Page 32 of Reeves

The highway bends toward the coast, and the lights of Bay St. Louis begin to appear ahead. The town looks the same—quiet streets, front porches, people living ordinary lives behind thin walls and glowing windows.

It’s the kind of place where men like me were never meant to stay.

The residential streets narrow as I turn onto Magnolia Lane. My hands move automatically now, the turns familiar even though I’ve only been here a handful of times.

The seafoam cottage comes into view halfway down the block.

Both times before, I kept going. A slow pass. A turn at the corner. Back to the highway before anyone noticed.

I ease off the gas again, telling myself this will be the same. But this time, Charli stands in the driveway.

She leans into the back seat of her car, pulling a bag out. The porch light casts her in silhouette, but I'd know that profile anywhere. The curve of her neck. The way she tucks her hair behind her ear.

She straightens, arms full of what looks like grocery bags. Then she turns, and our eyes meet through my open window.

Fuck.

EIGHT

Charli

The Trumpet:Carries the melody of the dirge, a sound that, in New Orleans, has always resembled something trying to get free.

For a second,I forget how to move.

The grocery bags hang heavy in my arms while my brain tries to catch up with what I’m seeing.

Reeves Stone.

Six years have passed since the last time I saw him, but the recognition hits instantly.

The black Hummer rolls past my driveway before the brake lights flare twenty feet up the street. The truck stops at the curb, engine idling in the warm evening air.

He’s stopping.

My mouth goes dry, and I realize I’m still standing there with an armful of groceries like someone pressed pause on the rest of my body.

I should go inside. Close the door and pretend I never saw him.

Instead, I turn and set the bags back in the car before walking down the driveway toward the truck.

The Hummer alone costs more than I made last year. I know because I was with him when he bought it.

I think about the insurance claim I've been fighting for six weeks over a forty-dollar co-pay, and keep walking anyway.

Each step is automatic, like my body has already decided what to do while the rest of me struggles to catch up. My heart pounds hard enough that every breath comes shallow.

The wind chimes at my neighbor’s house stir in the evening breeze as I reach the open driver’s window.

The scent hits me first, the same clean soap and leather I remember from another lifetime.

His hair is shorter now, and the years have filled out his shoulders beneath the dark t-shirt. Both arms are covered in tattoos that run down to his wrists. He didn't have a single tattoo the last time I saw him, and now he looks like he's covered in them.

But his eyes haven’t changed.

The intense emerald green, just like Benjy's, are still dark and steady, watching me with that same unreadable calm that used to make my pulse race.

“Are you stalking me now?” The question is meant to break the ice, a little tongue in cheek, but once it leaves my mouth it doesn’t sound that way.