42. She Calls Me Back – Riggins
The entire world feels bleak and empty, the longing for a drink creeping through my veins. And then I feel it, her small hand sliding into mine, the familiar smell of brown sugar and vanilla lifting on the breeze.
It’s a ghost haunting me, but then the hand squeezes, another hand resting on my bicep, and I give into the urge to look down.
And there she is. Still short as fuck, but her hair is a bit longer, with a bit of a wave to it as it brushes past her shoulders with pretty highlights woven through it. Her blue eyes are looking at me, wide and calming, the way I always felt when she was near, her full pink lips pressed together.
She looks older, but she doesn’t. She looks changed but wholly the same.
“Stell,” I whisper quietly, worried she might be a mirage, something my sick mind manufactured to further torture me, and worried if anyone in the area sees me talking to the air, it will be the breaking point. Everyone is already always on edge around me, walking on eggshells.
“Riggs,” she whispers, her hand tightening in mine, shifting until our fingers are twined the way we always used to hold hands.
I decide to say fuck it, to give into the delusion. It hurts too much not to, and there’s enough fucked up bullshit in my life right now not to take this moment of peace my mind is offering and succumb to it.
“You came.”
“I loved him, too,” she says simply.
And she did.
She loved my dad more than I did sometimes, much more understanding when his drinking overtook him after my mom died. When I would be angry he was the way he was, she’d always tell me to give him grace, to find understanding.
And when we were finally together, she’d always tell me, imagine if you lost me, Riggins. How would you deal?
The irony of that never ceases to amuse me in a sick and twisted way. The way I lost her and spiraled, became my father.
My father, who I’m burying today.
Nearly ten years after my mother left, after ten years of drinking to forget his soulmate was gone from this world, he drank himself to death.
I can only hope that now he’s at peace and by my mother’s side. I hope she forgives him for leaving me to fend for myself.
I forgive him.
I get it.
But now… now my person is here. She’s here after over two years of not talking to me, of sending back my letters and ignoring my calls and never coming back for me. Two years after she disappeared randomly in Vegas, not a trace or a note.
She’s here, holding my hand.
“Please stay with me,” I beg without thinking, without altering my response to sound better or less desperate or more casual. She must see something in my face, the pain there or the watering of my eyes as I once again fight tears, or maybe the way my hand tightens on hers because instantly she nods.
“Of course, Riggs. Of course.”
And she does.
She never lets go of my hand, not as I greet fellow mourners and accept condolences I don’t feel I deserve from people who wrote my father off years ago. Not as I toss a handful of dirt onto his coffin as it’s lowered.
She never does. Even when I loosen my grip, she’s there, holding firm.
And when everyone is gone, when it’s just us in a graveyard, watching an industrial machine scoop dirt onto the last remaining physical vestiges of my father, she turns to me, staring and waiting for me to say something. Anything, I think.
I break contact with the quickly disappearing coffin and look at her.
Stella.
My little star, my sun.
It’s been so fucking dark without her.
I’m still not sure what happened, not really, but I can make an educated guess. I told her I stopped drinking and didn’t. Then I blacked out, completely forgetting the night before as I stealthily drank the entire night until I couldn’t remember a thing.
It took nearly six months and a turn for the worse before the guys sat me down and told me I needed to slow down. I’ve been better, I think, since I last saw Stella, managing the drinking and the urges on my own.
But all that did was make it easier for me to remember how much I missed her, how much I lost.
I ache every fucking time it rains, remembering our first kiss or the last time I held her as mine.
“Thank you,” I whisper, unsure of what to say to her. Her small hand reaches up, brushing my hair that’s much too long and disheveled behind my ear, her skin touching mine and sending heat and comfort through me.
“Whenever you need me, Riggins, I’m there.”
My mind races through responses, ranging from shithead versions of a rage-filled me about her leaving when I needed her to asking her to never leave my side again, but I know this doesn’t change a thing. This is just Stella being Stella, coming when I need her most.
“Can we talk?” I ask without thinking. She opens her mouth, doubt written on her face, but I keep speaking, verbal vomit that won’t stop.
This feels like a chance I shouldn’t have been given, and I’m grasping it as hard as I can. Maybe this was a gift from my dad, one last moment to try and make things right. He always loved Stella.
“Please. Coffee. Lunch. Anything. I just…” I take a deep breath, letting my eyes close for a moment to find my footing even though all I want to do is look at her, to commit her face to memory in case this is it for us, for me.
I wouldn’t blame her if it was. I don’t hold her, leaving against her, even though I’ve spent every day for a year trying to put the pieces together to figure out the tipping point.
It always ends in my not putting her first, with my lies, my deceit, and my addiction.
I just hope I didn’t push her all the way away. That I?—
“Yeah,” she says, cutting off my thoughts, her eyes going soft. “Yeah. We should talk.” It feels fucked to smile this big in front of the spot where my father was just lowered into the ground, but here I am all the same. Her lips tip up, too, like she finds my smile funny. “Cafe Pine at noon,” she whispers.
“I’ll be there,” I tell her. Then, I lift her hand and press my lips to it the way I did years and years ago in the clearing where we fell in love. Moments later, I’m pulled away by a grieving family, and she waves at me, stepping away and mouthing tomorrow at me.
For the first time in what feels like forever, the sun shines on me, its rays actually warming me to my bones.
My sun is back.
The grocery store in Ashford isn’t huge, but it always had a pretty decent flower section. I remember the months when Stella moved in with me, stopping here on my way home from a day practicing with the guys or out at a studio any time she didn’t come, and bringing her flowers home. Usually sunflowers, her favorite, but sometimes I’d grab her fluffy pink peonies or a mix of wildflowers if they had them.
It’s the day after the funeral and I’m checking out with a bouquet of sunflowers before I meet Stella at the coffee shop.
It’s time.
It’s time to finally talk, clear things up, and win my girl back. I’ve spent the last two years battling on and off to get sober, succeeding, and failing, but I’m going on three months now, and the world seems… clearer. I get it now, why she left. I was a drunk, and I’d gotten so bad that I was willing to push her to the side in order to keep up the habit. I was willing to throw it all away for just one more drink.
But eventually, I got past the anger of her leaving, with Reed talking to me and letting me see things from his perspective. He tried to get me to go rehab or join AA, but I don’t need that shit. I’m fine, especially with the wake-up call that’s been my dad’s passing.
And now I’m about to get my girl back.
My bright, shining little star. Fuck, just five minutes in her presence warmed me to my bones, a heat I hadn’t felt in years.
It’s as I’m checking out, a pack of gum, a soda, and the flowers the only things in my basket, that I feel an unwelcome cold presence behind me, a foreboding of sorts.
“If it isn’t Riggins Greene,” a familiar, sickly sweet voice I would be more than happy to never hear again in my life coos. That’s the only way you can call the way Rhonda Hart speaks—a coo filled with hatred and anger and pure venom.
“Hey, Mrs. Hart,” I mumble, grabbing my things and turning to leave.
“What, no time to chat?”
“Unfortunately, no, I have places to be,” I say. Like making up with your daughter, getting everything back to where it was always supposed to be, I want to say but don’t since she never liked my dating her daughter. She didn’t even like me being in her daughter’s stratosphere, but I think that’s more because she spent her entire time making those girls everything she never was, everything she wanted to be.
Rhonda Hart was born and raised in Ashford, but she always wished she was somewhere glamorous, like New York City. I always wondered how Hank, the girls’ dad, convinced her to stay here and how she never got to live the big life she aspired to. Either way, I think once that dream became unattainable, she looked to her daughters to live that life for her.
Her daughters who happily haven’t let Ashford, except for the few months Stella left with us. But that wasn’t the way she wanted Stella to live, so it was null and void, really.
“Are those for Stella?” she asks, irritation and anger in her words as her chin tips toward the flowers. While she was never pleasant with me, the anger and hatred in her eyes is new. Different.
“I’ll talk to you later, Mrs. Hart,” I say, trying to move around her. Where the fuck is Stacy, who normally works the self-checkout, eager to talk to anyone and everyone?
“I just thought you should know she’s moved on,” she says casually.
I should ignore her.
I should keep walking, leave the store and sit in my car outside the coffee shop until it’s time to meet with Stella. Or call Reed, dump all of my thoughts and feelings on him so I don’t explode with the nerves of talking to Stella.
Instead, I turn and look at the woman who would be gorgeous if it wasn’t for the envy that stains her face.
“What?” I ask, my words much less stable than I would have hoped.
“She’s moved on, Riggins. What did you expect her to wait here for you while you were off gallivanting with your little band?”
I force myself to take in a deep breath, to not jump to whatever conclusions she is trying to push me toward. That’s what she wants, after all. She’s always wanted the most distance between me and her daughter. I might not be the poor, white trash kid of a blue-collar contractor anymore, but I’ll never be the type of man she wants her daughter to be with. I’ll never have the “right” kind of money or influence for Rhonda Hart.
“It’s great to see you, Mrs. Hart, but I do have things to do.” I move to leave, but she moves to block me from leaving.
“Don’t believe me?” she asks snidely. “I have proof, of course.” She reaches for her phone and taps the screen a few times before looking back up at me, gauging my interest.
I should leave.
God, I know it. I should leave.
“She’s dating Tripp,” she says, and I take a moment for my mind to place the name but once I do, my jaw grinds.
The asshole who pinned her to a tree when she was 19, expecting more from her than she was willing to give. The son of one of Rhonda’s bitchy friends,
Rhonda takes a step closer, a catlike smile on her lips, and turns the phone to me. “See?”
I do.
Stella’s head is tipped back, her mouth open in a laugh, her hair trailing down her back as she does. Her arms are around his neck, dancing I assume, based on the bodies and couples around them, and he’s looking at her with… awe on his face.
I know the look well—I used to have the same anytime I saw Stella, anytime I looked her way. Awe that she was with me, that she chose me. Awe that she was so incredibly talented, at her ability to string together words and melodies in a way that could evoke emotions you didn’t want to share with the world. Awe in her kindness and her beauty and her grace.
And he’s looking at her, holding her, with that look on his face.
The phone is gone and Rhonda swipes a few times, then shows me the screen again. Stella in a knee-length blue dress, her hair hanging in long wavy sheets, his arm on her waist.
It’s clear to anyone looking that they’re together.
My words croak when I speak.
“When were these taken?” I ask, begging some god I don’t know I believe in that it was six months, or eight months ago. Fuck, even if it was right after she left, I’d be okay with it. Just not?—
“Two weeks ago at his mother’s wedding.” I feel nauseous. My fingers hold onto the bouquet of flowers loosely, barely grasping them.
“I set them up, of course. Finally, she let me choose a nice, suitable man for her.” She takes her phone again and looks at it, exaggerated joy and peace on her face. “Doesn’t she just look so happy? A mother does always know best.”
I can’t speak.
My mind is stuck on Stella moving on, on Stella looking at someone that way, a way that I used to think was just for me, special.
“Well, you look like you have somewhere to go,” Rhonda says, and I look to her, lightheaded and confused, but her smile…
Even years from now, I know that smile will haunt me.
“Have a great day, Riggins.”
Then she turns, the cashier I was begging to come just minutes ago now standing there confused. Rhonda walks over to her excitedly, like she’s an old friend she hasn’t seen in ages, even though she hates the working class of Ashford more almost as much as she hates me.
I force my feet to move, to take me out of the grocery store. Fresh air. I need fresh air.
But when I get out there, it’s not enough.
I can’t get enough in my lungs. It’s not air I need.
It’s oblivion.
And without the hope of winning back Stella, I let myself fall into it.