Bittersweet Creek (6 page)

Julian

I
t wasn't the first time I'd ever seen Romy get drunk. I liked her pleasantly tipsy when everything made her giggle—or I used to. Watching her tonight, a night when I knew there'd be no sex under a full moon nor any mosquito bites in places you didn't want to explain, was sheer torture.

To make matters worse, Genie and Ben were hitting it off as if just discovering each other instead of having gone to school together most of their lives. At one point I almost told them to get a room, but that would've meant leaving Romy with me. I shouldn't have been shocked when they said they were getting another beer but instead sneaked out while Romy was in the middle of singing “I Will Survive.” I shouldn't have been, but I was.

They were trying to play matchmaker. Ben, of all people, should've known better. He knew why Romy and I couldn't be together. He had seen it with his own two eyes. Me and him were going to have ourselves a chat tomorrow, and he was not going to like it.

“I think it's time we took you home,” I said as Romy stepped off the stage. She'd nailed the song despite being drunk, and she was flush with both victory and alcohol. Then she frowned.

“Where's Genie?”

“Said she needed a ride home herself.”
Bullshit.
“So she let Ben drive her home.”

Romy frowned, looking around the rapidly emptying tavern for another option.

That she would look to someone else in that crowd before looking to me felt kinda like someone had a crowbar under the rib over my heart and was trying to pry it off. I started to ask if I was really that bad, but I knew the answer. I deserved no less from her.

“C'mon. It's just a ride home.” I grabbed her elbow.

She snatched it back from me.

“Hey, now. I don't bite.”

Her arched eyebrow and the memory of at least one well-placed hickey contradicted me. “No. You do worse.”

I reached for my hat only to remember I still hadn't replaced it and ran my hand through my hair instead. “Look. I'm not drunk. You are. These other assholes are. Please let me take you home.”

She nodded, and we made our way to the door.

Riding home reminded me of too many other times she'd ridden home with me, times we'd taken a detour to Robert Smith's abandoned orchard. I still had a stack of old quilts in the back, but these days they gathered dirt and dust. I'd seen no reason to wash them and only used them to cushion the bed of the truck from whatever I was hauling.

“Why didn't you show up?”

She continued to lean against the door, as far from me as possible, gazing up at the moon. That imaginary crowbar stabbed the meaty part of my heart, the pain so intense I couldn't find my voice for a minute. “I had my reasons.”

Her head jerked to me, and tears streamed down her cheeks. “You could've talked to me, you know. I know you always thought you needed to protect me, but you could've told me stuff. I told you everything.”

And she had. She'd been completely honest with me, but it was easier to be honest when your secrets weren't so dark. There was nothing in the world she could've told me to ever make me stop loving her. Glancing at her tear-streaked face, I knew there'd never come a day I didn't love her. But loving someone meant doing what was best for them. Sometimes what was best for them wasn't all that good for you.

Sometimes, loving someone meant you had to let them go, send them off, even.

“I changed my mind.”

I almost choked on the words because they weren't the truth, not exactly. They told what I did, but they didn't explain why. And I could never, ever tell her why. After I told her, she would never look me in the eye again, and I wouldn't have that. I'd rather her look at me with hate in her eyes than pity.

Romy broke into sobs, her face hidden in her hands, and a boulder of a lump formed in my throat. Was there anything I could do that wouldn't make her cry? I couldn't swallow. I couldn't think. I could hardly keep myself from stopping the truck and pulling her into my arms and telling her it was all a lie.

If only it would be as simple as telling her I'd been kidnapped by the Dread Pirate Roberts. She'd always liked
The Princess Bride.

Ben was right. I had been watching too many movies—girlie movies at that.

But, dammit, real life wasn't a movie—at least not a happy movie. Real life didn't have a happy ending—not for anybody I knew. If anyone deserved a happy ending, it was Romy. She might not realize it, but I knew she'd never find that happy ending with me.

Romy

I
collapsed on the front porch steps, but Julian just sat there with his headlights blinding me. It took me a few minutes to realize he was waiting for me to go inside. He wanted to make sure I made it into the house safely. I had to wave him on at least five times before he got the hint and started to back down the driveway.

I didn't want to go in and face Daddy. Sure, he was probably snoring in the living room chair while he pretended to watch the late-late show, but if he were awake, he'd see that I was drunk. He'd dress me down even though I knew from Granny Satterfield that he'd had a few benders in his youth, too.

I didn't think it was too much to ask. If a girl got jilted, didn't she deserve to know why?

In spite of myself I went back to the night in question, a night a lot like the present one. It was warm with just a hint of the cooler days of a spring just past. We'd graduated, finally made it through the minefield of high school. In the shadow of the football stadium, Julian leaned in to kiss me even while other students and families milled about the football field taking pictures and looking for the caps they'd flung into the air with careless jubilation.

“We're still on for tonight, right?” he asked with his forehead still touching mine.

“Daddy is going to kill me.”

He frowned. “Are you sure then? Sure you want to do this? We can do it the right way, you know.”

“This is the right way,” I said. I was so young and stupid back then, so sure my father would say no and so sure I knew better than him.

“All right. If you're sure. I've got the truck washed and waxed. Oil's changed, and it's full of gas.”

My heart swelled. What might be a checklist to some were actions of love from Julian. “I trust you.”

“You shouldn't,” he said with a wolfish grin as he reached for the hem of my white graduation gown and started lifting it along with the hem to my dress. I slapped his hand as he knew I would.

“Come on, now. I couldn't even concentrate on your speech for wondering what you could possibly be wearing under that gown. I couldn't see the outline of anything. Are you commando under there?”

“Wouldn't you like to know?” I countered.

“I aim to find out.” This time he reached for the zipper at the collar. I smacked his hand.

“Later!”

He kissed my lips gently. “Don't blame a man for being excited about his wedding night.”

“Then let's go now.”

He frowned. “Your daddy would have the cops on us before we got to Nashville. We'll go tonight—but make sure to put out that letter where he can find it.”

I tried not to think of how I later stumbled home before dawn and took my letter to Daddy off the kitchen table before hiding it in my suitcase and sneaking back up the stairs.

Instead I thought of how Julian had kissed me long and hard, almost as though he knew he wasn't going to show up later that night. At times over the years I'd thought of that kiss and wondered if he'd known in that moment what he planned to do, but I didn't think so. No, the kiss and the smile that followed had held promise, not betrayal.

Julian had known I didn't like going to his house because his dad scared me and his mom hated me, so I had been sure he would call me. I hardly got out of bed the next day, worried sick about him. When Daddy asked, I told him I was just tired from all the work of the last few weeks of high school, that I needed to sleep it off and I'd be fine.

But I wasn't fine, and I didn't sleep. Finally, after an entire day with no word from Julian, I called his house. I cringed when his mother answered the phone.

“May I speak to Julian, please?”

“No, you may not.” Her crisp reply startled me. Even though she hated my guts, she'd never kept him from me before.

“This is important, so if—”

“He doesn't want to talk to you.”

And she hung up on me.

My teenage world upended itself. I ran across the room to the trash can and hurled inside it, then had a momentary panic about what if condoms broke and I was now pregnant
and
without my husband of only a few hours. I gasped for air. I had to see him.

So I ran downstairs, ignoring Daddy's questions of where I thought I was going like a bat out of hell, and I jumped in my car to drive the short distance up the road. I tripped as I ran up the steps to the front door of the McElroy trailer. The acrid taste of vomit lingered in my mouth, but I couldn't be bothered with that. I rang the doorbell once, then twice, before I heard feet heading in the direction of the door.

Julian's mom didn't even undo the chain, instead peering at me with most of her body hidden behind the door, no doubt to conceal whatever damage Julian's dad had recently done. “I told you he doesn't want to speak to you.”

“Please.” My voice came out on a sob, and tears streaked down my cheeks.

For a minute I thought she was going to cave because I noticed her eyes were puffy and red, too. I thought she might open the door to me. Instead, she pulled herself up straighter with new resolve. “He's gone. I don't know where he is, and it's all your fault. Now go on off to college or whatever it is you
smart
people do.”

She slammed the door shut with as much force as one could muster when it was held only a chain's length open. I pinched myself to make sure I wasn't in the midst of a horrific nightmare. It couldn't be happening. Julian had promised to love me and cherish me forever. I'd heard him say those words just three days before. I'd seen the love and admiration in his eyes, his confident cocky grin.

It made no damned sense.

And because it made no damned sense, I had no choice but to drive home and go back to bed where I could cry myself to sleep even though the sun hadn't even begun to set.

If Daddy thought something was wrong with me that summer, he kept it to himself. He didn't even say a word when I told him I wanted to go to Nashville a month early to see the sights and get settled in. He didn't question for a minute that I was staying in an apartment with a girl I'd only met once at the Volunteer Girls State program the summer before. Either he'd decided I was eighteen and could do as I pleased, or he knew enough about losing the love of your life to figure I was going to do some stupid things whether he liked it or not.

And I did some stupid stuff then, just as getting drunk at The Fountain and letting Julian drive me home now had been incredibly stupid. As I heard Daddy wrestle with the front door, I realized I'd been very, very stupid.

I expected him to bless me out, but instead he sighed deeply as I wiped away my tears with the back of my hand. “Come on in here before the skeeters eat you up.”

I got up and walked into the house. I wanted a hug from my daddy. I wanted a fierce hug, as though it would somehow make up for tonight and what'd happened ten years ago. But he couldn't hug me very well from his wheelchair.

I was lucky. He'd get the cast off, and then I'd be able to get one of his crushing hugs, but that wheelchair reminded me he was old. Even when he got out of the cast, he needed to start taking it easy and not take any more chances with temperamental bulls who snapped legs like twigs. I'd already lost my mother, and I couldn't bear to lose him, too.

For the first time ever I wanted to stay home. Forever. It was a stupid pie-in-the-sky kind of wish, but I didn't want to miss another moment with my father. Of course, if I stayed, I'd be stuck next door to Julian and would run the risk of running into him every time I needed a carton of milk. Every time I saw him and he looked away, I'd hear those four words that had ripped my heart out all over again:
I changed my mind
.

“Julian? Again?”

I nodded.

“C'mon.” He turned the wheelchair with a grunt and rolled to the kitchen. He nodded at the table, and I took a seat while I watched him rummage through the lower cabinets. By the time he emerged with the bottle of Jack he was panting from the exertion.

“Need some help?”

“Nah, get a Coke out of the fridge, though.”

“You sure this is a good idea?” I asked as I reached for a couple of cans of Coke.

He raised an eyebrow. “Already drunk off your ass, aren't you?”

By the time I sat back down he had two coffee mugs—the only glasses he could reach—and he'd already poured a finger or three of Jack into each mug then passed them to me. He tilted each mug sideways before slowly pouring Coke on top.

“You're going to have to let that boy go,” he said as he lifted his mug in a sad toast.

I clinked my mug against his. “I just want to know why. That's all, Daddy. Why?”

He drank for a while before setting his mug down hard enough to make his drink slosh. “I ask that question about your mother every damn day.”