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He also wasn’t at the house when I went by, or at the garage which was still padlocked when I checked on my way here earlier on.
There’s only one other person I know who keeps track of the town’s most notorious bad boy. It feels weird to think of him that way now, to be honest, even after his behavior yesterday, when I think of all the ways he’s been changing.
He has changed.
Ross has changed.
The realization hit me during the night as I tossed and turned, angry at him, sad for him, trying to understand what happened. He backslides sometimes but he is trying. I can feel it, sense it.
And I have to trust that gut feeling.
Just like I got to trust the feeling telling me that something’s wrong. The bad feeling grows over the day, expanding as the minutes tick by. It could be my usual preoccupation with Ross, the worry for him that I can’t get rid of. A side effect of having such a crush on him.
Or it could be a sixth sense trying to tell me he isn’t doing well. That outburst yesterday? If I’m reading it right, it wasn’t an attempt to intimidate me.
It was a defensive, preemptive strike. Part of his arsenal against pain. Something I said set him off, and although that’s not okay, I want to think that I’ve understood him well enough by now to know it wasn’t meant to hurt me but...
But what? I need him to answer that question. If I’m right. If I’m not making all this up to sooth the hurt, ignoring the truth.
And first I have to find him.
Dena walks into the diner kitchen, hands piled high with dirty dishes, and I hurry to take them off her hands and talk to her.
“Hey, have you seen Ross today? I can’t find him.”
I don’t see her face as I grab the dishes and place them by the sink. I hear the incredulity in her voice, though, when she says, “Well, that’d be the day.”
“What do you mea
n?”
“You, openly looking for Ross.”
I bite back a retort. After all, she’s right. “Well, I am.”
“Haven’t seen him at the diner in days,” she says, and my heart sinks. “Certainly not today. Haven’t seen him around town either.”
“He hasn’t been here because I told him not to come. You said he wasn’t paying his bills.”
“Oh, honey. Why did you do that? It’s between him and Mike, nothing to do with us.”
“He made me so mad that day,” I whisper. “I couldn’t help it.”
“Not many places to eat around here, you know. Drinking and not eating, not a good combo. At least here he got something to line his stomach.”
God. “But then I told him it was a mistake, that I wouldn’t go to Mike. I thought he heard me.”
Did he really avoid the diner since then because of me? Hearing my dad talk about how Ross was in and out of prison, I didn’t think much of it, but it seems he really, really doesn’t want to go back in there. Not that anyone in their right mind would, but still... I’m starting to wonder if there’s more I don’t know about.
It makes me all the more determined to find him. I can’t explain this twist in my stomach, the heaviness on my chest. By all rights I should be furious at him for the things he said and suggested, for the accusations that I was only there out of morbid curiosity.
But why would he so easily believe I care for him?
Do I care for him?
Oh come on, Luna. I think it’s too late to lie to myself now. Would I be looking for excuses for him if I didn’t? Would I be looking for him?
There you go. Case closed. I’m falling for Ross Jones.
