34
AMELIA
I letmyself sit in the dark until headlights swept over the living room wall. I wiped my face with a paper towel, then ran my fingers under cold water in the kitchen, which felt like scrubbing with mud.
I grabbed my bag and threw it in with the few boxes that I filled.
Dante parked in front of the house without turning off the engine. He leaned against the headrest, looking up at the porch, his face pale in the wash of his phone screen. When he saw me, he opened the door and hopped out.
He looked the same, except his features were more defined as a man. Warm eyes that held hues of gold. Tousled black hair.
I remembered how it felt to run my hands through his hair as he devoured my lips, as he pleasured me all those years ago.
I remembered the last time I had seen him, seven years ago, before I left town. I ran into him in town and told him I was leaving, and that I wanted to properly say goodbye.
He agreed, still having feelings for me, and we lost ourselves in each other in a motel room that night.
We were sober the second time, and he took his sweet time touching me, kissing me, holding me. The memory of that night felt foreign, as if it had been a dream.
“Hey, Amelia. It’s been a while.” He smiled. My insides untwisted, and I smiled at him. It was small, just a tug of my lips, but enough to show him I was pleased to see him.
“Hi Dante. It has been a long time. Seven years.”
He seemed to consider the number, then smiled again, like he could make time itself less cruel just by not blinking. “That’s longer than it feels. You look…” He trailed off, scanning my face, and I tried to figure out what he saw.
The makeup had bled off in streaks, and my eyes had the ghost-sheen of crying.
“Like shit?” I offered.
He laughed softly, a sound that didn’t judge. “No. Just…real.” His gaze flicked to the bags at my feet. “Let me grab those.”
He slung the boxes into his trunk with the practiced ease of someone who’d moved other people’s grief before.
Then he opened the door, a gesture so old-fashioned it almost made me smile for real. I slid in, clutching my purse in my lap, and for a moment we just sat in the blue-lit hush of his dashboard. I could see the ghost of my reflection in the window: hollow-eyed, mouth set, but alive.
“Thanks for coming. I didn’t want to bother you, but I?—”
“Don’t sweat it. You’re here. That’s enough.” He thumbed at his car. “Want to get out of here? I was thinking maybe the diner. It’s open till two.”
The suggestion was a lifeline. I nodded, and between one heartbeat and the next we were on the road, the heater blasting, the night blurring past in watery streaks.
The town had changed around the edges, but the core of it was still the same: empty lots, upside-down for-sale signs,streetlights buzzing like angry bees. My mother’s house shrunk in the rearview, a mausoleum receding into the cold.
We didn’t talk, not at first. Dante drove with one hand on the wheel and the other fiddling with the radio, scrolling through static until he found a station playing something soft and anonymous.
I watched his fingers, the way they tapped out the beat, the way he flexed them when the cold bit through the car. I remembered those hands at my waist. I remembered the night we checked into the Oakwood Inn and the way he’d laughed at the ugly floral comforter, said,“We deserve at least one memory that isn’t filled with tears or angst.”
I had agreed. I wanted one moment with him to treasure.
“So,” I broke the silence, “You saw Caiden? How was that? He was supposed to pick me up tonight, so I’m a bit irritated that he went out to get drunk instead.”
Dante’s mouth twitched, something between a smirk and a wince. “Same old Caiden. Guess I’m not one to talk, but he looked rough. He got really fucked up on booze. Didn’t even recognize me at first. He said he was here in town with you. I asked for your number. We did catch up a bit, it was nice while it lasted.”
“Thank you,” I said, tracing a crescent in the frost on the window. “For coming. And for not asking for details. Not yet, anyway. As for Caiden, I was not sure what to expect. I knew he’d be feeling bad coming here because of trauma with his dad. But I didn’t expect to be abandoned in my dead mother’s house while he got drunk and forgot about me.”
He nodded like he understood, and maybe he did. There were things, after all, that were too painful to say out loud. “I’m sorry. Caiden had it rough with his dad, that I know. He was bound to snap coming back here with all the memories andpain. Not that it’s your fault, it’s not. Caiden made the choice to come, knowing how it would make him feel.”
His words made me feel a little less upset. Dante was always good with that, soothing my wounds, lifting me back up.
