Me After You (4 page)

My garage door squeals as it scrolls up.

“How was work?” Lily perches herself on my tool bench with her hands gripping the edge of the tabletop.

“Work.”

“Did you have a lot of customers?”

“Yup.”

“Sounds busy,” she remarks.

“It was.”

I wonder who else has actually seen Sawyer. Have Aiden or Josh seen her yet? If one of them had they would have mentioned it. Josh wouldn’t be able to help rubbing my mistake in my face. Aiden would look at me with hope and confidence. He’d tell me to pick my life up off the floor, win back my jackpot.

“Congratulations, man. You got to keep your luscious locks.” Josh pats me on the back.

I chuckle, running my hand through my hair. “I wouldn’t take a bet I knew I couldn’t win.” I’m talking through my teeth, but I keep that insecurity from them.

“I can’t believe you actually got her to go out with you, dude,” Aiden says.

“Oh, ye of little faith. I can’t believe you guys really doubted me.” Truth was, I didn’t feel that confident. But I wanted to ask her out so badly; the bet merely gave me the perfect opportunity. She was worth the risk. They never would have let me live it down if I asked her out on my own. And if she had said no, all I had to lose was my hair.

And my manhood.

“Did she blab about volleyball and her hair the entire time?”

“I bet you couldn’t get her to shut up. Did you at least get a good lay out of it?”

I nearly punch Josh, but I shake my head instead and give him a look. They won’t understand. Sawyer is more than that. Sawyer is different. Little do they know with this one, I found gold. I definitely struck the jackpot.

I hear my name in the distance. “Dean,” Lily repeats loudly.

“Huh?” I blink, peering over at her.

“Where were you?” Lily pauses for my answer, but I don’t reply. I stupidly keep blinking because I have no response. “Is everything okay?” She rests her hand on my elbow as I walk past her to put the wrench in my toolbox.

I almost shrug off her hand. I don’t know why. Was I being that obvious? I probably look as if I’ve seen a ghost. Sawyer nearly looked like one. Though she did look older, that wasn’t why she looked so different. There was no warmth in her eyes, no pink in her cheeks, and no smile on her unforgettable face. Everything that made Sawyer, Sawyer, was gone.

I debate on mentioning it at all, but Lily’s going to find out sooner or later. This town can’t handle keeping big news like Sawyer coming back to themselves, especially considering what she’s going through. The small town girl who left and made something of her life, marrying a doctor, and living the big city life in Seattle, only to have her husband brutally murdered. I’ve heard bits and pieces over the last couple weeks. I don’t know what to believe. I heard everything from a gang attacked him to a drug deal gone wrong.

The news might as well come from me. “I saw Sawyer,” I say gently.

Lily’s face falls, and her hand clenches the material over her heart. “Sawyer’s really back in Willowhaven? She actually came back? You saw her?”

“Yeah, for like a minute, and then she took off.”

“You didn’t talk to her?”

“No, she literally ran when she saw me.” Bolted faster than I’d ever seen her run back in high school, and she was an athlete.

Lily bites her lip. “Are you going to go see her?”

I step out of Lily’s grasp to put the rest of my things away. This is the last thing I feel like talking about with Lily. We don’t need this kind of strain on our relationship. “Lil, she shot off like a firecracker on speed. I don’t think Sawyer wants to talk to me.” Based on the look I saw in Sawyer’s eyes, she might have run all the way back to Seattle.

“But you
want
to talk to her.” There’s no question in her voice, and she’s right. I don’t have it in me to deny it. Lily and I keep no secrets. She went to high school with Sawyer and me. She knows what we had, what I threw away, and yet Lily loves me anyway.

“I haven’t talked to her in six years, Lil.” I at least make my voice sound apologetic. “But she just lost her husband. She needs space.” I don’t want to give Sawyer space, but I will.

Lily nods like she understands, but she doesn’t. Now she’ll question everything. I can see it in her eyes, the fear of losing me already setting in. She’s going to second-guess what we have, which is pointless. I love Lily. And if today is any indication, Sawyer will never look at me again. Not that I expect anything more.

“Do you still want pizza? We don’t have to—” Her hesitant voice makes me cringe.

“Of course I do.” I wrap my arms around her waist, bringing her tightly against me, and kiss her on the forehead. She moves forward on the bench and wraps her legs around me, cradling my waist. It feels so normal and yet unnatural. Does that make sense? “Portabellas or Jeff’s?” I ask.

She chooses Jeff’s because she knows how much I like it—cheesy greasy Chicago-style as opposed to the thin crust Italian crap.

“I don’t mind Portabellas,” I offer, still holding her waist, hovering my lips over hers.

“But you would rather have Jeff’s.” She smiles sadly, and I feel like we are talking about more than pizza. So, I kiss her and try to make her forget. But more than that, I try to make myself forget and get lost in Lily. Concentrating on her mouth and her hands tangling in my hair, I focus on the woman I’m with, on the woman who has stood by me through some of the hardest times in my life.

T
HERE
’
S
A
KNOCK
at the front door and neither of my parents are home so I choose to ignore it. I stay wrapped up in the blankets on my bed as I stare up at the swirls in the plaster on my ceiling.

The knocking continues, but they will eventually have to stop. I’m not about to give in because they think repetitive pounding will get my attention.

In some parts of the plaster, I can make out parts of Grayson’s face. I can see Grayson’s thoughtful eyes behind his glasses, the curve of his full lips, his ruffled, curly, unkempt hair. He’s watching over me.
I’m going crazy, aren’t I?
The features are sporadically placed on the ceiling, but if I stretch my imagination far enough… but the longer I look, the more it looks like white crap smeared on the ceiling.

The knocking won’t stop, so I’m forced to throw back my covers and get up to answer it, or I might kill the person on the other side. When I do, there stands my best friend since birth, Alix Fink.

The red in her chestnut hair shimmers in the midday light. Her bob is something I wish I could pull off as well as she does. She owns that blunt cut.

“You know, when I heard you were back in town I thought they were crazy. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine you’d set foot in Willowhaven again. And I’ve had some pretty wild dreams.”

“Looks like I’m the crazy one.” I shrug and offer a small smile.

She smiles back and grabs me in a hug. I hug her just as tightly because I finally grasp how much I have missed her.

“It’s really good to see you,” I say into her neck. “I’ve missed you so much.”

“Girl, why didn’t you call me? I had to hear from my mom who heard it from Valerie. You’ve been here for almost three weeks without telling me. It’s not as if I saw you much over the last five years. I would have been here for you.” She pulls away still smiling. It’s a sympathetic smile, and it says it all without saying anything.

“You could have come to see me, you know. For more than the wedding… and the funeral.”

She eyes me with raised eyebrows. “Goes both ways, you know. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming back when I saw you then?”
 

“I hadn’t really thought that far yet. It took a couple months for my mom to convince me to come back after Grayson was gone. She was unrelenting.”

Alix walks inside, and I close the door. “If I’d known getting rid of your husband was the way to finally get you back here, I’d have done it myself a long time ago.”

I stare at her because I don’t know if I should laugh or cry or smack her across the face.

“Okay. Too soon for jokes?”

I nod and humorlessly chuckle. “Maybe.”

“Well, you look like crap.” She eyes me up and down with her fierce green eyes. “I’m serious. When was the last time you showered?”
 

I look down at my crinkled pajamas and try to remember when the last time actually was. It wasn’t yesterday. I don’t think it was the day before. It must have been the day before that… when I saw Dean. She’s shaking her head when I look back up at her.

“This isn’t you. Go shower. You’ll feel better, and I’ll be here when you’re done.”

I nod because she’s right, and I can’t deny it. She’s not going to treat me like I’m fragile, even if I feel I might completely shatter at any moment. She knows what I need without asking. And if she has to jump on the train and ride to hell to bring me back, I know she’ll do it.

When I walk back downstairs after my shower, with damp hair dripping down my back, Alix is searching through the cupboards in the kitchen.

“See, now don’t you feel better?” She gets up from squatting down.

I want to laugh at the irony of that question. I feel clean, but I don’t feel better. To appease her I nod anyway.

She starts rummaging through the drawers and compartments inside the fridge. “You got anything to eat around here? You look like my anorexic cousin, Georgia. And that’s not a compliment to your waist size.”

“I saw Dean.” I hate that it’s the first topic of conversation, but she had to know he was here, and I want to know why I’m the last to know.

Alix turns back to me coolly, closing the fridge behind her. “Yeah?”

“How long, Alix?”

“How long what?” I don’t know why she bothers with the innocent act.

“Cut the crap. How long has he been back?”

She sighs and leans against the refrigerator. I see in her eyes how much she wants to avoid this answer, but I won’t let her. I level my stare to let her know I’ll use force if I have to. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“A few years,” she answers unapologetically.

I nearly choke. “A few years? What’s a few years?”

She shrugs. “Three years, give or take.”
 

“Alix! Are you freaking kidding? Three years! Three
freaking
years! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What would have been the point?” she counters. Her voice doesn’t match my level of vehemence, but she’s confident in the decision she made to keep it from me. “You were moving on in Seattle. You were finally finding happiness away from here. Dean didn’t deserve you. Bringing up Dean would have stirred up old issues that didn’t need to be rehashed. He’s your past, and that’s where he should stay.”

“I had every right to know.” I step forward to enforce my point. “I never would have come back if I had known.”
Or maybe I would have come back sooner.

“Exactly! Don’t you see? You can’t let that douchebag dictate your life forever, Sawyer. He left you. He left you with the weight of the world. He
crushed
your world. And this is
your
home.” Her voice softens. “This will always be your home.”

“It doesn’t feel like home anymore, Felix,” I say her nickname quietly.

A smirk crosses her lips. “I know,” she says, and that’s all it takes for me to start crying again. She pulls me into her, but I don’t know if it’s for my benefit or for hers, because she’s crying with me.

“I hate it. It never stops.” I sniffle.

“It will.”

“It doesn’t feel like it.”

“I know.” Her hand rubs up and down my back. “I miss hearing you call me Felix.”

Calling her Felix brings me back to happier, simpler times. When mean girls were the worst of my worries.

“Sawyer?” Lily questions with a prissy attitude, her hand on her hip. “Isn’t that a boy’s name?”

“Does she look like a boy to you?” Alix steps forward, arms crossed, daring this new girl to mess with her.

Lily steps back, but only slightly because the sandbox is stopping her from moving farther away. “Just because she doesn’t look like a boy doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a boy name.”

“I like my name,” I say proudly.

I can tell Lily doesn’t know how to respond to that, so she huffs and turns on her heel to join some other girls on the swing set, her blonde ponytail swinging back and forth as she walks.

“My mom always tells me that girls can be really mean,” Alix says and rests her hand on my shoulder. “You can call me Felix if it makes you feel better.”

I giggled. “It does. Thank you, Felix.”

N
EW
MOTORCYCLES
LINE
the front of my garage, waiting to be ridden. A new Ducati Streetfighter was shipped in today and stands front and center. I hang out for a while, leaning against the brick, admiring it. I’ll have to test her later today to make sure she runs well. It’s the most logical thing to do.

“Dean! My man!” Josh hollers as he saunters toward me. His eyes are bloodshot, and his hair probably hasn’t been washed in days. He looks like he’s been hit by a freight train.

“What’s up, Josh?” I sigh. I try to sound like I care, but he wouldn’t be able to tell if I did.

“Not much, bro. I just wanted to come say hey.” He holds out his fist for me to pound. “It’s been a while.”

I bump his fist and head for my office, waiting for the punch line.
It’s been maybe two weeks.

He follows closely behind me. “Sweet new Ducati out there.”

I nod. “Yeah. She came in this morning. I’m going to take her for a test run later today.” He hovers along the back wall of my office, nodding. He’s probably hung over. “What do you need, Josh?”

His hands run through his hair, making it stand on end. “I need a place to crash tonight, bro.”

I rub the back of my neck. I know his old man. I’m very familiar with the kind of man Josh doesn’t want to—or can’t—go home to. Jared may have kicked Josh out for good this time.

If I say no, Josh will end up sleeping on a park bench or behind some dumpster, or worse, never make it through the night. If I say yes, he’ll show up at my house at three in the morning completely plastered. He’ll sleep it off on my couch, then eat all my food when he wakes up at one in the afternoon, and I won’t hear from him until his two weeks are up, and he repeats his process.