The leaving road, p.15
The Leaving Road, page 15
“Is that so?” Sloan’s voice startled me, and I jumped up, almost bumping into his chest.
I must have forgotten to set the alarm.
“Jesus, you scared me.”
“You must have been lost to some good conversation.” He looked at me warmly, eyeing between me and Peaches.
“Something like that. You made it back quickly.”
“I didn’t like the thought of you being here alone. I would have been here faster, but Lexie almost took out my kneecaps with a baseball bat and informed me to tell you, ‘What good is a cell phone if you never check it?’”
“Shit!”
I made my way out to my car, knowing I left my phone in the center console. I was terrible about my phone when I was at work. More often than not, I opted to leave it somewhere it wouldn’t distract me, promptly forgetting about it for hours.
I had just about reached the door when I was basically upheaved from my trajectory and thrown over a muscled shoulder.
“What the heck, Sloan?”
I pounded on his back and was put down, but this time, Sloan was between me and the door.
“No. What the heck you, Magnolia! Did you not hear anything Doc said? Guns? Be extra careful? It’s dark outside, and you’ve actively helped and have taken animals from these people.”
“So that means I can’t step outside by myself?” I all but yelled in his face.
“Yes!” he yelled back
“That’s entirely unreasonable.” I gawked at him. This was real life. People didn’t stay inside for weeks, and they sure didn’t have bodyguards that followed them around.
“Well, it’s entirely unreasonable for me to risk losing you when I just got you back.” The desperation in his voice was clear, and we were chest to chest—well, as chest to chest as you could be with his height and my lack thereof.
“Uhm…” I took a step back because being so close to him was making me lose all rational thought. Truthfully, my only thought was, climb him like a tree.
“Please, could you just listen to me and not put yourself in danger for once? I would love to be able to spend all day, every day, escorting you everywhere, but I don’t think I could swing it. Unless…” His eyebrows bunched together, and he whipped out his phone.
“Sloan, what are you doing?” I wasn’t yelling at him anymore, but I was suddenly very curious as to what idea was brewing in his head.
“Dad, it’s me. Say, I know you retired, but could you work the restaurants in my place for the next few weeks? Maybe Mom, too?”
“What?” I half screeched and half jumped on top of him to grab his phone. He can’t be serious about escorting me around every day.
“No, everything is fine. That’s just Magnolia being as unreasonable as always.” He backed me up a bit from him and switched the phone in between ears to prevent me from taking it. “Absolutely, I’ll tell her. Call you later. Bye.”
“Dad said hi, and that he’s missed you,” he said warmly and some of the anger I’m feeling dissipates. I always loved his parents.
“You can’t really think you’re going to follow me around all day, every day.” I pouted.
“My schedule suddenly became open.” He stepped toward me, effectively ending any distance I had put between us. “Never underestimate what I’ll do to keep you safe, Magnolia.”
“Now, where were you going?” he asked.
“Just to get my phone from my car.”
“Stay here. Keys.” He held his hand out to me, waiting for my keys, and knowing he would win, I gave them to him without any fight.
He smiled at me. “Good girl.”
Chapter 33
Magnolia
“Shit,” I said as I watched Sloan walk outside to my car to get my phone.
I was feeling a bit betrayed by my body because, after him getting all protective over me had it tingling absolutely everywhere. Mix that with all the help and absolute adoration he was showing Peaches and her puppies, and I was an absolute pile of fucking goo.
Clearing my throat, regretting not only agreeing to this evening, but initiating it, I walked over to the employee break room to grab some paper plates for the pizza Sloan had deposited in the kitchen.
The smell of melty cheese and all my favorite toppings had me squealing in delight. Zio’s.
It was a local pizza parlor that had been around forever, and to be honest, I had completely forgotten about it until I smelled it. It used to be my favorite.
I had a lot of memories with Sloan eating this pizza, so maybe that’s why I had chosen to forget it. Whenever I was grumpy or in a bad mood, he would order this pizza; whenever I was stressed about a test or my mom, he’d order this pizza.
“I see that Zio’s still makes you happy.”
“You have no idea.” I opened the first pizza box and groaned at the sight. It had sausage, mushrooms, green peppers, and onions. It was my favorite pizza of all…and Sloan’s, too.
“Good call on getting two, though; I’m starving.”
Sloan slid a plate to me and then moved the box from the top of the other one and opened it. Inside lay a travesty of a pizza: pepperoni, jalapeno, and pineapple.
I frowned. “What’s this?”
“My pizza.” Sloan shrugged
“Do you no longer like this kind?”
“No, I really don’t like green peppers, and mushrooms taste like wet boogers.”
I looked at him like he had two heads. “But…this is the pizza you always got us.”
“I always got it for you,” he said while shoveling in a slice of his.
“I don’t understand.”
“My allowance only covered one pizza from Zio’s—that place was expensive for a kid.” He laughed. “But now I’m a grown up and can afford two pizzas.”
My mind was spinning. What?
“I don’t…I don’t understand.”
Sloan sighed, almost as if embarrassed that he had said anything in the first place. “You loved Zio’s, and it made you happy…”
“So you ate the wet booger mushrooms?” I couldn’t help the smile on my face.
He smiled back at me. “So I ate the mushrooms.”
Damnit, the tingles are back.
Being a glutton for punishment, I couldn’t help but ask, “Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t like mushrooms or green peppers?”
Without hesitation, he answered, “Because I knew you’d insist on getting something we both liked, and I liked how happy it made you. Plus, who can’t use more vegetables in their diet?”
I knew he was trying to make a joke out of this, but for some reason, this really struck a chord with me. This was the Sloan I had tried to forget. And maybe that’s what made everything so much worse; Sloan was always a good guy, a good friend. He helped his neighbors, mowed grass for the elderly, and helped his parents.
“Why her, Sloan?” I whispered, looking at my pizza that suddenly felt like more than just pizza.
“You want the short answer or the long answer, Magnolia?” The way his deep voice said my name had me looking at him. My eyes met his, and I saw the regret, pain, and the almost reluctance to hear my answer.
“Short, then maybe the long version?” I answered by doing my best to be honest with how I was feeling. If I could handle the short version, then maybe I would be okay hearing the long version—it had been almost a decade since we last really knew each other.
“Okay, short version. Boy meets girl, they become best friends. Boy starts realizing things he shouldn’t about his best friend, like the way her ass looks in the jeans she wore to a pep rally one day.”
“I remember those jeans! I remember that day! Robbie Falkens hit on me that day.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at the memory, even though Sloan was basically growling through his teeth at the mention of it.
I was standing in the bleachers, waiting for the gym teacher to signal the start of the cheerleaders before they introduced the football team. Even though it was the start of the season, it was colder than I was expecting, and while I had worn jeans and a sweater, I didn’t bring gloves. I was rubbing my hands together, waiting for this to be over with when…
“Hey, Magnolia, are you excited about this school year?”
A quick glance to my left showed me it was Robbie Falkens, the class clown, standing beside me, grinning.
I shot him an unamused look. “I’d be happier if they made these things optional instead of mandatory.”
That got a rather loud and unnecessary laugh out of Robbie, and I turned to face him and ask him what he wanted when, before I could protest or move, he crushed his lips to mine.
I was frozen, stunned, until a large body came between us, and I instantly felt it was Sloan,
“What the fuck, dude?” Sloan growled in Robbie’s face.
Robbie held his hands up in surrender. “Hey, she didn’t say no!”
But Sloan was having none of it. “I heard the whole conversation, and in no way did she invite you to kiss her.”
“Dude, you need to chill out…” Before the last word barely left his mouth, Sloan reared back his right hand and socked him right in the nose. The crunching sound was deafening, and then the shouting started, and everything after that was a bit of a blur. I was so worried that Sloan was going to be expelled.
“You never did tell me how you barely got in trouble for that.”
“That little prick… I informed the school that he kissed you without consent, and if I was getting expelled or in trouble, then so should he. His parents panicked about it going on his permanent record and having to switch schools in such a small area, so they figured it best the subject was dropped.”
“I feel like we got off topic here.” I feel like we’re treading on dangerous territory.
“Right, sorry. Okay, so, boy meets girl, they become best friends. Boy starts realizing things he shouldn’t about his best friend, like the way her ass looks in the jeans she wore to a pep rally one day…”
He turned to raise his eyebrows at me, as if waiting for me to interject again. I couldn’t help but smile and stay silent, so he continued, “He realizes he has all these feelings for someone he should not be having feelings for. He gives in to the first girl who showed him attention, dated her because he was young and dumb, misplacing a lot of feelings. Best friend leaves, he sinks into a depression, stays with the wrong girl for the wrong reasons, grows up, wises up, realizes his mistakes and some hard truths he tried to bury. He does his best to move on…and now, here we are”
His eyes met mine again, and I saw shame, and a little shockingly, what looked like some self-hatred.
Keeping eye contact, I murmured, “Now I think I want to hear the long version.”
Chapter 34
Magnolia
“Can I go check on Peaches before we get into it? I’d rather not be interrupted, but I haven’t checked in on her in about an hour now…” His voice was hesitant, almost as if he was afraid this would offend me, but instead it did the exact opposite. Cue heart melt.
I couldn’t help the soft look I shot his way when I nodded, and I absolutely didn’t miss the fact that he picked off all his gross toppings, leaving him with just a piece of cheese, bread, and sauce. I had a feeling he was about to sneak it to Peaches. I didn’t even have the heart to give him a warning glare. Doing his best to inconspicuously take it with him, he made his way over to where she was, and I watched him from afar, giving them time.
If I thought her tail wagged in happiness near me, I was wrong. I could hear the thumping and soft little whines she greeted him with while he cooed at her, ripping off pieces of the cheesy goodness and hand-feeding them to her.
After finishing his task of spoiling Peaches and checking on her and her babies, he made his way back to me. I found myself wishing we could skip the deep talk for the night and just hang out like we used to do, but if I kept putting off the conversation, then that’d just kept us both in limbo. And I’d spent enough of my life there.
“What does the long version entail?” I found myself asking. I hated to admit that his short version made sense to me.
I was unsure if I’d forgotten or just chose to block it out, but I remember being wildly confused about my feelings for Sloan when they first started happening. That was until my mom sat me down and gave me the birds and the bees talk. She had also explained that no, I wouldn’t be attracted to every guy I met. But she also cautioned me by trying to explain love vs. lust, and that confused fifteen-year-old me. I found myself wondering what I felt for Sloan.
Once I finally figured it all out, I was a seventeen-year-old mess who was losing her mom, and by the time I had picked up the courage to tell him, I was an eighteen-year-old girl who was drowning in her grief. It wasn’t the fact that he was dating someone, it wasn’t even the fact that it was her—which, of course, sucked on its own. It was the fact that he hid it from me; the fact that he let her spew all those terrible things about me and never once tried to stop her or stick up for me. That was what had hurt me the most.
“Magnolia, you with me?” Sloan whispered. He must have been able to tell that I was lost to my own thinking.
“Sorry, yeah. Were you saying something?”
“Not really… I was just asking where you would like me to start?”
“I guess…I guess I don’t know. The beginning?”
He sighed and visibly flinched. “Can I just tell you that it took me a long time to realize my mistakes, and I’m currently still in the process of righting my wrongs?” He looked a little bit paler than he had a minute ago, and my heart hurt for him. I did my best at scolding myself for that; I deserved to know the truth, even if it pained him to tell it.
“It started at a party, right before senior year. I was actually on my way out before Cassie stopped me and we got to talking, and…well, one thing led to another. Before I knew it, we were…” he trailed off, giving me a look as if asking, do you really want me to continue?
I raised my eyebrow in response. Yes, I told him without words.
“One thing led to another, and before I knew it, we had slept together. I was naïve, and from that moment on, I was infatuated with her. Looking back now, after having some real-life exposure and not being a seventeen-year-old hormonal kid, I can see I was ruled completely by my hormones. It…it had felt so good at the time that I assumed it only felt that good because I had feelings for her. I think a part of me always knew that wasn’t the case, but the damage had already been done.”
He looked down at his plate and frowned, then pushed it away, making it clear his appetite was now gone.
“At the time, I was unsure why I was hiding it. I kept rationalizing it to myself that I did it because I didn’t want to hurt you, but I knew it was because, if the truth came out, I would lose you. Magnolia, in no certain circumstances was that something I was willing to risk…but I always wasn’t willing to give Cassie up because I had convinced myself I was in love with her.”
Some of the color had returned to his face but it was a fierce crimson. He’s embarrassed.
“We met up at parties; we drank, we had fun, and I thought to myself, this is what it’s supposed to be. This is the high school experience. I saw it on movies and TV shows, that’s what it’s supposed to be. Jock meets cheerleader, jock dates cheerleader. They go to parties and end up happily ever after. I had everything so twisted in my mind, and I know it’s because I was just trying to ease my own guilt and avoid what I already knew.”
“And what was it that you knew?”
“That I was never in love with Cassie, but I had made a choice—even though it was the wrong one. Part of me knew you wouldn’t ever give me the time of day once you found out, so I stuck to my guns. I loved her, it was worth it, this is what I wanted.”
“And?”
He laughed, but there was no note of humor in it. “And it was exactly what I had already known: Cassie was the worst mistake of my life.”
I stayed silent, still processing everything he told me.
“She kept nagging about it, what happens after high school, and I was still trying to figure out what I was doing, you know? Finally, it got to the point where I just started agreeing with her because it was easier. Her dad had rented her an apartment for college, and she needed a roommate. One thing led to another and before I knew it, I agreed to move in with her. I had convinced myself that she was what I wanted, and it was the next logical step. Not bothering to factor in that I barely spent any time with her, other than at parties and drinking…and uh…well, you know.”
“Having sex?”
The crimson traveled all the way to the tips of his ears. “Yeah, that.”
“And?”
“And then you left, disappeared. I panicked when I got that phone call from my mother saying she stopped by your house, and it looked like no one had been home. I worried something had happened to you at the graduation party. I called and called, only for it not to ring through. I’d never been blocked before, so I didn’t realize what the empty dial tone meant. I texted, I pleaded; I went door to door, asking if anyone had seen you. Once my mom got a hold of your dad and he explained you’d just simply left, all my worry turned to rage…”
“Rage?”
“I’m not proud of it; I had planned on telling Cassie that I wasn’t moving in with her, and that our relationship had neared its end, but when I found out you had just left, I blamed you for my anger. I blamed you for a lot of things that weren’t your fault… Instead of blaming myself for my idiocy and actions, I blamed you. With all that anger, I vowed to make my relationship with Cassie work because at least she didn’t leave me.”
“That’s not fair,” I whispered. That’s not fair. I only left because of what I overheard.
“I know it wasn’t fair that I misplaced my anger for myself on you. I know that. It just took me a significant amount of time to figure that out. It took you calling me out on my shit to realize how wrong I was about why you left. But I made my bed.
