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"How could you--?"
"I'm not an idiot." Luke slid from his booth, grabbed his papers, and tucked them under his arm. "I don't care what you do. Just don't give me advice when you're still living in the past. You've changed. She's changed. Whatever teenage glow you think you have is gone."
"What the fuck is your problem?"
"No problem. Just the truth." Luke walked through the bar's swinging wooden doors and down into the basement, and when he'd disappeared Chase stared from the place he'd gone to the bar's glass entrance.
Whatever Luke said, there was clearly a problem here, but whether it had anything to do with him and Julie was yet to be determined. Still, he'd given him the go ahead...
Which, he remembered, still didn't mean much of anything.
Julie had been pretty clear about what she wanted and what she didn't want.
Still, what was there to lose, now? She was already angry. It wasn't like she would hate him more than she already did.
But then there was the heartache in her eyes when she'd looked at him last night. And the fact that Luke was right--she wasn't sixteen anymore. They weren't the same people they'd been.
But he was still Chase and she was still Julie.
He'd messed this up once, but he couldn't, wouldn't, do that again.
He glanced at the paper on the bar and then at the entrance again.
He'd go to their house and congratulate her. Like a peace offering. She couldn't turn him away in front of her mother and then maybe he'd be able to set the record straight and see if the Julie he knew was still in there somewhere.
And if she wasn't?
He could finally really move on.
She had not had enough to drink to have a hangover.
That was a fact. So, that meant the world was somehow crumbling around her head,
Oh my...
Her mother was standing in the backyard, wielding a chainsaw like she was the lone survivor in a horror movie and charging at an overgrown maple tree.
Quickly, Julie grabbed her fluffy purple bathrobe from her bag and sprinted down the steps, running through the house and out the back door like her mother's life was on the line. And, considering the way she handled the chainsaw, it very well might have been.
"Mom!" she shouted over the noise, but when her mother didn't look up, she cringed and stepped barefoot onto the wild lawn.
Luckily, nothing squished between her toes, so she took a few more steps until she was in her mother's eye line and the older woman powered down the machine.
"Oh, good morning. Did I wake you?"
Since she wasn’t sure what time it was, she opted for
a lie. "No, I was up. But don't you think you should leave this for Luke?"
"Oh, he's done so much already. It's nothing, really."
"Right." Julie glanced around. "I guess Amy's running?"
Mom nodded. "Yes indeed. We had a nice breakfast. I saved some for you if you're hungry."
"Sure." Anything to get her mother away from that death machine.
Her mom stepped in front of her, then led her into the kitchen. Apparently, she'd made progress on this room even from last night. All the stacks of newspapers had been moved, and the smell--though not entirely gone--had cleared a bit.
