We drove towards town in silence. I wasn’t used to being a passenger and I took advantage of the opportunity to stare out the window. The forest on Strawberry Hill was thick and tall. Wildfires raged through many areas of British Columbia each summer without fail, but this mountain side had been spared so far. As we got closer to town the trees thinned and the road smoothed out.
Finally, she pulled her SUV into a parking spot in the middle of downtown Springwood. The squat brick buildings and leafy trees that lined the sidewalks were all as familiar as the back of my hand. I hoped I still felt that way after testing the waters onhow Jill’s article was received.
Jill materialized outside my door and I stepped out to meet her. She held her hand out to me and I took it, letting her lead me down the sidewalk. Our first stop was Oh, Beans!, a coffee shop owned by my boss Nick’s wife, Charlotte. Charlotte was a tall, curvy woman with a big smile and a personality to match. I had met her a few times when she came to one of the work sites. She smiled when she saw me now.
“Hey, Wesley. Hi, Jill. I read your article this morning. I’m sorry you went through all that. I hope you know Springwood is behind you. It takes more than one goof up for us to turn our backs on our own.”
“Uh, thanks,” I said awkwardly. Jill ordered us coffee and muffins and we continued our walk down the block.
We went to the library and a few little shops before making our way back to Jill’s SUV. I opened the door and heat poured out of the interior. We both stood with the doors open, waiting for the worst of it to dissipate. She watched me over the top of her vehicle. She hadn’t said much on our walk, letting the locals speak for her. “So, what do you think?” she finally asked.
I cleared my throat and got into the passenger seat, fiddling with the scalding hot metal of the seat belt while I considered my answer. The majority of people hadn’t treated me any differently. A polite smile or no reaction at all. Those who did say something about the article only had good things to say. They expressed support and a little pity. But hell, I would take pity over hostility any day. Jill cranked the engine and turned the AC to high. “So?”
“It was only one article and it’s only been a few hours since it came out.”
She pulled her lower lip into her mouth and stress linesappeared around her eyes. “I hope there is abutin there somewhere.”
A smile spread across my lips. Not a big one, not one full of abandon but hey, there was some hope in there somewhere. “But, I think you pulled it off.”
She leaned over the center console and gripped my jaw, pulling me into a kiss so full of promise that a moan escaped my lips.
When she finally pulled away, she threw the car into drive and pulled into traffic, getting us back to my cabin in record time. Before the door was even shut behind us we were shedding clothes, socks, shoes and shirts disappearing before we were through the bedroom door. Last time we’d had sex I’d taken my time, memorizing every pore of her skin and every sound that came from her lips. I’d wanted to take my time in case I never got another chance, but now I knew I would.
When my name had been dragged through the mud the first time, I had turned and fled. Running back to a place that was familiar to me but where I wasn’t familiar to anyone else. Not as the suck my cockguy anyway. It hadn’t occurred to me before to ride it out, to trust the people that I knew to support me through the shit storm my life became. Maybe it was because I didn’t have the kind of support then that I had now. Or maybe it was because this place, Springwood and Jill’s arms, were where I belonged. It just took a whole hell of a shove to get me back here.
After we had both come, we lay together on my bed. It was hot as fuck in the house and sex hadn’t exactly helped the matter so the only place we touched was by holding hands. She turned to me, her cheeks pink and her eyes soft. “I am truly sorry for not telling you about the article, Wesley. I hope I made it up toyou.”
I leaned over and kissed her, soft and slow, her taste already as familiar to me as my favorite beer. “I know and I do. I have a question for you, though.”
She pushed herself up on one elbow, her face growing somber. “What is it?”
“Can I take you out on a date? A real one, I mean.” I avoided eye contact while I stumbled out the words. “We knew each other so well as kids, then we were apart for a long time. I didn’t want to put a label on things when I wasn’t sure where life would take me. Now though. Even if a story does come out and some people don’t take well to it, I know I have you and my crazy group of senior supporters. I want to take you out on a first date. I want to start over with a solid foundation. Actually live life rather than hide from it, you know?”
She leaned in and kissed me again, before leaning her forehead against mine. I was a sweaty mess from the heat, the sex and now from my admission about how I saw the future going. She didn’t seem to care. “I would love to start over with you.”
Epilogue - Five Months Later
Wesley
No matter how much I had been through in my life, I was still nervous when I raised my hand to ring the doorbell at my dad’s house. After Jill’s article had hit the paper and the world hadn’t exploded, I’d finally felt truly settled. With that in mind, I wanted to close some old wounds. My dad, step mom and step brother all lived in Springwood, so I decided to start there. It was Christmas Eve, and that should be about family.
“Wesley, what’s wrong?” My dad’s eyebrows, now more gray than dirty blond like mine, dipped low over his eyes.
“Nothing. I just wanted to see you guys.”
If he was surprised, he didn’t show it, although showing any emotion had never really been his thing. “Just me home at the moment. Come on through to the garage. I’m just doing a tune up on the truck.”
I followed him into the garage and we worked side by side in silence for twenty minutes or so before I finally broke the silence. “Dad, do you ever think about back before you got remarried, when you and Mom were starting to fight andeventually got divorced?”
“What about it?”
“It was a rough time for me, being a kid and all. I don’t know if you guys realized it, but I got a little lost in the shuffle.” I swallowed, and my dad finally turned to face me.
He sighed. “We did our best, Wes. I don’t know what to tell you.”
“I’m not trying to give you shit or anything,” I said quickly. “I just think, maybe, we aren’t as close as we could be, or would be if that whole thing had gone a different way. That maybe I am a little more closed off than I would have been if you two hadn’t focused so much on one upping each other and more on being my parents.”
I hadn’t planned on guilt tripping the guy, but it was hard to say what needed to be said without doing just that.
