Chapter 3 – Jael #2
“Oh, no!” I cry out, dropping the claw to the floor, where it pings and bounces off the cracked linoleum like an alarm before finally coming to a rest. Thankfully, the cheap plastic doesn’t break, but the noise draws a few curious eyes my direction.
“Whoa. Hey there,” strong hands land on my shoulders and squeeze, steadying me. “I thought that was you, Jael,” the voice says.
Looking up finally, I lock eyes with two big blue irises and a very, familiar head full of blonde, shaggy hair.
“Owen?” I ask. He looks almost identical to the eighteen-year-old boy that I'd known ten years prior however, now he's grown at least an inch in height, and his body has filled out with more mature, bulky muscles.
Looking at him now, I’m thrown back to my senior year of high school as if no time has passed…
◆◆◆
“Hey, babe,” Owen slings his arm around my shoulders easily as we make the walk down the hallway of our high school.
Class has just been dismissed, and it’s another beautiful spring day in Whitewood Creek.
With only a few weeks left until our senior graduation, the excitement over summer plans, long days of lake swimming, and no class is thick in the air as students exchange their jeans and sweatshirts for t-shirts and shorts.
“Hi,” I say, reaching up on my tiptoes to brush a kiss against his lips. “Are you playing in that senior pickup lacrosse game today?”
“Yep, headed there now.”
“Only a few weeks left until our graduation. Do you have any plans for this summer?” I ask, my voice full of hope that his plans will include me before I leave for college in Virginia.
“Other than spending the whole summer making love to you?” he winks, and I feel a flurry of nerves shoot through my stomach.
Owen and I have been seeing each other for a few months now but have yet to go all the way.
Although he’d been understanding at the beginning of our relationship, the topic of when we’re going to do the deed has become a reoccurring theme that he brings up almost daily as we approach our summer and the end of our time together before we part ways.
And it’s not that I’m holding out for any specific reason; the thought of my first time being with Owen, makes me excited, but also terrified that I’m going to embarrass myself.
I don’t know what I’m doing, I’ve never even given oral before, and I already know that Owen is way more experienced than me.
Will he laugh? Will he be embarrassed if I suck at doing the things he wants to do this summer?
“Why don’t you pick a date you’re comfortable with?” he says, grinning, his voice softer now. “It’s not as scary as you think it is. Once your first time is out of the way, it’s much less painful.”
I bite my lip and nod gently. If sex is painful, I’m not sure how much I’m going to enjoy doing it all summer like Owen seems to want. My friend Lainey told me that though the first time isn’t usually great, and at times a bit awkward, it gets better with practice.
“Okay… how about graduation night?” I offer.
He smiles. “I’ll hold you to it.”
◆◆◆
“Hi Jael. It’s been a while,” he says, dragging me back to the present and grinning down at me as he stoops low to pull me in for a hug.
The scent of his cologne on his work shirt instantly takes me back to being eighteen in the back of his old beat-up Chevrolet, where we used to park and make out while overlooking the miles of green pastures that surround our small town.
It surprises me that a twenty-eight-year-old man would still be wearing Curve cologne, but the scent stirs up a sense of nostalgia in my chest, reminding me of the innocence of my younger years and the carefreeness of those days gone by.
“It has been a while…” I start. “What are you doing here?”
He chuckles. “You know, some of us never left Whitewood Creek. I got a job working construction for the city of Whitewood Creek. I'm here picking up a tool for today's project that my boss needs.”
“Oh wow, I had no idea,” I say though of course, I didn’t know any of that.
When I left, I made a point not to keep up with anyone from this town and deleted my social media accounts years ago to forget the place I spent most of my formidable years.
There were simply too many painful memories and bad decisions made in Whitewood Creek, and I needed a clean break.
“The real question is, what are you doing here?” he asks. “I ran into your mom a few months ago at the bank and asked about you. She said you were a big-shot ICU nurse working in Virginia now?”
Owen asked my mom about me?
Of course, my mom never mentioned it to me, why would she, when we haven’t spoken in years?
I bite down on my lip, unsettled by the thought of my high school boyfriend asking around town about me.
Things between us hadn’t ended on a high note, and the last thing I want is to drag old wounds into the middle of a small-town, hardware store where nosy ears are everywhere.
Still… there’s a little thrill buried in the idea that after all this time, he’s been thinking about me.
People can change, right?
Or maybe this is just me getting tangled up in unhealed emotions because it feels like for once a man is choosing me.
No. Don’t think that.
Except my therapist’s words creep in any way, the ones that dug their way into me back when I started therapy in Virginia.
That was the first time that I realized just how deep my childhood wounds run.
Because my parents never really chose me, I’ve spent years chasing men who were just as broken as me.
Clinging to the hope they’d pick me in the way my parents never did.
Holding onto any scrap of attention or love that I craved and didn’t receive.
I wanted—no, I needed—that feeling of being chosen after a lifetime of being overlooked and ignored without having my basic needs met.
And it kept me in relationships far longer than I should’ve stayed, hoping love would come if I just held on tightly enough and ignored the red flags.
I push that thought to the back of my mind despite it screaming at me to slow down and get out of this conversation quick.
Owen had been my first crush when my parents moved me to Whitewood Creek as a teenager, and someone who I’d pined after for years until we finally started dating my senior year of high school.
And for whatever reason, that draw to him seems to still exist.
“Yes, I’ve been working in the ICU in Richmond as a nurse for the past few years, but I recently switched to traveling nursing.
I took an assignment that has me stationed here for the next month.
The local hospital in Whitewood Creek has been asking for someone with ICU experience, and the pay was too good to pass up,” I say, leaving out the part about my estranged, dead father and my mother who practically dragged me back here so she wouldn’t have to deal with his will on her own.
He nods, his smile some sort of cross between a smirk and a smolder. My stomach flips again as I stare up at him. He’s changed, clearly aged as we all have, but the younger guy I’d used to crush on seems like he’s still under the surface. I wonder if he’s become less of a dick, too.
People can change…
“Do you have any plans for this weekend?” He asks.
Is he asking me out? I tell myself not to rehash why we broke up, or the last words that he said to me before I skipped town.
Would it be the worst thing in the world to go on a date with my old high school boyfriend? It hadn’t been all bad when we were together. There were some good memories, too.
“Um… you know, I haven’t thought that far ahead,” I admit, adjusting the strap of my bag on my shoulder nervously and feeling like a kid again. “I was thinking of hitting up some of my old friends, but I haven’t talked to any of them in years.”
Owen raises a brow. “Oh? Who were you thinking of calling?”
“Probably Lainey… or Molly,” I reply, their names tasting both familiar and foreign after all this time.
He nods knowingly. “Lainey’s still around, and so is Molly. Lainey married Lark. Don’t know if you remember him.”
Wow, Lainey got married. “Yes, I remember him.”
Lark had been friends with Rhett, one of my old neighbors and the guy I spent every summer evening and after-school hour with for years.
Just thinking his name makes my chest tighten, my pulse kick harder, and my heel bounce nervously against the shop’s concrete floor.
Do I even want to know if he’s still around?
If he still lives here? If he’s married now?
The questions swarm before I can stop them, but I know I can’t ask Owen given my history with both of them.
“And Molly’s engaged to Colt Marshall,” he adds casually, like it’s nothing.
“Oh… that’s incredible,” I answer, blinking through my surprise. And it is. Genuinely. Good for her.
Molly and her older brother, Maverick, had been my neighbors in the trailer park.
They understood better than anyone the grind of that life, the constant scramble, the way our parents put themselves first and left their kids to deal with the fallout.
Molly’s dad and mine had even been drinking and gambling buddies back then, wasting their paychecks together while we kids tried to carve out our own little worlds.
I wonder if her dad’s still hanging on, or if he went out the same way mine did.
“Well,” Owen says, breaking my train of thought, “if you’re free this weekend, the high schools got a football game Thursday night at seven.
I’d love to go with you. We could grab burgers and beer at Smoky Mountain Grill and Doghouse after, just like old times.
” He winks, and the mention of that grill hits me like a time machine.
Suddenly I’m seventeen again, scrounging together every penny I can find to scrape up enough for a basket of fries or a single scoop of ice cream to fill the ache in my stomach.
The memory pulls me back further, to sweltering summer afternoons spent with Rhett.
We’d pool our loose change to split a basket of fries and, on the rare occasion that we could swing it, a chocolate-dipped cone.
The grill had been our escape after Rhett got his driver’s license, a place where time slowed down and the world didn’t feel so heavy.
I haven’t thought about Rhett in years and yet here I am, talking to Owen and thinking about Rhett on repeat.
It’s a bittersweet nostalgia wrapped up in a full body ache.
I can’t help but think about the last time I saw him, the weight of that goodbye heavier now than it felt back then.
Tears prick at the corner of my eyes as I wonder if he still hates me.
I’m dying to know if he’s still around and at the same time, I know I shouldn’t care. Scratch that, I can’t care.
I snap back to the present, Owen’s proposition lingering in the air.
Burgers, beer, and a football game with him.
It’s dangerously close to reliving my teenage years.
And though those years weren’t exactly golden, there had been good moments, too.
Moments with Owen that were fun before everything fell apart.
Besides, it’s not like I have any other plans while I’m in town.
I don’t want to stay in my hotel hiding all month, and I’d be lying if I said that small thread of hope that someone will finally choose me is glowing faintly in the background of my mind.
I glance at him, his easy smile softening the hesitation that’s building in my chest.
“Sure,” I say finally. “That sounds fun.” I hesitate for a beat before adding, “Maybe I’ll text Molly and see if she and Colt want to join us, too.”
Owen grins, a spark of something familiar lighting in his eyes. “Now that sounds like a plan.”
And just like that, I start to wonder if I’m going to regret this decision and if Owen, just like the rest of this town, is something that I should have kept firmly rooted in my past.