I lean over the table and kiss her cheek. There is no way to ignore Bradie’s pointed stare or Duke, who moans, “Gross.”
“You’ll change your tune,” I tell him.
“Don’t give him any ideas,” Bradie warns as she follows Winnie off the porch and around the house to the trailer.
Duke and I talk about hockey and pile up the remaining dishes. As Bradie walks back to grab some more, Winnie’s phone starts to wail. She left it on the picnic table. The ringer is on really loud and so we all look at it. The lit up screen flashes with a name. Well, not so much a name as a title.
Boyfriend.
My eyes move from the screen to Bradie. She’s looking down at it with a hard expression, which doesn’t get softer as she raises her gaze to look at me. I try not to look too shocked. After all, I am fairly certain that it’s just an oversight that her ex is still programmed in her phone that way. I mean, I still fucking hate it, but we haven’t even defined what we are doing so I can’t exactly pitch a fit.
“I assume you aren’t pocket dialing her,” Bradie says and doesn’t wait for my confirmation. “So what are you doing with her if she has a boyfriend?”
“She doesn’t,” I say. “It’s complicated.”
“Which is probably the last thing you need,” Bradie remarks and before she can say anything else, Winnie rounds the side of the house.
“I don’t have anything for dessert,” she announces apologetically. “But I think there’s ice cream in the freezer in the house and there’s coffee or tea if anybody wants that.”
Bradie reaches over to Duke and gives his sleeve a tug. He stands up. “Actually, this has been great. The food was fantastic and it was nice to hang out but we have to get home. I’m sorry to eat and run.”
“It’s okay,” Winnie says easily. “I’m just glad you stayed. Duke, I’ll see you in two days for another session but remember, you can always call or text me if you are having trouble with your homework.”
Duke nods, but he isn’t wearing his usual smile. Fuck. Did one ring of her cell phone ruin this night for him too? I grab his shoulder and give it a squeeze. “Have a good night, bud. See you at practice in a couple days.”
We watch Bradie and Duke walk around to the front of the house and hear her car drive off. Winnie turns back to grab the remaining dishes off the table, but I’ve already scooped them up. She gives me a beautiful, grateful smile. “Please say you’re going to help me do dishes too. I forgot the dishwasher isn’t installed yet in the cottage and the Airstream doesn’t have one.”
“I will help you do dishes,” I say walking around the table to lay another kiss on her cheek. “And later I will help you have an orgasm.”
She blushes and it’s really becoming my new favorite thing. I want to bring up the call—and I’m about to—when her phone starts screaming again. She jumps and grabs it so quickly that I can’t see the full name before she turns it away from me, but I do see “Boy” so I know it’s him again. She turns off the ringer and looks up at me. This is where she says something to make me feel better about her ex—still listed as “boyfriend”—in her phone—calling her late at night, repeatedly.
“I have to take this, but it will just be a second,” is all she says as she walks across the deck to the other side, opens the screen door and slips inside the cottage.
I don’t know what I needed to hear, but that wasn’t it.
I carry the dishes into the trailer and start to wash them, my least favorite chore in the world. I’ve gotten all the pots and pans washed and am moving onto the plates when there’s a knock at the trailer door. Is Winnie knocking before entering now? That’s ridiculous. I turn off the water and grab a dishtowel. Wiping my hands I reach for the door handle and twist. “Since when do you knock—”
It’s not Winnie. It’s Kevin. My mood flips so quick it scares even me, but I told him to stay the fuck away from here. It’s not my place and he’s not allowed to just show up here. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
He looks astonished by my reaction. He fucking shouldn’t be. I warned him last time to stay the fuck away from here. I glance up at the cottage. Winnie is nowhere in sight. I step out of the Airstream, forcing him to back up. I glance around. No car so he walked. Fuck.
“You don’t want me here? Fine, I’ll leave with my information,” he says and starts backing away.
“What information?” I bark but keep my voice low so Winnie doesn’t hear me from inside.
“I found her!”
“You told me that last time,” I say through gritted teeth. “Do you have something I can actually use? Like does she still have the fucking necklace?”
“Yeah, actually she does,” Kevin says, annoyed. “I drove down to Boston like I said I would and turns out not only does she still have that stupid thing, she’s willing to sell it back to you.”
“Sell it?” I scoff. “She never paid for it. Kidd gave it to her as a gift.”
“Well, now she wants money to part with it,” Kevin shrugs. “Is that an issue?”
“Yeah, it’s a fucking issue, but not a deal breaker,” I grumble because I am so sick of giving these scumbags money. But if I can give Cat her grandma’s necklace back then I’m sure she’ll forgive me. And I need her to because if I’m going to keep Winnie in my life—and in Maine—then Cat will be in my life too. I need her to tolerate me, at the very least.
“How much?” I ask and I glance at the cottage again. Still no Winnie, thank God.
“She won’t tell me. Says she’ll only meet with you,” Bruce explains. “She’s staying at the Driftwood Motel until Monday.”
“Just a second.”
I dart back into the trailer, grab my wallet and keys and when I come back outside I grab his arm and start to walk us both over to my truck. “We’re going now?”
“Yes,” I say and open the passenger door and shove him toward it. He gets the point and climbs inside as I jog around to the driver’s side. “I need to get this over with.”
As we drive away, I call Winnie. It goes straight to voicemail probably because she’s still on the phone with her ex. That makes my dark mood darker but I try not to show it when I leave a message. “Hey, Win. Listen, I had an emergency. Nothing serious, just a thing I have to take care of. I’ll explain when I get back.”
This is not how I wanted tonight to go. Fuck, this isn’t how I want any night to go. But I’ll fix it. I just need to get that damn necklace and see Winnie and I can fix it.
19
Winnie
I miss you.”
It’s the fifth time in twenty minutes he’s said it, and I feel the same thing I’ve felt every other time—nothing. The Winnie who was with Ty, who put up with so much for so long, kind of doesn’t exist anymore.
“You don’t miss me,” I say back and try not to sigh. “You miss the familiarity. The comfort, but you don’t miss me.”
“How can you say that?’
“Well, first of all because you and I fought like cats and dogs in the last couple of years,” I remind him and keep pacing the dining room, careful not to trip on any of the boxes of kitchen stuff piled up everywhere. “And you cheated on me so, like, if you thought you were going to miss me, you probably shouldn’t have done that.”
“It was a mistake,” he says and now that lonely, sad tone of his voice is getting harder and angrier. Good. He has been drinking; I can tell by the slight slur to his words. “You said you forgave me. You stole years of my life by lying about that.”
“I’ve told you, I wasn’t lying on purpose.” I know that still sounds lame but it’s the truth. “I tried to forgive you.”
“All you tried to do was be there for your family,” he snaps back. “You didn’t care that it took you away from me. You didn’t care that I was going to be lonely or what it would do to our relationship.”
“I cared about the fact that my dad was dying,” I say, pain and anger bubbling over. “And if you loved me the way I deserved
, you’d have cared about that too instead of cheating on me.”
“Well thanks for making me remember why we’re done,” he says. “I can’t believe I wasted a fucking decade on you.”
Before I can answer, he hangs up. Good. I don’t care who gets the last word as long as it’s the last. I don’t want to talk to him again. God, was he ever really in love with me? Was I ever in love with him? The way I felt about him was different than how I feel about Holden now. With Ty, I always felt like I was trying to win him or woo him. I never felt secure about his feelings for me. I was an insecure nineteen-year-old when we met, and I was just so grateful someone I thought was charming and cute seemed to think the same about me.
With Holden, I don’t feel like I’m chasing him or that I have to work hard to keep him interested. He’s interested, whether I like it or not. I smile at that thought and start through the cottage toward the porch and front door. Holden has seen me at my absolute worst and he’s been there, as a friend and then when I was ready, a lover. I feel like we are more solid in a few weeks than Ty and I ever were at any point during our ten years together. Which is why I am going out there and I’m going to ask him about the guy Dixie saw him with. Because the Winnie who is falling in love with Holden is different from the one who dated Ty. I confront problems now, I don’t try to ignore them into oblivion.
I step out onto the porch and see the lights on in the trailer. I open the screen door and head down the stairs toward the trailer but when I swing open the door, there’s no one inside.
“Holden?” I call out his name as I walk to the tiny bedroom and then over to glance in the bathroom. Nothing. He’s not here. I walk back over to the kitchen area and stare at the half-washed dishes. As I lean against the counter and lift my phone to text him, I see I have a voicemail. Right. Someone called when I was talking to Ty, but I ignored it assuming it was one of my sisters or something. But the number it’s showing is Holden’s so I quickly retrieve the message.
I stand there in the middle of his empty trailer listening to it three times in a row. Emergency? What the fuck is going on? Why does he sound annoyed and cold? My brain starts to spin out of control with possible situations that would have him leave without actually talking to me. I decide to call him but it goes straight to voicemail.
Was it Bradie and Duke? Did their car breakdown again or something? I check the time. It’s only nine thirty. Not too late to call Bradie, so I do. When she answers, I ask her if Holden is with her.
“No. I left him with you at the house.”
She sounds oddly cold too. “Oh. Okay, well I was in the cottage on the phone and when I came out, he was gone. He left a voicemail about an emergency or something so I thought maybe—”
“Were you on the phone with your boyfriend?” Bradie cuts in. “The guy who called you when you were clearing dishes?”
“What? I…he’s my ex. How did you—”
“The number that popped up on your phone when you were in the trailer said ‘Boyfriend,’” Bradie explains. “Which you should probably fix if you’re dating my brother. Are you dating my brother?”
“I don’t know,” I admit because I don’t. “I mean we’re involved, and I really like him.”
“Okay, so then maybe change your ex’s name in your phone,” Bradie says, still as cold as ice. “And I have a feeling Holden’s absence tonight might have to do with that. I know everyone says my brother has changed and honestly, I’m beginning to believe maybe he has, in some ways. But I can tell you one way I don’t think he’ll ever change. If he thinks he’s going to get hurt, he will shut down and shut you out so quick it’ll make your head spin. And he won’t let you back in. Ever. I know because I’m the same way.”
“Solid advice,” I say quietly. “And I swear, I am not going to hurt him.”
“You don’t have to convince me. You have to convince him,” Bradie says. “Night, Winnie.”
After I hang up with Bradie, I feel even more confused and worried than I did before. Is he really upset I was talking to Ty? The idea that he is, that it caused him to leave, makes me feel like such a screwup. Ugh. I am all about the fails today clearly. Giving people I care about labels that aren’t their names in my phone started as a safety thing for Jude after I caught a girl in college going through my phone when I left a lecture to go to the bathroom. She was trying to find my superstar brother’s number. So, I changed everyone’s names who meant anything to me. My parents are listed under “Couple Goals,” my sisters under “Blond and Blonder” and Jude is “Putz.” I changed Ty’s to “Boyfriend,” just for fun, around the same time.
I try to call Holden again and he doesn’t answer again. Damn. Ocean Pines is a small town that is more than half empty this time of year. I could walk the streets and probably find him, if he stayed local. But he took his truck, so he could have driven into Portland or Ogunquit or anywhere. Fuck. My. Life. Now I just have to sit here and let my brain wander to all the horrible things that he could be doing or, worse, thinking about me—and us.
I finish the dishes and put them all away and when he still hasn’t called or texted, I decide to go out—not to look for him but just to keep from going crazy sitting here waiting. I head to the beach first and sit there for about half an hour on a bench by the dunes watching the tide roll in under the moonlight. It doesn’t do anything to stop the tornado of bad feelings swirling in me, which is rare. The ocean always makes me feel better.
I walk down Main Street, the same street that, if you walk far enough, will take you to the bus station. How does it feel like a lifetime ago that I was walking it in the other direction, home from the bus station, trying not to be noticed by Holden?
The streets are just as deserted tonight as they were that night. All the tiny motels that pepper the street between closed sundry shops and empty restaurants have flickering vacancy signs. I look up at the sign for the Driftwood, which has been the same since I was little. It’s a white neon clamshell with the name in pink neon script across the middle. The building is the same, squat two-story structure it’s always been, the white and teal paint peeling now, unlike when I was a kid. Normally, I wouldn’t look twice at it, as it’s so familiar I could sketch it with my eyes closed, but tonight it has more vehicles in the parking lot than the other motels. And one of those vehicles is Holden’s truck.
My steps falter and stop completely. I stand there, on the sidewalk across the street, unmoving and staring at the building for what feels like eternity. I don’t know what else to do except wait while I let my brain and my heart fight a battle. My brain says it’s sketchy as hell that he’s at some motel and that he must be up to his old no-good ways again. My heart says he isn’t. It’s something else…but what?
Finally, the door to a room on the bottom floor opens, second from the end. Holden steps out. He turns back to the open door and he’s saying something to someone, but I can’t see who it is. He looks…different. And yet familiar. His shoulders are tense, his hands in fists at his side. His jaw is so tight I can see the tautness of the tendons in the side of his neck from here. The scowl on his face as he turns away from the motel room brings me back to my youth—all the painful parts. Because he wore that expression permanently when he was young. It was always on his face and I stared it down while I died inside when he teased me mercilessly.
Suddenly someone else comes out of the room, as Holden is reaching for the driver’s door on his truck. A woman. Skinny, not slim, in a pair of cutoffs so short I can see her ass cheeks hanging out from here as she reaches for his shoulder, holding him in place and pressing the front of her body up against the back of his.
My emotions are spiraling, pulling my heart with them into a dark vortex.
She says something, her chin resting on his shoulder, her lips near the shell of his ear. Holden turns and gently moves her back, off him and then proceeds to get in his truck. I can’t move. I’m just standing there, rigid, stuck in this strange Twilight Zone where everything I’v
e clung to—like the belief that he’s changed, that I’m a stronger person and wouldn’t see a cheater like Ty again—is disintegrating before my eyes.
He starts the truck and pulls out of the parking spot. As soon as he reaches the exit, his headlights shine directly on me. Despite the fact the road he’s about to turn onto is wide open he doesn’t pull out. Instead, his window goes down. “Winnie?”
I don’t respond. I can’t.
He gets out of his truck, leaving it running, in park in the middle of the motel driveway. He jogs across the street and as soon as he’s in front of me, I’m released from the trance I was in. I shrug off his touch when he reaches for my shoulder, which causes a wounded look on his face. “What are you doing in a motel with…whoever that is?”
“Were you following me?” he accuses, his tone hard.
“How can I follow you?” I ask angrily. “You took off without even telling me and you weren’t answering your phone. I was just on a walk and saw your truck. I’m not some psycho stalker.”
“Well, I would have told you, but you were busy talking to your ex-boyfriend,” Holden says icily.
Bradie was right. He’s hurt. So what? He runs to a motel with this girl?
“The key word in that sentence is ‘ex,’” I say my voice as hard and cold as his even though I feel like crying. “And just because I talk to my ex means you get to run off to a motel room with some woman?”
“Who are you to tell me what I can and can’t do?” he says.
“I guess I’m no one,” I reply and start down the sidewalk away from him, back toward the cottage. He follows.
“Wait! Winnie!” he calls. My sad little heart is yelling at my feet to keep moving but I slow to a stop. And then he’s standing in front of me again.
“I don’t know what we’re doing. I don’t know if this is something to you, like it is to me but I do know this,” he pauses, “I wouldn’t run off and fuck someone else just because I’m upset about something. That’s not who I am anymore and the real problem is the fact that, no matter what, you don’t get that.”
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