Chapter 11
Rory
Ipace back and forth across the carpeted bedroom, picking at my thumbnail. The cuticle is already ragged after everything that’s happened in the last few days, and at this rate, it’s going to start bleeding soon.
I sigh as I turn and pace in the other direction. Maybe I overreacted. Okay, I definitely overreacted. I wince as I replay the conversation in my head. Jesus, what am I, a teenager?
It’s not like Nate said anything wrong. He just offered a suggestion for a job here in town.
How would he know that this exact question is already spiraling in my brain?
He can’t possibly know how I’m struggling to reconcile two different lives—the life here in HiLo that I thought I left behind but have missed desperately, and the need to strike out on my own and make my own way in the world.
I chew on my lip as I sit on the side of the bed. I’ve loved the time I’ve spent with Nate since I’ve been back. Our friendship seemed to come back so naturally, and he’s been so sweet with the way he’s welcomed me back into his home.
I wonder if there’s something between us still, or if there could be. I can’t be the only one who senses the chemistry between us, can I?
There’s something hidden behind his eyes when he looks at me, and there’s no denying that my body still responds to his touch.
It’s bringing up feelings I’m not sure I’m ready to process.
I’ve wondered sometimes over the last ten years whether I did the right thing in breaking up with Nate, and this tension between us is making me question it even more.
I shake my head, unwilling to even consider the possibility. He’s opened his house to me. It seems like common decency that I’d refrain from jumping his bones.
Anyway, love doesn’t seem to be in the cards for me. The last ten years have made it clear that happiness isn’t mine to take.
Plus, if we gave it another try, it would end up the same as every other relationship I’ve had—crash and burn, often in spectacular fashion.
I’m not sure if I’m doing something to drive them away, or if this is just my lot in life.
I need advice from someone with a more objective view of things. Pushing farther back on the bed to sit with my legs crossed, I pull my phone out and start a video call with Allie.
It rings a few times before her face pops into view. She’s chewing on something. The tacky 80s-style wallpaper of her Chicago rental in the background tells me she’s sitting in her kitchen.
“Hey,” she says through a mouthful of whatever she’s eating. She swallows and wipes her mouth.
That’s how you know someone’s really your best friend. You can answer a video chat while full-on eating, and neither one of you bats an eye.
“Hey,” I say back. “Sorry to interrupt your dinner. What are you having?”
She holds up a forkful of something yellow before putting another bite in her mouth. “Mac and cheese. What’s up?”
Sighing, I flop back on the pillow, holding my phone up in the air above my head. “I think I fucked up.”
In fact, I know I fucked up, if I’m being honest with myself.
“The dog?”
Why does everyone hate Spam? “No, not the dog, although I’m really not sure why no one likes him. He’s adorable. This is something else. I think I fucked things up with Nate.”
“Oh.” She lifts a water bottle to her mouth and sucks on the straw. Knowing her, it’s probably filled with iced tea. “How?”
Holding the phone above my face is getting heavy, so I turn to my side before I drop it on my head. That’s all I need, a black eye from a phone conversation. “We had a fight.”
I don’t usually fight with people. Not at all. I hate confrontation. And for some reason, fighting with Nate is worse.
“Jesus, Rory. You’ve been there what, two days? How are you in a fight already?”
“It’s not even about something good. I spent part of my day looking for jobs online and didn’t find anything yet. Nate asked about looking for jobs in HiLo. And it just… It triggered something inside me, I guess. I left the table and stormed up to my room. And I heard him leave.”
He must be mad at me if he’s leaving the house.
“How come you don’t want to look for jobs in HiLo?”
Not her, too. “I just… Don’t, Allie. I’m trying to make a life, to be independent. Not just come back to my hometown to hang out with my parents because I couldn’t make it on my own.”
This is feeling a lot like the summer after senior year, when all anyone wanted to talk about was how I’d regret breaking up with Nate. I had my reasons, dammit.
She’s silent for a minute. “You know I support you in anything you do, Rory. And wherever you decide to end up will be the right choice for you. All that matters is that you’re happy, babes.”
Could I be happy in HiLo? I mean, of course. I love it here, and when I was young, I dreamed of living here. But it’s different when you’ve been away for ten years. It feels like giving up to move back now.
“Have you seen your brother?” Allie asks, changing the subject momentarily.
“Not yet. I called him when I first got here, but he’s remodeling his house and getting ready for the school year, so he’s busy. But he might have some good advice, too.”
Dylan’s always been my protector, the one who looked out for me, and my biggest supporter. He’s also down-to-earth and logical, so his advice is always on point.
“He still hot?”
“Allie!”
She dissolves into giggles as I make a face. It’s been a running joke between us since we hit puberty and Allie realized my older brother was a man. She’s told me he’s cute for years.
It’s still gross. That’s my brother.
“Just asking,” she says with a smirk.
I stick my tongue out at her face on the screen. “You wouldn’t think he was hot if you had to see his dirty sock piles and his weird toes.”
“Never know,” she says. “Anyway, you know he’s always on your side. You could see what he thinks, while you’re figuring it out for yourself.”
I consider the idea. It’s a decent one, actually.
“Maybe,” I concede. “I don’t want to burden him with my problems, though. I’m a grown-up. I should be able to sort this out on my own.”
“Fair enough,” Allie says. “Even though, for the record, no one is getting through life all on their own. You can always lean on your family and definitely on me. But do what you need to indulge your little brand of crazy. Anyway, go back to your fight with Nate. What are you going to do?”
I sit up on the bed, crossing my legs in front of me. “Stay up here in my bedroom with the door shut, apparently. I came up here, and he didn’t come after me.”
She lets out a long sigh. “Be an adult, Rory. You can figure out what you want from life, but this is Nate. You owe him honesty, if nothing else. You have to talk to him. You can’t just run away from things. Plus, think about this. What would Mandy say?”
Allie has a point, and I hate that she’s right.
Mandy owns Lonesome Acres, the horse barn where Allie and I spent most of our formative years.
She’s hard as nails, fiercely protective of her barn girls, and a firm believer in tough love.
She’d probably say something along the lines of There’s no such thing as perfect or Happiness is a choice.
She’d probably even throw a fuck in there somewhere for good measure.
She was never afraid to tell us when we fucked something up, like the time Allie and I were distracted while mucking out a stall and accidentally let the horse get out. I think people a mile away heard her yelling at us. But she didn’t kick us out or give up on us.
She made us help get Silver back into his stall—not that difficult, since Silver was old as dirt and didn’t really want to escape, and had only wandered into a fenced-off area—and put us on stall duty for a week until we were so good at it that there was no chance we’d let another horse out.
“You’re right,” I say. “She’d call me a pansy.”
“Or worse.” Allie laughs. “I wonder how she’s doing. Maybe you should go over to the barn and see her. She’d love to see you.”
“I will.” I really mean it, too.
Of all the places around here, Lonesome Acres is probably the one I miss the most. It was a home away from home during my teenage years, and maybe Mandy will give me some insight.
“So you’re going to talk to Nate, and then you’re going to visit Dylan, then Mandy. Yes?” Allie recaps our conversation.
It feels overwhelming, all laid out like that, but this is why she's the event planner instead of me.
“Not all tonight. But I will.” I have two weeks. A little less now, but still some time. It’s not like I need to get all of this done tomorrow.
“Talk to Nate tonight.” Allie’s voice is firm.
“He left,” I point out. “I don’t know where he went.”
And doesn’t the fact that he left mean that he doesn’t want to talk with me right now?
“He’s coming back, Rory,” she says, exasperated. “You’re in his house. He’s not going to move out because you had a disagreement.”
She’s right. God, having to be mature and have a real conversation sucks sometimes. At the very least, it stresses me out.
“Here’s what you’re going to do,” she continues. “Go take a shower, put on your pajamas, make yourself all comfortable, and realize that everything is going to work out the way it’s supposed to. Then text him you’re sorry. Then go the fuck to bed. And everything will seem better in the morning.”
“Fine.”
When I step under the steaming water, I do start to feel better about the whole situation. Nate was just trying to be helpful, after all.
Going back over it in my head, I wince. He didn’t deserve the way I lashed out at him.
I think about Lonesome Acres while I lather my hair with shampoo. The barn was my happy place, and when I picture the fields, the stables, the horses nuzzling my pockets for treats, I smile beneath the hot spray. It’s been ten years, so lots of the horses must be different.
I wonder if Starfire is still there. She was one of my favorites, and she was only five when I was a senior in high school. So that would make her fifteen, maybe sixteen now, in the prime of her life.
I rinse and smooth a handful of conditioner over my locks.
I need so much of it to keep my hair from tangling that I always run out of conditioner before I use up my shampoo.
You’d think I’d have learned by now to buy more conditioner than shampoo, but nope—I keep on buying one of each at the same time.
Maybe I should start my own company, selling hair products in complementary volumes. Like, two-thirds as much shampoo as conditioner. Half as much body wash.
I rinse and consider repeating, like it recommends on the bottle. Does anyone actually do that? When I was a kid, I thought that you really were supposed to wash your hair twice. Rinse and repeat.
Turns out it’s just so they can sell you more shampoo. Once again, the hair product industry is out to get us.
Once I finish in the shower—one wash, thank you very much—I wrap myself in a towel and crack the bedroom door open an inch. I put my ear up to it and listen for any sounds that would indicate that Nate’s back.
Silence.
And then: Yip!
Spam sits just outside the bathroom door, tail wagging. I hope he didn’t get into anything while I was holed up in the bedroom. I open the door enough to stick my head out. I don’t see any chewed-up shoes or destroyed paper products, so maybe he held it together for the last twenty minutes or so.
I really should take him to obedience school. I make a mental note to look into that tomorrow as Spam squeezes past my legs and into the bedroom.
He settles himself on the bed, where he slept last night, all cuddled up against me.
His big eyes follow me around the room while I brush my wet hair out and pull on a pair of boxer shorts and a long-sleeved Colorado State University T-shirt to wear to bed, the one I bought as soon as I was accepted and have washed so many times that the cotton is starting to wear thin.
I should feel better. This is my comfort clothing, what I wear when I need to just close myself away from the world. But even this isn’t enough.
Why do I even care what Nate Patterson thinks?
That ship sailed a long, long time ago. Just because he’s giving me a place to stay for a few days—or a couple weeks—doesn’t mean I owe him anything.
But he’s been so nice, so open to rekindling a friendship that I do feel like I owe him this, at the very least. An apology.
“God dammit, Spam,” I say to the dog, who’s doing his best to burrow into my armpit. “Why do I fucking care what he thinks?”
Spam lifts his head out of my side, but he doesn’t have any wisdom to offer.
Even if he did, I’m not sure I’d be ready to hear it.
My phone buzzes on the bedside table with a text.
Allie
Tell him you’re sorry. Don’t mess this up, Rory.
That’s a best friend for you—someone who knows when you need that little extra push. And, like it or not, there’s something about Nate I want to get to know. There’s something different about him, something that’s grown since our high school days.
I take a deep breath. Now that I’ve thought it over in the shower, maybe this wasn’t exactly a fight. All Nate did was bring up a valid idea, and I kind of bit his head off.
Yeah, this one is on me.
I swipe to Nate’s name and type out a text.
Nate
I overreacted. I’m sorry.
I stare at the text. It’s easier to type than to say, but there’s more we need to talk about. Butterflies swirling in my stomach, I bite my lip and add:
Are you coming home?
Then I hit Send.