She lost the whole first minute of her time as we stared at each other. For once, I wasn't stuck searching the room for something to look at. Staring at Ronnie for a full hour certainly wouldn't be any hardship. Nor would it be the first time I'd done it.
The professor cleared his throat. I couldn't tell if it was actually directed at Ronnie since he was standing out of my line of vision, but it sent her into a flurry of motion.
I watched in awe as Ronnie let herself get lost in her work. Her hair was braided away from her face, which meant I had an unobstructed view of her every expression. Just like I'd expected, her teeth sunk into her full bottom lip. Her eyes flickered between me and her canvas. She didn't look at me objectively the way the other students did, she looked at me with every bit of the intimacy that was between us.
When the professor finally called, "Time's up," Ronnie reluctantly dragged her eyes away from her work. Her teeth released her bottom lip, allowing it to sink into a pout. She would have stayed working for hours if given the chance.
Some things never changed.
I stood up and slid out of the room as people started to pack up. At the door, I shot Ronnie a wink before disappearing into the sanctuary of my storage closet. I redressed quickly, assuming Ronnie was sticking around until I got out.
Ronnie was leaning against the wall just outside the door when I opened it. The first words out of her mouth were, "When you mentioned you were posing for art students, you didn't happen to mention that you were posing nude."
I flinched. "Yeah, I probably could have mentioned that part."
"So long as modeling is all you're doing for those hussy artists."
I grabbed the hem of her shirt to pull her to me. "Are you kidding?" I landed a kiss on her lips. "You're the only hussy artist for me."
"Ahem." We turned to find the professor—whose name I still couldn't remember—staring at us with judgment in his eyes. "Is this yours?" he asked.
He held up Ronnie's canvas. My jaw went slack as I got my first look at the work she'd done. I only occasionally got peeks at the pictures of myself, but none of them had looked remotely like the one Ronnie had done. She'd managed to capture details most people never seemed to notice.
"Oops, yeah. Thank you." Ronnie went to grab it but he held it back out of her reach, turning it back towards himself instead.
"This is really something," the man said. It was the closest thing to a compliment that I'd ever heard him utter.
"Oh. Thanks?" Ronnie shifted nervously between her feet.
"Will you be attending classes in the fall?"
"Ah, no. I'm not planning on it."
"Hmph." He thrust her painting at her, clearly put-off by her answer. "You should reconsider. We have good teaching staff, despite the fact that our current students are a pot of shit."
A group of girls that had come from his class overheard the comment. They shared an offended look amongst themselves. The professor had no interest in their mumbled complaints.
"Move along," he told them.
"Thanks for letting me sit in on your class," Ronnie said, drawing his attention back to her.
"See you next week."
"Oh, I wasn't planning to—"
He turned on his heel to go back into the classroom, the door slamming firmly closed behind him. I had no idea how he got away with being such a crotchety old man on what was generally a pretty friendly campus. Most of the professors were tough, but few came across as downright mean the way he did.
"Maybe he meant you," Ronnie said.
I literally laughed in her face. "No, babe, he definitely was talking about you. He's expecting you back and based on his reputation, you'd better show up. Otherwise, he's liable to hunt you down and drag you back to class. You should take it as a compliment."
"The creepiest compliment ever, maybe." She laughed it off.
I set my hands on her shoulders. "Look, I know you have a tendency to play too-cool-to-care or whatever, but you don't have to do that here. People here care about things."
"Like what?" She shrugged uncomfortably.
"I care about football—and you and Stella." She rolled her eyes at me, but I continued. "Laurel cares about the library, which is why she keeps showing up there every day even though she doesn't work there anymore. Hazel cares about keeping her bar open full time even though she hemorrhages money by having almost no customers before seven o'clock. Carter cares about this petting zoo on the outskirts of town, even though I'm pretty sure he's allergic to every animal. He comes home sneezing uncontrollably for days after every visit. And Wren. Well, Wren cares about just about everyone and everything. She goes a little overboard, actually. Let's maybe skip her as an example."
Ronnie snorted out a laugh.
"Anyway, my point is, you can feel free to actually care about whatever you want here. And if that's art—which I think it might be—then you should take that old guy seriously."
"That is both the weirdest and most inspirational speech I've ever heard." She threw her arms around me. "Thank you."
Veronica
It amazed me that Travis managed to be surprised by my request to see the petting zoo. What sort of man mentions petting cute little animals and then just tries to go about his day? It was practically criminal. So, when Travis had suggested a quiet afternoon at the park, I'd had to politely decline.
There was a petting zoo calling my name.
We'd picked up Stella and driven to the city line. I wasn't sure which of us was more excited. Probably me.
"Would you stop bouncing in your seat?"
"How much longer?" I whined.
"Up here's the turn."
I pressed my face against the glass as we drove past a length of fence. Finally, we'd reached the place. A freshly painted sign greeted us as we turned onto the gravel parking lot. I didn't even wait for Travis to set the car in park before I was leaping out.
"Jesus," he muttered after me.
I yanked open the back door to get Stella so that she could share in my excitement. She didn't quite understand what was happening yet, but I knew she'd be thrilled once she got a good look at the animals—and got to pet them.
"Ronnie, I swear if you start sprinting I'm leaving your ass here." I'd all but given up on correcting his language around Stella. The good news was she hadn't taken to repeating any of the words… yet.
"Hey, Travis?" I wiggled my brows at him from across the car. "You know what else is an ass?"
"What?" he asked wearily.
"Donkeys! I bet they have donkeys here, don't they?"
Travis worked his way around the car and took Stella out of my arms. "Let's try not to drop the kid, okay?"
"You know what else is a kid?" I was really on a roll. "A baby goat!" I blurted out without waiting for an answer.
Travis groaned, but amusement danced in his eyes so I knew he was just teasing. "C'mon, then." He transferred Stella to one side so that he had a free hand. He clasped it with mine. I forced myself not to skip as we made our way towards the entrance.
"You're so excited you're literally vibrating," Travis commented. "If I'd known you'd be this excited then I would have brought you here a long time ago."
"Show me a woman who doesn't want to touch cute animals and you'll have found a serial killer."
He started to laugh until I elbowed him in his side. When he looked at me I blew him a kiss that made him roll his eyes. I'd been grating his every last nerve ever since he'd mentioned the petting zoo. He'd been nice about it, but I was sure by that point he was starting to feel just ready to get it over with.
"I would have opened that for you," Travis protested when I yanked the door open before he could get to it.
"Too slow." I stuck my tongue out at him.
"I've created a monster," he groaned.
"Who me?" I batted my eyelashes.
He gave me a gentle shove the rest of the way into the building. An older gentleman materialized almost instantly. He lifted two me
tal buckets up onto the counter, then turned and left.
I looked to Travis, who didn't seem surprised at all. "Are those ours?"
"Yep." He set Stella down and reached for the two buckets but I side-stepped him to grab one myself. It was heavy, but I held it close to my chest.
"Mine," I said, sounding so much like Stella it was uncanny.
"Well, alrighty then. We're going through that door there."
He pointed behind me and I spun in that direction. I couldn't quite skip anymore with the heavy bucket clutched close to me, but there was still an excited bounce in my step. Travis grabbed Stella's hand to guide her along beside me.
We stepped through the door, and Stella finally caught on when a goat greeted us almost immediately. She jerked out of Travis' grasp to reach for it. I was right there along with her, kneeling closer to it. That turned out to be a huge mistake.
The second I'd kneeled down, the goat had caught sight of my bucket. It nearly rammed right into me in its excitement to get the food. I squealed as I got knocked down. Travis shot into action, pulling Stella back out of the danger zone before reaching for me. I smacked his hands away from me. I'd landed flat on my ass, but the bucket was safely between my legs. The goat happily chomped away in front of me, giving me the perfect opportunity to stroke his furry neck.
"Are you okay?" Travis asked.
"Uh-huh." I reached my hand out to encourage Stella closer. "Come meet the goat, baby."
Stella lunged forward again. As she passed Travis, she grabbed his pant leg, effectively forcing him closer with her. The three of us ended up huddled around the goat together.
"Dog," Stella said with some uncertainty.
"No, Stella. That's a goat," Travis told her. He repeated the word again for her, "Goat."
"Goat."
We spent longer than we really should have with the goat before Travis finally wrestled the food bucket away. Stella was wide-eyed as we moved towards the gated area that held the bulk of the animals. A miniature horse rushed over at the sight of us. Travis went first, unlatching the gate and ushering us in so he could close it securely behind us.
"Aren't you the cutest?" I cooed at the miniature horse as it nuzzled Stella's hair.
"Cutest!" Stella echoed.
Travis stepped up beside me, offering up a bucket for me to grab food from. I opened my mouth to ask where the other bucket was, but I didn't need to when he raised his other hand and pointed a few steps behind us. A whole slew of animals were gathered around the spilled bucket. A donkey was nuzzling against the bucket to push even more of the food out onto the ground.
"They accosted me," he announced solemnly.
"I literally looked away from you for like thirty-seconds."
"They work fast."
His small shrug made me giggle. Everything about the petting zoo was so lighthearted. After weeks of uncertainty between Travis and I, it was nice to have a break from anything too serious. I wrapped my hand around as much of his forearm as I could grab and tugged him closer.
It felt like we were finally a proper family.
Travis' phone rang, disturbing our peaceful moment. I grabbed the bucket for him so that he could pull it from his pocket. His eyes scanned the screen. "I need to take this." He stepped away from me before I could ask if everything was okay.
"Hey," he answered into the phone.
That was the only part of his conversation that I heard before he was out of earshot. My brows furrowed as I examined his body language from afar. His shoulders slumped. His head stared down at the ground. Something was wrong. The stress of the call was obvious even from where I was standing.
He stayed like that for several minutes. I split my attention between watching him and keeping an eye on Stella with the animals.
When he finally returned to us, he didn't say a word. I'd expected him to give some kind of reason for stepping away like that. Travis had never been secretive about anything as far as I could remember. He had to know that stepping away like that had seemed odd. It only made it more bizarre that he didn't offer anything in terms of explanation.
"What was that about?" I asked when it was clear he wasn't going to offer anything on his own.
He hesitated for a moment. "Nothing."
"It didn't look like nothing." He stared over my shoulder. "Travis."
"It's nothing, Veronica. Don't worry about it." His use of my full name told an entirely different story. Whatever it was, it wasn't nothing. I filed it away with the half-dozen other things that we weren't talking about.
Travis
I studied Kylie as she sat across from me in the same booth I'd shared with Ronnie weeks earlier. It had been the only open table when we'd gotten there.
The nineteen-year-old finally looked her age. The heavy makeup she'd once paraded around in was gone. She'd traded mini-skirts for blue jeans. Her hair was cut to shoulder length instead of cascading down her back in giant curls.
The biggest change, though—she was sober.
"I still feel terrible about the last time I was here." She ran her finger over the rim of her water glass.
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. "That wasn't your fault."
"Maybe not directly, but it would never have happened if I hadn't shown up here the way I did."
"The only one responsible for my drinking is me." They were words John had encouraged me to repeat over and over when he'd first started meeting with me. Part of recovery had been accepting the blame instead of making excuses. Kylie wasn't responsible for my relapse.
"I guess I'd better start thinking that way, too, huh?"
"It wouldn't hurt." I took a gulp of my own water. My next question pained me. "How are things at home?"
"Everyone is already acting like nothing ever happened."
"What about your parents?"
"They're the worst of all. Travis, they took his pictures down."
"What?" Shock projected my voice louder than I'd intended.
"I woke up one morning and all of them were gone. And my mom won't talk about it, of course. When I tried to ask her about the pictures, she just turned and left the room. It's like everyone just wants to pretend that everything is fine and nothing has changed."
"But everything has changed."
"Exactly."
Kylie's hand left her glass and started tracing patterns across the table. She was nervous. I didn't blame her.
"When your accident happened, everyone was so worried about how it would affect the rest of us. None of us really cared what happened to you or Ronnie, not unless it ruined our fun." She winced. "It's different when it's you, isn't it? Now that the tragedy is mine, worrying about whether or not my friends will get to keep partying seems like such a foreign concept."
"For some of them, that's all they have," I reminded her.
"I used to think that was all I had, too. Funny how that perspective changes when you lose something far more important."
"Nathan was a good guy," I said, trying to be polite.
Kylie knew better. She barked out a short laugh. "No, he wasn't. He was terrible. Selfish and cruel. He was my brother, though. Sometimes I hated him, but I never wanted him to die." She cleared the emotion from her throat. "He never should have gotten in that car."
It was a story I knew all too well, only with two vital differences. Ronnie had begged me to take her home until, in my drunken stupor, I'd agreed. Nathan had gotten into his father's shiny new convertible purely for a joy ride. The other vital difference? Ronnie and I had gotten lucky, striking the telephone pole at just the right angle so that the only casualty was Ronnie's broken arm. Nathan hadn't been so lucky. They'd found the car at the bottom of the lake two days later.
"No, he shouldn't have. I can only hope that maybe some of the others will take it as a warning to not be so careless."
Kylie sighed. "I'm not so sure about that. Our hometown… there are serious problems. And no one wants to talk about them, which means nothing is getting better
."
"You should get out of there."
"Do you think it would really make a difference?"
"It did for me."
"That's true." She glanced around like the pizza parlor might have all the answers for her. "But you were already so different from us even before you moved."
"Because I wasn't filthy rich?" I smirked.
"That's not what I meant." Her cheeks flushed. "It's just, you seemed destined to get out. You weren't stuck in that cycle of shit like the rest of us. Ronnie, too. That's why I always assumed the two of you would work things out."
I toyed with the stack of napkins on the edge of the table. "Speaking of Ronnie—"
"She's here."
"You knew she'd moved here? I didn't think the two of you kept in touch." It wasn't like Ronnie had been the biggest fan of Kylie and her friends.
"No, like, she's right there." Kylie pointed and I turned.
Ronnie was standing in the entrance of the place, staring at our table with confusion. She seemed stuck choosing between approaching or fleeing.
"Shit."
"Yikes," Kylie muttered.
Noticing that we'd caught sight of her, Ronnie reluctantly moved towards our table. I kicked myself for not thinking to warn Kylie about the possibility. I'd mentioned to Ronnie about stopping by the pizza place, but I hadn't mentioned with who. I'd just assumed she'd be tired and heading home after work. When Ronnie reached our table she stared down at us, her discomfort obvious.
"Kylie? What are you doing here?" Her eyes drifted over to me. "Travis, what the hell is going on?"
I slid over in the booth. "Why don't you sit down, Ronnie." She stared at me. "Please," I pressed.
She slid into the booth, sitting on the very edge as if she still might bolt at any moment. I tried to rest my hand comfortingly on her thigh, but she flinched. I moved it away.
"What are you doing here?" she asked Kylie again.
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