Page 29 of Something Like Sunflowers

I made myself this person.

Tears bead like glass over my eyes as I think about the girl with the long, unbrushed hair, who used to ride horses barefoot through the dandelions as a wannabe cowboy chased behind her with a water pistol on his hip. I won’t give up. I’m still that girl, aren’t I?

Storming through the dining halls, I push open the double doors underneath a blazing Exit sign. But it isn’t to the parking lot.

It’s to the bar.

Idon’t normally drink, but I’m damn sure drinking tonight.

I click my hot pink Jimmy Choo kitten heels across the floor and march straight for the bartender. He holds his head back and checks me out, but not sexually. I know that look; he knows me, somehow. But not like people in the city do. Not because I’m micro-famous, or whatever people are calling it these days. Their word, not mine.

No, he probably knows me from here. Home. I squint, scanning my memories. He does look familiar, but also not.

“Devyn?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I say, waving whoever-he-is off, “good to see you again, too. Look, what’s a super strong drink?”

What’s-his-face hesitates but finally answers me, “Whiskey?”

“I’ll take that,” I say confidently, even though I’ve never had whiskey before. “And keep ‘em coming.”

I hand him my card to start a tab, and he takes it, but super-duper slowly, still eyeing me the whole time like he’s waiting for something.

Weird.

I swivel around on the stool and watch the crowd. I recognize half of these people, and it’s so damn awkward as their eyes take turns picking me out, the look of discovery on each one of their faces like old wounds cut back open. Their knowing stares are half the reason I left this place. I wanted to be alone.

You are never alone in a small town. Everyone is so damn nosy. A few are pointing and whispering. Some are flat-out staring at me. This used to happen in the city too, but it was because they recognized me from TV, not because I was some blast-from-the-past car crash that made local headlines and gossip trains for years to come.

Someone clears their throat. I turn my head a bit to see it’s just Jeremy, returning with my drink.

Wait, Jeremy?

“That’s who you are!” I say, spinning around with a smile. The first genuine smile I’ve felt all day. “You’ve changed so much, Jer Bear!”

He places the whiskey in front of me and wrinkles his nose, much the same way I’m doing to him.

“I was about to be offended if you didn’t realize it soon, babe.” Jeremy makes his way through the opening of the bar and pulls me in for a bone-shattering hug. He may have lost a hundred-something pounds, but he still hugs like he hasn’t, squishing me in his tight embrace.

“What the heck happened to you, Jer? Someone kidnap you and feed you a liquid diet?”

He gives me a sassy look and rolls his eyes as he goes back behind the bar and makes work of sorting receipts. “It was honestly a lot like that, yeah. My partner, Corbin, and I did this healthy booty camp thing. It was mad expensive, but his company paid for half of it as some sort of health insurance write off.” He sets up a pirouette and ends it perfectly with a cock of his hip. “As you can see,” he gestures down his body, “it totally worked, and I look irresistible.”

“You looked perfect before the weight loss, too.” I really mean it. Jeremy is a beautiful soul inside and out. He was the best male cheerleader in our high school, even if he was the only male cheerleader. He emceed all the county pageants, and he was also in every one of my classes since kindergarten and was there for me when not a lot of other people were. We used to share loads of gossip. And anyone would be lucky to be with him, no matter what he weighs.

You know that one friend you have that you can just exist around, but it never feels forced or planned? And when you catch up, it’s on a deeper level than most? It feels like old and new coming together. Effortless.

I tell him about Lemon and Shana, and how Hunter screwed me over with the pageant, and he tells me all about his honeymoon in Cabo, which sounds like everything you could want and more. But after a while, he has to help some customers, so I turn back around and sip my whiskey, feeling slightly better than before.

Whether that’s because of Jeremy or the whiskey, I’m not sure.

But the longer I sit by myself, staring into the lights reflecting off the metal jukebox across from me, the longer I think maybe it’s the whiskey. And maybe I’ll just rehash my entire night and pick it apart obsessively.

I might have been wrong about Shana. I might have been a bitch.

Okay. Upon further inspection of my words and actions, I was a bitch. To her and Lemon.

So what if they’re friends? I should be fine with that. Am I really so insecure that it would bother me for my friend to have someone to confide in and hang out with? I don’t even live here. I haven’t been home in ten years.

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