CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
WALKER
Things with Sonya are better than ever, and because everything is so unbelievably good between us, the fear that something bad is just around the corner is weighing down my shoulders. Or it’s the cynical part of my brain not willing to let me have this. To indulge in something that feels so right, so utterly easy. She’s like breathing in fresh air, and I don’t ever want to lose that.
We have fallen into a routine—one I have grown comfortable and used to—of sex, conversation, and studying. She is my favorite part of the day, my favorite part of life. I love the way everything falls into place, the easy flow of us. I’ve grown used to Sonya filling in my spaces, the way her scent lingers in my room, on my pillows, and on my clothes.
She surrounds me.
And I don’t know how I’m supposed to go back to a lesser dose of her. I don’t think I can. I want her around me and in my corner.
All the time.
“Refill?” Flynn asks across from me, pointing to the empty mug of coffee sitting on our table in The Roast House next to my laptop as she pushes back from the table.
“Please,” I say, not looking up from the document in front of me.
We’ve been sitting here for the last three hours, working on the latest form of torture from our psychology professor, and I’m slowly beginning to lose my mind over it.
With a heavy sigh, I open my web browser and navigate to my email, deciding to give myself a break from writing to breathe. The new message at the top of my inbox makes me wish I hadn’t changed course because the last thing I want is to read the email from one of the firms I interviewed with a few weeks ago about a summer internship—here in Michigan.
I’m not ready to know if I got it or not. For the last few weeks, I’ve been able to put off talking to my mom even further despite now having Sonya in my ear about it and finally taking a step forward by talking to Mr. Richards. Having a few more silent weeks of ignorant bliss should have helped, but all it's done is twist my stomach up in further knots of guilt. Guilt for shutting down, for not being upfront and honest with her. For leading her on in believing my intention has always been to come home to Ashmore when I knew it wasn’t.
I’m happy here. It’s become my home, my place, and the idea of leaving it—even for the summer—fills me with dread. For weeks, I have been avoiding my mom and curling into something that isn’t me. I have never been one to run away from my problems, but it seems that is all I am capable of these days. Flynn has been on me about it for months, and now that Sonya knows, the added pressure has been at the back of my mind.
Since I told Sonya the truth, she’s been on top of me in more ways than one. She texts me about it, she calls me about it, and she climbs into my bed and in my lap with whispers of reminders. If I didn’t know any better, I would think she’s trying to distract me and make me suddenly have the nerve to figure out my shit.
“Oh no,” Flynn says when she returns to the table, clocking the pinched look on my face as she sets our coffees down on the table. “What’s wrong? You look upset.”
“Gilmore and Boseman emailed me.”
She pulls her mug closer to her after grabbing a sweetener from the holder on the corner of the table, ripping the two pink packages open, and emptying them into her mug. “The firm you interviewed with a few weeks ago? In Rosenthal?”
I nod my head. “Yeah.”
“And?” she asks, lifting her mug up to take a sip of coffee. I reach for my glasses to move them up my nose, causing her to sigh. “So, you haven’t opened it yet. What’s holding you back?”
“You know me too well.”
She smiles. “You’re deflecting.”
“I’m scared.”
Her smile softens into something sweet and gentle as she closes her laptop, shuffling it to the side before waving my laptop in her direction. Pushing it forward on the table, I reach for the coffee she got me as she turns it her way. “You have nothing to be scared of, Walk,” she says, her eyes dropping to the screen. “Anyone would be lucky to have you.”
“That’s not what I’m scared about.”
“I know,” she says, lifting her gaze. “Just softening the blow before I tell you they’ve offered you the spot. You don’t have a reason to avoid your mom anymore.”
I should be filled with pride. Anything but the dread that is currently pooling my stomach because she’s right. I have no reason to put it off anymore. I told her at the beginning of this semester that I wanted to wait for something concrete, a reason to stay before I corrected myself with my mom. And maybe a part of me was hoping it wouldn’t come so I could keep avoiding the truth and what my future would look like.
“I already told Mr. Richards I couldn’t accept.”
Her eyebrow lifts in surprise as she turns my computer back to me and pulls hers back over. “Oh, yeah? When did you do that?”
“After the interview. Sunny has a very convincing way of encouraging me to do things.”
She hums. “She told you she wouldn’t sleep with you again until you did it, didn’t she?”
“I’m not confirming or denying that.”
“You are so predictable!” She shakes her head just as my phone starts buzzing on the table, stealing my attention away and pumping my chest full of adrenaline when I see my mom’s picture on the screen. Flynn’s eyes dart towards the screen. “No time like the present. Maybe it’s time to rip off the Band-Aid.”
As much as I wish she wasn’t right, I know she is. There’s no more time for me to put it off. “I’ll be right back,” I say, standing from the table. She sends me a silent salute as I slide my thumb across the bottom of the screen, bringing it to my ear as I head outside for a bit more privacy. “Hi, Mama,” I answer, walking around the corner until I find a quiet spot.
“Peach! I just ran into Mr. Richards,” she says, and the knot in my stomach tightens. “He said you turned down the internship. He was keeping that spot open for you, Walker. I thought we talked about this? Why would you turn it down?”
Taking a deep breath, I push down the doubt growing in my chest. “I know he was keeping that spot open for me, but he doesn’t need an intern. He’s never needed an intern. He was doing it for you and for me, and while I appreciate everything he’s done for me over the last few years, I need something new. I need a challenge, and I got a great internship offer,” I share and swallow the lump in my throat. “Here.”
“What?”
“I have law school to think about, and I need to start padding my resume. A small-town law firm internship doesn’t look nearly as good as a big-city firm, a firm with actual cases and not local business disputes. And I know I should have told you from the start, I meant to and then I kept chickening out. I didn’t want to upset you.”
“But you agreed to the internship, Peach. You said you were coming home.”
“I know what I said…but I didn’t mean to.”
Her voice is weak, heartbreak written in her words as she says, “You…didn’t mean to?”
I squeeze my eyes shut and curl my fingers tighter around my phone. “Yes, I’ve been fighting with myself over this. It’s not like I’m going to spend the whole summer in Michigan. I will come home to see you, but my life is here now. I want something fresh, and I know that hurts you. That is the last thing I want, and I love you.”
“But you’re not coming home. Is this a forever thing?”
The question weighs my shoulders down. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t know what to say to that, and I have to go open the gallery. We can talk later,” she says, and it feels like she just stomped the heel of her boot against my chest. She’s shutting down, putting the cage around her to protect herself from hurting, but it’s never been from me. I’ve always been in the cage, and right now, I’m standing outside it, looking inside through the crack of her exterior.
“Mama, we need to talk about this.”
“I’ll talk to you later, Peach.”
The line goes dead before I can argue with her further, needing her to hear me out and for us to be okay. I’ve never felt like I’m the one on rocky terrain with her. It is new ground for us to navigate, and truthfully, I’m not sure I know what to do with it.
She’s been my person my entire life. My best friend for most of it, and I’ve never felt the distance I feel right now between us. She’s pushing me away to protect herself, and I can’t blame her because it’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve spent the last few weeks shoving as much distance between us as possible and distracting myself with Sonya and sex.
“Oh no,” Flynn says the moment I step up to the table and reach for my bag, shutting my laptop without returning to my seat. “Walker, what happened?”
“Doesn’t matter.” I slide my laptop into the bag, collecting my notebook from the side to put with it. “I’m going to head home, okay? I’ll see you later.”
“Walker.” She grabs my wrist, keeping me from running off. “What did she say?”
I shake my head. “Doesn’t matter,” I repeat myself. “It’s done. She knows. That’s all, and now I’m going to go home.”
Her grip loosens on my wrist before it’s gone altogether, letting me brush her off and leave without another word. The grip on my heart tightens with every step I take, putting more space between me and everything else before it hooks on and drags me under.
“Walker!” Sonya calls from the other side of my apartment door, knocking for what feels like the millionth time. “Cowboy, I know you’re in there, and you can hear me. Come and open this door. Or I’m going to eat this whole pie by myself.”
Getting up from the couch, I approach the door and pull it open. “It’s not fair to bribe me with pie. I can’t say no to pie,” I tell her, leaning into the edge of the door to find her in my hallway. Her lips pull up at the corners, gracing me with a little bit of her sunshine in my gloom.
“I would have bribed you with me, but I didn’t think your neighbors would love to hear all about the dirty things I was willing to do to you if you opened the door for me,” she says, her free hand coming up to my chest to push me deeper into the apartment so she can step inside.
“Was?”
Her smile grows. “Still am,” she says, closing the door behind her. “I am even willing to give you this pie if you tell me what happened with your mom.”
A sigh falls from my lips, reluctantly taking the pie from her hands before walking into the kitchen. “How do you know about that?”
“I ran into Flynn at The Roast House.” She presses her hand into the small of my back, wrapping her arms around my waist until her chest is against my back. “Wanna talk about it?”
“Not particularly.”
She presses her lips to my shoulder and moves to my side, keeping one hand on my back. “Want to do it anyway?” she asks, her free hand moving to the pie box to keep it closed before I can open it and use it as a distraction. “Cowboy, remember what I said?”
I shuffle and move my hands to her hips, lifting her up onto the kitchen counter. She opens her legs for me to step between and holds her hand out for me to take. When my fingers slip between the gaps of hers, her knees press into my hips. “I don’t think holding my hand is going to make this better.”
She leans forward, her nose brushing mine until her lips are touching mine. Our tangled fingers move behind her, resting on the counter as her tongue touches mine, our bodies melting together. She becomes an extension of me. “How about now?” she asks, whispering as her lips move to my jaw. “Feel a little better?”
“No, I think you should get naked.”
“Anything you want,” she says, squeezing my hands. “After you tell me what happened.”
“She basically hung up on me. I told her I wasn’t coming home for the summer. I told her that I got an internship here in Michigan. I told—”
“You got an internship?”
There’s a pause between us, and pride runs through my veins for the first time since I found out. Seeing the look of excitement in Sonya at my success, it slows me down enough to be excited. “Yeah. Gilmore and Boseman. I haven’t accepted it yet, but they extended the offer this morning.”
“Walker.” She untangles our fingers and moves her hands to my neck. Her thumb traces along my jaw, the darkness knotted in my chest from my conversation with my mom met by her light. “That’s fantastic! Congratulations,” she says, leaning forward to kiss me quickly. “I’m so proud of you.”
“Thank you.”
“She didn’t take it very well?”
“No, she was upset I wasn’t coming home and that I turned down Mr. Richard’s offer for the summer. She especially didn’t love the likelihood of me not coming home ever.”
“She was probably just caught off guard. She loves you, Cowboy. This is just a hiccup in the road. She wants what is best for you.” She rubs slow circles over my skin, curling her fingers into the ends of my hair. “It might just take a second for her to get there.”
“I know,” I say, swallowing as I lean forward and rest my head against her shoulder. “I know. You’re right. I have just never felt so in pieces when it comes to her.”
“I know, but it’s temporary. It’ll be better before you know it, and until then, I’m right here to hold your hand or get naked or whatever you need.”
“The naked part sounds really good right about now.”
She laughs, kissing me quickly. “How about we have a piece of pie, and then we can talk about getting naked. I might even give you a show.”
“A show, huh? What exactly would that entail?”
“Well—” she starts, but before she can get started, there is another knock on the door. My irritation grows deeper when I am forced to pull away from her.
“Hang on, it’s probably just Flynn. She must have forgotten her key,” I say, swaying back from her and taking the few steps needed toward the apartment door. “Flynn, you could not have worse timing,” I say, pulling the door open only to pause at the sight waiting on the opposite side of the door.
“Hi, Peach.”