Page 11 of Always You

But do I want to be in Oak Grove forever? That’s the question I have to ask myself now. I had previously accepted that I wasn’t going to be here forever. I had started the process of separating myself from this place emotionally because I’ve been watching Brandon’s career explode in front of my eyes. Now I don’t know how I feel about potentially staying put.

I could move to Clifton. It’s a bigger town with a lot more to do, but it’s close enough that I would still see family whenever I want. I’d be close if I needed help or if someone else needed me. I wouldn’t miss any holidays with my family. It’s a lot to think about. Too much to figure out in one day, but I can’t stop thinking. I sit up and throw the covers off, giving up on getting any more sleep. I’ll just have to drink some extra coffee tonight. Or maybe I’ll have an energy drink. I’ll just have to hide it from Dr. Yarbrough because she swears they’re killing people. She’s right, of course.

I choose a book from my shelf, hoping that a good book can stop my mind from spiraling out of control. I have a whole stack of books in my room that I haven’t read, and now I’mdetermined to read every single one of them within the next year. I used to love reading. My nose would be stuck in a book every chance I got, but for some reason, I stopped. I don’t even know why. How do you suddenly forget that you love doing something?

I take the book back to my bed and open it up to the first page. I get two paragraphs in before my mind starts to wander again but this time in a different direction. It was Brandon. He’s why I stopped reading. Every time I tried to read, he’d immediately interrupt me, asking me what I thought about his outfit for his next show or the lyrics for his new song. His lyrics were usually mediocre at best, and I’d end up suggesting something different. Just a change of word here or add a line there to make the song better. He would take my ideas…but he’d also take all the credit for them as well. He never told anyone that I helped write his songs. His bandmates thought he was the greatest lyricist to walk the earth, but at least forty percent of his writing was actually me. I never said anything about it because I was trying to be a supportive girlfriend. I didn’t want to make him look bad in front of his band. I told myself that it was okay that he was using me, because we were a team. But I was an idiot. I should have demanded credit and royalties from his earnings. I’d be laughing all the way to the bank thanks to his three songs that have gone viral in the past year.

And it would seem that I’m still letting him interrupt my reading time. I toss the book aside on the bed and groan in frustration at my inability to get the waste of space out of my head. I need to find a new hobby. Something that I’ve never tried before. Something that I can’t link back to Brandon and all the ways he wrecked my life. I don’t even know what I like to do anymore. I could go roller skating. That could be fun, and it’s exercise. I do need more exercise. But the last time Itried skating, I was thirteen, and I spent more time falling on my butt than anything else. Hmm… Maybe not, I don’t want to break all my limbs and end up in a full-body cast.

There’s a light tap against my door just before it slowly opens. I expect it to be my mom or one of my sisters—they’re constantly popping into my room to borrow something or chat with me—but it’s Josiah’s face that appears in the doorway. It was so quiet downstairs that I had assumed he and his mom had already left.

“Can I join you for a minute?” he asks mostly out of politeness since he’s already walking into the room.

“What? You’re not going to jump on the bed uninvited this time?” I joke, scooting to the side of my bed to make room for him. The left side of his mouth tilts up in a smirk. I’ve always adored that smile. It’s so cocky and almost arrogant, and it’s so perfectly Josiah.

“Are you upset with me for not telling you about quitting my job?” he asks after he sits down beside me. I don’t say anything for a long moment, and I feel his eyes watching me. I didn’t know that he noticed my displeasure at the dinner table. I thought I’d hid it better. I had tried to plaster a smile onto my face, but it must not have been very convincing. I should have known that he would be able to read every thought and feeling on my face. I’ve never been able to hide anything from him before, so of course this wouldn’t be any different. It drives me insane. Sometimes a girl just needs to feel all the emotions without them being dissected by her best friend.

I’ll never forget, in sixth grade, when I found out that Joe Parker, my big-time crush at the time, had a girlfriend. I was sitting in the lunchroom, watching them eat together. They were being so touchy-feely, and I was trying so hard to hold in my tears and doing a pretty good job at it too. No one around me noticed how distraught I was…until Josiah sat down next tome and said something about it. All the tears I had been holding back poured down my face in one great deluge. Oh, I wanted to punch him in the face so bad, but I didn’t want to get suspended for fighting in the lunchroom. I had never even been sent to the principal’s office before, and I wasn’t about to let a boy be the cause for my first time.

I really thought I was getting better at keeping my face under control these days, though. I mean, I’ve had a lot of time to practice my poker face, but I guess Josiah has had a lot of time to observe too.

“I was at first,” I admit, because why even bother trying to lie when he supposedly knows all my tells and refuses to share them with me. “But I get it. Sometimes you just want to keep some things to yourself.”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.” He kicks off his giant shoes and stretches out on my bed beside me, lying back against the mountain of pillows along the headboard. He puts his hands behind his head and crosses his ankles, and I notice the shamrock socks on his feet. I bought those for him after seeing them in the store around St. Patrick’s Day earlier this year. I cover up my smile with a fake cough. I love that he loves the socks I randomly buy for him. It’s kind of cute.

He picks up the book from my bed and holds it ridiculously close to his face to inspect it. He studies the picture on the cover as if it’s a piece of fine art in the Louvre. It’s one of those salacious romance books that so many women are embarrassed to be caught dead with. Brandon used to laugh at my choice of books, but I’ve never had to be embarrassed about anything around Josiah…even when there’s a couple caught in a passionate embrace on the cover of my book. The man’s white shirt is gaping open, showing off his muscled chest and abs. The woman is leaning into him with her hand plastered against his chest. Her gown is billowing in the wind behind her, showing off a long, smooth leg. It’s quite provocative.

“You’re reading again?” he asks. His voice is surprised, as if he thought he’d never see the day where I’d pick up another book. I’m surprised for a completely different reason. I didn’t know that he had noticed that I stopped reading. Brandon certainly never said anything about it, but Brandon rarely ever talked about anything but himself. I could have dyed my hair bright blue, and he wouldn’t have noticed.

“I was trying to, but I kept getting distracted by all my thoughts. I don’t know what I’m interested in anymore,” I confess. I take the book from him and flip through it absentmindedly. I want to love reading and getting lost in a make-believe world again, but I don’t know if I’m there right now.

“What do you mean?” Josiah asks, rolling onto his side so he can see me as I talk. I love that he gives me his full attention when we’re together. It makes me feel important…special.

“Brandon somehow managed to commandeer everything from me. My time, my pride, my hobbies… He ruined reading for me,” I say, holding up the book for him to see again. “He took up all of my free time with his music, and even my future was solely focused on him.”

“Well, what do you think you’d like to do? For fun, I mean. Everyone needs a hobby, something they do just for the enjoyment of it. If reading isn’t it, what do you want to do instead?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Well, think about it,” he says. His eyebrows are scrunched up deep in thought. I can practically hear the cogs in his brain working. “Come up with a list of things you’d like to try, and we’ll do them together until you find your thing that gets you excited again. I suddenly find that I have a lot of free time on my hands.”

I laugh at the self-deprecating joke. That is the single-most sweetest thing anyone has ever offered me. I practically leap from my spot on my bed and onto Josiah, wrapping my arms around his neck in a hug and knocking him onto his back. My nose presses into the side of his neck, and because I have no shame, I breathe in deeply, basking in his delicious scent. It’s manly and piney and a little bit musky. I want to bathe in his scent. It should be illegal for someone to smell this scrumptious.

His arms are wrapped around my waist, and they tighten around me ever so slightly as he asks, “Did you just sniff me, Ellis?”

“Absolutely not!” I shout. He winces and pushes me off of him, laughing like a little boy as he rolls over onto his side to face me again. A lock of his sandy-brown hair hangs down over his forehead, and I reach up to brush it out of the way of his brown eyes. We’re almost nose to nose, and I can see each individual freckle on his nose. We used to lie like this and talk for hours when we were younger. But that was before I was in a serious relationship and things shifted ever so slightly between us. Once Brandon came around, things had to be different. He was still my best friend, but we didn’t cuddle or spend as much time alone. It’s nice being able to go back to just being Josiah and Ellis—the way things were before.

We both roll onto our backs and lie side by side, staring up at the ceiling at the hundreds of glow-in-the-dark stars that I had stuck up there in middle school. None of them glow anymore, but that’s probably for the best. When I had first bought them, they kept me up for hours every night until I eventually got used to them. When I couldn’t sleep, I would count them until I eventually drifted off into the abyss.

Josiah and I stare at the stars, and we talk and talk and talk.About everything and nothing all at once. It doesn’t matter what we’re talking about, so long as we’re together.

It’s Wednesday! Meaning, I have the next three nights off work, and therefore, tonight is girls’ night. Last night’s shift at the hospital was another crazy one. Not as bad as Saturday’s full-moon extravaganza, but a lot went down in a short amount of time. I slept like the dead for most of the day, so I’m feeling as fresh as a daisy now. I’ll regret it when I want to sleep tonight so I can be awake during the day tomorrow, but such is life when you work night shift. By this point, my body is pretty used to sleep deprivation and running on caffeine and the sheer determination to live.

Jolene, Merrily, Valerie, and I are huddled around a circular table at the pub, waiting for bingo night to start. As cheesy as it is, it’s the highlight of my week. I hardly ever win anything, but it’s hilarious seeing what everyone else gets. Last week, Valerie won an air fryer, and from her reaction you’d think she got a million dollars. I’ve never seen someone so excited about a small kitchen appliance. She said she has used it every night this past week, experimenting with new recipes. The only thing I’ve ever won was a yearly planner. It was October, though, and the planner was for the current year. I only got two and half month’s use out of it. It came with cute stickers and pens, though. Always have to find the upside, right?

Our table is loaded down with every junk food imaginable: French fries, onion rings, fried pickles, and mozzarella sticks. If you can fry it, this pub serves it, and we’ll eat it. I toss a French fry in my mouth and look around the room, surveying our competition. My gaze lands on the group of older ladies just entering the pub. There are six of them, and they’re all in theirseventies. They may look like sweet grandmas who would fix you a home-cooked meal and send you home with a basket of baked goods, but looks can be deceiving. These ladies are evil incarnate. I think they used too much hairspray in their youth, and it caused some kind of brain damage. That’s the only explanation for them picking on a group of younger women the way they do.

Once, Merrily won bingo three times in one night, and those women took her blotters while she was collecting her prize and refused to give them back. They swore up and down she was cheating and shouldn’t be allowed to play anymore. I don’t know how you can cheat at bingo—it’s all just luck. I offered her one of my blotters, but Merri refused, claiming it was a matter of principle. She pounced on their table like a feral cat, ready to fight them. One of them threw a club sandwich at poor Merri’s face when Merri tried to pry the blotter out of her cold, weathered hand. It was downright vicious. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Merri had lettuce clinging to her hair and mustard smeared on her cheek. The police were called, and if you’ve never been witness to six elderly women being arrested in the middle of town bingo…well, you haven’t really lived. Cops were kicked, and threats were made. The craziest of the bunch, Mrs. Debbie, threatened to call Deputy Hankins’s mother if he arrested her, and he actually looked as if he was considering caving to her demands! It was both scary and exhilarating.

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