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“Yeah, sure.” I smiled and got up to go clean up. I found myself suddenly self-conscious of my nakedness and knelt to quickly grab my clothes, covering my butt as I walked to the bathroom.
Once the door was closed, I rested my forehead against it. I felt like crying, and not because I blamed Dean for anything. I felt like crying because I was doing it again. I was letting my heart lead the way. Again and again, I’d seen that it wasn’t going to work with Dean, but I couldn’t stop myself from wanting him. All of him.
We had good sex together and I enjoyed spending time with him. And in a few days, the wedding would happen, we’d head back to Manhattan, and go on with our lives. I needed to stop imagining some kind of future where he dropped everything to be with me–where he asked me not to leave the city because he didn’t want to lose me when this was all over.
All I could do was tell him how I felt. I had no idea if I’d get the courage to go through with it, but it was the only thing left to do.
I rubbed my eyes and looked in the mirror. I glared at myself. Stupid, I thought. Why did I have to be so stupid? Why couldn’t I just stick to the plan?
30
DEAN
Zack Ashford hadn’t been kidding when he said the whole town was going to be at the game. Everyone was gathered around a set of four basketball courts in a park at the edge of town. The mountains stretched out in the background. They glowed with a fiery orange light from the rising sun at our backs. It was a chilly morning and everyone was bundled up in jackets or with blankets over their fold-out chairs.
I brought Walter and let him roam free. He chose to go run around and play with the little kids, occasionally yapping loudly enough that I knew he was still nearby.
I was on a set of bleachers with Pearl to my left and Old Mr. Ashford to my right. He had Billy and Molly, the young kids who had been running the counter, to his right. They were rowdily cheering for their dad, a man named Greyson, who I learned was Harper’s husband. But the kids weren’t Harper’s. Over the last two days, I’d had more small town back stories unloaded on me than my brain could handle. All I knew was some serious soap opera shit had gone down here in Fairhope, and maybe it wasn’t all over yet.
As far as I could tell, the outcome of the basketball games wasn’t really the point of the gathering. Mostly, people were just socializing on the side, snacking, drinking, and doing anything but actually watching.
There were a few notable exceptions. Pearl’s Grandma Bobo had discovered there was a tournament where a bunch of sweaty, athletic men would be running up and down the court. She had her little chair pulled right up to the edge of the concrete and was leaning so far forward I worried she might tip over. She wasn’t cheering when someone scored. Instead, she was cheering when the action came her way and she got a better look at the men who were playing.
Curtis and Lane were leading an intense game of volleyball off to the side with a group of teenage kids from town. Based on the amount of arguments breaking out, it seemed like they all wanted to win very badly.
“I thought this kind of stuff only happened in TV shows,” I said, nudging Pearl. She’d been unusually quiet so far this morning. I figured maybe she was getting nervous about the upcoming wedding.
“Yeah, I know,” she said. “It’s pretty wild.”
“Everything alright?” I asked.
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Everything’s super fine. Perfect.”
Hmm. Her words spilled out one after another, and I didn’t believe a single one of them. “Want to take a quick walk?”
“We don’t have–”
“Come on.” I took her hand, leading her out of the bleachers and down the sloping grass hill behind all of the action. Every step took us farther from the hum of conversation and the squeak of sneakers on the court.
We walked a few minutes in silence until we reached the abandoned town square where the river ran beneath the tiny footbridge. It seemed like the entire town had cleared out for the game. We wandered up to the bridge and leaned on the railing, watching the water lazily drift by, dodging the smooth rocks and bubbling as it went.
“You can talk to me. You know that, right?” I said.
“I know. But it’s nothing, really. I’ve just been thinking a lot about the future, I guess.”
“What about it?” I asked.
“If I really want to leave the city. What kind of life I want to have if I do. What kind of life I want to have if I don’t. That kind of stuff.”
