Chapter 17 #2
“Why didn’t you tell us you don’t like driving?” he asks.
“Why did you assume I liked driving?” I volley back, keeping my tone light.
“Because you volunteered whenever we were talking about it,” he says, and I think he may be right. That while everyone else fought over who had to drive, I’d offer, take on the helpful role I’d gotten so comfortable in at home. “We’re your family. You can tell us shit, you know?”
My stomach bottoms out, and I can’t help but flick my eyes over to Thea.
I’ve been so dishonest with everyone. Not just about my history with her, but about what I want and how I feel about my place in the family.
I don’t regret lying about Thea. I don’t think I could regret anything that brought Thea into my life, but I do wish I’d been better with my cousins.
More honest about what I want. I think I’ve gotten so used to what I want not mattering that I assumed they’d act the same way, and that’s not fair to them.
“You’re right,” I say.
Tommy’s brows pull together, like he was anticipating more of a fight, but then he claps his hands. “Great. Then let’s get you drunk, little cousin.”
“Get your own booze,” Jourdan says, clutching the flask to her when Tommy reaches for it again.
Tommy dives on his baby sister, wrestling it away from her and tossing it over to me. While he holds Jourdan back, I chug the contents, then throw it back to her. She lifts it over her mouth, whining when only a couple of drops come out.
I throw an arm over her shoulder, already feeling the effects of the rum. “I’ll buy you a beer when we get there.”
We all spend the next fifteen minutes with our hands in our pockets, calling out a warning about Thea’s game to anyone who joins the party until Gabriel admits defeat and trudges off to pull around the bus.
I feel guilty about Jourdan’s flask, so I run over to the inn’s restaurant to have it filled up.
By the time I get back, they’re all loaded up and waiting for me.
The second I step on the bus, everyone stretches out in their seats.
I make my way down the aisle, hearing excuse after excuse for why I can’t sit with my cousins.
“No, I can’t share,” Jourdan says when I pass over the flask and gesture to the seat next to her. “I sprained my ankle while wrestling with Tommy and need to keep it elevated.”
I didn’t see her get hurt, but fine.
“Sorry,” Lynne says a few seats back. “My bag’s giant and I need a place to put it.”
When I reach Camila near the back of the bus, she’s sitting across the aisle from her wife instead of with her. She rolls her eyes. “Of course I can’t share. I’m sitting for two. I need the space while I’m growing a literal human.”
My brows kick up. “You sat with Mira on the way to the bar yesterday.”
“This is a big developmental window. Huge changes in a short amount of time. You’ll understand when your future wife is with child.
” The tone she uses when she says those last words is so overexaggerated, I’m surprised she doesn’t stand up and take a bow like an actor in a Shakespearean play.
“But I think I saw a seat in the back next to Thea.”
Mira lets out a long-suffering sigh and rubs a hand across her forehead, mouthing sorry.
I walk past more cousins who avoid eye contact and spread themselves out like wild animals looking to defend their territory before I reach Thea.
“Do you mind?” I ask quietly.
She shrugs. “Doesn’t seem like we have much choice.”
I don’t want her feeling like she doesn’t have a choice. The idea of her feeling trapped into anything, much less spending time with me, causes a buzzing underneath my skin.
I slide into the seat, but whisper, “I won’t let my cousins pressure you into sitting with me because they came up with some harebrained scheme.”
She shifts closer to hear me, and I turn my head to get a hit of her, that spicy scent that’s becoming the most intoxicating smell in the world. Our gazes clash, but she doesn’t move away. There’s a buzzing under my skin, and I can’t tell if it’s from the rum or from Thea’s presence.
It’s dark in the bus, the two of us closed away in the back row with nothing to shine a light on what we do. It’d be so easy to slip my hand over her knee, to let my fingertips tease the seam of her jeans, higher and higher until I reach where she was aching for me earlier.
“This isn’t distance,” I whisper, holding on to the barest dregs of my self-control.
“Yeah,” she breathes out, the word coasting over my lips.
I abruptly shift away and rub a hand over my eyes.
I’ve never had a problem putting another person’s needs before mine, so why can’t I stop being so selfish with Thea?
We need to talk, but we can’t do it here with all my cousins’ heads tilted just slightly to the side to catch the latest drama.
I gesture for her phone, and when she hands it over, I save my number and send a text, sending another from my phone a few seconds later.
Owen: We should have each other’s numbers again.
Thea: Yeah, that’s smart.
We sit side by side. How do I follow that up?
I’m sorry my family is so invested in our potential future that they keep throwing us together?
I’m sorry for so desperately wanting you that I keep forgetting we’re supposed to stay away from each other?
Do you want this as badly as I do? Because it sure as hell looked like she did.
I’m drafting and redrafting potential texts in my mind, but there’s one thing I keep coming back to.
Owen: Why did you delete your number?
Thea’s warm body tenses beside me, and her soft gasp is blaring in the silence of our little corner.
My eyes stay glued to the screen as the bubbles pop up.
Then disappear. Over and over and over again, her arm shifting against mine every time she types, like a tease of the words that might never come. I can’t stop myself from writing again.
Owen: Did I do something? Make you feel uncomfortable?
Owen: because I thought that weekend was amazing, then when I tried to call you, realized you must not have felt the same way. But now we’re here and I don’t think it was all in my head, and god, Thea, I’m so confused.
From the corner of my eye, I see Thea drop her phone on her lap. I feel the jolt of our attached seats when she knocks her head back against the headrest. With every second she doesn’t answer, my heart sinks further into my stomach. I’m such a jerk.
Owen: I’m sorry.
Owen: The alcohol from earlier is hitting me harder than I realized. I don’t know what I was thinking. Cornering you on a bus about why you ghosted me is not the move.
Owen: I’m so sorry.
Thea looks at me, but I can’t look back.
I can’t see disappointment or frustration written on the lines of what has become my favorite face in the world.
It’s my turn to tense when her fingers start flying.
It feels like ages, and when my phone buzzes in my hand, I rush to read it so quickly I fumble my phone.
My lip quirks against my will at the little novel she’s sent.
Thea: Don’t apologize. It’s a fair question.
I didn’t respond because I don’t know how to.
I didn’t even fully think it through. I was sitting in your car while you were in the gas station, and your phone was there and shockingly unlocked and it just felt like the universe was telling me to do it.
And I know that sounds ridiculous, but the truth is I’m a bit fucked-up.
Was even more fucked-up back then. I deleted my number because I was scared you wouldn’t call and I’d feel like shit.
And because I was scared you WOULD call, and I’d end up ruining everything eventually and I’d feel like shit.
And I didn’t know how to handle the potential of having you and losing you.
She really did feel this thing between us.
It’s both heartbreaking and a relief. What could have been if she hadn’t deleted her number?
Would she have said yes to a date? Would we be three years deep into a relationship, or would we have exploded, leaving so much damage in our wake that Harrison and Addy never would have found their way to each other?
Neither of us says anything else, but her words I didn’t know how to handle the potential of having you and losing you float in front of my eyes for the rest of the drive.
Elk Ridge’s downtown looks like it stepped right out of a Hallmark film.
A flat square park dominates the middle.
Kids run through, jumping over each other and wrestling in the grass while their parents try to wrangle them.
The park is circled by buildings on three sides, all mom-and-pop restaurants and stores.
No chains in sight. People from town stop by, asking how I’ve been.
If you boil down the time I’ve spent with these folks, it’s only a few years, but it’s been spread over my entire life, and each time I come back, they welcome me with open arms.
A group of the twins’ friends come over, plying me with beer at Tommy’s request. They come from all walks of life—the town doctor, a few of the mechanics who work at Jourdan’s shop, the ice cream shop owner concerned about leaving the store in the hands of her teenage nephew—but they’ve become their own sort of family.
I haven’t been drunk in ages, and I stumble off to the bathroom before the movie starts.
I don’t recognize the man in the mirror.
My cheeks are flushed and my eyes bright, and it’s not because of the booze.
It’s freeing, hanging out with friends and family without anyone to take care of.
It’s a feeling I could get used to, if not at home, at least when I visit.
I think I could be happy with just that.