by Allison Rios
“So, anything you wanna talk about?” Micah asked.
“No.”
“Anything interesting happen?” Reed interjected.
“No.”
“You coming in?”
“Nope,” James said, shifting the truck into reverse. Before he could step on the gas, Micah’s hands had grabbed onto the window well.
“How about we go somewhere and cool down for a little bit and then come back.”
“You guys go on in and have fun.”
“We’re not going anywhere without you, James. We were a trio in high school, we’re a trio today, and we’re not celebrating without everyone there. Let’s go for a little drive,” Micah said. “Clear our heads and come back.”
Micah jumped in the passenger seat while Reed hopped over the side and into the truck bed. He slid open the window that separated them.
“What’s got you so riled up?” Micah asked.
“She said she loved me,” James said.
“And you’re pissed about that? Why? I thought that’s what you’ve been waiting to hear,” Reed pointed out.
“Yeah, it is. But in my mind, her proclamation wasn’t followed by her telling me it didn’t matter because she doesn’t want to be with me.”
“So, she actually said the words?” Micah felt torn again between hating and loving Rae. He’d asked her to go without stirring the pot, and she’d already broken her promise.
“I can’t do this anymore,” James said. “I’ve been inching my way through life. I’ve been doing what people ask of me, taking care of everyone and everything. Somehow, I’ve forgotten what it’s like to live. Rae thought I was out traveling the world. Did you know that?”
“Not surprising. She didn’t want to know about you, man. She just took whatever your dreams were at eighteen and pretended that those magical ideas were your reality. Our dreams change as we grow up,” Reed interjected.
“Traveling is still my dream,” James said. “But I’ve buried it so deep under obligation and doing what’s best for everyone else that I know I’ll never make the time for it. I’ve spent the last fifteen damn years waiting for Raelyn Pinemore to love me again and tonight I suddenly realized that dream won’t happen, either. So now what? What the hell am I supposed to do with my life now?”
“You pick a new path, man,” Micah said. “You find something that you wanna do, and you make it happen. We aren’t getting any younger. No one else is going to jump-start your life.”
Silence filled the space between them as James brushed the hair back from his forehead.
“Remember what we used to do when we got pissed at the girls?” Reed asked.
“I think we did that more than just when we were pissed.” Micah laughed at the memory of teenage idiocy.
“Let’s do it,” James said. He signaled a turn onto a country road that never had much traffic.
“Are you kidding? We’re too old for that,” Reed said.
“You might be too old, but I’m not. Too much of a coward?” James said. His voice housed a vicious tone. He knew the phrase would strike a fire in his friend.
“I’m not a coward,” Reed said. “I just think you're an ass.”
“What about you Micah? You a coward too? Don’t think you can do it anymore?”
“Oh, I can do it. I mean, we’re much better drivers now than we were at sixteen, right?”
“Are you guys insane?” Reed yelled. “I’m not doing it.”
“Then you can drive,” James said as he pulled the truck over.
“James,” Reed said, “you have a lot more to lose now than you did back then. This is a stupid idea.”
“Either you drive, or you get in the back. Your choice. If you don’t drive like an asshole, we’ll all be fine.”
“You’re the only asshole around here tonight,” Reed barked at his friend. He got in the driver’s seat and slammed the door as Micah and James climbed into the truck bed and held onto the roof. “Last chance to change your minds.”
“Go!” James yelled.
“What exactly is the point?” Reed asked.
“To see who chickens out first. Whoever tells the driver to stop first has to do chores for the other one for a week,” explained James.
“And what if Reed sucks at driving and we end up off-road?” Micah asked.
“I’m a great driver!” Reed replied. “But you two are idiots.”
Reed put the truck into motion and James silently begged the wind to wipe his memory clean. The gravel covering the unpaved road scattered beneath the tires. James stared straight ahead because looking at Micah might make him change his mind.
“Faster!” he yelled to Reed.
“I’m not –”
“Damn Reed, do it!”
Reed stepped on the gas, and the truck lurched forward.
“It’s like riding a bull, but better!” Micah yelled.
The wind whipped around them and pulled their clothes back. The flip-flops they donned over the summer months didn’t grip the floor of the truck bed as firmly as they would have liked, but neither let the obstacle hinder their competition.
“You giving up?” James yelled.
“Not a chance!” Micah replied.
The speedometer inched its way to thirty, then forty, and finally fifty miles per hour before Micah caved and yelled at Reed to stop.
“Hope you like mopping floors at the store,” James laughed.
“What’s the point of this game again?”
Micah used to love the freedom he felt hanging onto the back of the truck because without his parents and with no siblings, he didn’t feel he had much to lose. They’d played the game well into their twenties until Brian and Sophia died in the car accident. As much as James hurt for losing a brother, Micah lived the pain right along with him because Brian had become a brother to him, too. Their young and fun days came to an abrupt halt when James took in Ruth. Overnight, the men had catapulted from crazy kids to adults.
Reed glanced in the side mirror at his friends as the truck slowed and couldn’t help but smile at their stupidity. His concentration shifted when Micah let out a scream.
“Reed, look out!” he yelled a moment too late. A deer had darted into the road but didn’t make the clearance. The brown ball of fur hurtled into the bumper, onto the hood, and into the windshield as the truck’s brakes locked. The prized pick-up shifted wildly on the gravel.
As both men gripped the roof with every ounce of strength they could muster, the truck left the road and cut through the tall grass. James heard Micah scream before the sound of crushed metal filled his ears.
“Micah! Micah, where are you?” James called out but the darkness of the fields and night sky surrounded him. He could hear coughing from the cab of the truck above him and relief washed over him. At least Reed was alive.
“Reed, you okay?”
“I … I think so,” his friend feebly replied.
“Micah?”
Nothing but silence surrounded him until everything went black.
Chapter 19
Saturday, October 3
Rae and Nella escaped the noise of the gymnasium and the constant barrage of old friends waiting for their turn to talk with Jessup’s long lost Raelyn Pinemore. The familiar echo of their footsteps on the blue and white tile brought a sense of calm to Rae. The school hadn’t changed much since they’d left. An addition or two had sprung up, and the outside looked more grandiose. Inside, however, the gray lockers and white cinderblock walls remained, now just a bunch of antiques with fresh paint. The same old cherry wood trophy cases lined the hallways though the awards inside carried more current years on their inscribed plaques.
The building had been their home for four years. With sports and school – and the mandatory hanging out before and after school – they’d spent more time within the walls of the institution than they had in their own homes. Every inch of hallway and classroom carried a myriad of memories. Dances, studying, first failing grades
, first honor rolls. Rae had struggled for years to fit in somewhere, and she found one in high school.
They strolled in silence along the corridor. To the left sat her sophomore locker, now donning a bright pink lock, where her relationship with James first began. To the right was the conference center, once decorated with blue and black taffeta and tulle for their junior prom. Her fingers trailed along the cinderblock wall to the photos of each class.
“It seems like all the time from graduation to today has just zipped by,” Rae said. “Look at our smiles!” She pointed to the group of best friends huddled close together as the photographer captured the tiny senior class.
“I don’t think I’ve smiled like that since 1999.”
“Seems like a lifetime ago,” Nella concurred.
“What happened to me, Nella?” Rae stopped short and leaned against the trophy case. “I was such a rotten person back then. The things I said and did. I feel like everyone in there is staring at me and thinking about the last terrible thing they experienced with me.”
The sarcastic grins on Micah and Reed earlier in the weekend had been enough to let her know the past hadn’t been entirely forgotten. She’d hurt their friend and though time had passed, they protected him just as Nella, Ava, and Brooke protected her.
“You make yourself out to be a million times the monster you were,” Nella laughed. “I think you are amplifying things in your head. And you weren’t mean to everyone, just some.”
“Wow, you don’t sugar coat anything at all, do you?”
“Do you want the truth? Or do you want me to be your sunshine and bubblegum friend? I can’t do both.” Nella smiled and wrapped an arm around the slinking shoulders of the one woman she’d trusted since kindergarten.
“Being here again brought everything back,” Rae said. “I feel eighteen again, only this time I know the future is not going to bring any sort of resolution. If anything, it might just get a little worse.”
“How?”
“James.”
“You guys are like a rollercoaster we can’t get off of. We love you most of the time but sometimes, you’re a real pain in the ass.”
“I know.” Rae grinned before her mood shifted to match the blandness of the walls. “Coming back was a mistake.”
“It was not a mistake! Everyone is so happy to see you, Rae.”
“Not everyone.”
“Are you kidding me? James was pretty much gleaming every time he looked in your direction at dinner.”
“I told him nothing is going to happen.”
“You could just lighten up for a bit, you know. Have a little fun. Enjoy a weekend with friends.” Nella’s little booty dance did little to ease Rae’s apprehension, though it did evoke a smile.
Rae slumped down onto a brightly painted bench outside the principal’s office. “I feel like the last fifteen years have been an everlasting detention.”
“Self-assigned, by the way,” Nella added. “What is up with you? I know you have this whole angst-filled grudge thing going on and it has sort of been your thing since college, but seriously, the past two days you’ve been sweating pure fear. This can’t be all about James. You guys broke up; you didn’t kill someone.”
Rae closed her eyes and shifted her gaze back to her intertwined fingers. Her teeth clamped down on her lip to stop her secrets from pouring out.
“Oh my God, did you?” Nella asked.
“No!” Rae stammered with somewhat of a giggle. “But I appreciate you thinking I’m capable of that.”
“I wouldn’t put anything past a woman scorned,”
Nella said. She slipped down into the empty space next to Rae and pulled her friend’s hands into her own. “Tell me, what’s so hard about being here? You have to talk to us. I couldn’t take losing you again! For three years after high school, you barely spoke to us and then out of the blue you call us up and act as if nothing had changed. You never told me why, and I haven’t pestered you about it because I was just so damn glad to have you back. I want to know. Were you depressed? Are you depressed now? You’ve refused to talk about it, and we can’t help you if you don't open up. Did we do something to hurt you?”
Rae could feel every ounce of anger and sadness and joy and frustration she’d left behind in the hallways of the school now infiltrate her lungs and her being. Each breath grew shallower until they transformed into sobs. Even Nella’s arm wrapped around her and her friend’s sweet whispers to calm her did nothing to ease Rae’s strife.
“You girls never did a thing wrong,” Rae choked out. “I’ve been lying to you for so long, and every time I hear your voice I’m reminded of that. When you come visit me in the city, I try and keep us busy so that there isn’t a lull to start thinking about how awful of a friend I’ve been. I feel it, though. I always feel it.”
“What are you talking about?” Nella asked. “What lies?”
“I’ve never told anyone else this, not even my father,” Rae says. “Only my mama knows, and she’s been sworn to secrecy.”
“Seriously, Rae, you’re starting to freak me out. What the hell are you talking about?”
Rae braced herself for the consequences telling her story would bring. Nella didn’t take well to lies, and second chances were rarely granted by her loyal and fierce personality.
“I had a baby.”
“Wait, what?”
“A baby,” Rae repeated.
“I'm sorry, what did you just say? When? How?”
“The how is pretty self-explanatory. The when is first semester of sophomore year at college.”
“Boy or girl?”
“The gender is unknown. I didn’t ask.”
“Wait, hold on.” Nella stopped to calculate and ceased talking in a desperate attempt to assess the information that had just been dumped on her. “How did you have a baby and none of us knew?”
“I pretty much shut everyone out, which you know all too well.”
“I thought you were still heartbroken over James. I had no idea.”
“No one did. That was my goal.”
“I just … I mean, you can hide grades or crushes or any of that, but how did you hide a baby? Where is the baby?”
“I gave the baby up for adoption. I couldn’t do it alone.”
“Who’s the dad?”
“That’s the million dollar question,” Rae said, slightly grinning as she did. “Life was a blur back then. I was sad and depressed and trying to find love in all the wrong places.”
The silence growing between her and Nella didn’t feel any less daunting than the silence she’d experienced with James.
“Do you hate me?” Rae asked meekly.
“I don’t hate you, Rae,” Nella said. “I need to just, I need to process this. I don’t understand. I mean, this is huge. This whole weekend so far just seems like you’re still hiding things. What else aren’t you telling us? I feel like we don’t even know the real you anymore. You’re pouring out wine and lying to your friends and wearing a wig. What the hell is going on?”
Rae shook her head. She’d been waiting for some grand shift in the weight on her shoulders after she told the truth, but found little relief once the words were spoken. She’d been carrying the lies for so long, she wondered if perhaps the guilt would take another decade to disappear.
“We would have been there for you. We are here for you.”
“I know you would have.”
“No, you don’t. Or you would have told us.”
“I couldn’t. I can’t explain why, but I couldn’t.”
“In all these years, you’re telling me you couldn’t find a single time to tell us?”
“I’m so sorry Nella. There’s no logical reason I couldn’t have trusted you. There are just some things in life that I don’t want people to know. Some things are so private and so painful that I hoped by hiding them away, they’d merely cease to exist. Instead of disappearing, though, the pain just grew. I’m with you girls and it’s like we’re tee
nagers again. I’ve been pretty bad in neglecting all of you, and you’re all here still standing by my side.”
“That’s what friends do, Rae.”
“Then what does that make me?”
“That makes you human. I don’t mean to yell,” Nella said. “I just don’t get it. We’ve been there for each other through everything. Through boyfriends and girlfriends and breakups and weddings and babies and miscarriages.”
“Exactly. That pretty much cemented my promise to not tell anyone. Ava had the miscarriages, and all I could think of was how much she’d hate me if she knew I gave a baby away.”
“You’re her friend. She wouldn’t have been mad at you.”
“We both know that’s not true. Maybe not outwardly, but her mind would always hold that little nugget there, reminding her of what I did. I didn’t want any of you to hate me. You’re the only ones who really stood by me no matter what, and I didn’t want you to look at me differently.”
“So why are you telling me this now?”
“I don’t know. Maybe these halls bring back memories of what life used to be like. Maybe I feel like I owe you the truth.
Maybe part of me hopes you’ll all hate me so I can go back to Chicago and forget about Jessup. Maybe I want to get everything out in the open and find some forgiveness. And maybe I hope it will make you all see that you should let go of the idea of James and me. It can’t happen.”