Walk a Mile

29. Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Now

“I want these, too.”

I shift our shopping basket, close to overflowing, to my other arm. “Don’t you think we have plenty?”

“This is it,” Theo says, holding a package of firecrackers in one hand and smoke bombs in the other. He starts to walk toward me but pauses when something else catches his eye. After rearranging the fireworks in his arms, he grabs a cannister labeled ‘La Vida Loca Fountain’ from the display table. “Okay, last thing.”

I watch as he carefully places his newest selections in the basket. “Pyro.”

“You’re sure not being very patriotic on our country’s birthday.”

“That’s because I usually try to pretend it doesn’t exist.”

Our eyes meet, understanding rippling in the air between us. It’s the Fourth of July, ten years to the day since we were torn apart, and this is the first time either of us have acknowledged it. Every year since I left Amity, I’ve done everything I could to avoid this day, even sleeping with ear plugs and drawn curtains so I could ignore the fireworks. I’d never forgotten riding away from the Jacksonville police station in my mom’s car, head throbbing from hours of crying, and seeing the sky lit up in celebration. I had no desire to relive that.

The tense moment passes, and we move toward the checkout at the front of the tent. The line is long, winding through the makeshift aisles. Theo takes the basket from me and puts his hand on my back, nudging me around a corner as we search for the end of the line. There’s a person standing with their back to us, browsing a display. I lose my balance as I squeeze through the crowd and accidentally bump into him, stepping on the back of his shoe.

“Sorry,” I say as Theo steadies me.

“It’s fine,” says the guy, glancing over his shoulder. He does a double take when he sees me before turning around completely, and I balk the second I recognize the cocky smirk of Vince Redding.

“Nina Sullivan,” he drawls, crossing his arms over his chest. “I heard you were back in town.”

I force a smile. The last time I saw Vince was when he insulted me and wouldn't let me walk away from him. I’ve run into enough old acquaintances by now that I’ve mostly gotten past the discomfort, but Vince is one of those people I’d definitely rather avoid. “Hey.”

Theo moves in closer, and Vince throws him an unenthusiastic, “Hey, Hoyt,” before returning his attention to me. He makes a big show of eyeing me up and down, letting out a low whistle. “Looking good.”

“Thanks,” I say in a tone meant to convey that I don’t mean it.

“So what are you guys doing?” Vince asks. “Having a party?”

“We’re going over to my parents’ house,” Theo cuts in before I can answer, like he wants to remind Vince he’s there. “We’re headed up to check out.”

Vince nods, but doesn’t take the hint to end the conversation. “You want to come out with me instead?” he asks me. “I’m meeting my friends up in Raleigh. We’re gonna shoot off some shit and then hit the bars.”

I think I'd rather relive every miserable Fourth of July of the past decade than accept this invitation. “Sounds fun, but I’m good.”

“Come on, now.” He nudges my arm. “You can’t follow this guy around forever. We’re not kids anymore.”

“Are you sure?” Theo asks, deadpan. “Because the way you’re acting right now reminds me of the time I punched you in the face.”

Vince snorts and raises his hands in mock surrender. “Still can’t take a joke, Hoyt, huh?” Although he’s acting nonchalant, he takes a couple steps backward, putting space between us. “That’s okay. You guys probably have a lot to talk about, anyway.”

His last sentence is punctuated with a meaningful look in Theo’s direction, and then he turns his back to us. We watch as he saunters to the other side of the tent and says something to a woman browsing alone. She giggles, he grins, and he’s officially onto a new flirtation.

I look up at Theo, who’s staring hard in Vince’s direction. “What was that about?”

“Nothing,” he says, a little bit quickly. “Let’s get in line.”

***

When we pull up to the Hoyts' house and see just how many cars are lining the block, I feel a kick of anxiety. Theo told me ahead of time that extended family and neighbors would be at the barbecue. In a moment of bravery, I agreed to go anyway.

"If it gets to be too much," he tells me as we trudge up the drive, weighed down by plastic bags of fireworks, "let me know and we'll leave."

The house is full of the Hoyts' family, friends, and neighbors, and the minute Theo and I step through the front door, we're showered in greetings, pulled into hugs. I stick close to Theo's side; this type of family gathering has always felt foreign to me, since my parents were only children whose own parents died young.

But it's not too much. As we move through the house, everybody we stop to talk to is nothing but warm and welcoming. They don't ask intrusive questions about where I've been or what I'm doing here; they don't stare at my scar or hold the past against me. Over and over, it's so good to see you and how are you doing and let us know if you need anything . When Theo's grandmother sees me for the first time, her eyes grow watery, and she reaches out to grasp my hands in her papery ones.

"Oh, Nina Lynn," she says, "look at you, beautiful girl. Back where you belong."

"Gram," Theo warns,wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "Nina gets to decide where she belongs."

"I didn't mean Amity," his grandmother tsks . "I meant standing next to you."

Over her head, Theo sends me an apologetic grimace. “Gram, that’s not--”

“Thank you,” I interrupt, surprising myself and not even knowing who I’m speaking to—her for calling me beautiful or him for trying to make me comfortable. I squeeze her hand and say, “This is exactly where I want to be,” and the way Theo’s gaze heats has me looking at the floor.

We go into the backyard, where Cecil is grilling burgers and hot dogs. Randi sits in a lawn chair with a canned margarita in her hand, bare feet propped on a cooler in front of her.

“Kids,” she scolds affectionately, and in that moment, I am one. Something that feels suspiciously like joy bubbles up, as if I’ve somehow traveled back to that time in my life when the world was simple—even though now, it’s anything but. “We already have way too many fireworks.”

“That’s a matter of opinion,” Theo tells her, moving some of the fireworks already covering the patio table to make room for his. “Everything was half off, anyway.”

“I tried to stop him,” I say.

She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. Behind her, a group of kidschase a soccer ball around the yard. Theo had mentioned that some of his cousins have kids now, and they’re standing nearby, talking and drinking. I see them notice us. When they raise their hands to wave, I smile and wave back.

One of the boys, maybe six or seven years old, grabs the ball and holds it over his head. “Uncle Theo!” he hollers. “Come play with us!”

I raise my eyebrows,thinking of the nephews I’ve never met. “Uncle?”

He shrugs. “It’s simpler than Second Cousin Theo.”

“They’re your first cousins, once removed,” Cecil chimes in.

“Know-it-all,” Theo says good-naturedly, elbowing his dad in the side. He scoots behind me, resting a hand on my hip. “You okay?”

“Sure,” I say, and with a quick kiss to my cheek, he’s off. In my peripheral vision, I see Cecil and Randi exchange a pointed glance. But I keep my eyes on Theo, watching as he swiftly scoops the ball from the boy’s hands and takes off with it. The kids follow him, squealing, until he throws himself on the ground and lets them pile on top of him.

“Nina, how are things going at the store?” Cecil asks me. “I was there on Tuesday, but I didn’t see you.”

“That’s usually my day off,” I say, sinking into the lawn chair beside Randi.

“I saw Judith. She said you’ve been such a help,” Randi tells me, the corners of her eyes crinkling with a warm smile. She reaches into her cooler and grabs me a margarita, popping the tab before she hands it to me. “I told her that I’m absolutely not surprised.”

“You always did a good job at Walk a Mile,” Cecil agrees. I take a sip of my drink, drawing it out, caught off guard—and a little uncomfortable—with how casually they’ve started talking about the store. “When we were teaching you and Theo how to make change, you picked it up a lot faster than him.”

“Oh, Lord,” groans Randi. “Every day for two weeks, if he had rung somebody up, the drawer would be short.”

“But Nina was great at it,” Cecil says. “And she was a year younger! Eight or nine, I think.”

I was nine, and I know because I clearly remember the last time he messed up the drawer. My mom had counted it, found it short, and called me into the backroom. We were missing twelve dollars, and I wasted no time in throwing Theo under the bus in the interest of self-preservation. It didn’t work; I was working alongsidehim, so as far as she was concerned, I was responsible too.

When I told Theo that I’d gotten yelled at for his mistake, he asked me to help him understand how to make change. We took some money from the register and practiced a few times. I watched as he carefully counted bills and coins into the hand of our next customer, giving him a nodwhen he glanced back for confirmation that he’d done it correctly.

“I won’t mess up anymore,” he promised me.

That night, and every single night afterward, the drawer was balanced.

I search for him in the yard and find him talking to his cousins, one kid splayed across his back while the youngest one, a toddler, taps his thigh. A warmth blooms in my chest, expanding even more when he catches my eye and shoots me a quick wink.

“You know what else you were good at?” Randi says, and I bring myself back toour conversation. “Upselling.”

“That’s right.” Cecil momentarily stops flipping the burgers to point his spatula at me. “People would get up to the register and by the time you were done with them, they’d be spending twice as much money.”

Randi pats my knee. “You were a natural.”

“I liked the store,” I admit. “Theo and I used to talk about taking over eventually.”

It’s been so long since this dream was even possible—if it ever was—but since I've returned, I’ve felt unsettled by it. Like there's something I should be doing, something unfinished. There isn’t, of course—the store has been gone for ten years and was on its way out long before that.

But the more time I spend here, the more I want to reach into the past and grasp at those old possibilities.

“So, Nina,” Randi says, and now her voice is tinged with hesitation. I take another swig of my drink, bracing myself. “I’ve been wanting to ask...how is your family?”

“You haven’t asked Theo?”

“There are a lot of things I’ve been wanting to ask both you and Theo,” she admits, “but I’m trying to respect your privacy.”

It’s too early for the stars to be out, so I press the cold aluminum can to the inside of my thigh and focus on the steady numbing of my skin. “My parents are divorced.”

“Hmm,” Randi hums, sympathetic but unsurprised.

“I know. Big shock. Dad and Brock moved west together afterward, and I stayed with Mom.”

“And do you speak to them?”

A peal of laughter rings through the air, and I stare out at the yard, at Theo, asI answer. “Not much. Brock has two kids, but I’ve never met them. And Mom...” I let out a sardonic laugh. “She’s mad at me for ending my engagement, so I guess that’s over now, too.”

“Oh, Nina.” Randi leans forward to put a hand on my arm. Her palm is warm and clammy from the humid evening, and still, it’s exactly what I need right now. “I am so sorry. You deserve better.”

“It’s alright, Ra--”

“No,” she interrupts, her normally soft demeanor suddenly replaced with uncharacteristic ferocity. “No, it is not alright. I spent so much time watching your mother mistreat you while your father and brother did nothing about it. And--” She closes her eyes briefly. “And neither did I.”

I press my drink harder against the flesh of my thigh. “She wouldn’t have listened to you.”

“You’re right. But I still wish I’d said something.”Randi moves her hand down to cover mine,curled over the cloth arm of my chair. “And since I’m already making you uncomfortable--”

“You aren’t,” I lie.

“I’m sorry for keeping Theo away from you.”

Involuntarily, I draw back, unprepared for the barrage of emotions that dredges up. “What?”

“After the police found you,” she says, as if I’m not already having vivid technicolor flashbacks. “We just wanted to protect him. We should have been doing the same for you.”

“He’s your son,” I say stiffly, even as I think of all the opportunities for things to be different, the opportunities that nobody took. Cecil and Randi may have told Theonot to talk to me, but he’s the one who listened, and I’m the one who was so hurt from a few days of being ignored that I decided to do the ignoring for the rest of our lives.“Of course you’d put him first.”

“But we love you like our daughter.”

Cecil’s voice cuts intothe conversation, startling me. I’d completely forgotten that he was lingering within earshot. He stands with his back to the grill, watching me expectantly, and slowly, I begin to process what he’s said.

“We do,” Randi reiterates. “Theo grieved immensely when you left, but so did we. We always hoped...” She trails off, her chin quivering a little before she stills it with a shaky smile. “We’re just so very glad you’re here.”

Maybe it’s her sincerity, or her squeeze of my hand, or the sound of Theo’s raucous laughter moving through the hot air, or the fact that I’d be alone tonight if it weren’t for the Hoyts. Whatever the reason, I find the strength to break through the cageof tension holding me back and wrap my arms around the woman who’s said all the things I wish I could hear from my own mother.

“Oh,” she says, surprised, but hugs me back hard.

A moment later, a pair of arms surrounds both of us, and from somewhere above my head comes Cecil’s voice: “It hasn’t been the same around here without you, Nina Lynn.”

Footsteps run across the patio, growing louder as they approach, and I know without looking that they belong to Theo. He kneels on the ground between Randi’s chair and mine, wedging himself into the only opening left. “What’s going on?” he asks, slinging his arms over our shoulders. His eyes scan my face, assessing, and I nod to indicate that I’m just fine. “Group hug?”

Randi pulls everybody in further. “Family hug.”

***

When the food has been served and night has fallen, everybody migrates to the Hoyts’ driveway to watch the fireworks. One of Theo’s uncles puts himself in charge of setting them off at the end of the driveway, and the rest of us mingle near the fence, the older adults in chairs while everyone else sits on the ground or stands.

I’m leaning back on the fence, the splintered wood poking my butt through my shorts, when Theo comes to join me. He sidles up to my side; shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, we stand there together, looking out toward the street.

“You’re not setting off you own stuff?”

“Nah,” he says as his uncle lights a sparkler and touches it to a cylinder sitting on the asphalt. The air fills with the familiar sizzle, whine, crack of a firework streaking upward and exploding in the dark sky. The kids squeal and clap. “I want to watch with you.”

I smile at him just as another firework goes off a block away. Another one of ours follows, and it feels like a show.

“You know what this reminds me of?” Theo asks, and from the way his voice has grown quiet, audible only to me, I have a feeling I know where this is going.

I rest the back of my head against the fence and let it loll in his direction. He does the same, and when the next set of fireworks goes off, our faces are only inches apart. “What?”

“That night I was in the holding cell while everything got sorted out,” he says, and my chest aches at the way his past pain threads through his words. “I was sitting there thinking my life was over, and all I could hear were fucking fireworks.”

“Yeah. I hated them for a long time.”

Theo nudges the bill of his cap upward, and another burst of light, another crack , lights his face. “Until tonight?”

“Don’t give yourself too much credit.”

He laughs, then I do; and then he moves a little closer, his fingers brushing the pulse at my wrist. “Nina--”

My phone vibrates in my back pocket, buzzing loudly against the fence and breaking the moment. I wince. “Sorry,” I say, pulling it out. “I’m not--”

With my finger poised to reject what I assumed would be spam, I pause.

Because it’s Daniel calling me.

“What the hell ?” I stare down at the screen, stunned. “What does he want?”

Theo lets his hand fall to his side and takes a step back, putting space between us that I have the urge to close. “Pick it up.”

“What? I don’t want to.”

“He’s calling you at almost ten o’clock on a holiday,” he says stiffly. He adjusts his hat, bringing it down to shield his eyes. Even in the light of the fireworks, they’re hidden from me, and a heavy rock forms in my stomach at the idea of him closing himself off.“See what he wants.”

I stare at him, because I’m pretty sure that Theo doesn’t want me to take this call any more than I do. But then he turns and walks off, toward the rest of his family, and I'm left alone.

I gather my courage and swipe quickly across the screen, catching the call before it goes to voicemail. I lift it to my ear, only managing a weak, “Hello.”

“Hello,” comes Daniel’s voice, impatient as ever.

I wait to feel some sort of wistfulness or regret, but there’s nothing. I have no desire to talk to Daniel. No desire to repair anything. I want to get this conversation over with and return to Theo and whatever was happening before we were interrupted.

I step through the gate and into the empty backyard, keeping my voice low. “Why are you calling me?”

Daniel sighs, and I find pleasure in the fact that he’s already annoyed. “I've got a company coming to pack and ship your stuff in the morning.”

Another round of fireworks; I use my pointer finger to plugmy free ear. “Okay? You had to call me this late to tell me that?”

“I just got off work.”

“It’s a holiday.”

“Some of us have jobs, Nina,” he snipes, and I barely manage to bite my tongue. “Just give me an address to send it to.”

I rattle off Theo’s address easily and wait while Daniel writes it down.

“Let me guess,” he says. “You’re staying with him?”

There’s no need to clarify who him is. “Why do you care?”

“I don’t.”

I roll my eyes, thinking sounds like you do , butthere’s no point in starting an argument. We broke up less than a month ago; our wedding was supposed to be four days from now...and yet, the three years I spent with Daniel already feels like distant history.

“Okay,” I tell him. “If that’s all you needed, I’m gonna go.”

He doesn’t say anything. I give him one second, two, and then I end the call, deciding that this conversation was the last of my time, my energy, or myself that I’ll ever give Daniel Hartley.

A sound behind me has me turning back, and there is Theo, one hand on the fence and the other holding the gate open. In the moonlit shadows, I can see the defined curve of his biceps, the point of his nose.

Silence stretches between us. In the driveway, another firework goes off; Theo waits for it to finish crackling before he asks, “What did he want?”

“Nothing.” I slip my phone back in my pocket. “He was asking where to send the stuff I left at his apartment.”

“This late?” Theo asks doubtfully. “On the Fourth of July?”

I shrug. “He has a very important job ,” I drawl sarcastically. “Too busy to callat a normal time, I guess.”

“Are you sure he wasn’t looking for an excuse to talk to you? Feeling you out for another chance?”

“I don’t think so, and even if he was, I really wouldn’t care. We’re done.” I make a slashing motion across my throat. “Finished.”

Theo removes his hat, curls the brim, and replaces it backwards. I look at him. He looks at me.

“Thank God,” he breathes into the silence, his voice thick with relief, and then he’s crossing the space between us, and he’s right there, his palms are on my cheeks, his mouth is on mine.

His kiss is so intensely familiar, yet still like nothing I’ve felt before. This is not the euphoric make-out of our last summer together. Tonight, we have years of pain and separation and grief behind us, between us, and I feel every ounce of that heavy history in the press of his fingers, the caress of his lips, the stroke of his tongue.

“Theo.”

He pulls back, and even in the dim light I cansee his face shuttering, prepared for disappointment. “Yeah, Sass.”

Feeling his grip on me loosen, I wind my arms around his neck to keep him close. I prop my chin on his shoulder, letting my lips brush his ear when I speak against it. “ Let’s go home.”