Page 9 of When We Were Younger

"Wanna go for a walk, girl?" I ask, and her tail wags furiously behind her.

With Daisy May leashed up, we head out. It takes us six and a half minutes to walk from my parents’ house to Liquor World, a fact I only know because my own apartment is across the street above Mr. Carmine's Trains & Hobbies shop. The old man gives me a stupid good deal on the rent since he retired, leaving the shop in the hands of his grandson while he spends his daysat his cabin up in the Great Smoky Mountains. One bedroom, one bathroom, a kitchen, and a grassy area outback that's big enough for Daisy May to run around for only four hundred dollars a month. Plus, a promise to inform Mr. Carmine if I ever catch the grandson smoking weed around the model trains.

Technically, dogs aren't allowed in Liquor World unless they're service dogs, but Daisy May is notoriously well behaved. She's welcome everywhere in Fox Hole. Probably more so than I am. She stays dutifully by my side as I push open the door and give a smile and quick hello to Mrs. Johnson, who just barely bothers to look up from the crossword puzzle book in her hands. Daisy May and I cross the store, headed for the wine section in search of the cheapest bottle of Pinot Grigio on the shelves, when a flash of blonde hair stops me in my tracks.

I might be looking at the back of a head, just a bunch of hair attached to a woman in an oversized hoodie and black leggings, but it's a bunch of hair that I'd recognize anywhere. A mess of whitish blonde, pulled back with a blue clip shaped like a butterfly.

It's the hair I'd stare at when it was right in front of me during almost all of my classes senior year. English, calculus, world history, that hair was all I saw. Hair so tempting and soft looking that I sometimes had to sit on my hands to keep from running my fingers through it. Hair that I watched float through the air as I chased her through our backyards when we were kids. Hair that I held back when we were sixteen after we stole a bottleof my dad's bourbon, and she spent the better part of the night with her head in the toilet. Hair that I know once smelled like raspberries and sunshine.

Hair that I dug my fingers into and held onto as I buried myself inside of her for the very first time, promising to love her for the rest of our lives.

I'm awestruck as I watch her turn, slowly. I can't explain it, but I know she knows that it's me. There's no way she can't. The time, the distance, none of it matters. The connection is still here. I feel it, the electric pull that first dragged me into Dottie Lynn Hart's orbit when I was seven years old and watching her eat pepperoni pizza with dirt under her fingernails. It pulses between us like a heartbeat. It echoes off the walls. It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I know she feels it, too. I can see it in the way she suddenly stiffens. How she turns so slowly, deliberately, like she's steeling herself for what's to come.

I've seen her over the years. Never in person, of course. As far as I know, she hasn't been back here since that day in June all those years ago. But Dottie Lynn Hart, the model turned influencer is hard to miss, even for someone like me who doesn't do all that social media crap.

I didn't watch TV for six months last year when the makeup commercial she starred in was on every single ad break. She was so fucking gorgeous, it hurt my eyes to look at her. That and she had me convinced that I needed whatever mascara she was peddling. I'd buy anything from her.

I thought she was beautiful on the tiny iPad screen I use to streamNFL Redzone, but her online presence has nothing on the flesh and blood version of her.

She's fresh faced, all round, apple cheeks and dewy skin. Her blue eyes shine bright, a lovely contrast to the sun-kissed spray of freckles across her nose. Even under the baggy hoodie, I can make out the soft curves of her. The flat belly I used to lay my head on as we gazed up at the stars from the bed of my truck. The full hips I once spent hours running my hands over, gripping, kneading her warm flesh.

She's all woman now, but she's still just as I remember her.

I smirk as she pulls her bottom lip between her teeth, her eyes roaming over my body like I'm the prime rib at an all-you-can-eat buffet. She opens her mouth, then closes it again, so I take the opportunity to get the first words in.

"Hey, Dorothea."

6

DOTTIE

"Hey, Stephen!" someone says in an annoying, cheery, fake tone that sounds like a mix between Siri and a WASP-y mom who's had one too many martinis. I take a quick glance around, looking for the culprit of the ridiculous voice before quickly realizing it was me. I'm the annoying voice.

I'm Knockoff Siri, The White Girl Wasted Housewife.

The dog at our feet wiggles, it's tail flicking back and forth where it sits on the linoleum floor. I'm going to go ahead and assume it's a girl dog, considering her pink collar and the tulip-pattern bandanna wrapped around her neck.

Of course, Stephen Hudson has an adorable, well-behaved golden retriever that he dresses up with cute accessories. Just fucking of course.

"Who's this little cutie?" I ask, dropping into a squat and running my hands over the dogs soft, floppy ears.She immediately perks up, her tail whipping faster behind her as a long pink tongue licks a slobbery stripe up the side of my cheek. It's gross and so sweet. What is it about dog breath that makes it so disgusting and endearing at the same time?

"It's been a long time, huh?" Stephen muses, ignoring my request for the pooch's name. I don't bother looking up at him. I can feel his judgement dripping from where he glares down at me, coating me in something that feels muddy and thick. I start to scratch the pup behind her ears, and she gives me an approving headbutt.

At least someone here seems to appreciate my presence.

I don't quite know how to respond to Stephen. It wasn't a question, not really. It was barely even a statement. More like a thought he seemed to accidentally mutter out loud. I can only let this silence stretch on so long, so I swallow my pride and say the only thing that comes to mind.

"Yeah, well. I've been busy. Lots of work, you know?"

Stupid, stupid, stupid. No one is that busy for nine years.

"Hmm. Must be important work to keep you busy for a good–what has it been? Nine years?" he asks like a mind reader, his words laced with biting sarcasm. Sarcasm that I probably deserve, but that I resent, nonetheless. Maybe it's not the point of this conversation, but my workisimportant, especially to me, and I'm not going to sit here and let him act like it's not. I stand and cross my arms, popping a hip and finally looking athim. I hit him with my fiercest, 'take no shit' gaze and try to ignore the dazzling flecks of gold that glitter in his otherwise green eyes.

Eyes that are softer than I remember them being. A bit sadder, with small lines in the corners that do nothing but show the passage of time and how favorable the years have been to him. I take note of the messy knot of thick brown hair at the back of his head. I wonder if it still falls into those eyes, if he keeps it tied back now so that he doesn't have to push it out of his face. I almost smile when I think back to the summer when we were thirteen and he really started to grow his hair out. He was constantly pushing it out of his face, saying that the messy mop was the reason he couldn't catch the footballs that Kira's brother torpedoed his way. I'd offered to braid it for him, and he’d scoffed in the moment.

Later that night, though, when it was just him and me stargazing in his parent's backyard, he let me have a go at it. He fell asleep with his head on my shins as I knotted a million tiny braids into his soft locks.

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