Until she wasn’t. Until she left me and this town behind the day she turned eighteen without a single look back.
The day after I asked her to marry me.
I studied her portrait with a numbness that surprised me. I used to not even be able to think about her without it feeling like my chest was going to cave in. Now, with over ten years between me and when she left, I could see her with distance, and I felt almost nothing. Except maybe that same longing for a simpler time, when everything was ahead of us still, and we felt like we were going to be alive forever. Back when I knew my purpose was to love and protect her. I had nowhere to put all that now. My throat tightened?—
“Shit, sorry, man. I meant to hide that one.” Levi’s sudden return startled me into dropping the photo back down with the others.
I shot him an affable shrug, calming my racing heart.
“Nah. It’s all good. It was a lifetime ago,” I said, more honest than I would have thought.
“Yeah?” He stepped closer to close the container back up.
“Yeah, man. I don’t even think about her anymore,” I said, and it was true.
He held my stare like he didn’t believe me. He thought, like the rest of the town, that I hadn’t moved on from Kayleebecause I hadn’t had a serious relationship since the woman I dated for two years left me abruptly. The whole town assumed I was still caught up on her. And they only knew the half of it. I never dispelled the rumors either. It was easier that way. But any residual feelings I’d had for Kaylee died when she hadn’t come home for Lily’s funeral. We spent way too many afternoons lounging in Lily’s garden or in her photography studio with Lily casually doling out life advice and unconditional acceptance, only for Kaylee to dishonor her memory like that. Lily was as much a part of my youth as Kaylee. There was no excuse for her to miss it, even if she wanted to avoid me.
But the town was right in one regard to Kaylee. I did think about her from time to time, as a reminder of what not to do ever again. Never let myself fall so hard and fast, never let myself put my heart on the line for somebody who couldn’t get away fast enough.
It was weird how a little over two years of adolescence felt like a decade or more of adult life. It held more weight somehow. Things felt so big then, and now things felt ... I didn’t feel much.
It was this unmoored mood I’d been in lately. I needed to shake it. What was this shit that was following me around like a cough that won’t quit after a cold?
Levi lifted the box to tuck it out of sight on a high shelf, and neither of us said anything else about Kaylee. As was the way.
He handed me a pair of leather gloves that I slid on.
“Be careful. This one is heavier than it looks,” he said.
We went on either side of the giant piece of tree trunk and gnarled root system.
“It’s a beauty,” I said.
“Yeah. Should be good.” He grunted as we both hefted the beast up.
Shit. Itwasheavier than it looked.
“Any plans for it?” I asked, more winded than I wanted him to know as we maneuvered out the back door, barely missing smashing my fingers into the doorframe.
Levi’s delayed response had me looking up at him. I was disturbed to find him staring at me with narrowed eyes. Creepy best-friend stare—intense and too observant. Levi had that superpower.
“Maybe. The beginning of an idea,” he said ominously.
“Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
I glanced away and focused on the task at hand.
We were silent as he navigated the rest of the way out the back door and to the bed of his truck. This thing was heavy as fuck, and we were both—or at least I was—working very hard to pretend like it wasn’t. We set it down as carefully as we could, shaking the whole truck as we released it with grunts. It was enough to cause Ripley to bark once with indignant annoyance from her den in the back seat. I slipped off my glove to reach through the back window to pat her head. She licked my hand once before burrowing back under the blankets to make the whole mass shiver.
Levi lifted his hatch door and closed it with finality once the piece was strapped to his liking.
He leaned against the side as he slowly took off his gloves. He was working up to say something, and, for some reason, the buildup made me want to run down this back alley and out of sight.
“Do you know what they are doing for the fundraiser this year?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Not really.”
The Cozy Creek Fire Brigade’s annual fundraiser varied from year to year, anything from a calendar to last year’s auction, which was a smashing success. No matter what, it usually ended up with me taking off my shirt.
