Me After You Read online

  He nods with empathy in his eyes.

  We continue to talk about the subtle changes of Willowhaven, and how, though it hasn’t changed much, it’s a completely different town than the one we grew up in. Every time I bring up Lily, he brushes over the subject. And somehow we manage not to talk about us once. Not where he went. Not what happened. Not what happened to me. It’s the elephant in the room, but when six years pass by, I suppose there’s more to talk about than the one event that tore you apart.

  I’m not ready to talk about it anyway. Though he pretends like he is, I know he’s not either. If he were he would have taken this opportunity, but today is about pretending. Pretending everything is okay, pretending we can be friends, pretending our lives haven’t gone in completely different directions—two different directions that may never intersect again.

  I look at my watch and see it’s almost one. We’ve been here for over four hours. “I need to get home to my mom before she starts to worry. I told her I’d only be gone an hour or two. And that was this morning. I didn’t bring my cell phone with me.” It was merely one more way for her to get a hold of me.

  The corners of his mouth turn up, and I hear myself years ago, repeating the exact same thing to him after we’d been kissing in the bed of his dad’s truck for hours. It was definitely a regular occurrence. If it wasn’t me worrying about my mom, it was his dad hollering from their front door. We always made sure to stop before that happened. Neither one of us wanted to be on the other end of his father’s anger.

  “Wouldn’t want to worry her now, would we?”

  My eyes shy away from his. “No, we wouldn’t.”

  “Well, friend,” he says as he gets up and stretches. “It was good talking to you. We should do it again sometime.”

  I bite my lips to conceal my smile as he walks me to the door of the café. My lips betray me. “Maybe we’ll bump into each other again around town or something.”

  “It’s been known to happen.”

  What am I doing here? Flirting? This can’t happen. “Tell Lily I said hi.” I can’t restrain the punch that my words pack. I tried. I really did.

  He nods once with a fallen smile. “Will do.”

  After I wave, I head toward my car. My mind replays the last several hours. My smile can’t be stopped until I notice it there. I bite my lips as punishment to make them stop. What just happened? With one look over my shoulder, I see he’s watching me from the café entrance. He lifts a crooked smile and tosses a small wave. I return the wave and spin back around. Opening up to him is a stupid move. This can’t end well.

  DEAN

  I DON’T KNOW what’s worse. When I knew that I lost her to someone else or knowing that I can’t have her because of the turmoil I created, a mess that I can’t seem to fix no matter how hard I try. We were making progress today; at least I thought we were. She feels so close and yet so far out of reach. Though she started to open up to me, she was still on guard. She’s fighting it.

  I used to fight it, too—my need for Sawyer. I used bury myself in whatever job I could find at the time or distract myself with a girl I knew I would forget the name of by the next day. I found stupid outlets for it all. But then, when nothing worked, I would cave to the one temptation I hated more than anything in this world because nothing could satisfy my craving for Sawyer but Sawyer herself. And only one thing could bring her back to me.

  I lean over the bar with one hand over my eyes and a drink in the other. I’ve lost track of time. Who knows how long I’ve been sitting here. But I’ll wait as long as it takes. My head feels foggy and disoriented, the way it should. The music is booming. The TVs are competing. I hate this place, but I can’t stay away.

  “What are you doing here, Dean?”

  Finally. I lift my head and see Sawyer sitting on the barstool next to me. “Hey,” I say, sitting up a little straighter. “I’ve missed you, Jack.”

  “This isn’t you. Why do you keep doing this to yourself?” Her eyes aren’t the usual smiley kind. They are sad, and I want to change that so badly.

  “Because when I drink, you come. I get to see your face and it takes away the pain.”

  Her head shakes. “But you know I’m not real. Once you’re sobered up I’ll still be gone. And you’ll hate yourself all over again for doing exactly what you promised yourself you would never do.” She levels her eyes.

  I didn’t dream her up to be lectured. “I’m not my dad,” I snap, and she winces. I hate it when I make her do that. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m sorry.”

  “I know.” She offers a small understanding smile, but it doesn’t rise to her eyes. They remain sad. I want to kiss away their sadness. “But this is what happens when you let it take over you. You’re not my Dean.”

  “I am. I swear I am,” I declare adamantly. “I haven’t changed.”

  “Then put down the drink and walk out of this bar. Get a cab or call someone to come and get you. This place is a bottomless black hole that you will never be able to climb out of if you don’t clean your act up.”

  “But it’s the only way I can see you,” I murmur desperately.

  “And whose fault is that?” My eyes narrow, but I know it’s true. And I know she’s not really here. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I know I’m having a conversation with myself.

  “Hey, handsome,” a throaty voice purrs near my neck. She’s so close I can feel her warm breath on my skin. Sawyer fades away.

  I turn and have to blink to focus in on her. When her face comes in clearly, I see eyes so dark they might as well be black and hair the color of coal. She’s a fierce one who I can’t seem to escape no matter how hard I try.

  “Tiffani,” I acknowledge, but she’s not the one I want to be talking to. I want Sawyer back. She scared away Sawyer.

  “You haven’t been back in a few weeks. I was beginning to think I’d never see you again.”

  My eyes shut because I can’t keep them open any longer. If only when I closed my eyes, I could imagine that Tiffani was Sawyer. But there’s nothing about Tiffani that’s like Sawyer. She’s taller and darker. Her hair is shorter, and her voice isn’t raspy enough. Her touch isn’t as tender, and she has an obnoxious, booming laugh. One might think it’s a good thing, but there’s nothing good about forgetting Sawyer. She’s the only good thing I ever had.

  “You all right, Dean?” she asks, placing a hand on my shoulder.

  I rub my fingers into my eyes, hoping that will clear some dizziness. I open my eyes to see two Tiffanis. “I need you to call me a cab. Please?”

  She’s a little miffed, but I’m too hammered to care. I can’t keep doing this. I hate drinking. It doesn’t solve anything. I’m going to wake up in a world of hurt tomorrow. One worse than this one.

  I have to go back. I have to get my Sawyer back.

  All I got when I came back to Willowhaven was a town with no Sawyer and a dead dad. Funny how plans work out. Or how they don’t. Life never goes as we hope it will. This shouldn’t come as a shock to me anymore. Every decision I make blows up in my face. Why should that start changing now?

  Making things right with Sawyer is going to take all the patience I’ve mastered over the years. Patience might be a virtue, but it’s a beast.

  SAWYER

  “I RAN INTO Lily today.” Alix leans over the counter while I decorate some pastries for the display.

  “That must have been awkward.”

  “A little, yeah. I think she wants to be friends again. It seemed like she was trying to apologize to me.”

  My eyebrow quirked up in question. “For what?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t flat out say, ‘I’m sorry for such and such.’ She said she missed me and hoped we could get together sometime.”

  “How special for you two. What did you say?” I ask, concentrating again on the task at hand.

  “I said, maybe. But it was weird, Sawyer. She’s probably trying to cozy up to me to know what’s going on with you and
Dean.”

  I stop decorating and give her my full attention. “Nothing is going on with me and Dean, so there won’t be anything to tell.”

  Alix shrugs. “Maybe. But if there was something going on, I wouldn’t tell her and she knows that, so I guess that doesn’t make any sense.”

  I set down the icing bag. “What are you getting at, Felix?”

  She throws her arms in the air as if she doesn’t want to take the blame for anything that comes out of her mouth. “I don’t know. It was just strange how she suddenly surrendered. She’s been avoiding me for three years—nearly as long as Dean has been back—and all of a sudden she wants to be friends again. It’s fishy.”

  “Maybe she finally realized by taking Dean she lost her true friends, and now she’s left with all her fake ones.” The bite in my voice is irrepressible.

  “That’s possible, too. But why now? Why after all this time? What changed?”

  “When you get that all figured out let me know,” I say, turning my attention back to decorating. Not that I care terribly about the fate of the friendship. She’s made no attempt to rectify ours, though I doubt I’d be all that welcoming to the thought anyway.

  “I will, but I’m out. Got to pick my brother up from school.”

  “Okay. Ruffle his hair up for me.”

  “Will do,” she hollers as she walks out of the bakery door.

  ***

  My car makes a funky clinking noise when I start it the next morning. I groan and lean my head against the steering wheel. I don’t have time for car troubles right now. I’m late for work as it is. I call Polly and tell her my dilemma, explaining I’ll be even later. As much as I don’t want to ask him, there’s only one place I know won’t jerk me around, or make me any later than I already am.

  I pull up to Dean’s garage and, thankfully, he’s already out front, so I don’t have to go searching for him. The place looks pretty busy. He’s talking to a customer and pointing out some of the new bikes he has on the lot. When he notices my car he smiles but finishes up his conversation. I get out and lean against my driver’s side door to wait. After a couple minutes, Dean gestures for the man to keep looking and tells him he’ll be back in a little bit.

  As he walks up to me, I notice how fresh and clean he looks. He probably hasn’t done much of the garage work today. He’s dressed in black jeans and a form-fitting gray t-shirt. Dark stubble along his jawline makes him look incredibly rugged. Inhaling, I struggle to control the urge to run my fingers over it. Would he fight me if I were to drag him into his office and—

  It’s such a ridiculous thought I cut myself off. Yet it’s the only thing I can think of as he makes his way over to me.

  “She’s knocking a little bit,” he says as a way of greeting.

  “I know you don’t normally take care of cars,” I say apologetically, “but I was wondering if you could take a look and see if it’s something major, or if I’m just being a girl and could fix it with something simple like an oil change.”

  Dean lets out a throaty chuckle. “What’s the issue? What kind of other noises has it been making?”

  I explain the noises it made when I started it and how it’s driving. I repeat the noise, trying to get it right. Dean looks at me as if I’m giving him his entertainment for the rest of the day. “Okay.” He laughs. “Okay, you can stop. I heard it when you pulled in. I know what it means. I just wanted to hear you do it.”

  I step forward and punch his shoulder with enough force that he grabs his arm. He laughs harder. “I’m sorry I couldn’t resist.”

  I bite down on my laughter. “Well, can you fix it?”

  “Yeah, give me a few minutes.” He holds out his hands for my keys, and I hand them over. “Just hang out. I’ll bring her out when I’m done.”

  At the end of the garage is an open bay that he backs my car into. Though I’ve been to Dean’s shop before, I’ve never really looked around, so I decide to do some exploring. The tin roof shines underneath the sunlight. The garage is bigger than I imagined a motorcycle repair shop would be. It looks like he bought a regular auto repair shop and converted it. When I stroll by one of the open garage doors Aiden waves at me from inside, motioning for me to come to him.

  “What’s up, Sawyer?”

  “Hey, Aiden.” I smile.

  “You here to see Dean?” His greasy hand lifts for a high five until he realizes how dirty it is. “Sorry,” he says and wipes it on a rag.

  It throws me a little, the way he asks if I’m here to see Dean. As if I would be here for more than car troubles. “I had some issues with my car this morning. He’s taking care of it for me now so I can get to work.”

  Aiden grins impishly. “Ah. I see. Sure.”

  I arch my eyebrow, silently questioning what he’s insinuating.

  “You can hang out in his office if you want,” he offers. “It’s through the main office.” He points to a door on the other end of the garage. “Just that way.”

  My curiosity is piqued. “Okay. Thanks.” I nod and walk past a few other guys I don’t recognize working on bikes. A couple of them look to be around our age. Some look a little older. They nod politely, and eye me all the way as I cross the open space.

  The walls of the main office are covered with rims and posters of different kinds of motorcycles. Some other automotive posters hang on the front counter. Past the counter is another door that leads to a smaller office—Dean’s office.

  I hesitantly enter, feeling a little bit like I’m intruding on his personal space. But Aiden was the one to tell me to come and wait here.

  I tell myself to sit down in the chair in front of his desk to keep me from snooping, but Dean has a couple frames on his desk. I can’t help picking them up one by one. The first picture is of him, Aiden, and Josh standing outside the garage. Aiden has his arm thrown over Dean’s shoulder, and they’re both flashing a thumbs-up. Josh stands on the other side of Dean with a straight face like he’s trying to appear tough. I hadn’t realized Josh had been a part of the garage, too. He looked different back then, not nearly as affected by the harshness of the world.

  It could be the opening day or just after Dean first opened the garage. Dean looks a little younger with not as much scruff on his face. He appears happy, but there’s a smidge of something else in his eyes—a distant sadness that I don’t think most would pick up on. My fingers brush gently over the face that looks more like the Dean that left me behind. A piece of me fills with disappointment and envy, a gut-wrenching bitterness that I missed such a big moment in his life. Lily was probably here. Knowing her, she was most likely the one to take the picture, not willing to miss a moment of the action.

  I set down the picture with a sigh and lift up another frame with a one-dollar bill mounted in the center.

  “That was my first dollar.”

  I twirl around to see Dean leaning against the doorframe, and his arms folded over his chest. My first thought is, how long has he been standing there? My second, dang, he looks good in black. The contrast of the dark against his skin makes the green in his eyes even brighter. I attempt to shake thoughts of kissing him right here and now, but they hit me over and over like a jackhammer.

  Setting down the frame, I point to the picture of him with Aiden and Josh. “That’s a good picture of you guys.” I swallow.

  “I had just gotten the keys to the place.” A reminiscent smile forms on his lips. “It was one of the best days of my life.” All I want to do is stand here and watch him with that content aura in his eyes. He looks so satisfied with life, and I wish I could feel the same way.

  “Josh used to work here?”

  He nods grimly. “But he became too unreliable. Over the last few years he became someone I didn’t even recognize. I should have cut him out of my life a long time ago, but he was my best friend, you know?” He clears the emotion from his throat, the building tears. “He was like a brother to me, the brother I never had.”

  I did know. I never under
stood it, but I did understand the depths a friendship could go. Alix was the sister I never had. If she were to change like that, I don’t know how easy it would be for me to turn my back on her.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Pushing off the doorframe with his shoulder, he walks into the office to stand in front of me. He shakes his head. “There’s nothing for you to apologize for. He made his bed. It’s time he lay in it. Unfortunately, it took me watching him hurt someone I really care about to realize that.”

  Dean’s eyes unhurriedly glide over mine, making me lose myself. If I just lean in a little more… His hand rests on my upper arm, and I freeze. His touch brings me back to reality. I have to get out of here, and I really have to get to work.

  “Is it all taken care of? Did you find the problem?”

  Dean takes a moment, blinking. He nods once and drops his hand. “You needed some oil. You were running low. That’s what that knocking noise means.”

  “Really? That’s it? Are you sure?”

  He can’t hide his amusement. “I realize my expertise resides with the motorcycles, but yeah. I’m familiar enough with the sounds your car was making to know how to fix it. You’re good to go. You brought it to me just in time. Driving with low-to-no oil will burn up the engine. So, make sure you check your oil regularly.”

  “Okay. Thank you. What do I owe you?”

  “Nothing.” Dean shakes his head adamantly as he steps back.

  “No, seriously, Dean. How much?”

  “It took me ten minutes,” he says, coming around on the other side of his desk. “I looked around a little and poured in some oil. I’m not going to take your money for that, Sawyer.”

  “And I’m not leaving here until you let me pay you.” Standing my ground, I fold my arms across my chest. I don’t want him to do me any favors, nor do I want to feel like I owe him.