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“OK, but I won’t be far, Rain. You know how to find me when you’re ready to talk.”
“Sure, sure,” I replied.
I was close to tears and didn’t want to cry in front of him. I wasn’t sure why this hurt so much, but it did. It hurt just as much as that one day when I was almost seventeen and realized that the boy I had given my heart, body, and soul to had left me without even bothering to say goodbye. It had taken me a long time to get over that. I wondered how long it would take me to get over it again. At least this time, I had some closure.
I watched as he walked out the front door, the tears falling before he was even off the front porch. I fought the urge to call out to him, to stop this. Was I overreacting? Had I misunderstood him? Why was this so damned hard? A thousand questions ran through my brain and seeped back out of my eyes. They seemed endless as I buried my face in my pillow and let them flow, my sobbing absorbed by the memory foam encased in cotton.
So, there it was. Jon was gone and I was alone again, with one problem solved and a hundred more to go. What business did I have moving on with life when I hadn’t finished exiting my old one yet? I still had things to deal with back in Los Angeles. I needed to resolve my problems with Shaun and decide what I was going to do after that. Did I look for a new place in Los Angeles or move back here where I’d be forced to see Jon Rayburn at every turn?
9
Rain
By the time the sun broke through my window the next day, I had accepted that I wasn’t meant to be as happy here with Jon as I had begun to think. My feelings had been just as much of a farce as our engagement. I had told Shaun I would be away from the clinic for a few weeks, at most, and here it had been twice that. I could only ignore his calls for so long, though I had tried to hire a temporary replacement for myself for a few months while we sorted things out, not just here with my grandmother’s passing, but between us. He had refused the help and insisted I get back as soon as I was finished. Still, I wasn’t quite ready to leave here just yet. There was something inside me that told me I belonged here and I so much wanted this to be home again.
“You want to come and work at the flea market with me?” Becky asked over the phone.
“Flea market? That sounds riveting,” I laughed.
“Yeah, I know, but it helps pay the bills.” She shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
“Anna Mae Johnson still sells those snow cones like when we were kids.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Nope. She brings her eighty-two-year-old backside down to the square the first Saturday of every month, and her grandson sets up the machine for her.”
“That’s crazy!”
“Crazy delicious. Come on. You don’t have to sit with me the whole time. You can wander around the other booths and check things out.”
“I really don’t know if I’m up for seeing people.”
“You mean you aren’t up for running into Jon. Don’t worry. He won’t be there.”
“How do you know?”
“He went to some home design show down in Savannah.”
I nodded. He had mentioned that a while back, saying he would take me with him but he was bunking with some other guys at a cheap motel and getting some fishing in on the side. I’d forgotten all about it.
“All right, but there had better be snow cones.”
The monthly flea market held in Muskrat Creek was just a random assortment of tables placed around the town square. The courthouse sat in the center of the layout, and no one was allowed to set up outside of it, but the sidewalks on the opposite side of the street would all be overflowing with wares and treats. Becky made jewelry in her spare time and sold it both online and at sales like this. Her regular job as a bank teller was steady but not very well paid.
Overall, it felt like old times, and she was right about the snow cones. They were as delicious as ever. I was happily munching on one when I ran into Derrick and some of his friends looking at a table full of survival gear.
“You boys planning on going into a bunker later on to play some weird war games?”
“As kinky and fun as that sounds, no. We’re planning on hiking up Mole Hill tomorrow, and I need some straps. How’s that snow cone?” Derrick replied, still looking through items on the table while the two guys with him, twins named Peter and Paul, of all things, debated whether they needed a bowie knife.
