Chapter 34
AMELIA
I let myself sit in the dark until headlights swept over the living room wall. I wiped my face with a paper towel, then ran my fingers under cold water in the kitchen, which felt like scrubbing with mud.
I grabbed my bag and threw it in with the few boxes that I filled.
Dante parked in front of the house without turning off the engine. He leaned against the headrest, looking up at the porch, his face pale in the wash of his phone screen. When he saw me, he opened the door and hopped out.
He looked the same, except his features were more defined as a man. Warm eyes that held hues of gold. Tousled black hair.
I remembered how it felt to run my hands through his hair as he devoured my lips, as he pleasured me all those years ago.
I remembered the last time I had seen him, seven years ago, before I left town. I ran into him in town and told him I was leaving, and that I wanted to properly say goodbye.
He agreed, still having feelings for me, and we lost ourselves in each other in a motel room that night.
We were sober the second time, and he took his sweet time touching me, kissing me, holding me. The memory of that night felt foreign, as if it had been a dream.
“Hey, Amelia. It’s been a while.” He smiled. My insides untwisted, and I smiled at him. It was small, just a tug of my lips, but enough to show him I was pleased to see him.
“Hi Dante. It has been a long time. Seven years.”
He seemed to consider the number, then smiled again, like he could make time itself less cruel just by not blinking. “That’s longer than it feels. You look…” He trailed off, scanning my face, and I tried to figure out what he saw.
The makeup had bled off in streaks, and my eyes had the ghost-sheen of crying.
“Like shit?” I offered.
He laughed softly, a sound that didn’t judge. “No. Just…real.” His gaze flicked to the bags at my feet. “Let me grab those.”
He slung the boxes into his trunk with the practiced ease of someone who’d moved other people’s grief before.
Then he opened the door, a gesture so old-fashioned it almost made me smile for real. I slid in, clutching my purse in my lap, and for a moment we just sat in the blue-lit hush of his dashboard. I could see the ghost of my reflection in the window: hollow-eyed, mouth set, but alive.
“Thanks for coming. I didn’t want to bother you, but I—”
“Don’t sweat it. You’re here. That’s enough.” He thumbed at his car. “Want to get out of here? I was thinking maybe the diner. It’s open till two.”
The suggestion was a lifeline. I nodded, and between one heartbeat and the next we were on the road, the heater blasting, the night blurring past in watery streaks.
The town had changed around the edges, but the core of it was still the same: empty lots, upside-down for-sale signs, streetlights buzzing like angry bees. My mother’s house shrunk in the rearview, a mausoleum receding into the cold.
We didn’t talk, not at first. Dante drove with one hand on the wheel and the other fiddling with the radio, scrolling through static until he found a station playing something soft and anonymous.
I watched his fingers, the way they tapped out the beat, the way he flexed them when the cold bit through the car.
I remembered those hands at my waist. I remembered the night we checked into the Oakwood Inn and the way he’d laughed at the ugly floral comforter, said, “We deserve at least one memory that isn’t filled with tears or angst.”
I had agreed. I wanted one moment with him to treasure.
“So,” I broke the silence, “You saw Caiden? How was that? He was supposed to pick me up tonight, so I’m a bit irritated that he went out to get drunk instead.”
Dante’s mouth twitched, something between a smirk and a wince.
“Same old Caiden. Guess I’m not one to talk, but he looked rough.
He got really fucked up on booze. Didn’t even recognize me at first. He said he was here in town with you.
I asked for your number. We did catch up a bit, it was nice while it lasted. ”
“Thank you,” I said, tracing a crescent in the frost on the window.
“For coming. And for not asking for details. Not yet, anyway. As for Caiden, I was not sure what to expect. I knew he’d be feeling bad coming here because of trauma with his dad.
But I didn’t expect to be abandoned in my dead mother’s house while he got drunk and forgot about me. ”
He nodded like he understood, and maybe he did.
There were things, after all, that were too painful to say out loud.
“I’m sorry. Caiden had it rough with his dad, that I know.
He was bound to snap coming back here with all the memories and pain.
Not that it’s your fault, it’s not. Caiden made the choice to come, knowing how it would make him feel. ”
His words made me feel a little less upset. Dante was always good with that, soothing my wounds, lifting me back up.
There was a mercy in that, in Dante’s way of letting the wound exist in the room without prodding it with questions.
He could have pressed, could have made me spell out the horror-show details, but instead he just let the silence bloom, filling the car with a gentler ache. Maybe that’s why I’d always liked him. He’d known how to breathe around broken things.
At the diner, the parking lot was empty except for a salt-rusted truck and a single police car, blue lights off but the engine running. Inside, the waitress wore her uniform like a second skin, hair knotted at the back, smile painted on but not unfriendly.
She led us to a booth by the window, the vinyl seats cracked and patched with duct tape. I slid in across from Dante and stared at the menu.
He ordered coffee, black, and I followed suit, though I hated the taste. It felt polite, necessary. A way to punish myself for needing any comfort at all. I also ordered a side of French fries. It was my comfort food.
Dante folded his hands on the table, his fingers laced. “You know,” he said, “I thought about you a lot. After you left.”
I looked up, startled, unsure if I was meant to answer. I glanced at his face, searching for the line between honesty and politeness, but found only quiet sincerity.
“I thought about you too,” I said. “I imagined you moved on, found someone less—” I stopped, not wanting to say broken, not wanting to make myself a cliché in his story. “Less complicated,” I finished, and regretted it immediately.
“Oh, I did,” he said. “But none of them argued as passionately about horror movies or could eat a whole basket of fries and still have room for dessert.” he swirled the spoon in his coffee. “I guess I liked the complicated.”
I sipped, hoping the bitterness would reset me somehow, give me a reason to believe in small salvations.
“I’m sorry I never called,” I said, surprising myself with the admission. “I just…If I had, I don’t think I would have stayed away. And I had to get out. I had to.”
He nodded, accepting the logic, because he’d lived it, too. “Everyone leaves Pathosbury. Some just take longer.”
Around us, the diner pulsed with its own slow rhythm. The waitress swept by with a coffee pot, refilling everything to the brim whether you asked or not.
There was comfort in that kind of predictability. I wondered if Dante saw it the same way, if he found solace in the repetition of small acts.
He leaned back, arms folded. He looked at me. “So, is this you coming back for good? Or are you just passing through?”
I wanted to say I didn’t know, but that felt cowardly.
“I came to bury my mother. But I might stay a little longer if something comes up.” I didn’t realize I was tossing a hint at him until I said it. I didn’t remember how much I liked him until now.
He watched me with an easy, loose focus. I wondered if he’d practiced this, or if it was some muscle memory from all those afternoons in high school when we’d sit at this exact counter, neither of us talking, both of us waiting for something better to come along.
The fries arrived, stacked and glistening. I picked at them, breaking each one in half before eating it, a dumb little ritual that made me feel anchored. The first salty bite was perfection, a reminder that my body still knew how to want something, even if it was only this.
“Well, either way, it’s nice to see you. To catch up. If you do stay longer, that would be nice. If not, I’ll get over it.” He smiled, as if trying to convince himself that he did not need me here, but I could see through him.
I picked at my fries, breathing in the curdled coffee air. The next question was sitting between us.
“Is it weird, seeing me?” I asked.
He half-laughed. “No. I mean, yes, but not in a bad way. More like… I didn’t realize how much I missed you until you were actually here.”
I felt my face heat, my hand going to my mouth automatically. “Don’t say that. Makes it harder to pretend we were never a thing.”
He shrugged, pushing a napkin around the table. “You think I want to pretend that? With you?”
I met his eyes, and for once didn’t look away. It would be easy to fall back into him—he was safe, familiar, uncomplicated in the ways that mattered—but I had no idea what kind of version of myself I even had left to offer anyone.
What came next spilled out of me, a terrible thing that had been sitting and was finally unleashed into the open.
“I am sorry for how we fell apart. How I used you to get revenge because of how Caiden slept with my sister. I did enjoy that night with you, but it wasn’t pure, and you didn’t deserve that.
I have a lot of regrets in my life, and that is at the top of my list.”
He looked at me with a soft yet focused gaze, as if calculating my words, analyzing the breaths in between. “What part do you regret?”
I swallowed. “Manipulating you that night. Lying to you. Practically spitting on all the kindness that you had gifted to me.”