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1
SUTTON
PRESENT DAY
I expected to feel nothing when I saw him.
Instead, I feeleverything.
It’s been eight years since I last looked at him. That’s too long to let your gaze linger on someone you’ve never even kissed. But my eyes don’t care about proper decorum. They snag on Teddy Owens and refuse to let go.
He looks exactly like I remember—and completely different. He’s joking with the bag boy, who’s staring at him with what can only be described as hero worship. He’s a teacher now, shaping young minds at the same high school we graduated from.
It fits him. The way this town fits him. The way the worn jeans and the cotton T-shirt fit him. The way the woman walking over to him, clutching a bunch of bananas, fits him. She’s smiley and sunny, wearing a patterned skirt that swishes around her ankles as she walks toward the checkout.
I look away and shove the box of Fruity Pebbles I was holding back onto the shelf. I figured—hoped, worried—I’d see him at some point during this short visit.
I just didn’t think it would be while I was holding sugary cereal, drowning in an oversize sweatshirt and yoga pants with my unwashed hair twisted up into a messy topknot. My attempt at incognito registers a lot like sloppy.
Maybe his appearance here is a sign that I should stop avoiding the inevitable and go face my father and Lily. Stopping at Dave’s Grocery was silly and sentimental and utterly pointless. I won’t even be in Brookfield, Wisconsin long enough to eat a whole box of cereal.
I walk down the breakfast food aisle and then wander through the back of the store, lingering by the floral display located just past the produce. All the bright blooms hang saggy and limp, hardly the sort ofmy condolencesgift I’m looking for, but better than showing up with a box of cereal, I guess. I sift through a few bunches of drooping tulips and then give up as shriveled pink petals start to fall to the floor.
Sorry, Grandpa Joe.
The old man was never a fan of flowers anyhow. Just his cows and Jack Daniel’s.
I pass a display of mayonnaise and a rack of magazines—several of which I’m on the cover of, unfortunately—before walking through the automatic doors and out into the parking lot. I exhale, relieved to have made it through the small store and outside without encountering anyone.
The air here is cooler and fresher than what I’m used to, absent of any smog or humidity. Inhales feel cleansing. Exhales are a relaxing relief.
This trip was always going to be steeped in nostalgia. I think that’s inevitable when you visit a place for the first time in close to a decade. Especially when you return as a version of yourself your eighteen-year-old self would barely recognize. A younger Sutton didn’t dare dream of the overwhelming success she’d discover in the music industry. She just enjoyed singing and had a lot she was trying to forget.
Music is an escape for me. And the more success I found, the more of an oasis it became.
I turn to the left once I reach the cracked sidewalk outside the grocery store and almost collide with someone.
That sigh of relief was released too soon.
We halt, inches apart, and Teddy starts to apologize. “Sorry, I wasn’t…” His voice trails off as soon as he gets a good glimpse of my face.
Should have worn the hat and sunglasses after all. They seemed like overkill after no one at the arrivals gate in Madison gave me a second look.
I stare.
He stares.
We’re two statues, standing frozen on the asphalt between the 7-Eleven and a laundromat. He’s holding a red plastic basket, no longer containing any groceries. I watch his knuckles whiten and wish I had something to clutch at right now as well.
I didn’t prepare for this moment. Because I didn’t think it wouldbemuch of a moment. This…awareness was supposed to die a slow and painful death over the past eight years.
Seeing him wasn’t supposed to matter.
But again, I feeleverything.
Teddy looks the same. Same brown hair. Same two freckles below his left eye. Same hazel eyes. He does seem taller, though. Broader. A man, not a boy. Now twenty-six instead of eighteen.
This should be a full circle moment. Closure, getting a glimpse of who we each are now. But instead of a loop coming to a close, it feels like it’s getting knotted and tangled. Tightened.
