Page 3 of Just Enough

“Safe is what you are. Like home, it’s what you are to me. Don’t ever change.”

“I won’t.”

But I wouldn’t decipher why that bothered me.

Even as I drove us home, I didn’t want to figure out why I felt lost all of a sudden. Mom was waiting for me when I pulled into our driveway. She stood at the door, scowling as she saw Emily dart out of the passenger side and hurried across the yard to her house.

Only when she stopped midway in her yard and turned around, gave me that smile she’d been giving me for most of our lives, did reality strike.

My heart was lost, pumping out of rhythm, mourning the place it’d never reach because being safe was what I was.

It was where I’d stay.

Her standing there, I saw the girl she was, the one I chased around for hours on hours growing up, I saw who she was now, the girl that sought love in all the wrong places because she was so desperate to feel something,anything.And lastly, I saw the woman she’d become staring back at me.

That smile, so carefree, until she saw my mom glaring, and gave me a pitying look before she waved and ran inside.

I stood there, and I’d stay still. I’d play it safe.

But, it flashed before my eyes. The truth of what I felt for her, what I always felt for her. I blinked it away, closed my eyes, only the thoughts would never go away for long.

They’d always come back.

Chapter 1

_______

Benjamin

3 years prior…

I was movingout. I was leaving this town, leaving the house I grew up in and heading for college. In all honesty, I couldn’t wait. Mom was overbearing and always trying to control every aspect of my life, and Dad’s car dealerships loomed over my shoulders. In the state of Virginia, our last name—Helen—was plastered on most of the car dealerships. My dad was a big name in the business. I knew it was my future, but it was a future I didn’t want right now.

So yeah, I was ready to get the hell out of dodge. There was just one problem…

I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and walked to my bedroom window. I called Emily and waited.

“Hello?”

“Walk to your window,” I told her.

“I’m eating,” she muttered with a mouth full of food.

“Emily,” I said in my stern voice.

“Fine,” she huffed. I smiled as I heard the chair she was sitting on squeak as she got up. When she pulled her curtain to the side, she smiled at me. “What? I thought there’d be something good. It’s just you.”

I fought the need to roll my eyes. “Come with me.”

She frowned, shaking her head. “Not this again. I’m not leaving, you know that.”

“What’s left in this town?”

She laughed through the phone, it was loud and rich. “I don’t plan on going to college this year.” Her words worried me because if I left her alone, I feared no one else would make her go. Her dad was a drunk while her mom worked all the time. The woman was more self-absorbed and into aiding her husband’s addiction than Emily and the things she did.

“Emily…”

“I’m doing just fine at Crash’s right now; the tips are good.” Crash’s was a local diner with a bar. She was only nineteen, so she didn’t work near the bar.

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