Page 55

Nova

During the drive back to Bayou from Baton Rouge, Lance had to take an important call.

That meant I had nothing but time to sit and think while I played with the apps on my new phone.

I’d named them colorful boxes until Lance told me the real name.

Why did a phone need so many apps anyway?

And what did apps mean? Those were questions I’d have to wait and ask.

His call sounded serious. One of his major donors was trying to back out of their original commitment, and Lance wasn’t happy about it at all.

“You okay?” I asked when he opened the console between us and tossed the phone inside.

After a slew of curse words, Lance glanced at me. “I’m sorry. I hate when people say they’re going to do something, then at the last minute come up with a million reasons why they can’t.”

“Anything I can do to help?” I really wanted to do something for him for a change. Ever since I’d been back, he’d been going out of his way to make sure I was okay.

“Nah, it’s fine. It’ll work itself out.”

“You say that like you really believe it.”

Lance nodded. “That’s because I do.”

I chuckled. “Spoken like a man who’s never been disappointed before.”

He narrowed his eyes and aimed them at me for a second longer than I liked, since he should’ve been watching the road. “Are you serious? Me? Never disappointed? Now that’s funny.”

“I’m not talking about football disappointment. Not that that’s not real, and doesn’t hurt, but I mean life disappointments.”

Lance’s jaws clenched.

I’d overstepped and made him angry. Why was I hurting everyone I loved today? “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what I was apologizing about, but I felt that I needed to say it anyway.

“Don’t be.” The smile he flashed her wasn’t real. It didn’t take over his whole face. “Are you in a hurry to get home, or do you have time to go to the lake? I have something I want to talk with you about.”

My mind froze in the memory of the last time we were at the lake together. My heart raced when the image of his pained face came into view. Every day, I’d wanted to tell him that I changed my mind. I missed him so much, but I couldn’t hurt Quinton either.

“Are you sure we should go to the lake?” I asked, turning the phone over and over in my hands.

“We don’t have to if you’re not comfortable. We can go back to your house or to mine,” he suggested.

“No, it’s not that I’m uncomfortable. It’s ... Well, the last time we were at the lake, it wasn’t a good experience,” I reminded him.

“I know, but the lake has become kinda symbolic for me. It’s where I go to release all the bad stuff and take in the good.”

“Is that what you think I was doing? Releasing the bad stuff? Because that’s not ...”

“No,” he laughed. “That’s not what I meant. But after you left that day, I stayed there a while longer. I fished and talked with God. I wasn’t too happy with him then, but afterward, I got it all out, and I felt better. For the time being, anyway.”

I didn’t tell Lance what happened with Skye earlier, but if the lake was a place to go and feel better, then it was exactly where I needed to be. “Okay, let’s go to the lake.”

Lance turned on the road that led to his house. “Let me grab a couple of blankets. It’s getting cool.”

“Oh my goodness.” I leaned forward in my seat and tried to make sense of what I was seeing.

Lance told me that he’d built a house instead of moving into his mom’s house. Neither he nor Carmen could stay there after their mom passed away. When he said he’d built a house, I thought he meant a regular house, not the massive building in front of me. It had to be the largest house in Bayou.

“That’s your house?” I pointed ahead.

“This is it,” he said, turning off the engine and walking around to open my door.

I was in awe as I stepped out and walked up to the widest front porch I’d ever seen. There were rocking chairs and flowerpots. “I never imagined you as a flower person.”

“I’m not. I don’t know anything about flowers or decorating. Carmen did everything.” Lance unlocked the door. “Want a tour?”

“Of course I do.” I moved past him like I knew where I was going.

I didn’t think my eyes could get any wider, but somehow, they did. I stepped into the living room, which, like the porch, was cozy and huge. His plush sofas were arranged around a large stone fireplace. On the mantel were black-and-white family pictures all in silver frames.

“This place is amazing,” I said, looking up at the ceiling that had to be as high as the sky itself. “How do you clean those?” I pointed to the ceiling fans.

Lance looked up there, too, then back at me. “I don’t.”

“You hire someone to clean them?”

He shook his head. “I guess I should, though, huh?”

“Show me the rest of the house.” I followed Lance out of the room and throughout the rest of the house.

I couldn’t be sure, but it felt like we’d walked at least two miles by the time we finished the tour. The final thing to see was the backyard, which wasn’t a yard at all. Lance opened the french doors that led to a deck overlooking a pasture, which stretched out farther than I could see.

“You have horses?” I sounded like a little girl at an amusement park.

“Of course. Why do you think I always wear cowboy boots?” He pointed to the boots he was currently wearing.

“Because you like them.” I hunched my shoulders. “I didn’t know you were a real cowboy.”

He chuckled. “I don’t know about all that, but I do love horses.” He looked over at me. “Maybe one day we can go for a ride.”

“On a horse?”

“Yes, on a horse.”

I stepped back as if we were going right then.

“Oh, come on. What happened to that girl who was always up for a challenge?”

My head dipped. “I wish she were here too,” I said, barely above a whisper.

“Hey.” Lance placed his finger underneath my chin, then tipped it up so my eyes could meet his. “She’s still in there. She needs time before she’s ready to come out.”

He sounded so sure that I almost believed him. “Promise?” I asked.

He held out his pinkie, and I wrapped mine around it. “You got this ... We got this.”

Lance stared at me, and for some reason, I couldn’t look away. A warm feeling flowed through me, which didn’t make sense because the temperature had dropped. Lance smiled, and I could’ve sworn that someone had turned the thermostat up to a hundred.

“I’d better go get those blankets,” he said, breaking whatever hold his eyes had on me.

“Okay. I’ll wait for you by the front door.”

My thoughts as we drove farther down the road to the lake were very different than they were before. I was still trying to make sense of what happened back at Lance’s house. I’d never felt that way around him before. He was Lance. I didn’t feel warm around Lance. At least I didn’t before today.

Lance backed his truck up to the lake and pulled the tailgate down. We sat with our legs dangling as we looked out at the water. The main attraction wasn’t the lake, though. It was the orange and purple sky.

“I don’t think I ever realized how peaceful it is here,” I told Lance.

It amazed me how I could be surrounded by serenity and beauty and still feel so distraught on the inside.

I kept reminding myself that Skye’s words were out of pain.

I understood that deeply from the times I’d lashed out at Mama.

By the next day, the only thing I wished was that I could take them back and tell her how sorry I was.

Maybe Skye would feel the same way. Even if she didn’t apologize, I wanted to know that she didn’t hate me.

“Still thinking about Skye?” Lance asked.

I’d filled him in on our way to the phone store. As always, Lance was the calm I needed at the time. I didn’t deserve his friendship. He had every right to turn his back on me the way I’d turned mine on him.

“Yeah.” I lifted the cell phone. “I keep hoping that Mama may have given her my number, and she’d call and say she didn’t mean what she said.”

“She will. Maybe not today, but it won’t be long before she realizes you’re not to blame for whatever’s going on between Leah and Quinton. Skye’s young. She doesn’t understand that almost every relationship goes through tough times.”

I thought of all the arguments Quinton and I had when we were married.

They always took place after Skye was asleep.

Even though she was young, I thought she could still sense that something was wrong between her parents, and I didn’t want her to feel that.

It wouldn’t surprise me if Leah and Quinton did the same thing when they argued . .. if they argued.

“Maybe their relationship was as perfect as Skye thought it was,” I said to Lance.

Lance laughed. “Trust me, they had their issues too.”

“How do you know? You aren’t close to Quinton. Did Leah tell you? Are you close with Leah?”

“Only professionally, but I don’t need to be close to either one of them to know they have problems. Quinton’s stubborn, and Leah may not be as stubborn as he is, but she has her ways too. She’s a control freak. I can imagine that the two of them butt heads a lot at home.”

I probably would’ve asked more questions if it still didn’t weird me out to think of them as a couple.

“But Leah’s good people, though,” Lance continued.

“That’s actually what I wanted to talk with you about.

Not Leah specifically, but I wanted to tell you about something I’d gone through.

I’m sure it was what Quinton wanted to talk with you about that day when he interrupted us in your mom’s backyard. ”

“Okay. What is it?” I asked, glad that I had something else to focus on other than Skye and the words that wouldn’t stop playing in my head.

Lance stared quietly at the water for a second before he spoke.

“After my grandma died, I went through this period where I thought the only way to ease the pain from that loss was to do something big. My grandma felt like my whole world, you know that. I still had my mom, of course, but she was dealing with her own grief.”

I nodded.