Page 45 of Now to Forever (Life on the Ledge Duet #2)

Thirty-One

“People who run for fun,” I pant, hinging at the waist, “are fucking lunatics.”

“Swearing,” Wren gasps, hands squeezing her hips as she walks a circle on the pavement trying to catch her breath. “But we made it a whole mile today.”

I shake my head, convinced my lungs are too collapsed to talk, and start walking toward the house, Wren following suit.

Molly trots beside us like she could go for eight more miles.

I can’t complain too much. I don’t know if it’s the running or the fact I’ve run out of things for her to eat, the dog has been significantly less feral.

“How’s school? And Luke?” I ask with deepening breaths.

“I’ve been talking to him in art. I drew his face.” She smiles shyly. “He asked if I was going to be at Orchard Fest this weekend.”

“Attagirl.” I nudge her with my elbow, but she doesn’t react. “What’s wrong? ”

“There’s this girl—Becca—she’s popular and maybe they dated or something.” She pinches the sleeves of her shirt with her fingers. “I think she knows I like him. The way she looks at me . . .”

“She a bitch?”

Wren laughs softly. “Something like that. I think her mom went to high school with Dad. Letts is her last name.”

I scoff. “Jessica Letts? Adam her dad?”

She nods; my face puckers. The name alone could make milk curdle in an udder.

“We went to school with them. Rotten apples don’t fall far.

” Jessicunt, as I liked to call her, took every opportunity to remind me that I lived in a trailer park when Ford turned her down.

My junior year, she wanted him, he wanted me, and she retaliated by making copies of a picture of the trailer I lived in with the words Ledger Dump typed across it and then plastered them in the halls.

I wanted to punch her face; instead, I got naked with Ford on the hood of her car one night while she was at a late cheerleading practice.

Even though I never told her, our satisfying tryst made her significantly more tolerable.

“Ignore her. She probably inherited her mom’s saggy snatch. ”

“Scotty!” she groans. “Gross!”

I cock an eyebrow; her groan turns to a laugh. “I’m serious. All the rotten ones do.”

“Maybe,” she says as she kicks a pinecone.

“How was therapy yesterday? You were quiet on the drive back.”

“Fine.” She kicks another pinecone.

“You shook up about your dad being shot? ”

She looks at me, eyebrows pinched and as if that was a ridiculous notion.

“She asked if I ever think about visiting my mom.”

“And?”

Another shrug, another kicked pinecone. “And . . . sometimes. Seems messed up that the only way I’d get to see her is if she’s trapped without a choice, though.”

“When was the last time?”

“A couple months before she got arrested. She picked me up and we were supposed to go to lunch. We ended up outside of some apartment complex where she went inside for a ‘few minutes’ and didn’t come out for an hour and a half.

She dropped me off at home with a bag of McDonald’s.

When I told my dad, I thought he was going to kill her. ”

I would have supported this. And burned the body.

Her shoulders slump, pulling my heart with it.

“She probably got sucked into a game of Monopoly. Those games never end, you know?” She looks at me. “That’s why I steal everyone’s money when they aren’t looking. Speed the damn thing up.”

“You play Monopoly?”

“No.”

She smiles, just slightly. “I know what she was doing.”

“I know you do.” The pavement turns to gravel as we turn into the driveway.

“But it’s her loss, you know?” She looks at me like she doesn’t believe me as I take Molly off of her leash.

“You’ve mastered the art of eye-rolling.

And”—I shrug—“it’s too bad for her if she’s spending her life not being at the ass-end of that.

” She snorts a laugh. “Plus, from someone who sees their shitty mom on a regular basis, you’re not missing much. ”

“Why do it?” Wren asks as a crisp breeze stirs fallen leaves and the dog takes off after a squirrel. “Why go see her at all?”

How many times has June asked me this? How many times have I asked myself this?

Every visit leaves me more frustrated than not, and yet, once a month, despite the hurt and heartache it causes, I go.

I buy her groceries. I do a few chores in hopes of making her feel less alone.

I try like hell to remember she lost the same people I did.

“Because nobody else does,” I admit. “And because she’s my only family.”

Wren says nothing; a cardinal lands at the feeder. I wonder if it’s Zeb.

“Miss!” A man’s voice cuts across the lawn. “Floors are in!”

Molly somehow has the energy to sprint, and we follow behind, the sight in the house taking my breath away the moment I reach the doorway.

It’s just boards of reclaimed hickory, hammered and stained then laid down right next to each other, but it’s morphed the house from construction zone to home. The strong angled walls have gone from being awkward to feeling like the arms of a mother welcoming her family home.

“Are you going to cry?” Wren asks with disbelief .

“No.” I knuckle the not tears from beneath my eyes. “I’m allergic to the glue they used.” She gives me a skeptical look; I turn to the man who installed the floors. “They’re beautiful.”

He lifts his hat by the rim then does a swirly motion through the air, gesturing to the rest of the crew to pack it up. I sign the clipboard, he hands me a paper with his name, Floored by Fred, and with a gruff voice says, “Leave five stars and tell your friends.”

Bet he’s a snuggler.

“Looks good, right?” I say, looking around again, seeing it all together, every detail fitting perfectly with the next.

“It does. You still selling?”

I do not want to talk about this.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Gee, Scotty, I don’t know.”

We exchange annoyed looks then she walks outside, rummages through her bag, and returns with a thin square wrapped in a brown bag. She shoves it toward me.

I blink.

“It’s a gift, dummy.”

“A gift?” I take it gingerly, looking from the brown square to her. “Why the hell would you get me a gift?”

“Just open it and don’t be weird.”

I do as she says; it’s a record. I chuckle softly, reading Miranda Lambert , Postcards from Texas. I flip it over and read the track list, swallowing around the tickle of emotions.

I look at her. “You got me a record.”

She frowns. “You have a weird face. ”

“I don’t.”

“You do,” she punctuates. “It’s dopey.”

“I don’t do dopey.”

Her expression says otherwise.

I gesture with the record. “Fine. In a non-dopey way, thank you for this. I’ve never actually had a record that belonged to me first.” It’s true.

It’s just a record, but in my hand, it’s something precious.

Like a long-lost artifact people spend forty years wandering through the desert to find.

Something travels between us when we look at each other.

Something endearing. A little like love.

“I can’t wait to play it and dress like a sexy cowgirl when your dad comes over. ”

She groans. “You ruin everything.”

I grin.

“Let’s listen.”

I take the plastic wrap off and slip the record out, putting it on the player and dropping the needle. When the first lyrics start in a song about an armadillo, I shake my hips to the beat, laughing at her annoyed expression as I circle around her.

“You can’t fight the Miranda effect, Wren. Don’t bother,” I tell her, poking her in the ribs. “Three songs and you’ll want to buy pink sunglasses and ride a horse out of town.”

She grunt-laughs. “You’re weird.”

“No,” I say, grinning as the beat changes from slow to fast. “I’m dopey. ”

She rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t fight me when I drop an arm around her shoulder. In fact, she sways right along with me for the entire next song.