“You have to come get me,” I beg after I finish the Sawyer story.
“I can’t, babe. I’m in Manhattan and there is no way I’m leaving to come to Hicksville. I’d probably hit a deer. Oh, too soon?”
“I hate you.”
“No you don’t. Listen, I have to go shopping with my bubbe. I’ll call you later, okay? Just . . . stay away from the deer.” Aw, I miss her grandmother. It took me a week to figure out that was who Allison was talking about. For a minute when she’d say “bubbe” I thought she was talking about Michael Buble and mispronouncing his name.
“I will.” I sigh and we hang up. I hear my name being yelled inside the house and I take one last breath of fresh air before diving back into the chaos.
Chapter 3
The next morning my mother sends me to the store for more flour. She’s making cookies with Stacy’s brood and they’ve already ruined one bag. She watches them now when Stacy is at work, and also Drew’s daughter and stepson when they get out of school. If there’s one thing I know about my mother, it’s that she can do just about anything that normal people would shy away from.
I try to hurry through the grocery store as quick as I can, because I know every single person who works here, and I really don’t want to do the small talk thing right now. Get in and get the hell out is my motto for this trip. I grab the only bag of flour left and turn to dash to the register, but I’m blocked by a cart being pushed by Sawyer.
Not again.
“I’m sorry,” he says, trying to maneuver the cart in the narrow aisle. There’s no way I can get past it.
“No, it’s fine.” I back up and go around and come out the next aisle. But he’s there as well.
“Sorry,” he says again as I dodge the cart. All I wanted was to get some flour. But the universe just couldn’t let me have that.
“Ivy, wait,” he says as I start to walk toward the register. His voice makes me stop, as if he’d pushed a button in my brain.
“What? What do you want?” It comes out meaner than I intend it.
“Nothing. I don’t want anything from you. Why would I want something from you? You were the one who broke up with me, if I remember.” He’s angry. I’d even go so far as to say he’s pissed. He’s right. I was the one who ended it, but he didn’t fight me on it.
“I’m sorry.” It’s all I can think to say.
He just shakes his head and whips the cart around, crashing right into a display of stuffing, scattering boxes everywhere.
“Fucking perfect,” he mutters under his breath as he leans down to pick the boxes up. I have two choices: help, or run.
I pick the former.
Setting down the flour, I start picking up the boxes and stacking them the way they were. Sawyer is doing the same and then our hands bump as we both reach for the same box.
“Sorry,” we both say at the same time. He pulls back as if I’ve slapped him. Awesome, he’s even afraid to touch me.
We finish clearing up the stuffing boxes and then there’s a moment.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I mean for breaking up with him and for a lot of things. About his dad. He and Sawyer were never close, which was one of the reasons we got along so well. He was really close with his mom, though.
“What are you sorry for, Ivy?” Ah, the old Sawyer is back. He never let me get away with vague statements. He always made me explain them. Big fan of honesty, that boy.
“I’m sorry for a lot of things.” I look down at my shoes. Our toes are almost touching.
“Maybe . . . maybe we can sit down and talk about some of them. It’s . . . it’s really good to see you.” I look up from his feet and see that he’s serious. God, it’s good to see him. I didn’t know how much I missed him until he popped up in my life again.
“It’s good to see you, too. I have to get home, but maybe later? Where are you living now?”
“I’m back at home, but they built me a place over the garage. Come around five and we’ll talk. I’ll make sure I have plenty of vanilla Coke and Red Vines.” The mention of the Coke and Red Vines makes my heart stutter for a moment.
“You still remember that?”
“I couldn’t forget if I wanted to. See you at five.” With that he backs the cart up and vanishes down another aisle.
I take the “scenic” route back home because I need some time to think. My car is still messed up from its fling with the ditch, but there’s no car wash around here, so I’ll have to deal with it for now.
I park by a little cove, get out, wrap myself in the blanket I keep in my trunk, and sit on the hood of my car and stare at the ocean for a bit.
I used to do this all the time, and sometimes I wasn’t alone. The roar of an engine sounds behind me and I turn around to see a familiar truck pulling in. He gets out and shakes his head.
“How did I know you would be here?”
“Because this was where I always came when I needed to think about something,” I say as he walks over to my car and stands next to the hood, looking at the ocean and not me.
“It’s been a while,” he says.
“Yeah.”
He leans against the hood and I pat the spot next to me. It’s weird that he’s standing. Sawyer gives me a look to ask if it’s really okay, and then hops up. I unfold the blanket from my shoulder and he ducks under it.
Places are like time capsules, I think. Right now I’m transported to two years ago when Sawyer and I used to sit here under this blanket and watch the ocean and talk. Or sometimes we wouldn’t. He’s the only person I’ve ever met that I can be completely silent with and it’s not awkward. Well, except for Allison, but that’s different.
“I’m sorry about your dad,” I say as he moves closer to me under the blanket until our shoulders are touching. I’m used to having his arms around me, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. There’s too much history and heartbreak for that to happen. “What happened?”
“Heart attack. Just this past summer. I was away at school, and I didn’t make it home in time. Mom took it hard and she was going to lose the business. So I dropped out of school. That’s why I’m here.” I figured as much. Sawyer’s father (and his father before him and his father before him) owned the McCallister Lobster Pound, the only such establishment in Saltwater. Basically, they were the biggest business in this tiny town. There’s a lot of money in selling lobsters, let me tell you.
All Sawyer ever wanted was to NOT be stuck here and run the family business. He’s an only child, but he didn’t care. He wanted more. Like me.
“I wish you would have told me.”
“I didn’t know how. I thought about going to Columbia to tell you about it in person, but I guess I pussied out.” I lean on him a little, like old times. The past is slowly sucking us back in time.
“I missed you,” I whisper, but I know he hears it.
“I missed you. I thought about you. A lot.” As in past tense?
I turn my head and meet his eyes. Those feelings that I thought I’d buried and done away with simmer under my skin. I’m captivated by his blue eyes, just like I was when we were kids.
“Ivy.” It’s just my name, but the way he says it . . . I turn my head a fraction and our lips meet. It’s almost by accident, like all our other meetings so far. Just a brush, and then it’s over as quick as it started.
“I can’t,” he says, holding my face, as if to stop it from moving close to his again. “I can’t do this again. You’re going to leave and I’m going to be here. You’re going to get out.”
I know we talk about this place like a prison, but that’s what it’s like for us. Or at least it felt that way when we were younger.
“I’m sorry,” I say again, because I don’t know what else to say. He moves his hand from my face, and I go back to staring at the ocean.
“You have to stop saying sorry, Poison.” I almost flinch at the nickname. He used to tease me with it when we were in first grade and it used to make me cry. Then I got a little older and realized that I kinda liked it. Now it makes me hurt and burn at the same time.
“I have a lot to be sorry for.”
“So do I.” I don’t know what else to say, so I look out at the ocean again.
“I miss you,” he says, moving his arm around me. I wait a second before I lean into him.
“I miss you, too.” Present tense.
Chapter 4
Sawyer and I sit on my car for a while, but then my phone vibrates with a call from my mother.
“I have to get home,” I say. He removes his arm from around me and hands the blanket back.
“Am I still going to see you at five?” There’s still a hell of a lot to talk about. We definitely wouldn’t get through it in one night.
“Yeah, I’ll be there.”
“Bye, Poison.” He gets in his truck and I get off the hood of my car. I came out here to think, but I’m leaving with even more thoughts than I came with.
My mother is pissed at me when I walk through the door and gives me the third degree while the little kids run around, all of them on sugar highs because she let them eat half of the cookie dough. The house is loud, so much in contrast to the quiet I’d gotten to experience with Sawyer.
I finally hand her the flour and start working on the dishes to appease her.
“I hear you ran into Sawyer McCallister at the store,” she says as she pulls some cookie dough out of my youngest nephew’s hair. This is what happens when you live in a small town. THIS is just one of the reasons I got out while I could.
“Where did you hear that?” I say as I pull my niece off the kitchen counter and put her back on the floor. She runs away, screaming and flailing her arms. Sometimes I wish I could do that.
“Sally Caruthers stopped by to drop off some of her wreaths.” Ah yes. Sally. If Saltwater was a megaphone, Sally was the mouthpiece. She was always stopping at people’s houses and “dropping things off.” I swear, she baked pies and made wreaths and so forth just so she would have a reason to spread as much gossip as possible. It’s worse than venereal disease in a small town. That spreads too, but not as fast.
“Yeah, I bumped into him. No big deal.” She makes a sound as my niece runs by me again, smacking me in the stomach.
“Do you want to talk about it?” When have I ever talked about my issues with her? Yeah, never.
“No. It’s not a big deal.” I can say this till I’m blue in the face, but she won’t give it up until she wants to.
“His father died, you know. That’s why he’s back.”
“I know.”
“You talked to him?” Her eyebrows raise and I realize I shouldn’t have said that. Now I’m not getting out of talking about it.
I sigh and sit down at the table and wipe my hands on a dishcloth. I give her the quick and dirty version of what had happened with Sawyer, but I don’t tell her about meeting him again near my car. I also don’t tell her that I’m going over to his house in an hour. That would set her off and everyone would know about it. God, they probably already do.