The next day was exactly like the day before. I worked the office at the garage, not putting my new degree to use at all, then I cleaned the office. If I was going to work there, the place was going to run smoothly. After Dad and Devin left for the day, Amy stopped by and kept me company.
“A few of us are going to Sprints tonight for drinks. You should go with us.”
I looked at Amy like she had grown an extra head before chuckling at her as if she had just told a joke.
“I’m serious, Jen. It’s Friday. You’ve done nothing but work and stay home since you got home from Texas. Snap out of it, chick. Let’s go get fucked up and have a night. We’re young, hot, and single. See if Lilly will keep Caleb and come along. It will be good for you.”
Her words slammed into my chest like a wrecking ball, and I know I flinched. Young and hot was a definite no, but I was for sure single. I would be for the rest of my life, I was sure.
I schooled my expression and shook my head. “I’m good. I think I’m going to go home and catch up on my shows. Spend some time with Caleb.”
She sighed with annoyance. “You can’t stay locked in this place and in your house forever, you know?”
“I know. That’s not what I’m doing. I’m just mentally exhausted, you know. Plus, I’m still trying to get the hang of things.”
“That’s bullshit. You just want to blow me off again. Are you avoiding Josh? Because I’m sure we won’t see him at Sprints. The chances of me running into him three times in two days are slim.”
“I’m not avoiding anyone.” Then a thought hit me. “You saw him again?”
I hadn’t meant to sound curious, but I couldn’t help myself. I needed to know how he was.
Did he seem okay?
Happy?
As miserable as I was?
“Yeah. I saw him at Walmart about two hours ago, picking up some groceries for his momma. He was with some girl. Brandy thinks they might be engaged because the chick has a ring on her finger that looked like it could sink a boat.”
Tears rushed to my eyes, and I turned away so Amy couldn’t see.
Josh engaged?
My stomach burned with the thought.
Why was I doing this to myself?
He was out living his life like nothing had happened.
He didn’t give a shit.
Why should I?
My jaw set, and my teeth ground together. “Fuck it. Let’s go get trashed.”
I tossed what I was working on onto the desktop and grabbed my things. I called Lilly and asked if Caleb could spend the night, and of course, she was thrilled to keep him.
After locking up, we drove to my house where Amy attempted to find something decent in my closet, which ended up being a pair of short jean shorts, a white tank, and a blue plaid shirt that she refused to let me button. She brushed my hair and pulled out a tube of lip gloss from her bag that I refused to let her put on me. Then I slid on the only pair of sandals I owned, missing my flip-flops the entire time.
She stood back and smiled. “You look great.”
She was lying. She had to be. I felt like a lumberjack in my plaid shirt. Especially with it unbuttoned and I hated wearing shorts anymore because my legs were so fat. I didn’t say this out loud because letting anyone know my self-esteem wasn’t top-notch wasn’t something I was willing to do.
Still, I smiled a bit when Amy said, “God, your legs are gorgeous. You should wear shorts more often. Mine are little skinny sticks. I wish I could be as curvy as you.”
I rolled my eyes and snatched my trusty hair tie from the top of my dresser before popping it on my wrist. No way was I leaving my hair down for long.
“Shut up,” I said playfully. “You’re slim. Slim is good. Trust me.”
That was the most I said about size. She didn’t need to know I was having a hard time accepting my new shape.
Amy followed me to Springs while I drove my “muscle car.” At least that was what she called it. She had no appreciation for cars. Me, I was all about cars. It was expected since I was raised by two motorheads.
My car was my baby. The only man I needed in my life who wasn’t family.
By the time we made it to Sprints, the place was packed with locals. My nerves were a wreck, and honestly, going inside was the last thing in the world I wanted to do, but I held my head high and followed Amy like I was a regular.
We sat at the bar, and I ordered a simple beer after she ordered her fancy girl drink. When the bartender handed our drinks over, Amy’s was pink and in a curvy glass. Mine was in a beer bottle the way God intended. We drank and talked about the day, and I felt myself beginning to relax.
“I’ll be back. I need to pee,” Amy said, leaving me alone at the bar.
I peeled the label of my beer and tried not to seem uncomfortable sitting at the bar alone.
I took a swig from my beer, letting the bitter liquid slid down my throat. And when I set my bottle back on the bar top and looked across the bar, my eyes clashed with Josh’s.
Fuck.
20
Josh
I knew before I left Texas that Jenny was home in Walterboro. Not only had she disappeared from school a few years back, but my momma made it a point to tell me when she came home. Apparently, she had gone and gotten herself knocked up, ran home from college with a baby bump, and ended up at the tech school. Things were still so fresh then, and the pain I felt when Mom informed me of Jenny’s fall had altered me.
What a waste.
Jenny had squashed her dreams, sleeping her way through Texas after I had broken her in and forgetting about me like I was nothing. Just a dick to kick-start her fall. We had been so much to each other. Jenny was my childhood. My world. The only woman to hold my heart. And while I knew it was my fault for pushing her away after I had been injured, she should have stayed by my side. Pushed for me the way I would have pushed for her. Nothing could have kept me away from Jenny. Not even her. Yet she had let me start the downfall of our relationship without much of a fight.
Then again, when I remembered the way I had yelled at her, the way I had screamed at her to leave, maybe it was too much for her. Maybe my little stone maiden wasn’t as hard as I had always thought.
The house was quiet when I entered. It was as if the house had died along with my dad. Everything was the same. The furniture hadn’t been moved. Even Mom’s old afghan was still draped over the back of the couch like it was the last time I had taken a nap in front of the TV.
I tossed my duffel bag to the floor and closed the heavy front door behind me.
“Mom?” I called out. “Anybody home?”
I stepped into the space, pulling in a deep breath and letting the familiar scents of my childhood home rush over my memory.
I was home.
Three years was a long time to be away from the place your heart yearned for, but it was important for my sanity to stay away. However, looking around at the familiar walls and then breathing in the nostalgic scents, I was relieved to be there. Regardless of the reason I had to run home, losing my father, I still felt a sense of right when I stood in the living room of home.
The hallway to the bedrooms was lined with pictures of our life. I looked at each one as I passed on the way to my parents’ room. When my eyes landed on the picture of my dad with an unfamiliar little boy, I stopped and took a better look at it. Maybe things hadn’t stayed the same in the Black household.
The boy’s eyes were mischievous, his tilted smile hid the trouble a toddler his size could get into. My dad’s grin spoke volumes. He was fond of the little boy. I couldn’t blame him. The boy was adorable with this shaggy baby hair and tiny frame, and as I moved down the long hallway, his face slowly began to fill the parts of the wall that had once been empty between our family pictures.
I paused at the end of the hallway just before my parents’ bedroom, and my eyes caught on Jenny’s familiar face. The boy was sitting on her lap, and both were smiling at the camera as if they w
ere the happiest people on Earth. That was when it hit me like a ton of bricks.
The little boy was Jenny’s son.
My parents had pictures of Jenny’s son littered all over their home in places where pictures of my children would never be. There were pictures of my parents holding him and smiling. Pictures of the boy playing with my old stuffed animals. Pictures of him and Dad on a horse close to the barn. He was everywhere, taking the place of the grandchildren I could never give them.
My stomach bottomed out, and I leaned against the wall, feeling as if the floor beneath my feet was breaking away. I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to will the feelings that were exploding inside me to go away. We had just lost my father. The last thing I needed to be thinking about was the children I would never have and how I had probably let him down in so many ways.
Anger and hurt sparked at the end of the spine and rushed up my back before detonating in my brain. The desire to pull the photos from the walls and shatter them was strong, but before I could move, my mom’s voice gave me pause.
“You’re home.”
I swung around in her direction, ready to rip into her about the pictures of the little boy, but when my eyes landed on her, I slammed to a stop.
There was bruising beneath her eyes from crying so hard. She looked frail as if she had somehow lost half of herself overnight. Her clothes were wrinkled, which was one of my mom’s pet peeves. But it was the slight smile on her lips that sent me reeling. Throughout everything, her losing my dad and facing the rest of her life alone, she was happy to see me.
She opened her arms, and forgetting about the boy who took the place of my children, I went to her and pulled her into my arms. She shook against me, crying so hard my chest trembled with her pain.
“He’s gone. He’s really gone, honey.”
I squeezed my eyes tight, daring the tears to escape, but they were hardheaded little bastards like me, and when I opened my eyes, they poured down my cheeks before getting caught in my beard. I held her tight, and we cried, knowing our lives would never be the same. I could no longer run from Walterboro and Jenny. It was time I came home and took care of what was now mine.
“I’m here, Mom. I’ll never leave again.”
It was a promise I was determined to keep.
My home.
My farm.
It was time I forgot about Jenny, took care of what now belonged to me, and started my life.
Living in a such a small town, I knew I was bound to run into Jenny. After Mom and I had our heart to heart, I spent the rest of the day with her, Genie, and Ashley, who had flown in from Texas for moral support. We made final arrangements for Dad, and I spent a good bit of the time we spent in town looking around for Jenny’s familiar face. I thought I had prepared myself for the moment I saw her, but no amount of preparation helped.
After spending the day planning to put my father six feet under, I needed a beer. Once the sign for Sprints came into view, I put on my blinker and switched lanes before pulling into their white rock parking lot.
Ashley looked around, confused. “Where are we?”
“Look, I know you hate bars, but I could really use a beer right now. Take my truck back to your room; I’ll catch a ride there and pick it up later. Is that okay?”
She stared back at me. I could see the argument in her eyes, but whatever she saw in my expression snatched away her fight.
“No. I’ll come in with you.”
I reached out and put my hand on her arm to stop from opening the passenger side door. “Ash, it’s a crowded bar. I know you, and this place will send you into anxiety overload. It’s fine, really. I don’t mind going in alone.”
She tugged her arm away from me. “I don’t run from my demons … like some people I know.”
She stuck her tongue out at me before she opened the door and hopped down from my truck.
I followed her, opening the door to Sprints for her when we reached it. Within minutes, we were sitting at the bar and drinking a beer like normal people who could do that sort of thing. Above the bar, Ashley looked at ease, nursing her beer with a resting bitch face that would freeze any man in town, but beneath the bar, she bounced her shoes against the footrest of the barstool, making her knees bounce up and down. She was nervous, so when she needed to step outside every twenty minutes or so for a breath of air, I didn’t say anything.
She was a fucking champ, and I was thankful to have her in Walterboro with me. Seeing her strength as she pushed through her anxiety gave me the boost to do the same. When she left the bar to breathe, I stayed seated and relaxed. I nodded at familiar faces who nodded at me, but everyone seemed to stay away, unsure of how I would act if they approached.
I finished one beer and had already ordered another one. It wasn’t that I was out partying. I was drinking away the day’s anguish, taking a minute to breathe in and exhale the sadness of losing my father. I would have to move back. I would have to take his place at the head of the family and work the farm. Mom couldn’t do it, and Jimmy, my sister’s husband, couldn’t even get the tractor running, much less drive it.
No.
It was my responsibility, and I would do it.
I was drinking those thoughts away when I had looked up and saw Jenny sitting at the bar across from me. At that moment, something had happened that I couldn’t control. Every bit of anger that had simmered on low inside me for the past three years boiled over.
The moment my eyes clashed with her, my emotions reared their ugly head, and I turned as black as my last name. Jealousy pushed ahead of my anger, and images of a little boy I would never have sitting on my dad’s lap played through my mind like a broken movie. Without a second thought, I stood. There would be no hiding for me. Once I was on my feet, I knew she was going to pay with a lashing from my tongue. I could feel the words I longed to say to her pushing at the back of my throat, choking me with their dark hatred.
After the past three years of my life. After the terrible fucking day I had arranging my dad’s burial, I had excuses for my nasty words. I was a fucking mess. My dad was gone. My momma was inconsolable. My sister was angry with me for not being there and Jenny Michaels … fucking Jenny Michaels.
What could I say about Jenny?
She enraged me beyond control. Cruel words rushed through the vocabulary center of my brain, vile things I had never spoken to another person in my life. At least not to someone who wasn’t provoking me, but I supposed I wasn’t over it. Years had passed, but I was still raw as if it had only been hours. I was still burning from her betrayal, and those feelings alongside the loss of my dad had brewed the perfect storm.
The storm had begun when my mom had called to tell me about my dad. I went through several emotions. First was shock. I couldn’t believe he was gone. He had always been the strongest man I knew, working the farm from sunup to sundown without complaint. The second was guilt. All I could think was he might still be alive if I had gone home and taken over sooner. He was older. I was young and strong. While I was in Texas hiding from my heartbreak and working some other man’s farm, my dad had broken his back, the only other man in the family, until he had worked himself to death.
And lastly, I felt rage. If it hadn’t been for Jenny fucking Michaels, I would have gone home. I would have been there. I could have helped him. If she hadn’t been such a heartless piece of shit who jumped on the first dick as soon as I left American soil, I wouldn’t have been in Texas staying away from her and everything I wanted and could never have.
A family with Jenny.
Kids.
A life.
As I moved around the bar and toward her, I could feel the pent-up rage turning up in my gut. Heat enveloped my face, and my temples banged so hard I almost reached up to soothe them. She hurt me, so I would hurt her. She deserved the pain I was about to serve up for breaking me. For keeping me away from my family. For existing in a world where she and I were no longer anything to each other.
Seeing her
again made the room around me shift.
Had it really been so long since I had last seen her face?
The girl I grew up with. The woman I had loved so inexplicably that I felt my heart crack with her betrayal. Three years had passed since I had last seen her smile. Since the last time I truly felt happy.
She looked different, yet she was the same old Jenny. Her hair had grown longer, and the sun had touched it, leaving the usual dark brown with strips of sunlight. The craziest thing was, she didn’t have it in a ponytail. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had seen Jenny with her hair down, but she was sitting at the bar without a worry in the world, and while I hated her, I found myself envious of the strands that rested softly against her shoulders.
Her green eyes glistened under the dim bar lights, and the moment they clashed with mine, I had seen shock and pain reflected at me like a ricocheted bullet to the chest. It was only there briefly before Jenny smoothed her features and put her usual fearless face forward.
Jenny didn’t usually break. No matter how badly she hurt. I knew her better than myself some days.
Her cheeks were plump, but her high cheekbones still pushed through, and her pouty lips, the same lips I had kissed, turned down as she set her expression into her resting bitch face.
My eyes dipped, taking in her shoulders before the rest of her body disappeared behind the bar. When I looked back up, she was still watching me carefully, waiting for me to come to her. Of course, she wasn’t going to come to me. She had already come to me once before, and I had pushed her away like she was nothing when she had been everything.
The truth was, I couldn’t see her. Or better yet, I couldn’t let her see me. Not the way I was. Broken and bloody. Bruised everywhere and blasted inside. I had been altered. I was still altered, but the outside of me had healed. And so, I moved closer to her, needing to be near her, needing to alter her inside somehow. I had thought staying away from her would work, and for a long while, it did. But I hadn’t anticipated how badly I would need to be near her, how badly I would want to hurt her, if I saw her face again.
Thick & Thin (Chubby Girl Chronicles Book 3) Page 14
