Chapter 3 Aubree
THREE
AUbrEE
That kiss still keeps me up at night. I never thought I’d hear those words from him. Never thought that stupid kiss the night I turned eighteen even mattered to him. It’d mattered to me, obviously. But I’d never gotten any indication that he’d felt anything.
God, coming back here is going to open up so many boxes I’ve closed tight and shoved into the recesses of my mind that it might as well kill me.
One good thing, though, is connecting with my high school best friend, Nora. We’ve FaceTimed, emailed, texted, and she’s even visited me, but we haven’t lived in the same city since I left.
I pull out my phone and scroll to her contact, my fingers still slightly shaky from my encounter with Jesse.
A
I’m home!
Immediately, there are three dots.
N
Oh my god! I’m so excited. Wanna hang out?
Looking at the stuff around my room, I decide quickly I don’t want to spend my first afternoon and evening unpacking. There’s plenty of time for that. Besides, I need a distraction from replaying Jesse’s words over and over in my mind.
A
Yes! Come get me?
N
I’m over at the vet’s office. I’ll be there in fifteen.
A
See ya!
Nora’s a vet tech who helps out through the county, and I’m lucky she’s close. Quickly, I change, trading my travel clothes for a comfortable pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and wash the travel off me, before grabbing my purse and heading downstairs to wait on the porch.
The wooden steps creak under my feet as I settle onto the top step, just like they used to when I was a kid waiting for my dad to drive me to the bus stop.
Some things never change, I suppose. The prairie stretches out before me, endless and golden under the late afternoon sun.
It’s beautiful in a way I’d forgotten, or maybe chose to forget when I was desperate to escape to what I thought were bigger and better things.
“Already going somewhere?” Truett asks. He’s standing in the doorway, thumbing through his cell phone, probably checking the weather forecast like he does every few hours during every season of the year.
“Yeah, Nora’s coming to get me. We’re gonna catch up. Is that okay with you, Dad?”
The word slips out before I can stop it. I haven’t called him Dad since I was sixteen and trying to assert my independence. His expression softens, and I see a flash of the boy who turned into a man in one night and chased away the monsters from my nightmares.
He snorts, but it’s gentle. “It’s fine. If you need a ride, because I know how the two of you get, call me.”
With those words, it’s like I never left.
Nora and I had been notorious for losing track of time, getting caught up in whatever adventure we’d dreamed up.
There was the time we decided to hike to the old mining cave and didn’t come back until after midnight, or when we got distracted by a roadside farmer’s market and came home with three pies and a goat we’d somehow convinced Truett to let us keep for exactly one week.
“Love you, Tru.”
“Yeah, yeah. I gotta go. Be safe, okay?”
I watch him walk toward the barn where Dave’s probably still fighting with that cultivator, his shoulders set in the determined line that means he won’t stop until whatever’s broken is fixed.
He’s always been that way—a problem solver, a fixer.
It’s probably why he’s taken care of everyone around him his whole life, including me.
The guilt hits me like a physical blow. Jesse was right, wasn’t he? I had been spoiled. Truett gave me everything after our parents died, tried to be mother and father both, and I repaid him by running away the first chance I got.
A cloud of dust on the horizon signals Nora’s approach, and I push the guilty thoughts aside. There’ll be time for self-deprecation later. Right now, I need my best friend and whatever normalcy she can provide.
Nora’s truck, newer than the old one she drove in high school, skids to a stop beside me.
Grizzly River Vet Services is slapped on the door, which reminds me that we’ve all grown up.
Through the windshield, I can see her grinning like a maniac, her red hair pulled back in a messy bun that somehow looks effortlessly chic on her.
“Aubree Michelle!” she shouts, pulling out my middle name, jumping out of the truck before it’s fully stopped. “Get your ass over here and hug me!”
I can’t help but laugh as I run down the steps and into her arms. She smells like hay and the vanilla body spray she’s worn since we were fifteen. It’s the smell of home in a way that’s different from the ranch house but just as powerful.
“God, I missed you,” I mumble into her shoulder.
“Missed you too, city girl.” She pulls back to look at me, her hands on my shoulders. “You look like you’re doing okay.”
Okay is a good way to put it. I’m not good, not bad, but I’m making it. “I am.”
She links her arm through mine, steering me toward the truck. “Come on. Let’s get out of here before your brother decides he wants to interrogate us about where we’re going, and then tells us it’s a bad idea.”
“He’s not that bad,” I protest, but I’m already climbing into the passenger seat.
“Please. Remember when we were seventeen, and we wanted to go to that party at Miller’s pond? He made you promise to text him every hour and had Jesse follow us in his truck.”
The mention of Jesse’s name sends a flutter through my stomach. “I forgot about that.”
“I didn’t. Jesse parked where he thought we couldn’t see him and spent the whole night glaring at any guy who looked at you sideways.” She starts the truck and backs out of the driveway, gravel crunching under the tires. “Looking back, it was kind of sweet. At the time, I wanted to murder him.”
“He was just looking out for me because Truett asked him to.” The words sound hollow even to me.
Nora gives me a look that clearly says she’s not buying it. “Sure, he was. That’s why he looked like he wanted to commit actual homicide when Brad Patterson asked you to dance.”
I remember that night. I remember Jesse cutting in after one song, his hand warm and steady on my back as he guided me away from Brad and toward the bonfire.
I remember thinking he was being overprotective and annoying.
Now I wonder if there was more to it. Did he like me back then, when I was quietly pining over him?
“Anyway,” Nora continues, turning onto the main road toward town. “Enough about ancient history. How are you feeling about being back?”
“Honestly? I’m not sure. It’s weird being in my old room, seeing everything exactly the same. Part of me expected things to change more, you know?”
“Time moves differently here,” she says, and there’s wisdom in her voice that I’d forgotten about. Nora always was the philosophical one. “But you’ve changed. I can see it more now that you’re back in Grizzly River. It wasn’t so apparent when I visited you in Chicago.”
“How?”
She’s quiet for a moment, considering. “You’re more…polished, I guess. Like you’ve learned how to hide parts of yourself. The Aubree I knew wore her heart on her sleeve.”
Her words hit uncomfortably close to home. “Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe I needed to learn how to protect myself.”
“Maybe. Or maybe you just got hurt and learned to build walls.”
She knows more about what happened than anyone else.
I turn to look out the window at the passing landscape—fields of corn and wheat, the occasional farmhouse, cattle dotting the pastures like brown and black specks against the green.
It’s peaceful in a way Chicago never was, but it also feels confining, like the whole world could be contained within these county lines.
“So where are we going?” I ask, deflecting from her too-accurate observations.
“My place. I have an apartment above the hardware store in Grizzly River now. It’s tiny, but it’s mine. I thought we could grab lunch at the diner and then catch up properly.”
Grizzly River is barely big enough to be called a town.
One main street with a handful of businesses and maybe three hundred people if you’re being generous.
But it has charm, with its old brick buildings and tree-lined streets.
It’s the kind of place where everyone knows everyone, and secrets are impossible to keep.
The diner looks exactly the same as it did in high school, complete with red vinyl booths and a black-and-white checkered floor that’s probably older than both of us. Marge Henderson is still behind the counter, her gray hair teased high and her apron stained with what looks like gravy.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Marge says when she sees me. “Aubree Weber, as I live and breathe. Heard you were coming home.”
News travels fast in small towns. “Hi, Mrs. Henderson. Good to see you.”
“You too, honey. You look good. City life’s been treating you well.”
If only she knew. “Thank you.”
“What can I get you girls?”
We order—a chicken salad sandwich and sweet tea for me, a burger and fries for Nora—and find a booth in the back where we can talk without the entire diner listening in.
“Okay,” Nora says once Marge has brought our drinks. “Spill. And don’t give me the sanitized version you gave me last time I asked. I want the real story of why you’re back.”
I take a sip of sweet tea, buying myself time. It’s perfect, exactly the right balance of sweet and bitter, nothing like the fancy drinks I’ve gotten used to in Chicago.
“My life imploded,” I say finally.
“How so?”
“Remember how I always said I wanted to work in marketing? Have a career, be independent, all that?”
She nods.
“Well, I got what I wanted. You and I never really talked about it, but the job I had? It was great. I had a nice apartment, friends. I thought I was living the dream.”
“But?”
“But the man I told you I was completely in love with? The one I was seeing, and I was so excited about?”
“I do. We didn’t talk about it much because you didn’t want to, and I wanted to respect that,” she says, taking another bite of her food.
I put my drink down. “I found out he was married.”