to dull the pain sitting in the back of my heart. It was consistently there, poking and prodding.
His body begins to fidget in place and a part of me wants to reach my hand over for comfort, but I stop myself.
“I hated it because you used to glow like that around me. The entire time I was there, I kept thinking about how you were going to do great things and leave me behind.”
I grasp at the faux leather seats of the diner and look anywhere but at Blake. Everything he’s saying makes sense and I don’t want it to.
“But I loved you and I knew that my feelings would only turn into resentment after time. I thought that if we were really meant to be then you would come back to me,” Blake says as his jaw tightens. “So, then I decided to break things off. I pushed you out of the truck that night because I knew if you stayed and we talked about it, I would change my mind. Well, I actually did end up changing my mind, but by that point you didn’t want to talk to me, so it didn’t matter. I knew I just had to wait things out.”
“What do you mean you changed your mind? That night was the last time I heard from you,” I state before leaning into the table.
Blake stares at me with his eyebrows squished together. A few seconds later, something seems to click in his head as his entire body unravels across from me.
“You didn’t know.”
I stare at Blake with the same confusion in my eyes, begging him to explain more. I can feel a fluttery feeling intensify in my stomach.
“A few days later, I came to your house with the—well the details aren’t important. I came to your place to talk, but before I even set foot on the porch, Emma stopped me. She told me you didn’t want to see me and that I should leave you alone. After that, I knew you needed time. I just didn’t know you’d need six years,” he says with a smile.
Most of my depressive period after the break-up blurred together, but I can clearly remember the day he’s talking about. I clench my hand into a fist and dig my fingernails into my skin. Emma should’ve told me.
It’s almost as if my body can’t decide whether to be upset or sad. I wish Emma would’ve told me the truth, but it’s been six years now. I can’t change the past and getting mad about something that happened so long ago feels pointless.
There is no use in getting angry until I have all the facts. I have spent too long holding a grudge over simple miscommunication. I’m not going to let that happen again.
“Wren,” Blake says, pulling me out of my thoughts. “I’m sorry. I should’ve tried harder to talk to you. I should’ve reached out. I should’ve—please say something, Wren.”
I’m not sure what to say. I’m caught between hurt and reason and I’m not sure which way to turn.
I’m hurt that he felt like he couldn’t talk to me, but I understand why he felt like he was protecting me. I’m not sure where to go from here.
“Why didn’t you try to reach out again?”
Blake leans back in his seat and takes another swig of his beer. I look down and realize the waitress has brought our food sometime during my mini meltdown. I stare at the burger sitting on my plate, but I’ve suddenly lost my appetite.
“I guess I was scared,” he says before pushing away his own plate. “I was scared that you’d be better off without me. Or you’d look at me how you’re looking at me right now. With the same hurt in your eyes from that night.”
I blink, unaware of the frown beginning to take shape on my face. A single tear drips down my cheek, but I refuse to let the rest follow.
“I am hurt, Blake. I’m hurt that you felt like you needed to lie to me. I might’ve stayed, but that wasn’t your decision to make. You used to be the person I told everything to, and I thought you felt the same way about me. I was there for you throughout your mom’s entire treatment, but then you decided that you wanted to push me away. I understand that you felt like you were doing the right thing, but I don’t understand how you could pull away at such a pivotal moment in our relationship. It’s like the moment we endured even a little bit of hardship, you decided I wasn’t worth it and threw me away.”
Blake’s shoulders slump over in his seat and his eyes turn the pale teal color of the sky right before a big storm. He takes a deep breath before he steps up to bat again.
“I know the way I handled things was wrong and I’ve had six years to think about what I might’ve done differently. If I could do it all over again, I’d talk to you about how I was feeling, and we could’ve worked through it together.”
I blink away more tears, keeping my lips pressed together. I’m not sure what to say next. We could spend all night talking about what we’d do differently when we were young, but that doesn’t fix the past.
“I’ll sit here and apologize for hours upon end if that means we can be us again. I meant what I said when I told you Honey Grove hasn’t felt like home without you. You’re my person, Wren.”
My heart sinks at the sight of the man sitting across from me. I haven’t opened my heart to another man these past six years for a reason. I was holding out for him. He’s my person, my home, and no one stood a chance next to Blake Fisher. He’s it for me, but it will take time for us to get back to the way things were. Time we didn’t have.
“Where do we go from here?” I sigh. “Even if I admit I still have feelings for you, it doesn’t change the fact that you’re moving away in less than a month.”
Blake leans back and takes a minute to assess me. I can feel my heart racing in my chest, begging me to let him in.
“Yeah, I know.”
We’re both silent while we eat our food. Every few seconds, I look up and catch Blake’s stare, but both of us are speechless. After years of resenting Blake for ruining us, I’m tempted to fall back into his arms. The truth is, I miss the feeling of being his, but things are more complicated than that.
The ache in my soul seems to grow as I realize he’s just out of reach. I know I can reach out and touch him at this moment, but my touch will be meaningless. Everything I’ve ever wanted is sitting across from me, but in a few weeks that all will change. I feel defeated.