Page 4 of Westward

“You didn’t ask Rune for a day off?” I asked.

Rune was a friend, and I had known him since I was a child. He owned Summit Grill, where I knew Will was a busboy. Now that he was eighteen, he had been shifted and was training to be a waiter. Rune paid well and treated his staff well.

He was also my ex’s big brother, and while I enjoyed going to eat with my friends there, I tried my best to avoid him. He never gave me the pitying looks that the rest of the town gave me for being Atlas Carter’s ex-girlfriend. But he looked so much like Atlas sometimes that it was hard to want to be near him often.

“I said I would work because the rest of the staff needs to be at the graduation. I don’t mind. It’s not like I have any family going. They don’t even give you your diploma. You get the cover, which they can mail to me. I don’t really care, Ms. Ellis. Not that you aren’t great or anything. You and the other teachers are nice and all, but I don’t really need a party or an event to tell me that I’m out of high school and not going to college. I see that every time I look in the mirror.”

My heart ached for Will. I had known him since he was a good little kid, and he had always been a bright light, smiling and laughing. Great at sports, art, and just a good person. His parents had died in a snowmobile accident when he was in middle school. The event had shaped so much of his life and had been a town tragedy. Just a few years prior, another man had lost his children and wife in a car accident on an icy bridge, and that had broken some of the town’s spirit. But we had all clawed together, doing our best to care for those we could.

Nobody had come for Will and offered to raise him. He had been such a cute little kid and had ended up a hollow-eyed little boy who needed family. Part of me had wanted to reach out to say I could help, but I had been in my early twenties. A single woman on a teacher’s salary. I was an only child with elderly parents, and in the eyes of so many in town and the legal system, hadn’t had any prospects.

I wasn’t the right person to adopt a child to keep him in town. Instead, he had gone to a few different foster families and had ended up with one on the far east side of town. From what I could tell, his foster mother had run off a couple of years ago, and his foster father had gotten his last check once Will had turned eighteen.

I knew he still was living underneath that roof, at least that’s what he had told everyone, but I didn’t have any right to know anything else. My friends in the system did their best, but they were overworked, and the fact that Will had even been able to stay in Ashford Creek with his friends and familiar moments had been a miracle.

And now he was eighteen, and he wouldn’t have anyone for him at graduation.

“If you decide to go, I’ll be cheering your name.”

“Just like you always do with everyone else, Ms. E. You’re a good person, you know that?”

I blushed, shaking my head. “I do my best. You should go if you want to, but even if you don’t, I know that you’ll still have people who will be thinking of you.”

He just shrugged, not looking like he believed me.

“Maybe. I got to go, Ms. E. I’ll tell Rune you say hi though, right?” He winked as he said it, and if I weren’t a proper teacher, I probably would’ve flipped him off. Oh, he was an adult now, but I saw that little attitude on his face.

Just like everyone else, he knew that I was the ex-girlfriend of NHL star goalie Atlas Carter. The high school sweetheart, prom queen to his prom king. And there was no denying it.

For fuck’s sake, there was even a memorialized shrine to Atlas down the hall from my classroom. Complete with our prom photo.

There also happened to be a similar shrine to my friend Callum because the man had ended up in the NFL, and Gray, another hockey star. Ashford Creek might be small, but we sure knew how to make sports stars, apparently.

Will smiled as he left, and I figured that my slight humiliation might be worth giving him a laugh, so I quickly packed up my things.

My classroom was empty, things pulled from the walls, and I knew the custodial staff would scrub it clean before I came back in the fall. Maybe they’d even add a fresh coat of paint, but I didn’t think it was likely. There wasn’t any money for things like that.

I made my way out to my car, waving and speaking to a few of my fellow teachers, as my phone rang. I answered with a bright smile on my face.

“Elizabeth,” my mom said, her voice a little hoarse.

Warmth spread through my chest at the sound of her voice. I loved my parents something fierce, though we didn’t do much but hang out at the house these days. “Mom. I was just heading towards the bakery to pick up our pie.”

“Did someone say pie?” my dad asked from from the other line as they were on their landline phones, and I laughed as my mom scolded him.

When Atlas had gone to college on a full-ride hockey scholarship, I had joined. I had been in love with him and grateful for my own partial scholarship toward my degree. The town might’ve thought I had followed him because I had nothing else, but we had chosen that college together. It wasn’t just Atlas who had decided for us. He had always made sure I made my own decisions and was cared for. Even when we had broken up, he had been that man. He still was, which was something I tried not to think about.

Atlas’s parents, sister, and brother were still here, thriving in Ashford Creek. And my family was as well. Though my family was a good thirty-five years older than Atlas’s parents.

I had been a very late baby—one who had shown up when my mom thought she was hitting menopause. Now, my parents were the same age as some of my friends’ grandparents and needed me. They had needed me when I had moved back after college, and there hadn’t been another choice for me. I loved Ashford Creek. I loved that small-town feel and knowing where I belonged.

I hadn’t needed the limelight or the life of someone living in Portland as the significant other of the top goalie in the entire NHL.

I was just fine where I was.

And my parents needed me.

“We don’t need pie,” my mom complained.