Page 32 of The Cadence

Of course I knew about Carlee, the girl who’d gone on to star in the reality TV show, Love Beneath the Waves . I knew who she was and suddenly, I hated her. I managed to ask, “Are you really going to stay together when you go to college?”

“We haven’t decided yet. But even if Carlee and I weren’t together, I think you’re too young for me,” he’d stated.

“No, I’m tall!” I had reminded him. I was plenty mature! “Is it actually because I’m so skinny? I’ll gain weight and my breasts will get bigger,” I’d promised, and he’d blushed.

“I’m not going to talk about your—the issue isn’t how skinny you are.

Calla, wait,” he’d called. I had already begun my retreat and I didn’t stop it.

I kept going, appalled at what I’d just done.

It would have gone so much better if I had stuck to my script, I mentally moaned.

He would have listened to me! He would have been swayed by my logical reasoning about why we needed to be together, forever.

But what had I done instead? I’d ruined it by leading with the fact that I loved him.

I had been bursting with that emotion for months and now it was out: the truth was exposed and so was I.

I might as well have been stark naked on the stage with the high school principal and all the graduates!

And what would I do now? It felt like I’d loved him for my whole life, and if I had to be without him?

Well, I was never going to be happy again, ever, not for one, single moment.

I’d walked to the bus stop and sat in the slanting shade of a scruffy street tree.

I didn’t want to cry in public but there was no bathroom stall for me to hide in.

I had tried to look at the time on my phone so I could guess how long I’d have to wait for the bus, but my eyes were too full of tears to see clearly.

I couldn’t really see the car that pulled up and stopped at the curb, even though it was right in front of me.

“Hello, Calla.” Will had gotten out of the driver’s side and walked over to my bench. He sat down next to me.

“Hi.” By mistake, I’d blinked, and one tear did roll down my cheek. When I turned so that he wouldn’t see, a few more spilled out, too.

“I’m sorry,” he’d told me. “I’m sorry that it won’t work out like you wanted.”

“It’s not your fault that you don’t feel the same way.”

“It’s not about feelings,” he’d answered. “It’s just not right for us to be so far apart in age and everything else. I’ve done a lot more than you have in life, so it’s like our experience separates us, too.”

“You don’t know!” I’d shot back. Then I’d told him things that I hadn’t wanted anyone to hear.

I had said that I’d taken care of myself for years—years!

I had plenty of adult experience. I explained how I’d lived basically on my own and I wasn’t exactly the dumb little girl he thought I was.

I told him about my mother’s boyfriend, too, and how he got drunk and then didn’t care which person he was groping.

“Are you saying that some old man groped you?” Will had demanded.

“He sure tried! He was strong but he was slow after he had all the beer in him,” I’d answered. “What I’m saying is that I already have sex experience, too!”

“That’s assault, not sex,” he had protested. “We should call the police!”

There was no point in doing that, I’d said angrily, because Clifford and my mother had been killed when she’d run her car off the road during a storm, the same night that a tree had fallen on our house.

Then I kept going. I talked about how I had dealt with emergencies, like how I’d extinguished a fire that had almost gotten out of control when I’d been trying to heat the house and get warm, and how I’d also dealt with rats and opossums and giant leaks in the roof.

“I’m just as good as an adult!” I’d sworn.

Like before, he had seemed to be in shock. “All that happened to you?”

“Yeah.” By that point, I wasn’t crying anymore, and I was starting to feel stupid instead. I hadn’t meant to divulge that stuff to anyone and especially not to Will, who was the pinnacle of perfection no matter what I’d heard whispered about his weird family.

“Jesus Christ.” He had shaken his head and we’d sat for another moment. Then he’d said, “Come on. The least I can do is give you a ride home.”

Of course, we hadn’t made it to my grandma’s house before he’d started getting a bunch of calls from his mother, and that had all been a mess. At least I’d been there to help him.

I stepped out of those memories and back into the present when my own phone sounded a little reminder that I needed to leave for the grocery store.

I did have to work and I couldn’t sit here staring at the wall, lost in thoughts of Will.

I’d already wasted a large part of my life doing that, and now I had the real thing!

I didn’t have to pine and yearn anymore, like I was a forlorn and forgotten girl in one of the books I checked out of the library.

Although, I had just finished most of their selection.

I was going to either find a new branch or find a good used bookstore.

But there was no more pining, because now I had the real deal: William Franklin Bodine, in the flesh.

Of course, I didn’t have him at the moment, because he was off in Alabama where his beautiful former girlfriend lived.

And of course, I didn’t really have him at all, not in the way that I’d dreamed about when I’d proclaimed my love for him in the parking lot of our high school.

I sighed. I was seven years past the day when I’d humiliated myself with my ridiculous declaration but just like I’d once told him, I was still the same Calla at heart. Things hadn’t changed much for me.

I headed out to the car and looked at myself in the rearview mirror.

Why was I worrying about Will and some woman he used to love, why was I torturing myself with the idea of the two of them and what they would do together?

It was enough to be his friend and to help him just like he helped me.

Yeah, that was enough. I nodded at my reflection and drove myself to work, going a little faster than I should have.

I was a fortunate girl and this was enough.

“It’s not enough.”

I jerked back to the present once again and refocused my attention on my current location: the grocery store. “What?” I asked.

My manager shook her head as she looked at the display of bakery items that Cully had set up. “Why did he leave this half-finished? It’s…what’s that word I’m looking for? It starts with an S.”

“Sloppy?” I suggested.“Scarce?Stupid?”

“It’s all three and it looks like crap. Where is he?”

I shrugged, although I’d seen him grinning like a monkey at his phone and heading into the back.

He’d let me know that he and Kirsten had patched things up.

Apparently, there was an area next to the loading dock where the cameras didn’t reach, and she had been meeting him there for—at that point he’d gotten a self-satisfied smile that told me exactly what was happening next to the loading dock, an area that smelled like stale beer and garbage, and where I’d once seen a rat.

“That’s romantic,” I’d said.

“Who needs romance when a girl is so happy to share her kitty?” he had responded, but he’d used another word that also referred to cats. I couldn’t say it because I remembered my grandma’s face when she’d heard it yelled by some rude kid in another aisle at the thrift store.

Cully had also told me that I was being dumb if romance was what I was waiting for.

“Kirsten said that either you’re lying about Bodine and how you’re just friends, or you’re withholding sex for some reason.

She thinks you may be a religious freak, but they don’t have those in The City so she’s not sure.

Either way, go ahead and fuck him! You’ll feel better. ”

That had made me extremely mad and since the dinner party, the two of us hadn’t been on the best of terms anyway.

But out of solidarity, I still wouldn’t give up his location, so now I told the manager that I wasn’t sure where he’d gotten to but he was probably rounding up the buggies in the front parking lot.

She went off to find him and I hurried back to the registers to open mine.

With the Woodsmen game tomorrow, we were busy and the store was full of customers.

There was no time for doing anything with anybody’s kitty at the moment.

The manager must have found Cully eventually. He joined me at the front looking hot and messy. He also looked annoyed that he had to work and I got annoyed as well, because he kept checking his phone and smiling at it. Groceries were piling up at the end of my conveyer belt.

“Pay attention,” I hissed at him. “You’re not hiding next to the loading dock anymore.”

“You’re just jealous.”

I almost dropped the big bag of flour that I was passing over the scanner, and that would have been a huge mess if it had broken open. “Who do you think I’m jealous of? Kirsten, because she has you?”

He slammed the flour into the paper grocery bag and a dusty cloud flew up.

“Hey!” the customer said. “Did that just break?”

Cully’s voice went up in volume. “You’re jealous of me because I have a real relationship and you’re playing house with the Woodsmen—”

“Be quiet!” I barked. What about the fans who had takenpictures and videos of me? All the people who had criticized me? What if they heard?

“I want different flour,” the shopper announced, her voice just as loud. “And a different bagger.”