We both hesitate at the same moment, freezing, not breathing. I lower my face to her neck, pull my body away, breathing shakily. “Not here, Echo. Not like this.”
“No.” She doesn’t move, though, as if she’s feeling the fight of need versus knowledge; I know I am.
I owe it to her to be stronger. So I bend, find the scrap of material that she calls underwear and lift it for her, tug it into place, and then do the same for her jeans. I tug, tug, and she lets me, not moving, breathing deeply and slowly as I get her jeans into place. She spins and pushes me away.
“Stop, stop. I can’t handle it when you do that. I’m barely handling myself right now as it is. You being sweet and dressing me like that…I can’t handle it.” I don’t apologize. I just bend and lift up my own clothing, but she grabs my wrists and stops me. “Let me help you out with your problem,” she says, glancing down at my straining erection.
I shake my head and back out of reach. “No. That’d be even worse than if we’d done what we just started.” I pull my boxers into place and zip my jeans, button them. Now that we’re both clothed, I let myself get within touching distance again, but I don’t actually touch her, because that would be catalytic and dangerous. “Has anything changed?”
“Between us?” she asks, and I nod. She closes her eyes, wipes at her face with both hands, and then falls back against the door. “No. I don’t know how to change it. Us fucking wouldn’t change it. Here, your place, anywhere. It’d feel incredible, but it wouldn’t change anything.”
“Then we’re right back where we started before I kissed you.”
She shrugs and nods. “Yeah. If we fucked, it would put us right back in the bubble, and—as much as I like it in the bubble, I have to face reality at some point.”
“So you still want me to go?” I hate how my heart thumps and aches.
She won’t look at me as she nods and reaches for the doorknob, moving out of the way so I can step fully outside. “Yeah. Want you to go may be too strong a way to put it, but yeah, it’s best if you go.”
“Okay then.” I step carefully down the two wobbly stairs to the sidewalk and cross the grass to my truck. “You have my number.”
“I know.” She waves, like it’s any old goodbye. “Drive safe.”
“Yeah.”
And then I’m gone, back out to the main road, to my apartment, where I contemplate the fact that Echo and I were just a few miles apart, that we even know some of the same people but never crossed paths until now, until this. And I think about how this makes the thought of going back home to Nashville all the harder. Before, it was like skulking home with my tail between my legs. And then I got injured and I just couldn’t face even the idea of going back and hearing all the talk, the whispers, the curiosity about why I’d vanished so suddenly.
And now, if I go back, I’ll know not only is Kylie there with Oz—married now—but Echo as well.
What the fuck am I supposed to do?
And of course, just to rub it in, the radio plays “The One That Got Away” by Jake Owen.
TEN: Ben-Shaped Hole
Echo
It’s eleven o’clock at night, and Mom’s house is done. I tossed almost all of her clothes, because she was taller and skinnier than me, which irked me pretty much my whole life, from the time I was old enough to be jealous of her figure. I kept a pair of her shoes, killer red heels I’d always envied and that she’d never let me borrow. I also kept a leather bomber jacket that was old and worn and likely belonged to my father, as well as her favorite cream knit sweater. I have two boxes of sentimental stuff, picture frames and photo albums and her jewelry, and her favorite books. The curb is piled high with bags that I labeled as either “trash” or “free stuff”, as this neighborhood always gets trash-picker traffic the night before the garbage is collected. Someone will take the bags of goods and the rest will get thrown away. I leave the furniture, the TV. I clean the place top to bottom, scrubbing and vacuuming and mopping and wiping until the house looks like it had never been lived in. Grandpa and Grandma will sell the house and take care of whatever else has to be done.
And I do it all without sobbing.
When I’m done, I book a flight back to Nashville for early the next day.
Then I call Grandpa. “Hey there, sweet-pea. We was gettin’ worried about you,” he says by way of hello, his voice low and thickly Texas-accented.
“I needed time to deal, Grandpa. Sorry, didn’t mean to worry you.”
“Where ya at?”
“Mom’s—Mom’s house. I just finished…going through everything.”
He’s silent for a moment. “You shouldn’t have done that on your own, sweet-pea. Your grandma and I woulda helped you. We’re old, but we ain’t helpless.”
“It was mine to do.” I swallow hard. “I had help, too.”
“That boy you left with?” His voice brooks no argument, meaning, I’d better damn well explain, because even if I am twenty-two, I still have to answer to my elders.
“Yeah. Ben.”
“Echo.” It’s a none-too-subtle warning.
“Just let it be, Gramps. Please?” My voice shakes. “I just…I need a ride to the airport in the morning.”
He lets out a breath. “You’re stayin’ with us tonight, then?” It’s a concession, which means a lot to me, since Grandpa isn’t one for conceding anything, ever.
“Yes, sir.”
“Be there in forty-five. Just hang tight.”
“Thanks, Grandpa.”
“No sweat, sweet-pea.”
I sit on the stoop with the boxes at my feet, killing time on The Berry, and then Instagram. That last one is a mistake. I end up in my own photograph history, swiping through the pictures of Mom and me the last time we were together. It was the Fourth of July, and we spent it with Grandma and Grandpa at a lake near their house, grilling and drinking beer and setting off firecrackers. Mom and I got along great, since we’d decided on an unspoken rule to totally ignore my choice of schools and career.
I hold back the sobs, even still.
I keep holding them back when Grandpa shows up, his Wranglers as tight as ever, his shirt plaid and pearl-buttoned, his boots worn and scuffed. I hold them back as we drive in silence back to their house in his rattling, chugging, diesel Ram pickup that’s older than me. I hold the tears back when Grandpa hugs me stiffly outside the truck in the gravel drive out front with the crickets singing and the moon high. And I hold them back when Grandma hugs me tearfully and makes me sit down to eat reheated roast beef and mashed potatoes and pecan pie.