“I never used you. It was real. Ask me. I never used you.” He pleaded.
“When you didn’t tell me the truth – yes, you did. That’s how it feels anyway.” I reached up and placed my palm against his face.
“What can I do to make this right?”
“Stop this from happening.” I pleaded.
“And then?”
“I really don’t know.”
“Percy, please?” I stroked his face and turned away. I could hear him start to cry.
Without another glance back, I walked out of the kitchen and passed Tammy Sue, who said nothing. She would lock up, but I needed to leave Ben the same way he left me all those years ago—without another word. I had to put myself first, and I didn’t want to hear any more lies. I may have even loved him, but what did that matter? At this point, what did matter?
16
Ben
Iwas empty.
I felt like I had nothing left, and that was a shock to my already overloaded system. Two days – everything had changed in two days. A cataclysmic shifting of the Earth – of everything that you knew, and just as soon as you started to revel in your happiness, it shifted again. Nothing. My everything had left.
I called Percy’s name as he walked away from me, and I understood the enormity of what keeping the truth from him had caused. I wanted to take it back, but what was done was done, and all I could do was try to move forward. Old habits always have a way of coming back to bite your ass, and I had no one to blame but myself. I withheld. I hadn’t been totally honest. I was scared.
I have always been scared.
I was still scared. After all of that growth and change over the last ten years, I fell back into my old habits in the blink of an eye. I was a fucking idiot, and now I was paying for my stupidity.
I would leave Foggy Basin the same way I left it last time – alone and angry. But this time, I knewwhyI was angry. I was mad at myself.
Angry? No, it was something worse. It was the most pronounced sadness I had ever felt. For a moment, I had the world in my hand, and then it shrunk to a grain of sand that somehow slipped through my fingers in the blink of an eye. I was the world’s biggest idiot, and everything I felt – I deserved.
Percy had always been better than me. He was more caring and compassionate, and every word he said was true. This town deserved more. It deserved respect and love. It had given so much to me until I turned my back on all of it. Why did I do that? Fear…
I wasn’t proud of the way I… acted. The reason that I came here never felt right, and I felt that way the moment I started walking around my hometown. What they wanted me to do was dirty. This whole deal was dirty, wasn’t it? Why couldn’t they alter the space of the fucking parking lot, and then none of these businesses would even be involved? But BHB wouldn’t. They never did. God, I really was working for a greedy corporate monster, wasn’t I? I had known the truth all along, but I was willing to turn my face to not see the problems we left in our wake. But I did know about them.
I was complicit – just as Percy had said.
I sobbed in that kitchen as I stood there feeling more alone than I had felt in a long time. The same kind of alone I felt in high school when I lied to everyone and hid who I was away from my family, my friends – from Percy. I had lied to myself, and I had done it again. Fuck! I should have told him.
Tammy Sue left me alone, bless her. I didn’t deserve that. When I left the bakery, I saw her out of the side of my eye, but she didn’t say anything. She just let me leave the same wayeveryone else had ten years ago. Alone and scared was how I left then, and history would repeat itself.
Unless I did something. But what could I do?
I called Tim, and he was home and alone for the night. I drove over to his place because I needed a friendly ear to perhaps help me salvage my own dignity, if not my relationship with Percy. But it was and has always been about Percy. He was all that mattered.
I was tired of feeling alone. I had no roots. I had no new growth. I was a stagnant piece of shit that wanted to be so much more. And in the blink of an eye, I had what felt like everything as I held him in my arms. I had to get it back, no matter the cost.
Tim had a bourbon waiting for me.
“Well, you really stepped in a giant pile of shit. I can’t believe that you kept that from him, Ben. Why couldn’t you have just told him the truth? Percy is a really good guy, and you walked back in here and destroyed him in just a couple of days. Bro? what the fuck?” I deserved his judgment.
“I messed it all up, Tim. I had him, and I fucked it up.” I bit my bottom lip, trying to control my emotions.
“Yeah… I’d say you did.”
I looked up at him, completely lost. “What can I do?”
