Chapter Two
Six Months Later
“Scar, can I come in?” Maggie’s familiar voice echoed in the hallway outside of my apartment door.
Despite my lack of response, the door creaked open.
“Sure, come on in.”
“That was a rhetorical question. You knew I was coming in regardless. Perks of having a key.” She dangled the gold piece of metal attached to a furry keychain in the air. “I brought Haddie Jo’s bagels and cold brew.”
Maggie stepped into view, completely put together, per usual.
Her long blonde hair lightly waved down her back, its shade imitating sunshine.
Her brown cowboy boots practically went over her knees thanks to her short stature, but they paired nicely with her fringed jeans shorts and white crop top.
The whole outfit was a perfect nod to her sassy attitude.
She knew the way to make me feel better always involved carbs, stupid amounts of cream cheese—plain, of course—and a heavy caffeine drip. “Gimme,” I said, leaning my entire body over the back of the couch.
The same couch that I’d become oddly acquainted with since that rainy day in April.
I may be a thirty-year-old woman, but by no means did I need to have my shit together, especially after watching my entire planned-out life vanish in minutes.
My trusted couch never passed a single second of judgement.
Handing over the coffee, her interrogation began.
“Please know this comes from a place of love, but you’ve got to get out of this apartment.
I know things are shitty right now, but staying cooped up in here isn’t going to make everything just disappear.
At some point, you’re going to have to face it. ”
“I haven’t been cooped up. I’ve gone out to Rolling Meadows almost weekly, and George makes for great company,” I argued.
Her doll-like eyes darted into my soul. “Galivanting out in the wild where you can be away from the rest of the world for hours at a time is no different than staying in this damn apartment,” she yapped, scooping up trash from around my apartment.
“And hanging out with a seventy-year-old man doesn’t count as socializing. ”
“He’s sixty-eight,” I corrected.
Maggie and I were similar in many ways, but not when it came to this topic.
I’d always felt most connected to myself while lost. Lost on the dirt roads, lost in the wild, lost in my thoughts, hell, even lost within my own words.
But nonetheless, lost. And over the course of the last couple of months, I’d forced myself to repeatedly get lost in hopes of finding something—anything—but I’d come up empty-handed each time, and I was starting to lose that hope.
“Oh, so this wasn’t just you trying to be nice by delivering your best friend breakfast at eight in the morning?” I questioned.
“Scar, you know what I mean. I’ve been here multiple times a week since the wedding, but at some point, I’m going to have to force you out of here and back into society.
Things are starting to get questionable,” she said, holding up a takeout box from who knew when and using her judgy eyes as she peered at me lying in my oversized sweats and Quincey Falls Community College sweatshirt.
“I know.” I sighed, pulling myself to a sitting position and taking a gulp of coffee.
“Trust me, Mags, I know. It’s just that this town is too damn small and the oddly familiar feeling of humiliation is smothering.
I can’t go anywhere without someone looking at me like my dog just died.
Or, god forbid, someone asking me how I’m doing,” I huffed.
“Like yes, Sally, I am in fact mortified that my fiancé left me at the altar in front of all of our friends and family and no, I haven’t heard from him since. ”
“Wait, are you hoping to hear from Zane?”
My eyes rushed in her direction. “Maggie! That’s not the point.”
“Okay, okay. Just making sure. Because if that man ever steps foot back in this town, I can promise you he’ll wish he hadn’t.”
“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “He doesn’t have any intention of coming back. I’d bet money that man was on the first flight to O’Hare. Or did you forget we were supposed to move to Chicago after the wedding?”
The word wedding got caught in my throat as I swiped away a rogue tear.
She scooted closer and pulled me to her chest.
“You know you could still move to Chicago and accept that job offer, right? You don’t have to stay here just because you didn’t get married, Scar.” Her voice was so genuine, so hopeful.
Mags and I had been friends ever since her family moved to our tiny Tennessee town during a seriously tough year of high school when a few decisions of mine threatened to take me out.
When she showed up, it felt like the universe had finally realized that I needed a lifeline and it sent me Maggie.
She and I had been inseparable since. We’d both been through our fair share of shit, but we always stood by one another no matter how messy things got.
After high school, we both took the junior college route and stayed close to home. We had different reasons for doing so, but it didn’t change the fact that neither of us ever had any plans of leaving.
That was, until I met Zane Morris. He’d come to Quincey Falls Community College on a football scholarship with every intention of transferring to a bigger school. He’d never factored in tearing his ACL and ultimately being forced to move on from football.
Once he knew football was out of the picture, he quickly pivoted and majored in finance, working absurd hours to climb up the corporate ladder and out of this town. He’d ended up landing a job at a massive company in Chicago—his dream come true.
“I’m not sure I ever really wanted to go to Chicago, Mags,” I breathed, unknowingly releasing an invisible weight that had been lingering on my chest. “I mean, my job offer excited me at the time, but if I’m being honest, that’s the only thing that allowed me to be okay with the move in the first place,” I admitted, feeling the confidence to shed this layer of honesty as I rested my head on her shoulder.
“But now, so many things have changed, and I have absolutely no desire to take the job. Which is both a relief and an obnoxiously large source of stress.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’d always loved writing. It was a part of me, a piece of who I was. The way words could be strung together to evoke emotions that would otherwise get lost in translation was damn near the closest thing we’d get to magic, of that I was sure.
But after Zane repeatedly reminded me that poems and lyrics weren’t going to pay the bills, I jumped ship and forged another path.
Journalism might not have been my passion, but it was a way for me to still have one foot in the writing world.
So, when I landed a role at a small magazine based in Chicago, I jumped at the opportunity.
“What? Why didn’t you tell me any of this before now?” Maggie asked, unlatching me from her embrace so we were face-to-face. “And are you sure that’s the only reason you didn’t want to leave?”
“I’m sure,” I urged, knowing exactly where she was going with that comment.
“I don’t know. I guess I just thought that because we were getting married and he’d gotten a job in Chicago, it meant that we were going to Chicago.
It was his dream job, and if I was going to be his wife, then I wanted to support his dreams.”
“I love you for that, I really do.” She exhaled. “But you shouldn’t have had to forget about your wants and dreams just because the two of you were getting married. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, of course,” I rushed out, despite the fact that I didn’t actually think I knew that.
I quickly changed the subject before I lost my poker face.
“Plus, you know how much this little town means to me.” I smirked, snatching the bagel from the coffee table.
“Asiago bagel, extra toasty, plain cream cheese?”
“As though I would ever dare to bring you something different.”
“I love you.” A grin appeared across my face.
“There she is.” She smiled back, taking a bite of her muffin. “While this bagel is bringing you an immense sense of joy, I figured I might ask…”
I laid the side eye on thick. “What?”
“Booker’s having a party this weekend.”
Her silence lingered.
“Go on…” I replied.
“He texted me, asking if I wanted to come, but I haven’t responded because I absolutely will not show up by myself.”
“Do you want to go?” I asked.
Her mouth fell open, but she looked like she was fumbling for words.
“Magnolia Nelson, are you trying to wrangle Booker Baker?”
“I mean, have you seen the man? He runs that ranch of his like a well-oiled machine. Coming into The Wheel every Friday in those Levi’s and dirty cowboy boots should be a sin.” Her palm flew to her mouth, trying to grasp the words that had just slipped out.
“Oh, my hell. You’re smitten,” I teased.
“I mean, yes and no. But—”
“But nothing. I’m in.”
She blinked a few times. “Wait, really?”
“Really,” I responded. My response was not in the least what I expected to come out, but I knew it was the right one. “You’re right. It’s probably time I reenter society. Wouldn’t want people to start to worry.”
“Well, that was easier than I expected it to be…” She paused. “I have a shift at The Wheel until seven on Saturday, then I’ll swing by and pick you up?”
“Perfect.” My eagerness was already starting to feel forced, but I couldn’t take it back now. “Speaking of, has Wilson said anything about me not being at the bar? I need to reach out to him.”
My savings from bartending had provided me with stability since the wedding, but it was dwindling fast and I needed to figure out my next move.
“He understands. Wants you to take your time. Said your job will always be there for you whenever you’re ready to come back.”
“Of course he did. That man is too pure.”
“That he is,” she said, collecting her keys from the coffee table. “Have you been writing?”
She must’ve thrown her keys down next to my leather-bound journal when she got here.
Although, I wasn’t sure anyone besides her and me would’ve been able to identify it as that.
The leather was warped in more places than one, with mysterious discoloration spots on it and various scratches from years of being taken everywhere with me.
Although, sometime after meeting Zane, it got tucked away, and little by little, it faded into the background of my life, rarely seeing the light of day. That was, until I stumbled upon it a few weeks ago and felt compelled to open it up again.
“I mean, I’m not sure you’d call it writing, but I’ve put some words on paper.”
“That’s something,” she said. She and I both knew that getting the words out of my head and onto the paper had always been my way of healing. “I know we’ll chat before, but I’ll see you around seven fifteen on Saturday night.”
“Okay, love you.”
“Love you.”
The door shut behind her and the realization of what I’d just agreed to came barreling into view. I leaned back on the couch, pressing my thumbs into my temples. I didn’t want to go, but I also didn’t not want to go.
On the one hand, I felt guilty. Guilty that despite not being the one to call off the wedding, I wasn’t nearly as heartbroken as I probably should’ve been.
But then, on the other hand, the idea of finally re-entering society, especially at a party where everyone would be focused on other things, seemed like the perfect opportunity to start moving on.
The last five years had been spent with Zane—albeit on again and off again—so the idea of being on my own actually felt like a bit of a relief. With that in mind, something awakened inside of me and glimpses of life flapped around the depths of my belly.
And with it came a dusting of uncertainty, creating a haze in my judgement.
“Ugh,” I groaned.
Then I remembered I wasn’t going to this party for me. Magnolia Nelson had been my person for as long as I could remember, present in every one of my good memories. But even more so, in every one of my bad memories, there she was, picking up the pieces.
Always there, no matter what.
So, based on her facial expressions alone, I knew everything I needed to know. I was going to Booker’s party, and I was going to have the biggest smile plastered on my face.
For her.