14. Sawyer
Sawyer
Irene dismisses us five minutes early with a parting message to finish our case studies or we shouldn’t bother coming back next week. Man, she’s intense.
I step into the hallway, about to beeline for the coffee shop, when my phone buzzes four times in a row. Students nudge past me, so I move closer to the wall and check my messages as I walk.
Mom: Don’t forget dinner tomorrow night. I made a reservation at Marcello’s.
Mom: 7:00. Don’t be late.
Mom: I know you’ll be late. Try not to be.
Mom: I love you. My baby’s going to be 25!
Gia falls into step beside me, craning her neck. “Someone’s popular.”
“Just my mom.” I shove the phone in my bag. “Tomorrow’s my birthday.”
“Wait, seriously?” She stops walking and grabs my arm. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because it’s not really a celebration kind of year…plus, I’m turning twenty-five, not twelve. I don’t need a big thing.”
“Everyone needs a thing,” she says like it’s a fact. “Even a small thing. Especially turning twenty-five. You’re a quarter century…that’s way longer than you’d have lived if we were in ye olden times.”
“Thanks for making me sound ancient.” I laugh and push the door open. The late afternoon heat engulfs us, muggy and hazy, making the parking lot seem miles away.
“I’m just saying. Medieval Sawyer would’ve been thrilled to make it this far.”
“Medieval Sawyer wouldn’t have had the impending doom of Irene’s case studies.”
“True. She’d have the plague instead.” I shake my head and let out a dry laugh. Gia keeps up pace next to me, hands in her pockets. “So what does your mom have planned?”
“Dinner at Marcello’s.” I dig my keys out of my bag. “Just the two of us this year.”
“Oh. That’s…nice.”
“Yeah. It’ll be good.”
When I glance over at Gia, she’s making a face like she wants to push for more, but thankfully, she doesn’t. We stop at her car, an ancient Jetta with a crack that looks like a road map across the windshield, and she leans against it, not quite ready to leave.
“My family’s always made a huge deal about birthdays.
” She twirls a keychain around her finger.
“Huge parties with too much food and even more drama. Someone usually leaves in tears, or at the very least, we have enough gossip to last us months.” A smile breaks out across her face. “God, I miss them.”
I laugh, imagining what that must be like. “Sounds chaotic.”
“It is. I love it.” She shoulder bumps me. “What were your birthdays like growing up? Always this boring?”
“Hey,” I say, playfully narrowing my eyes. “A nice quiet dinner isn’t boring. It’s…” I think for a second but can’t come up with another adjective. “Okay, it’s boring.”
“See,” she says with a laugh. “All your birthdays couldn’t have been like that, right?”
Her question has my mind going, but I don’t answer her right away. Instead, I watch a group of teenagers pile into a car a few spots over, laughing. God, I miss laughing like that.
“We’d always be up at the lake,” I start.
“My family and the family I grew up with. We’d spend the whole day by the water, either in the boat or picnicking on the shore.
” I can picture it so clearly my chest aches—Mom and Victoria in their wide brimmed hats, laughing together.
Richard and Dad bickering over who got to drive the boat.
Knox and Owen pushing each other off the dock.
“Knox and Owen used to have these breath-holding contests. Every single year. Knox always won and Owen always demanded a rematch. My mom said they were trying to impress me, but I never thought so.” I smile without meaning to.
“Then we’d always go to our favorite burger place, still in our bathing suits, coated in sand.
Mickey’s. It had those wooden benches that would give you splinters in your asscheek, Christmas lights all year, and the biggest ice cream cones I’ve ever seen in my life. ”
“That sounds really nice, Sawyer.”
“It was.” I clear my throat. “And the next day we’d all go to—” Wonder World. I stop myself, and look down at my keys. “Somewhere else.”
Gia doesn’t pry and I couldn’t be more grateful, even if the look on her face is asking the things she’s not saying.
“Anyway.” I straighten, hitching my bag higher. “Marcello’s is fine. My mom’s excited, so.”
“Yeah.” She pushes off the car and pulls me into a hug before I realize what she’s doing. “Happy almost birthday, Sawyer. I’m glad we’re not in medieval times. But if we were, I’d gladly drink some mead with you and scour the taverns for available lads.”
I shake my head. “Thanks, Gia. Maybe we can scour the taverns here in this century another time?”
“Sounds good,” she says. “I’m off to work. Miriam’s 5:00 dinner waits for no one.”
I wave her off and reach my car. Memories play through my mind of better times. Knox pulling Owen out of the water by his ankle. My dad burning the hot dogs and insisting they were well done. Victoria passing me sunscreen more often than I needed, going on about the importance of it for anti-aging.
The sunshine, the laughter, the love.
I sit there for a few minutes, letting the air-conditioning cool down before driving.
When I get to my street, I pass it without fully thinking things through. Then the next one flies by. Before I realize, I’m past the town limits and veering onto the highway. I know exactly where I’m going and there’s no explanation why.
Only one place in Lake Mercer has a vacant room.
The Stop & Go Motel. I almost turn around and head back to Ashford, but then I think about how depressing Mom will be tomorrow, celebrating my birthday for the first time without Owen.
She’ll drink too much wine, and get all nostalgic, not in the fun way, more in the sloppy weeping, woe is me way.
I can’t deal with that when I’m already messy enough for both of us.
Plus, my subconscious brought me here for some unknown reason, but when I spotted the sun setting over the lake in the distance, it felt right in my bones.
So what if the motel hasn’t been updated since Clinton was president? Who cares about that alleged murder in room six? It was probably a story Knox made up to mess with me. Highway noise…I can handle it.
I’m here and I’m staying.
The woman at the desk barely looks up from her phone as she checks me in. She just hands me a key card with my room number written on it—not six, thank God—and tells me checkout’s at eleven.
I get to the room and sit on the edge of the bed, realization hitting me.
I have my purse. My keys. My phone is at forty-two percent. The clothes on my back, which is a sundress that barely covers anything since Irene likes to keep her classroom at eighty degrees.
No toothbrush. No pajamas. No charger. No plan.
I laugh at myself a little, alone in this room that smells like wet towels and stale cigarettes.
Then I grab my purse to head to the store.
The little market on Main Street is the kind of shop that sells an entire wall of saltwater taffy, every trinket known to man, and one brand of everything useful.
I find the toiletries aisle in the back, between endcaps of sunscreen on sale and a rack of keychains shaped like fish, and crouch down, holding my basket to squint at the toothbrush options.
There are two. A children’s one with a cartoon crab on it, and a regular one in neon orange.
I’m reaching for the orange one when a hand comes in from the left and takes it.
I turn my head to see the face attached to the hand and suck in a sharp breath.
Knox is crouched next to me, reading the packaging, pretending he has no idea I’m here. My stomach does a flip that I refuse to acknowledge, which is immediately canceled out by the urge to knock the toothbrush out of his hand.
What the hell?
The aisle is only a touch wider than my hips, stuffed with so much crap, two people can barely pass each other. There’s nowhere to go to avoid whatever this will be.
“That was mine,” I say. The corner of his lips tip up as soon as I acknowledge his presence. “I grabbed it first. Take the crab one.”
“No. You take it.”
I grab the crab toothbrush and hold it up between us. “This has googly eyes on it.”
“More fun that way,” he says.
“I don’t want fun. I want the orange one.”
“Too bad.” He stands, dropping it in his basket, and I notice that it’s filled with a lot of the same items I came to buy—a travel deodorant, toothpaste, a charger. “Why do you even need a toothbrush? Where’s your stuff? Actually, why did you follow me here?”
“I didn’t follow you, not this time,” he retorts. “And I could ask you the same things. Why are you here and where’s your stuff?”
“I asked you first.”
“I didn’t exactly plan this,” he says.
“Neither did I.”
Our eyes meet and when I see the softness in his expression, I let my emotions win. I’m glad to see him. I hate myself for it, but I can’t ignore how my nerve endings wake up around him.
It’s still awkward, though.
Everything we are to each other sits heavy in the air and I feel the weight of it, the words dying to escape, but I don’t want to make the first move.
He nods toward the crab toothbrush still in my hand. “You should get a keychain to match.”
That takes me by surprise.
I look down at the rack, pick up a little enamel crab and drop it in my basket. “Happy?”
“Extremely.”
I hide my smile behind my palm.
He nods toward the aisle. “You need anything else?”
Am I really going to stand here and have a casual conversation with Knox?
I let myself actually look at him. He’s in nice pants that hug his thick thighs—business attire, but instead of a button-down and tie, he’s wearing a navy NASA T-shirt.
Of course those damn aviators are on his head, his messy hair pulled back around them. I hate that he looks so good.
I sigh and adjust the basket so it’s against my hip. “Yeah, a couple things. Clothes too. Technically, I have nothing.”
His eyes light up. “There’s a rack of tourist stuff by the front. I checked it out on the way in.”
“I’m sure you found loads of things that match your fashion sense.”