Page 3 of Fall for You (Second Chances #7)
Alana
“ H ow have you been?”
Ronnie looked at me like I’d insulted her ancestors. “Why are you here?”
“I’m just visiting for a month or two while I figure out my next career move,” I said, looking down at my perfectly manicured fingernails.
I guess manicures were out of the budget until I had a real job again.
Ronnie snorted in disbelief, and I pressed the ‘awake’ button on my iPad with a small sigh.
“I guess the catching up portion of our meeting is over,” I said sarcastically. “Let’s talk about the Fall Festival. Walk me through it, I haven’t been since high school.”
I could see Ronnie biting back a sarcastic comment. That was the thing about my former best friend and first real girlfriend, she wore her emotions on her sleeve. That hadn’t changed.
I studied her from beneath my eyelashes.
The years had been good to her. Her wavy brown hair was long and a little wild, but then again, it always had been unless she flat ironed it.
Her skin was tan from all the time she spent outdoors working on the farm, but she was wearing mascara and her lips were shiny and pink. She’d always loved a pretty lip gloss.
Her outfit was boyish yet somehow still sexy. She was dressed casually in faded jeans that hugged her strong legs, work boots, and a thin flannel shirt open over a tank top that hugged her generous breasts.
Once upon a time I’d spent hours worshipping those breasts in the privacy of the loft in her family’s barn.
Ronnie and I met our freshman year of high school. With me living in town and her living in the unincorporated area where all the farmland was, we’d gone to different grade schools, but everyone in the area fed into the same high school.
She’d come into Freshman English the first day wearing ripped jeans, Doc Martens, and a Peppermint Patty tee shirt. Her hair was long and wild, her lips bright red and shiny. I fell in love with her at first sight, although I didn’t know that’s what it was, I just knew I wanted to be her friend.
Soon we were inseparable. We took all the same classes, ate lunch together every day, and joined the cross country team together.
We both had other friends, but we were each other’s BFF – and we had the friendship bracelets we’d exchanged to prove it.
We spent so much time at each other’s houses that our parents joked that they each had another daughter.
We were sophomores when Ronnie came out to me…
***
Fourteen years ago…
“What do you think about being a lesbian?” Ronnie asked me one day as we did a six mile workout for cross country. Running was always a great time to have a serious conversation.
“What do you mean?” I asked, slowing my pace slightly. “Like am I against it or something?”
I saw Ronnie shrug out of the corner of my eye. “It’s just that… I’ve been thinking I might be a lesbian is all.”
“Because you’re attracted to women?” I clarified.
She huffed out a laugh. “Yeah, that’s kind of a requirement.”
I debated the best way to respond, then decided to be candid.
“You’re definitely a lesbian,” I told her. “I’ve thought that for a while, to be honest.”
She reared back in surprise. “Why do you say that?”
“You had that crush on Miss Simpson last year,” I said, referring to our algebra teacher. “Whenever you comment about someone looking hot in a particular outfit, it’s always a girl. And your favorite songs are all performed by lesbian icons.”
“None of that proves I’m a lesbian,” she protested.
“No, but all of it together, along with me knowing you better than anyone else in the world, well, it was pretty easy for me to figure it out.”
Ronnie was silent for several minutes before speaking again.
“You don’t mind that I’m a lesbian?” she asked, her voice uncertain.
“Nah. Besides, I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately and I’m pretty sure I might be one too.”
***
“The Fall Festival hasn’t changed that much since you left, especially the activities at Patterson Farm,” Ronnie answered my question. “I’ve been trying to get my parents to do something new for years but they’re set in their ways, always wanting to do the same thing.”
She paused, then intoned in a perfect imitation of her mother, “New’s not always better, Veronica Marie.”
We both laughed then, and it broke some of the tension between us.
“You still do the haunted corn maze I assume.”
Ronnie nodded.
“The hayride, hot chocolate and apple cider stand, and the pick your own pumpkin patch?”
I mentally went through all the activities I remembered from growing up in Hayword.
“Yeah.”
“What were you thinking about doing different?” I asked. “Assuming you can get your parents on board?”
“I’ve been wanting to set up some picture opportunities, like standing in front of a display or behind a frame, take a picture, post it on social media with our hashtags, that kind of thing.
Or maybe pumpkin selfies, like where you stick your head through a hole and your face is part of the pumpkin. ”
“That would be good,” I agreed. “People love that kind of thing. They’re capturing a memory and low-key bragging about having fun at the same time.”
Ronnie looked pleased that I’d like her idea, until she caught herself and made her face blank again.
I went over a few ideas I’d come up with since last night, and Ronnie seemed to hate all of them. Clearly I’d need to give her some time to get used to working with me.
“Have you thought about separating the corn maze from the haunted house aspect?” I asked, looking at the last item on my list.
“What do you mean?”
“You could have the corn maze just be the maze and then turn the barn into a haunted house. That’s another activity to entice people to visit and they’ll spend more time on the farm and hopefully spend more money. You could also play up the romantic part of the corn maze.”
Our eyes met and I knew she was remembering our first kiss.
We were seventeen at the time, out to each other and a few close friends, but not to our family.
While there was a large and active gay community up in Chicago and some of the bigger cities, this was small town Illinois.
Farm country. Half the people in town went to the same conservative Christian church.
We weren’t brave enough to risk being out back then.
Both Ronnie and I had casually dated boys in our school, because that’s what you were supposed to do, but neither of us had dated a girl. Or kissed one either. Until the day Mrs. Patterson asked us to walk the corn maze to make sure we were ready for the festival to begin the next day.
It was late afternoon, shadows appearing as the sun dropped low in the sky, and Ronnie and I jogged through the maze, stopping when we came to a dead end.
She turned too quick, and I crashed right into her, my hands going to her shoulders.
Then, before I registered what I was doing, I leaned forward and kissed her.
She’d kissed me back, and then everything changed between us…
“That might work,” Ronnie said reluctantly, breaking my reverie.
It was like any good idea I had seemed to almost hurt her to agree with.
I understood. I’d broken her heart when I left Hayword.
I hadn’t meant to, but when I opened that letter from NYU and saw my ticket out of small town Illinois, I couldn’t help but grab the opportunity.
I wasn’t sorry I took the scholarship ii it had led me to my dream career – but I was sorry that I hurt Ronnie in the process.
She knew I’d applied to NYU, but she hadn’t thought I was serious about it.
I knew New York was the best place for me to study advertising and marketing and I’d applied for every scholarship I could to pay my way.
I dreamed of getting an internship in some big Manhattan advertising agency like something out of Mad Men, and that’s exactly what I’d done.
Unfortunately I’d left my best friend behind in the process.
Being an adult now, I realized that I could have handled the whole thing better. I knew I’d hurt Ronnie – that was obvious when she’d tearfully told me she never wanted to see me or talk to me again – but what I hadn’t realized was that the scars would still run so deep.
I also hadn’t realized that I was still in love with her after all these years. But I was. I knew it the minute I saw her. And given that she hated me and I was only in town temporarily, that was a big problem.