Waiting Seventeen Years #2
Unless I count Preston, my closest friend in Faulkner is Dixie, who I see when I come home and occasionally text.
My little freshman stepcousin is a senior now, all grown up and busy with her own life, school, dating, and extracurriculars.
I’d still rather have her take me to the doctor than her aunt.
“Thank you,” I tell Caitlyn. “But I don’t need any help. I’m not hurt. I drove myself here, and I’ve still got the car, so I reckon I can get myself around just fine, if you want to stay here and finish your show.”
“You sure?” she asks, looking uncertain. “Your Daddy said you were real emotional when you came home, didn’t think you’d want to drive.”
“I’m fine,” I assure her. “What’s he going to do with the police?”
“I figure they’re getting a warrant to go find Grampa Darling,” she says. “Then they’ll make some arrests, if what you said is true.”
I bristle at her insinuation.
If what I said is true.
Dad never once questioned what I said happened. He took my word for it.
I didn’t lie.
But maybe it’s not so simple.
When I slide behind the wheel—of my own truck, not Preston’s car—and find it running great and without a speck of dust on the dash, I know Dad’s been taking care of it.
I can imagine the shit he gets from his friends for driving around in a bright pink truck on occasion.
I can also imagine him proudly telling them he’s gotta keep it running for his daughter, the star.
It makes my heart ache to know how much he loves me and believes in me, and that I don’t deserve it. I didn’t become a star. I gave up.
But then I think about how he’s always believed in me, no matter what I wanted to do. He couldn’t care less if I’m a star. He’d boast about me the same way if I was Devlin’s wife, if I was a mother, if I was working at a café. He just wants his little girl to be happy and safe.
Which is why he’s going to arrest Preston.
My heart lurches into my throat, and I pull out of the drive. I hear sirens in the distance, and my heart speeds faster, and I press my foot down on the gas pedal. Are they already going to his house? Am I too late?
As I fly past Devlin’s neighborhood with the big white plantation style homes, including the one where Devlin and I would sometimes hook up if his family wasn’t home, I wonder where Devlin is now, anyway. Preston said he was home. Is he? Or was that another lie?
Maybe he just didn’t want me to see him. I know he’s eaten up with jealousy when it comes to Devlin. After all, Devlin lived closer to their grandfather, who runs the Darling family. Devlin was chosen to be the future mayor. He was chosen for me.
When Crystal Dolce came waltzing into school, a hot new girl that no one had a claim on, all the Darlings wanted her, Preston included.
His family hadn’t chosen a match for him.
After seventeen years, it looked like he might finally beat Devlin at something.
But she chose Devlin, just like I had. Devlin was always the golden boy, the favorite.
Preston pretended he didn’t give a fuck, that he was just a player after some ass, but I know him better than anyone.
I know how proud he is—how proud he was before the fall.
Even then I heard the bitterness, the resentment in his voice when we talked on the bleachers each day.
I know the pressures he’s under, the anger he felt at being a pawn for his family.
I know how much he wanted to leave town, just like me. But he never got to.
I escaped, but he never did. My heart aches for him as I imagine what it must have been like these last three years.
Once again, Devlin beat him to his dream.
Preston could have left their family to surrender to the Dolces too, but he stayed and fought back, took care of them as well as he could.
When they fell despite his best efforts, that destroyed something they hadn’t, even when they took his beauty.
I know that now. I know how much he must have wanted to leave, what he risked to stay and protect Magnolia and Sullivan when even their parents gave up.
Sure, Magnolia’s a little twisted, and Sullivan and his friends like to play creepy games of hide and seek with masks.
But considering everything, I’d say Preston’s done a pretty good job.
I can’t think of anyone more protective, who would fight harder to give his child everything this world could offer.
Our child.
My heart is racing by the time I round the last curve on the winding, two-lane blacktop leading to Grampa Darling’s.
I roll down the window even though it’s cold out, listening for sirens ahead.
Silence greets my ears, but it does little to ease my mind.
I yank the wheel, turning into the drive, and skid to a stop at the tall, iron gate.
I scan my eye at the retina scanner, halfway expecting that it’ll open. I wouldn’t put it past Preston to have somehow gotten a scan of my retina, probably while I was sleeping.
But the gate stays in place, and after a minute, I give up and hit the call button for the estate. With a crackle of static, the speaker comes to life.
“Dolly’s back!” Magnolia crows.
“Yes, and it’s important,” I say. “Can you let me in?”
“We can,” says a male voice that’s almost Preston’s but a little less accented, a little less smooth, a little less everything that could make my heart flip and break at the same time. “But what will you do for us?”
“It’s an emergency,” I say, my impatience getting the best of me. “Please, Sullivan. I really need to talk to him.”
The speaker crackles and shuts off, and despair floods into me. I hit the call button again. There’s a brief silence before it clicks on.
“Okay, we’ll let you in,” Magnolia says. “But if you hurt my cousin again… I will cut a bitch, even if she’s famous.”
“Thank you,” I say, relief washing over me.
“Let me hear you say please one more time,” Sullivan says. “You beg so much better for our cousin.”
I cringe at the thought that he could hear me in the attic all those nights, just as I could hear him. Even worse, what if he could see me on the camera Preston had in there? Surely he removed it when he started sleeping in there with me. Right?
But then I hear a distant siren, and I know that now is not the time to be proud.
“Please let me in,” I say. “Please, Sullivan. Please?”
He laughs before the speaker cuts out. Then the gate swings open. I floor it, and the truck roars through, spinning its tires all the way and spitting gravel as I pull into the lot behind the garage.
A black Escalade with a red tint sits in the lot already, the dark shape hulking under the blue-black sky.
How often does a person need to see his ex?
I hop down from the truck and march toward the back door. Just as I’m about to knock, the door is thrown wide, and Magnolia appears.
“You came back,” she says, clasping her hands in front of her chest and giving me a moony smile.
“Apparently I’m not the only one,” I say, casting a baleful look at the Escalade.
“He got hit by a car,” she says, widening her eyes at me like I’m missing something obvious. She grips the doorknob, standing in the door so I can’t pass. “He’s hurt. Of course she came to see him.”
“Shouldn’t his ex be happy when he gets hit by a car?” I ask, trying to make a joke to ease the guilt that knots in my stomach at the reminder.
“We do not tolerate Harper slander in this house,” Magnolia says, raising her chin.
“But you really should stake your claim before someone else does. Not Harper—she’s got Royal.
Even with that face, though, Preston’s a catch.
Think about it. Prince Zuko’s eye was all burned, and he was still the hottest bender. A Darling’s always got options.”
“I thought you hated him.”
“He’s like my brother,” she says, giving me a sour look. “I can talk shit about him. You can’t.”
“I’m not talking shit about him,” I say. “I just need to see him.”
“And I just need to say, if he jumps off that roof, I’m hunting you down.”
“Fine,” I say. “Where is he?”
“On the roof,” she says, swinging the door open and stepping back. “At the end of the east wing.”
“Thanks,” I call back over my shoulder as I start up the stairs.
Maybe I should be scared that this is a trap, but there’s no fear in me as I run up to the landing.
Only panic that those sirens I heard are coming here, and it’ll be too late to warn him.
I’m not disturbed by entering the dance studio, not even when I reach my room. It feels like…
Home.
This house is every bit as meaningful to me as my father’s, every bit as much of my childhood. It’s not just about the last month. It’s about all the months and years I spent here as a kid, happily swimming and playing house and running around in the attic room.
I throw open the door, and Peanut comes prancing over, wagging her tail.
I pick her up, and she licks my face, wiggling with excitement to see me again.
With her in my arms, I pass through the door next to my room and into the wide hallway where Sullivan and his friends chased me.
I get a little shiver, but it has nothing to do with Preston.
In truth, Preston didn’t do anything to me that I didn’t want or enjoy.
He might have bulldozed my objections, but now I can’t remember why I had them.
Even the punishments were worth the reward afterwards—ten times over.
I pass the lavish records library, the music studio he made just for me, and my heart swells.
I hurry to the end of the hall, where the white curtain is tossing in the restless breeze that blows into the house through the open window.
I slow when I hear voices and remember that this isn’t a sweet reunion. He’s not alone out there. He’s with his ex.
I stop when I reach the window, my hand halfway raised to open the curtain. What if they’re kissing?
But I hear voices and know they’re talking instead.