“You’ll have to actually read it to find out. I’m sure you used Cliff’s Notes.”
“Guilty. And they’re both boys, so…”
“You’re totally screwed?”
He blushed and glanced down. “Well… Screwed isn’t always a… It could be a good thing, I guess.”
“Divorce? Oh, I’m sure it is.”
“No, I meant being single. I feel like I really missed out on a lot, and… I mean, who knows what I might have become or even who, right? Maybe being screwed sounds like a whole lot more fun than being stuck.”
“I… uh…” I literally froze in place. Was he actually flirting?
“You’re blushing.” His smile brought me back, and I ran my fingers through my red hair. I really needed to go get a haircut.
“Sorry, I… was just… uh…”
“It’s cute. Like I said… It will be fun to figure out who I am now. I think people might be surprised. Maybe I’ll even surprise you.” He winked again and I gulped.
“How about surprising yourself?” I hugged the bag of flour.
“Oh, I’ve been doing that every day since we...” He frowned and crossed his arms. “It’s… like this incredibly foreign world I’m living in, you know? I was… I mean, I wasn’t unhappy in high school. And I don’t mean all the popular bullshit. I mean, like I was genuinely happy with life – with the… whatever was possible, you know? Then, somewhere in college, it all went sideways, and I didn’t even know it.” He switched the basket to his other hand.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean if she had gone to the college that she had originally wanted to go to, and I had stayed where I was—if we had let each other be our own authentic selves instead of trying to shoehorn each other into our existence… I mean, we never really wanted the same things in life—definitely not the same futures. Who knows? We forced ourselves together instead of letting fate do its thing. Fear? Maybe?” He shrugged, and for a second, the look that crossed his face told me how much pain he was actually in.
“That’s… heavy, I guess. You were always better than most of your friends,” I shrugged, feeling a little guilty for even saying it out loud. “But Pam was a monster.”
He chuckled. “She got much worse. If you see her, run.”
“Noted.”
“So, I was better than the rest of the assholes in high school, but I was still an ass myself? You don’t really need to answer that. I know the truth.” He frowned.
“You… It always felt like you tried to be a nice guy.”
“Well, I wasn’t Ben, at least. He may have been the most popular of all the jocks, but he even treated us like shit when he was in one of his moods. But I always thought that underneath all that fear and anger, there was a cool guy just wanting to burst out. For the most part, he was a good friend to me. But… he was something else when he wanted to be.”
“He was a dick.”
“Yeah, I guess… sometimes. I remember when you were very tight friends, though. It’s odd, huh? You and I had the same experience, but…”
“Completely different experiences? Trust me, you and I may have grown up here, gone to the same high school, and even graduated at the same time—but there was nothing similar in what we went through.”
“I know that. I meant… It still connects us in some way, right? Right now, I’m totally trying to get the courage to see if you want to go have dinner sometime. Maybe we can finally get an actual chance to catch up without a shopping cart between us filled with sugary goodness? It could be fun.”
“I’m pretty…” I thought about how Tammy Sue would smack my ass if I finished that thought. I needed to let my roots actually grow here in my new/old life. “Sure. That sounds great. Besides, I know we should still talk about the stupid offer to buy our places.”
“Yeah… I thought about it. I mean, I’m not super invested in the place, you know? I like being a coach and a gym teacher, so… The business is nice to still have, and it does bring some money in, but… I pay someone to run it. I pay someone to keep the books and do the accounting because I never wanted to do it. But when they tried to buy it… I knew I couldn’t sell.”
“Tammy Sue said that the Dress Barn already signed the offer.”
“Did she? Hmm… I’d be surprised by that, actually.” He narrowed his eyebrows as he thought about it.
“I’m not against growth or change or anything like that. I think it’s usually a good thing for any town, but… If things that have been here and are still a viable part of the community have to die for the growth to happen, then that doesn’t seem healthy, right?”
He reached over and put his hand on my shoulder. It was warm and comforting. “You made that so clinical.”
