Chapter 6
Chapter Six
EVERLEIGH
I walk out of the bathroom in the bathrobe I’ve had since I was seventeen. It’s white and plush with blue, red, and yellow hearts all over it. I got it for Christmas one year, I think, or maybe it was my birthday. My hair is wrapped up in a white towel as I walk down the steps to go find my mother.
I’m halfway down when I call her name, “Momma.” I look at the chair in the living room that faces the front window, seeing it empty. My eyes go to the kitchen right off the living room, and it is empty, with dinner dishes already dried and put away. I get to the bottom of the steps and look out of the side door that leads to the covered porch area. “Momma.” I stick my head out the screen door, seeing the two rocking chairs empty. “Momma.” I start to make my way to her bedroom when the bathroom door opens.
“What are you hooting and hollering about?” she scoffs. “Can’t a woman go to the bathroom?”
“I wasn’t hooting and hollering. I was wondering where you were.”
“We don’t live in Buckingham Palace”—she walks over to her chair—“so I couldn’t really go far.”
I point at her. “With you, you never know. You could have escaped and gone to the bakery.”
“I should have.” She sits down in her chair and grabs her glass of water from the side table. “It would serve you right for hiding my car keys.”
“I didn’t hide them,” I remind her. “I put them in a safe place that was not near you or where you could find them.” Walking over to the fridge, I pull it open. “Are you hungry?”
“Oh, good Lord.” She throws her hands up. “Will you stop hovering over me?”
“This isn’t hovering.” I grab the sweet tea pitcher out of the fridge. “This is being thoughtful and wondering if my mother is hungry.”
“We ate dinner not too long ago,” she snaps, “so I’m fine.”
“What do you want to do tonight?” I ask, and she just looks at me.
“Why don’t you get out of my hair?” she asks. “Go out and maybe leave me alone for a bit.” She’s been home from the hospital for two days. It’s been two days of her being, as she calls it, cooped up. Two days of her telling me she’s fine and it’s all hogwash.
“But then what fun will you have?” I pour the sweet tea in a glass as I stare at her, and she glares at me. I’m about to fire back at her when the doorbell rings. “I wonder who that could be.” I walk around the island and toward the front door.
“Tell whoever it is I’m not here,” she whisper-hisses. I just roll my eyes as I pull open the door. For the past two days, we’ve gotten visits from practically everyone in the neighborhood, trying to see my mother and wish her well. She was very polite to their face, but once the door was closed, she would bitch at me for letting them in. I pull open the front door, expecting to be greeted by one of the neighbors again, but I don’t know why I’m shocked when I see Dr. Oliver. Instead of his regular doctor attire, he’s wearing jeans and a white button-down with a leather jacket, and I think my jaw hits the floor. Right behind him is a motorcycle that has to be his. “Dr. Oliver,” I finally mumble and unlock the screen door.
“Don’t let him in here,” my mother hisses from the side as I push the screen door open, and he walks up the two steps to come into the house.
“Hey, Everleigh,” he greets me quietly, coming in and then looking at my mother. “Madeline.”
“Oliver,” she grumbles with her teeth clenched together, “what are you doing here?” Her eyes are big, and she goes from looking at him to looking at me. I have to roll my lips. She looks like I did when I was caught making out with Brock on the couch once when she was at the store. Of course, I was seventeen and not in my fifties.
“I came to see how you were doing.” He shrugs off his jacket and hangs it over the banister before walking over and bending to kiss her cheek. I have seen my mother look at me with murder in her eyes, but I’ve never seen this type of murder. “What have you been doing?” He ignores her look as he sits down on the couch next to the chair.
“I’m going to go”—I point up toward the stairs—“and get dressed, and then I think I’m going to go see Autumn.”
“That sounds like fun,” Oliver says. “I can watch over your mother.”
“You won’t be watching over anything,” my mother snaps at him, “because you’ll be leaving.” She looks at him, then me. “And you should go out, and then I’m going to go and lie down and rest.” I nod at her as I see Oliver grin.
Walking up the steps to my bedroom, I close the door and silently giggle at them before I take off my robe. Grabbing my matching white lace bra and thong panty set, I slip on my long, flowy, pink-flowered skirt that lands down to my ankles before I put on a short white T-shirt that sits right at the waist of the skirt. I walk out of my bedroom to go to the bathroom and hear their voices. Closing the door behind me, I pull off the towel from my hair as I comb through it before putting spray in and fluffing it with my hands. I apply just a light coat of mascara, then make my way downstairs.
“Okay,” I say, seeing Oliver and Mom in exactly the same spot they were when I went upstairs, but now the television is on. “I’m going to head out.” I put on my flip-flops. “I won’t be late.” I stop beside my mother’s chair and bend to kiss her cheek. “Love you, Momma.”
“Have fun,” she replies. I look over at Oliver and nod. He returns the gesture.
“I’ll see you around?” I say, not sure if it’s a question or not.
“You will.” He smiles and then looks at my mother. “For sure.”
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” I mumble at them before walking out and closing the door behind me. I hold my phone in my hand as I walk toward the bar. The sun is setting, and the stars are starting to twinkle in the sky. Walking down Main Street, I pass the diner that looks like it’s almost done with the dinner rush.
I hear music coming out of the bar, and when I turn the corner, I’m surprised to see it almost jam-packed. Except no one is here who I recognize. It’s all fresh new faces, which means no one will be gawking at me the whole time. I look around, seeing Autumn behind the bar with another bartender beside her. The two of them work on filling drinks as four servers work the floor.
I zigzag toward the bar and stop in my tracks when I see Charlie sitting on the stool in the corner of the bar. His eyes meet mine, and he smiles at me and gets up from his stool. My feet move on their own toward him. “Everleigh,” he says, then hugs me big, “it’s good to see you.” Once he lets go of me, I have to blink quickly to get the tears to go away.
“Charlie, I—” I shake my head. “It’s so good to see you here.” I look at him and then at Autumn, who has stopped doing what she is doing and is just staring at us.
“Autumn said you might be coming by.” He sits back down on his stool, and I pull out the stool beside him and sit down. “Thought I would…” He shrugs, and I look at him and then at Autumn. The last time I heard, he had shown up at her house, drunk off his ass, and told her he wished she was dead.
“Ignore him,” Autumn advises, putting down a coaster in front of me. “I told him not to come but”—she shakes her head—“he came instead of staying home with our child.”
“I’m sorry, what?” I slap the bar, and two things happen. One, her face pales, and two, Charlie about jumps out of his chair to step in front of her. I lift my hand right away. “No, no, I don’t.” I start to think of words. “It’s just a—” I put my hand on my head. “You two have a baby?” My eyes shuffle back from Autumn to Charlie, who looks at Autumn with a look of love I’ve never seen on his face before. A look that is returned by Autumn. “Landon is his?”
“He’s mine.” Charlie sits back down on his stool. “All twenty pounds of him,” he states proudly, picking up his bottle of beer and putting it to his lips, taking a pull.
“I just, I had no idea you two were together,” I reply, shocked.
“We got married two years ago,” Autumn explains, putting a glass in front of me with light amber liquid inside.
“This is wild.” My head is spinning. “I had no idea.”
“I thought for sure your mother would have mentioned something to you,” Charlie adds, and I just shake my head, looking down at the glass in front of me.
I turn the glass around in my hand before picking it up. “I didn’t really want to know what was going on in town.” I leave it open-ended, hoping they both get what I’m saying. My stomach aches from admitting it, but I push it aside and put a smile on my face. “To catching up”—I hold the glass up—“and healing old wounds.” I bring the glass to my lips as the stool beside me is pulled out, and someone sits down next to me. I feel his heat beside me as my heart catches in my throat. I look to the side, seeing him there. Brock. The man who shattered my heart and single-handedly buried all of my dreams in one single move. Holding the shovel in his own hands as he picked up the dirt and piled it on.His face covered with a little beard, like he hasn’t shaved in over a week, something he did all the time back then. His hair is even longer than it was the last time I saw him. A memory that I buried and refused to think about, until fucking now.
“Hey, Autumn,” he says, and I can hear Autumn gasp as I ignore him beside me. Which is really fucking hard when all I want to do is turn and look at him. I want to see if he looks the same. I want to see if you can see the small golden specks in his right eye if he’s looking into the light. I want to see if, in one look, he can calm all my fears. But I’m not taking what I want. I’m doing what I need to do, and that is ignoring the fuck out of him. “Charlie.” He looks right past me, or at least I think he does because I’m staring straight ahead. “Can I get a shot of the new blend?”
“Brock,” she replies to him as she walks to the end of the bar, grabs a glass, and fills it with the same liquid that is in my glass. He doesn’t say a word to anyone as he takes his glass and brings it to his lips, downing it all. My body feels like my skin is going to crawl off my bones. My heart is soaring through my chest, and I’m pretty sure if they stopped the music, you would be able to hear it beating quickly. My breathing is coming in short bursts as I try not to have a full-blown panic attack in front of him. I close my eyes as I hear him put the glass back down and then his heat moves away from me as he gets off the stool, and then tucks it back in as if he was never there. He puts money on the bar before turning and walking out.
I close my eyes, the scent of him lingering in the air. “Are you okay?” Autumn asks softly, and I open my eyes, trying to play it off. “Drink that.” She motions with her chin to my glass, as my hand brings it to my lips, and I take a deep pull. I hiss at the burn when it goes down my throat. “That was intense,” she declares, her eyes about to bulge out of her head.
“That was something,” I state, my heart beating back in a normal way. “It was something, all right.” I look at Charlie. “I take it you two aren’t as close as you were?”
“You can say that,” he responds, his jaw tight. “He’s not close to anyone. Stays mainly to himself.” The statement shocks me even more because Brock had friends everywhere he went. He was always friends with someone, and that was because he had different friend groups and would be active in each of them.
“That makes no sense.” I finally give in to his statement.
“A lot has happened over the years,” Charlie notes. “People change. Some for the better, some for the worse.”
I nod, picking up my glass again and putting it to my lips. “Some we just don’t even care about,” I reply right before I finish the whiskey in my glass, ignoring all the questions now screaming at me. “Some we just need to walk away from and never look back.”