Page 77 of Pin-up Girl

“Not anymore. You’re here. You’re real.”

“I am.”

“Why are you here?” Clint paused long enough to look at me with the question. “Not tonight, but in Haddarville.”

“I—” Hadn’t we had this conversation? If so, my answer had changed. “I wanted to come home.”

He gave a terse nod. “Do you regret leaving?”

Back then, he’d been furious when I told him I was going. My argument was he was moving to Salt Lake for college, and how was that different?

Because I’ll be within driving distance. If you go, you won’t. I could hear the argument as clearly as if we’d just had it. “No,” I said. “I did what I wanted to do.”

“And just like that you’re done?”

I’d been thinking so. Since I was asked to take a sabbatical I knew would end in my being fired, part of me believed that part of my life was over. It wasn’t, or I wouldn’t be here. “There’s still more for me to do, but I need to be here to do it. I need your help.”

“How are you so sure?”

“I’m not. But I have to pick a direction, and this is the one I pick. If I don’t do anything, I definitely make the wrong choice.” I needed to know, “Do you think I was wrong to leave?”

“If you’re asking me now? No.” Clint did a shake out of his limbs. “There’s so much that happened—bad and good—that I wouldn’t risk doing things differently.”

“If I’m asking past you?” This wasn’t why I was here, but the conversation was captivating. I’d missed him, but the feeling was more tangible now. More potent.

Clint grabbed his sweatpants from the top of his bag, and pulled them on. “If you’re asking past me, he doesn’t know why you would walk away from us for something so uncertain.”

The words were a gut punch. I understood what he was saying, but at the same time, “It wasn’t uncertain to me. I knew I was doing what I had to.”

“You asked.” He tugged his shirt on and tossed the towel on the bag, then sat.

“That’s fair.” I joined him, crossing my legs and making myself comfortable on a clean spot of concrete. It was still damp and sank through my clothing quickly, but it wasn’t enough to dissuade me from staying and talking.

Except that the conversation seemed to have stalled. The rain punctuated the silence, and I grasped for something to say. Did I want to stay in the past, or was it time to move into my real reason for being here?

Neither felt right.

“So, how about this weather?” I asked.

Clint chuckled. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Don’t pretend to make small talk. it’s not you.”

No. But I’d learned over the years. I’d perfected the art of pretending I wanted to be discussing the banal. “Sometimes I genuinely want to show my appreciation for the weather.” That was also true.

“And those times, you tend to say something like the sun is gorgeous today or isn’t this great rain for fucking in,” Clint said.

He had a good point. “It’s not, though.”

Clint smirked. “You’ve gotten picky about the rain you fuck in?”

“I’ve lived in a place where they have more than icy rain.”

“You do a lot of fucking in it?”

No. I rarely dated. When I did hook up with someone, when it got physical, that was all it was. In the bedroom, getting off. Moving on. “No. But I have a balcony that runs along one side of my condo, and looks over the entire city. Most of it is covered, but when it rains, there’s one spot that always gets wet. I keep a set of lawn chairs out there, to enjoy the warm rain. No one but me sits in them.”

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