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Twenty
Another text appeared on Aubrey’s phone screen, beneath the previous five she hadn’t answered. Not that Vic had asked a question. He hadn’t said, “I miss you” or “I love you” or trotted out multiple apologies. Each of his five texts was as random as they came, the tone casual, like when he and Aubrey were dating, talking to and seeing each other every day.
The latest entry into the diary of Vic’s day read, These tomatoes are damn good. I know you don’t typically eat them, but they’re stripey and sort of sweet. Jayden is being a prick. Why are we best friends, again? Chelsea, meanwhile, is being sweet. It’s weird.
Aubrey read it twice, tempted to respond. She could tell him how, stripey or not, she wasn’t interested in any tomato. Or she could explain that he was best friends with Jayden because no other male understood Vic better. On the Chelsea front, she longed to encourage him to embrace his oldest sister’s doting.
Aubrey understood why Chelsea had crashed the lunch she’d intended to have by herself. Chelsea loved her family, loved the ranch and cared about Aubrey a great deal. As an only child, Aubrey saw the value of having an interfering sibling.
But responding would give Vic false hope, and she didn’t want to hurt him further. She didn’t want him to believe all was forgiven because he’d sent several texts as if nothing was wrong.
Everythingwas wrong.
She parked in her parents’ driveway and stepped onto the porch. Normally she’d let herself in, but she hesitated at the front door. After she’d drawn a hard line with them, she wasn’t sure how welcome she’d be here.
Mary Collins answered the door, her red hair pulled off her face and tied into a short ponytail. Her freckles were out in droves. She appeared tired, if a little fragile. Aubrey’s heart hurt.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Aubrey. It’s good to see you.” Mary held up the dish towel in her hand. “I was cleaning the kitchen and swearing because I couldn’t reach the cabinet above the refrigerator. How are you?”
“I’m...” Aubrey wanted to say “fine” or “okay” but decided to tell the truth instead. A truth that caused her chin to wobble and her eyes to heat. “I’m overflowing with regret.”
“Oh, honey, come in here.” Mary tugged her daughter into the house and sat her down at the kitchen table. “Coffee will fix it.”
Aubrey let out a watery laugh. She wasn’t sure coffee would fix it, but she was willing to try.
Five minutes later, two mugs of coffee on the table in front of them, Aubrey apologized to her mother. “I was harsh and unreasonable.”
“You’ve been through a lot.”
“I love you and Dad so much. I never should have said the awful things I said before I left. And not speaking to you...what if something terrible had happened to you or him, and the last thing I said to you was—” She hiccupped and covered her mouth, not willing to finish that sentence.
“Nothing has happened. Your father’s at the home improvement store. He’s perfectly fine. I know, because he’s called me twice and asked me to measure the shelves in the garage. He’s on a mission to completely reorganize.” Her mother rolled her eyes. “We figured you didn’t mean it, Aub. Your father knows you. He was the one who told Vic to give you time. You needed to be alone, and we respected that.”
“Vic was here?”
“The day he dropped you off and you went to your room to pack. He came to the door.”
Of course he did.
“He’s come to see me since then, too.”
“Did he?”
“He says he loves me. He wants a second chance. I guess if I say yes, it would be a third chance. I’m not willing to do that. Or I wasn’t, anyway. Until my students reminded me how I taught them the most successful storytellers see life from the other characters’ points of view as well as their own. Then I started thinking about how Vic must have felt for the last ten years. And about how he felt when he was asked to pretend to date me because being with him was one of the last things I remembered.” Hands around her coffee mug, she spoke to her mother more earnestly than she’d intended. “We slept together the night before the chili cook-off.”
Mary’s cheeks went pink, but she didn’t try and stop Aubrey from sharing.
“It was supposed to be one night. I saw him at the bar at the Silver Saddle, and he was so familiar. Like the boy I dated. Except he was a man, and there were only good parts left. He seemed so grown-up. So different from before. And I had an escape hatch—one night to be with the Vic I used to love, and then I could return to my regularly scheduled life.” She shook her head at her own naivete. As if one night with Vic wouldn’t be burned into her memory forever—hell, that single memory had survived while countless others had temporarily perished.
“That night was so...intense,” she continued. “The emotions I thought were long gone returned and made themselves at home. Nothing but positive feelings for him remained after I lost my memory. It’s like I forgot everything bad that happened in the four years we dated.”
“There wasn’t much bad, Aub. You two had a lot of wonderful years together. At the end, you had a disagreement.”
“A disagreement? We had totally different life plans.” Aubrey nested her fingers into her hair.
“Honey.” Mary touched Aubrey’s arm. “You did the right thing then, and I’ll never not back you on that. You wanted to focus on school and attain your degrees. You wanted to live your life untethered. Who could blame you? So, now that you’ve been untethered for ten years, what do you want? Do you want to reclaim the life you had before with Vic, or do you want to move forward and chalk up the days you spent with him as a learning experience? It sounds like both options are on the table. All you have to do is choose one.”
