“I really couldn’t stand that last girl she was with, that Rebecca,” Louise said, placing a jar of pasta sauce into the cart.
“Yeah, me either. She was so spoiled and uptight,” Bria agreed. Samantha was definitely the quietest out of the three of them, but for whatever reason, she tended to pick loud, high-maintenance girlfriends. And Bria tended to be extra-overprotective when it came to Sam.
“She seems to really like Abby, though. She was really sweet at the party. I liked her a lot,” Louise said. Bria nodded. She had actually liked Abby, too.
As they turned down the dairy aisle, Louise stopped the cart.
“Hi, Tonya!” she said, pulling the cart up next to Mrs. Knoxville’s to give her a long hug. Bria followed.
“Hello, Kreery gals,” Mrs. Knoxville said. “How are you guys?”
“We’re doing well! Just enjoying having my big girl home,” Louise said, looking at Bria lovingly. She was really enjoying her time with her family, too. More than she had expected to.
“That’s great! I think Ben mentioned you were home,” Mrs. Knoxville. Bria felt her stomach do a small flip. “Now, you’re getting married, right?”
“Yep, in just a few months, actually,” Bria said. “We’re just finalizing the last details now.”
“We are all so excited,” Louise said.
“I bet! That’s so exciting. We’re going out to dinner tomorrow night with Ben and his new girl.”
“Oh, Ben has a girlfriend?” Louise asked, her eyes wide. It was pretty well-known around Dalesville that Ben Knoxville was never tied down, even now, as he was pushing thirty. “How exciting! Did you know that, Bria?” Bria put on a closed-mouth smile and shook her head.
“He’s still not saying she’s his girlfriend, per se, but they’ve been out a few times, and he seems to really like her. A mother can hope, right?”
“Hey, fingers crossed! You never know! Bria and Drew only went on a few dates, and look where they are now!” Louise said.
Ugh. Bria wished her mother would stop talking. She didn’t know why, but she felt like she’d been punched in the gut, and she just wanted to go home. As they said good-bye, Bria grew quiet.
“Well, that’s exciting,” Louise said again. “He never had a girlfriend all through high school, right?”
“Nope,” Bria said, grabbing a bag of shredded cheese off the shelf and dropping it into the cart.
“I always thought it was funny that the two of you never. . .” Louise started to say. “Nah. I guess that would have been too weird.”
“Way too weird,” Bria said. “We were never like that. So Drew talked to his parents again last night,” she said, desperate to switch gears, “and they are putting the final payment down on the food this week. We should be all set.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Louise responded, but Bria could tell from the look on her mother’s face that she felt it was anything but wonderful.
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh, nothing. I just wish we could do more. I wish I could be taking care of my daughter’s wedding, instead of my daughter having to take care of me.”
The words struck Bria to her core. She hated that her parents struggled so much with money. But she mostly hated that they felt like failures because of it.
“Mom,” she said, grabbing Louise’s arm, “I would get married in a freaking barn, if you wanted me to. I really don’t give a shit about stuff like that, you know that. And I wish you’d stop saying that, about me taking care of you. You and dad have taken care of us for our whole lives. There’s nothing I’d rather do than return the favor. Okay?”
Louise smiled sadly, squeezing Bria’s hand.
“You are such a wonderful daughter,” she whispered. Just then, they heard someone calling their names from the checkout line.
“Bye Louise, bye Bria!” Mrs. Knoxville called, as she finished checking out.
“Oh, bye, Tonya!” Louise said, as they waved back. “I wonder if whoever he’s dating has money,” Louise wondered out loud.
Whoever he’s dating.
That night, Bria sat with Katie on the couch, screaming at The Voice on television when the young, one-armed songbird from Texas chose Blake over Adam.
“What is wrong with her?” Katie asked, shaking her head. But Bria wasn’t really listening. Instead, she was spinning her phone around and around between her fingers.
“Dude, just call him,” Katie said, never taking her eyes of the screen.
“What? Call who?” Bria asked, as if she had been caught.
“Drew. You’ve been spinning that thing around for like, an hour.”
“Oh, yeah. I want to, but he’s working late tonight,” Bria said. But she didn’t really want to call Drew. She finally stopped spinning, and opened up a new text message.
Saw your mom at the store tonight. It was great to see her. It’s been years. She sent it. She waited anxiously for a few moments until she felt her phone vibrate on her leg.
I heard. That’s awesome. I’m sure she missed u.
Bria paused for a moment, contemplating her next message.
Heard they’re meeting your new girl tomorrow. She paused again before sending it. She couldn’t decide if it was too nosy, if she should even bring it up. But, she was compulsive. Off it went. After three agonizing minutes, her phone vibrated again.
Something like that.
She sat back on the couch. So it was true. She needed to see him. She needed to evaluate just how serious this was. And figure out why he hadn’t mentioned a thing about this purported “girl” of his over the last few weeks.
Well, that’s awesome. Hey are you around to run tomorrow evening?
Well, we’re going to dinner.
Shit. Duh. Then her phone buzzed again.
But, I could run before that.
Bria smiled.
Perfect. I’ll meet ya at the path around 4?
I can pick u up, if u want.
Sounds good. See ya tomorrow.
The next day, she chose her running outfit carefully—a tight pair of leggings and a sleek tank. In high school, she could eat three helpings of pasta for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and not gain a pound. But now, it took a little bit more than that. She had worked her ass off for this body. And now was her chance to show him. She waited around the front door for him to pull up, careful not to stand too close, so that he wouldn’t see her waiting. Finally, her phone buzzed.
Here. She waited a moment before going out, so it didn’t seem like she had been staring out the window for the last fifteen minutes.
“Hey,” she said, getting in the passenger side.
“Howdy,” he said, moving whatever crap was on the front seat to the back.
“Well, some things never change,” she said with a laugh. He wore a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, and she couldn’t help but notice how defined his arm muscles were.
“Man, it’s been a while since we’ve done this,” he said, parking his car in the lot at the beginning of the path.
“It really has. Remember when we used to finish our runs early so we could swing over there for a while?” she asked, pointing to the park that stood a few yards away.
“Yeah,” he chuckled. “If it had been up to me, we never would have gotten started running. We just would have swung the whole time.” She laughed and shook her head.
“Yeah, you always did hate it,” she said.
“Yeah. But you loved it. So I did it,” he said, matter-of-factly. She swallowed.
As they started down the path, Bria let a few moments of necessary small talk go on before she finally brought it up.
“So,” she said.
“So,” he said, knowing it was coming.
“Tell me about her.” He laughed.
“Talk about things not changing,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“You used to have to know everything about any girl that I was remotely interested in,” he said with a half-smile.
“That’s not true,” she said, giggling. He shot her a look. “Okay, it is. But it was only because I needed to check up on them and make sure they were good enough for you. You weren’t so good at deciding that yourself.” That brought out a laugh from deep from in his belly. Wow. She had missed that.
“Okay, I’ll give you that. This one’s a little different, though,” he said, growing a bit more serious.
“Oh? How so?” she asked, but she didn’t know if she actually wanted to hear the answer.
“She’s really. . .grown-up. I know, shocking for me,” he said. “But it’s refreshing.”
“Wow. How did you meet her?”
“We actually went to high school with her. Do you remember Karly Shepherd?”
Bria stopped in her tracks for a moment, then nodded. Karly Shepherd. That’s why he didn’t mention it. Of course she remembered Karly. She was the only girl at Dalesville High that came close to breaking Knox’s heart, so Bria sort of, well, totally hated her. Last Bria had heard, Karly was finishing up dentistry school.
“Yeah, of course. Wow, Karly. How did you two reconnect?”
“I actually ran into her at a bar a few weeks ago. I know, classy,” he laughed again. “We just started talking, and we’ve gone out a few times.”
Bria didn’t say anything, just nodded.
“Aww, come on Bria,” he said, nudging her playfully. “That was then, this is now.”
“Oh, I know. I guess I never really got past what she did to you.”
“Aww, come on. If I can, you can. That was so long ago, we were all just kids.”
His flippant words struck her, as though one of the big trees they were running under had fallen and hit her. It wasn’t that long ago. Karly had still broken him. And Bria couldn’t help but wonder if the “just kids” comment was what he thought whenever, if ever, he thought about the two of them, Bria and Knox. She wondered if everything they had was just a “good old days” kind of memory for Knox. Something to be left in the past.
TWENTY
Then, Freshman Year of College
After three or four weeks in College Park, Bria felt like she was finally getting the hang of the college life. It had taken some getting used to, but she was starting to have a little bit of fun. She’d made a few friends and gone to a few parties. She’d even had a moment of rebellion and gotten a tattoo. She’d always fiddled with the idea, but she couldn’t commit to a design she really wanted. But as she stood in the tattoo shop with her roommate, Miranda, she spontaneously decided on a branch of dogwood flowers, for no particular reason, down the side of her shoulder. She had a moment of panic as she admired her ink in the mirror that night, where she realized the permanence. But it wore off the more she stared at the bright pink petals on her arm. Her life had been so conventional. This made her feel a little unorthodox, edgy.
She was starting to figure things out, like which professors and classes she wanted to take the next semester, and that she definitely wanted to change her major from psychology to marketing. Things were going okay. But she missed home. She missed her sisters. And she missed Knox.
They talked almost every day, him checking in on her, seeing how classes were going, casually asking about the guys she was meeting on campus.
She’d laugh and tell him not to worry about it; she liked being a little sneaky, hoping that he’d want to put a stop to any hanky-panky that she might be getting into. But in reality, it was none. Zero. Zilch.
In her short eighteen years, sex hadn’t come to mean much to Bria. She supposed that was because she hadn’t had much of it; losing her virginity in a coat closet sort of set her out for a lifetime of underwhelming sexual experiences, she assumed. So after a few awkward hookups on campus, she had thrown in the towel for a while. Unless, of course, she could do it with someone that actually meant something to her. Just as she was adding names to her list of prospects, which included Jeremy, the hot graduate assistant that taught her English 101 class, and both of the Hemsworth brothers, her phone buzzed in her bag. She dug it out just in time.
“Hey, you,” she said, smiling as she kicked a pebble in front of her.
“You comin’ home this weekend?” Knox said, crunching on something on the other end.
“Yeah, I think I will,” she said. “What are we doing?”
She wanted him to know that she just assumed he’d be spending most of the weekend with her. She wanted him to know that it was important for her to see him.
“Well, I want you to meet somebody,” he said. Her heart starting beating inexplicably faster.
“Oh? Who?”
“Okay, well it’s not really meeting someone, per se, it’s more like re-meeting them.”
“Who is it?”
“Remember Karly Shepherd?” he asked. There was an unfamiliar tone in his voice; one that was light, and airy, and almost dreamy.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Well, I think we are sort of, together.”
“What? When did this happen?” Bria asked. She played it off like she was just offended that he hadn’t mentioned it to his best friend. But in reality, she was panicking. This was so weird, so foreign to her. His place in her life till now had always been so clear. But what would hers be in his, if there was someone else?
“Well, we’ve been talking for the last few weeks, and we’re actually going to meet up at Dalesville Day. But I wanted to have a group of people over afterward.” Bria stayed silent. “So, I was thinking that you could join us.”
Bria thought for a moment, perplexed.
“I guess. But won’t that be weird?”
“No. You know me. You know this whole thing is awkward for me, actually talking to a girl. It would be more weird if we were by ourselves. ”
For a second, Bria actually felt bad for him. His normal “connection” with a female consisted of laying his smooth moves on her, and then sleeping with her, and promptly ending it. It was clear he had no idea how to have a relationship. She suspected it was because of his parents; she knew they weren’t the happiest. They weren’t miserable, but she didn’t see them hugging, or kissing, or showing any affection. They’d often take trips without each other, and they both seemed to be okay with that. To be fair, though. Bria didn’t really know them. Despite how close she and Knox were, she really hadn’t spent a lot of time with his parents because they were never around. They had a lot of money, and they liked to spend it. Knox was their youngest, and they were waiting for him to be out of the house before they enjoyed the fruits of all their years of labor. He was on his own a lot.
“Yeah, okay. I’ll be there,” Bria responded.
“Yes, thank you, baby cakes.”
For the past few days, Knox had been talking incessantly about Karly, but Bria had just assumed she was his catch of the week. Karly Shepherd was a year older than her and one year younger than Knox, and was possibly one of the most beautiful humans Dalesville had ever seen. She was tall and tan, but had naturally blonde hair that fell to the middle of her back. She had electric blue eyes, and she was incredibly smart. Everyone knew Karly Shepherd. She was one of the girls that you wanted to hate, but you also wanted to be friends with. She had recently broken up with her long-time boyfriend since high school, Tony Welsh. The rumor was that he had broken up with her for another girl in town, but it hadn’t yet been proven true. Karly was reportedly struggling with the break-up big time, until Knox started giving her some attention.
That Friday, Bria and Knox grabbed some ice cream before they went to his house. She was only home for two days, so she wanted to soak in as much Knox as she could get. Even if it meant she had to share him.
“So,” he said, snagging a lick of her cone, “at Karly’s soccer game last week, she introduced me to some of her friends. I think I might go down and stay with her at school in a few weeks.” Bria nodded.
“You went down to watch her play?”
Karly went to school on the eastern shore of Maryland. And though it wa
s only a few hours away, Bria was surprised by Knox’s commitment level.
“Yeah. She’s so good,” he said. “What’s up with you?” he asked, detecting that her usual spark seemed to be zapped away.
“Oh, nothing. I guess I’m just worried she’s using you as a rebound,” Bria told him. Even though he was a player, she felt defensive of him when it came to his actual feelings. She didn’t see them getting used very often, after all.
“Nah, I don’t think it’s like that. She’s over Tony. Besides, he’s already moving on with Franny Leibowitz.”
“Franny? Franny was the other girl?” she asked. Franny was Karly’s best friend all through school. They were roommates together in college. “Damn. That’s cold.”
The next morning was Dalesville Day, the annual parade and fair that happened every fall. As a teenager, Bria found it so painfully lame; most of the parade “floats” were just her neighbors on their newest John Deere tractors, broken up by the small herds of farm animals, and the streets were always filled with animal feces after the parade was over. But, for the first time in her life, Bria was actually missing home. And she couldn’t wait for Dalesville Day. Maybe because she missed her hometown, or maybe because she was going with Knox.
When he picked her up, he was on the phone. He didn’t come to the door like he normally did, asking for her sisters or her mother. Today, he seemed to be in a bit of a rush.
“Yeah, that sounds good. We’ll meet you in front of Jimmie Cone.” he said, hanging up. “Karly should be there soon.”
“Cool,” she said. “By the way, hi.”
“Oh, yeah, hey!” he said, patting her leg once. “Welcome home!”
Parking at Dalesville Day was a always nightmare, and everyone and their mother knew to wear good walking shoes. It didn’t matter where you parked, you’d likely have to walk to get a good view of the festivities.
When Knox and Bria finally came upon the perfect spot, a single patch of unoccupied grass in front of Jimmie Cone, he snagged it, standing in it as if he were protecting his own property.
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