The Girl He Used to Love

by Amy Vastine

  Faith’s head felt fuzzy. Maybe she was imagining this. “You want to go out for pizza? With me?”

  “I mean, Josie and Lily are welcome to join us.”

  Faith glanced back at Josie, who was standing at her car door. “You okay?” Josie asked.

  “Stay here,” Faith said to Dean. She needed to talk to Josie and didn’t want him close enough to hear. Heat crept up her chest. “He wants to take us out for pizza.”

  “You. He wants to take you,” Josie said with a smirk.

  “Why would he want to take me to dinner?”

  Josie put a hand on Faith’s shoulder. “From what you’ve told me, I think he was a guy who didn’t handle his sister’s death really well. Maybe he wants to make up for it.”

  That seemed unlikely, but the best explanation. She wouldn’t let her anxiety get the best of her. She held her head high as she walked back over to where he was waiting.

  “Meet me at Sam’s?”

  “Is there anywhere else to get pizza in this town?” he asked rhetorically.

  * * *

  PIZZA SAM WAS the only pizza joint in Grass Lake. Luckily it had the best pizza in the county. People from neighboring towns often drove through just to order some pies for carryout.

  Dean had already grabbed an open table when Faith arrived. Without the buffer of Harriet and his mother, she wasn’t sure how this shared meal would go.

  The front room at Sam’s was quiet and quaint. There were half a dozen tables and a counter where people picked up their carryout orders. The walls were decorated with window murals that made it look like you were gazing out at the streets of Rome. The tables were covered in red-and-white-checked tablecloths, and the lit candle in a red glass holder on each added to the ambience.

  Dean got to his feet and pulled out her chair. “Is this okay? I can ask if they have something in the back if you want.”

  “This is fine. We’re here to be seen, right?”

  “Right.” His voice was soft.

  The back room at Sam’s was where families with younger kids usually sat. White lights were strung across the ceiling and video-game machines lined the back wall. There was one of those claw games that Addison had always seemed to win on her first try. Faith would burn through five dollars’ worth of quarters and that darn stuffed animal would slip out every time.

  “Still like pepperoni?” he asked, picking up a menu.

  “Pepperoni is fine.”

  Faith grabbed a menu, too. Pretending to read it was better than sitting there not knowing what to say. The squat, teenage busboy came over with ice water.

  Being with Dean was like spending time with both the person she knew best in the world and a complete stranger. She knew how old he had been when he got braces and what kind of car he drove when he was sixteen, but she had no idea if he currently lived in a house or an apartment, if he had a girlfriend, what he did in his free time.

  “It’s weird, right?” he asked, peeking over his menu.

  Faith set her menu down. That was a loaded question. Everything between them was weird. “What?”

  “That we’ve hung out in public more times in the last couple days than we did the entire summer we were dating.”

  “A secret relationship usually means the couple doesn’t go traipsing around town together,” Faith pointed out.

  “Did I ever make you feel like I didn’t want to be seen with you?”

  Faith had to reflect back on that. It had been such a short period in their lives. A whirlwind romance. “I thought everything we did was because of Addison. I never thought about how anyone else would feel about us. Did you?”

  “I worried about your dad. I wasn’t sure he’d want you to be with me because I was older. I know I’d be wary of some twenty-one-year-old and my eighteen-year-old daughter. His intentions would be questionable.”

  “Were your intentions questionable?” Faith leaned forward and rested her elbows on the table.

  “Being respectful of you was always my intention, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t think about doing things with you that would have made your dad chase me off his property with a shotgun.”

  Faith’s face was aflame. She took a sip of the ice water. She wanted to steer the conversation as far away as possible from what those thoughts could have been. “Maybe part of me thought you were a little embarrassed to be with someone who hadn’t been to college yet. I heard what your friends would say when we all hung out at your parents’ house.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Why are we talking about this?” Faith had bible study in an hour and rehashing the past wasn’t going to change what happened or even what the future held for them. There was no future for them. “Why are we having pizza together? Why do you care if Charles Hackney makes me dinner?”

  Dean seemed taken aback by her bluntness. He shifted in his seat and rubbed his knuckles against his bearded jaw. “Do you want Charles to make you dinner? Do you want his mother setting you up constantly?”

  “No.” She didn’t want to be set up with anyone. Her time and energy were better spent on Helping Hooves. The horses and her clients needed her more than she needed a man.

  “Then why were you ready to do whatever Mrs. Hackney wanted?”

  “Because giving people what they want keeps everyone happy,” Faith said with a shrug.

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “What makes you happy?”

  Faith couldn’t keep up with his opinions on how she was supposed to be living her life. “You’re the one who said we don’t deserve to be happy.”

  “I never said that.”

  “Fine, I think you said we don’t deserve to feel better. To me, that’s the same thing as being happy.”

  “I was out of control after Addison died.”

  “You said it in the church parking lot two days ago!”

  Dean threw his hands up. “Of all the things I’ve ever said to you, that’s what you’re going to hang your hat on? Something I said in the middle of an anxiety attack?”

  “No, what really sticks with me is that I was stupid for loving you and really stupid for thinking you could care about me after what happened.”

  Dean frowned and exhaled deeply. “I said that?”

  “I might be paraphrasing.” She wasn’t. Those words weren’t ones Faith could forget.

  “I know I said that after she died.” He sat back in his seat. “And I wasn’t in my right mind.”

  “Just tell me what we’re doing here.” Faith was drained. She didn’t have any more patience for this. He needed to be clear now because she had thought he’d been very clear twelve years ago.

  “Well, if you’re so good at remembering the things I say, remember this—you deserve better than Charles Hackney, Faith. Don’t settle for less than you deserve to make other people happy.”

  Faith’s heart was pounding hard enough to break through her chest. “That’s funny. I thought that was what I was doing the night Addison died. Telling her was my way of not settling for stolen moments. And we both know where that got me.”

  “That’s not what happened. I had put you in an impossible, no-win situation. You deserved better than me, too.”

  “We might have to agree to disagree on that one,” she said, feeling a bit light-headed. Dean had a way of knocking her off kilter. “I’m not sure you know me as well as you think you do.”

  “I will agree to disagree about that,” he replied.

  “I don’t like pepperoni,” she admitted. It felt like the whole room went silent, although no one was really paying attention to what she said except for Dean. “I’ve never been a fan. I used to eat it because I knew you liked it. I prefer sausage and mushroom.”

  Dean blinked a
nd, with his elbow on the table, rested his chin on his palm. He seemed to be trying to see inside her brain, wanting to know what else she was hiding inside there. When the waitress came to take their order, he didn’t hesitate.

  “We’ll take a medium—half pepperoni, half sausage-mushroom, please.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “ONLY CUT THE branches that are touching the house,” Dean’s dad said from the ground below.

  The large yellow poplar had grown several feet taller in the last decade. Dean definitely didn’t remember it reaching the upstairs bedroom window. The Presleys’ backyard was immense and sprinkled with a variety of trees with branches that provided lots of shade under all those green leaves. They lived on a three-acre lot that Dean used to hate to mow even on a riding mower.

  Dean took another step up the ladder. Trimming trees was not something he ever had to do back in the city. He spent most of his life on the phone or in the studio. Today, he’d been on the phone for hours, much to his mother’s dismay.

  “I don’t know if I can reach the ones at the top.”

  “We might have to get those from your sister’s room.”

  An unexpected wave of panic hit Dean and he had to hold on to the ladder so he didn’t fall. Every day it had gotten easier to talk about Addison, but the thought of going into her room and possibly seeing her things made his stomach ache.

  “You okay?” his dad shouted up.

  Dean nodded, hoping his dad could see, because no words were coming. He took a couple deep breaths and tried to shift his focus back to the task at hand.

  “So what’s this I hear about you having pizza with Faith last night? Word around the bank was you and she were spotted at Sam’s with your heads together. Charles Hackney didn’t seem too pleased.”

  Dean shouldn’t have, but he smiled at the thought. It didn’t surprise him that he was right about small-town gossip. It had taken less than twenty-four hours for the rumor to spread.

  “I needed to clear the air a little bit.” His attempt at empowering her pretty much backfired. He hadn’t realized how much she cared about what he thought—back then and now. He hadn’t gotten her to agree she deserved to be happy, but he had gotten her to be honest about her favorite pizza toppings. It was progress.

  “Since when have you had a problem with Faith Stratton that needs working out?”

  Dean had never told anyone what had happened between him and Faith. Addison hadn’t had the chance to spill the beans to their parents about it and, after she’d died, he’d felt too guilty to admit that she had gotten herself into that situation because he was off at a concert with Faith.

  Dean clipped every branch he could reach and climbed down. He handed his dad the pruners. “That summer—” Dean didn’t have to clarify it was the one that changed everything for their family “—Faith and I were seeing each other behind everyone’s back.”

  “Yeah,” his dad said, like he was already aware of this information. But that was impossible. Unless...

  “Faith told you,” he guessed.

  “No,” his dad said with a chuckle. He folded up the ladder. “John Stratton called me about a month after you started working for him that summer and told me he saw you two making out in the horse barn. Wanted me to know that he wouldn’t shoot you as long as you got your work done and it didn’t go any further than kissing.”

  Stunned, Dean didn’t even notice his dad was trying to hand him the saw to cut up the fallen branches.

  “Son, can you please take this while I put the ladder away?”

  He took the saw. “Wait, you’re saying you guys all knew Faith and I were together?”

  “I thought I needed to have a man-to-man chat with you, reminding you how important it is to treat a girl with respect and not to do anything that could lead to responsibilities you two weren’t ready for—or her dad wanting to shoot you—but your mother said we needed to trust that you two were good, responsible kids.”

  “Did you know Addison didn’t know?”

  “I suspect that’s part of the reason your mom didn’t want me to talk to you. You all must have thought your sister was going to blow a gasket over you dating her best friend.”

  Dean’s head was spinning. All this time he was sure his parents had had no idea. It had been a secret that was still tearing him up inside.

  He couldn’t bring himself to tell his dad that Addison did find out and wasn’t happy. She was so unhappy about it that she ran off to a party she never would have gone to if she had been with Faith that night. She was so angry that she got in a car with someone who had been drinking, instead of calling Dean to come get her like she would have if she didn’t think her brother was trying to steal her best friend from her.

  He couldn’t tell his dad that it was his fault his sister was dead.

  “I think Addison would have been mad for a day and then she would have gotten over it,” his dad continued. “She would have been planning your wedding because, let’s be honest, the thought of Faith being her sister would have had her over the moon.”

  They’d never know for sure. She never got the chance to get over it.

  “Cut these up and meet me upstairs. We’ll try to get the ones at the top from Addison’s room.” Dean’s dad didn’t wait for him to reply. He lifted the ten-foot ladder with ease and carried it to the garage.

  Dean did as he was told. He stood outside the closed door to his sister’s room and prayed it was like his old bedroom, completely unrecognizable. If his mother had busied herself with updating his room, she wouldn’t have stopped there. His parents had no trouble talking about her; they were obviously much further along in the grieving process than Dean was.

  He had himself convinced as he grasped the doorknob, turned it and pushed. Reality smacked him in the face hard. It was like walking through time. On one side of the door, it was present day and on the other it was as if the millennium had just begun.

  The purple walls were still covered in hundreds of pictures of Addison, Addison and Faith, Addison and the family, Addison and anyone she was friends with over the course of her life. Where there weren’t photos, there were flowers—paper flowers, fabric flowers, plastic flowers. Her tiny twin-size bed was covered by the flowered quilt their grandmother had hand-stitched for her.

  His dad came into the room like there was nothing odd about the fact that they were standing in a time warp. “Hopefully we can reach them all from here. Help me with the screen.”

  Dean’s lungs constricted. It felt like there wasn’t enough air in the room. His feet were cemented to the floor.

  His dad’s hand came down on his back with enough force to jostle him out of his head. “I forget you haven’t been back here. Do you need a minute?”

  “You left it like this for all these years?”

  “Your mom went through her clothes and donated a bunch of things about a year after she died. She let Faith come in and take whatever she wanted. We talked about packing up the stuff on her dresser and desk, but seems like your mom has gotten to every other room in this house first.”

  Dean wanted to sit down, take a moment to process what his dad had said, but he couldn’t bring himself to sit on anything in this room. Addison’s smiling face was everywhere.

  His dad picked up a framed picture of Addison and Faith. “Everyone grieves in their own way and at their own speed. Some take longer than others.” He set the photo down and gave Dean’s shoulder a squeeze. “You and your mom are more alike than you think. Maybe the two of you need each other to put this behind you instead of letting it hold you back.”

  * * *

  FAITH AND SAWYER both paced the aisle outside the horse stalls while the vet examined Duchess. Scout sat at attention, watching the two of them. The dog had no idea what they were worried about but seemed to be aware of their
anxiety. Faith said a prayer that it was nothing or at least something that could be treated with a change in diet or maybe some medicine.

  Rebecca Fielding came out of the stall wearing an expression that didn’t bode well. Faith’s stomach was twisted in knots and there was a ringing in her ears.

  “What is it?” Sawyer asked.

  Rebecca pulled her latex gloves off one at a time. “Her eyes are yellow. She’s underweight. You’ve reported the circling in her stall, head-pressing and shaking. My guess, without seeing the blood work, is liver failure.”

  “That’s treatable, right?” Faith needed to hear something good.

  “Often, yes,” Rebecca answered with some hesitancy. “But Duchess is an old horse.”

  “So, what are you saying? You won’t help her?” Faith said, feeling her heart pounding in her chest.

  Sawyer put his hand on her shoulder to hold her back.

  “No, of course I’ll help her. But I want you to be aware that she might not respond to treatment. I don’t want you to get your hopes up, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “We understand, Bec,” Sawyer said. He was always better at reining in his emotions than she was.

  “I took some blood. I’ll run some tests and come up with a treatment plan as soon as I can.”

  Sawyer and Scout saw her out while Faith opened the door to Duchess’s stall. The pain in her chest intensified. She stroked the horse’s head and made Duchess promises she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep. It didn’t take long for the tears to start flowing.

  “Come on, you can’t stay out here. Let’s go inside and watch a movie,” Sawyer suggested when he returned.

  “I don’t want to watch a movie.” She ran her hand over Duchess’s mane. She was such a patient and tolerant horse. How many times had Faith and Addison played horse beauty shop and tied flowers in her mane and tail? Duchess was such a sweet, social horse. It was unbearable to imagine this farm without her.