AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I get in my Jeep and lower the visor, knowing that’s where Junior would have left my keys. I sit there, stunned at what Robbie has just said to me. I’m more than stunned. I’m flummoxed. I look over and find my clothes folded neatly in a stack on the passenger seat. I pick up my shirt and sniff it. It smells fresh like Ms. Markie’s housecoat. My phone is in the console cup holder, and I open it up to find it still has battery life left. I open up the picture I had emailed to myself of the side of the building…and I just stare at it. She could have written anything on the side of the building, and all she did was just ask me to kiss her?
What’s bad is that if I could only get her to retract her fangs for more than two minutes, I’d love to do just that.
I look up and see her standing at the window of her bedroom. She lets the curtain drop immediately when she sees me look in her direction, but I can still see her behind the sheer barrier. She stands there, thinking she’s hidden.
But right now, she has never, ever been more exposed. She just isn’t aware of it yet.
Despite how much she’s hated me throughout the years, she’s still my favorite person, and a little seed of hope gets planted inside me when I admit that. I’m sure she’ll walk right up to me tomorrow and stomp it into oblivion, but I drive home with hope in my heart, even if I know it will be short-lived.
4
Evie
I arrive at the Jacobson place before Grady does. When I get there, the sun has just barely come up over the water. I look toward the barn and try to locate someone who is supposed to show me what we’re doing, but no one is there. So I walk down toward the water, keeping an eye out for people moving behind me.
The lake is peaceful and calm, with nothing moving aside from a family of ducks with some little ducklings trailing behind. Every now and then, the bigger ducks dunk themselves in the water, bobbing like fishing bobbers that go under and pop back up. The little ones try to do it, but they are much less graceful. The ducks watch me from afar, not even coming close, as I lean on my elbows on the railing of the dock and stare out across the water.
I owe Grady an apology. We both got drunk the other night, but I was the one who wrote on the side of the building. Someone posted a picture of what I wrote on social media with a tag that said: “Finally, she asks. But will he do it?” He won’t do it, of course. Grady doesn’t like me that way. He never has.
Grady and I were best friends for so long. Then we weren’t. I never felt so great a loss as when Grady and I stopped talking. I can’t even remember why we stopped talking, but we did, and I have felt it every day since. I’ve turned my sadness into a game, one that takes the pressure off me to apologize; but now that I’ve ruined his ability to work on Saturdays because of my own stupidity, I think I’m going to have to woman up and tell him I’m sorry.
Truth is I’ve always had a huge crush on Grady Parker. Even after we stopped hanging out together, it was there. I watched him as he drove girls to the mall in his car, and as he went to the movies with other girls. And I hated to see it. Every time I saw it, it was like he was chiseling a little piece of my frozen heart right off. So I turned sniping at Grady into a sport. I enjoyed throwing barbs at him, because if I could throw barbs at him, it meant he was in my vicinity.
When my parents moved away from Macon Hills, right before I started college, I lived for the weekends when I could drive back to Macon Hills and hang out with my old friends, mainly because I knew Grady would be here. He’d be in Macon Hills, and he’d be the same guy he always was.
I hear footsteps on the bridge and look up to find Barbara-Claire walking toward me. She has her hands shoved deep in the pockets of her jeans and her shoulders are hunched under her hoodie because it is a little cold out here this early in the morning on the lake.
“What are you doing here?” I ask as she gets close to me.
She rolls her eyes. “Girl, I wasn’t going to let you take all the blame.” She nods toward the end of the dock, where I see Grady talking to Junior. “Junior and I were in on it too. We can help you fix it.”
“But you’re off the hook,” I protest. “Mr. Jacobson said you two could leave.”
“And then he called my mama and told her what Junior and I were doing in the backseat of the Jeep.” She blows out a breath. “After she high-fived me, my daddy had some choice words about being grown with three little girls to set an example for.” She snorts out a laugh. “After he was done railing at me, Mama pulled me to the side and said that the best example I could give my girls was one in which their mama loved their daddy. And if fucking in the backseat of the Jeep was our way of doing that, more power to us.”
I cover my mouth so a laugh won’t slip out. “She did not.”
“She did.” She heaves out a sigh. “Anyway,” she says slowly, “Junior and I discussed it, and we decided you and Grady would near ’bout kill one another if we left you alone all day, so we came to help.”
I look out over the water, trying to figure out how to bring up what I want to bring up. I would love to get her advice. Barbara-Claire has been my best friend my whole life, and I value no opinions over hers. I want to apologize to Grady. I want to apologize for getting him in trouble with Mr. Jacobson and I want to apologize for working so hard at hating him all these years. But before I can gather my thoughts enough to ask for her advice, Junior cups his hands around his mouth and yells, “We ain’t got all day! Get your asses over here!”
I see Mr. Jacobson puttering toward us on his little red golf cart, so I hustle down to where the dock meets the shore. “Clifford,” Grady grumbles at me.
My hackles rise immediately. “Shut up, Grady,” I say out of habit.
“Make me,” he replies, as he leans on a fence rail. He raises one eyebrow at me.
Barbara-Claire looks from Grady to me and back and rolls her eyes. “You two will never learn,” she says quietly. Then she shakes her head and walks over to stand next to Junior.
“Morning,” Mr. Jacobson says as he cuts the engine on his little cart.
“Morning,” we all mumble back.
Grady opens his mouth and says, “I brought paint, Mr. Jacobson, and rollers, and whatever we might need to paint your building. They’re in my Jeep.” Her jerks his thumb toward where he parked the Jeep in the parking area, next to my truck. “The guy at the paint shop knew what color would match, since you buy it so often. He sold me a few gallons. I can go get more if we need it.”
Immediately, my heart feels heavy because Gr
ady went out and spent his own money, on his own time, and he bought the things we’d need today. I didn’t even think about doing that. I just assumed Mr. Jacobson would provide the supplies. That was dumb of me.
