Page 9 of After All The Wreckage
“Where am I meeting you?”
She hesitated, and I knew what she was going to say before it even escaped her lips. “I know you’ve been avoiding it…him… But I didn’t want to make it feel like a date, so I agreed to meet up with Devlin and his friend at The Prince Darian.”
I didn’t know which part of her statement elicited more twists and turns in my chest—where she wanted to go or the fact that it would be a foursome.
“He’s bringing a friend?”
“I promise I’m not trying to set you up.”
“Two couples in a bar on a Saturday night… definitely not at all date-like.”
She chuckled. “This is just Devlin and me trying to get a feel for each other without Dad hovering around us at the café.”
Devlin was new to town and the campus, carrying his newly appointed associate professor’s title like a badge. His visits to the Tea Spot where Shay worked for her dad while going to college had increased until the guy was practically eating every meal there. She’d begged me not to go all “Rory” on him, but I’d still done the basic search. Enough to know he didn’t have any priors and no complaints had been filed against him at his last college.
“What time are we doing this?” I asked, and my friend literally squealed. It simultaneously made me feel worse for neglecting her and made me smile.
“If you’d answered my texts, you would’ve had more time. They’re meeting us in thirty minutes.”
I put a hand to my messy ponytail, flattened from wearing a helmet, and then rubbed my makeup-free cheeks. I didn’t need to look in a mirror to know they were pale and lifeless and that my eyes were shadowed after months of tossing and turning instead of sleeping. This was certainly not the way I wanted to stroll into the tavern for the first time in years. Definitely not how I wantedhimto see me for the first time in years.
“I look like I’ve been on a stakeout.”
“Come over. I’ll have you fixed up in ten minutes.”
The debate within me was strong. But I couldn’t abandon Shay. Not again. So, I hung up, grabbed the keys to Pop’s Jeep, and left a note for Nan before walking out the door. The Jeep smelled like oil and ancient vinyl. Like salt and sea and rust. The scent was one more reminder of things I’d lost. A grandfather who’d been one of the only people in my life to truly spoil me. He’d been gone two years before Mom and I had moved in with Nan the first time. We had stayed barely a year, but thosemonths had branded themselves on my soul just like a certain gray-eyed boy once had.
A gray-eyed boy I wasn’t prepared to see again.
I wasn’t ready to walk into The Prince Darian.
But I’d do it because Veronica Mars’s words were true. The people who really deserved your time, faith, and love were the ones who came through even when you hadn’t loved them enough. And that was Shay for me. I’d always been more caught up in my tragedies than hers. So, if she needed me, I’d be there.
If that meant seeing Gage Palmer for the first time in seven years, I’d just have to take the hit and hope I could get up and walk away when it was over.
CHAPTER FOUR
Rory
FOREVER YOUNG
Performed by Rod Stewart
TEN YEARS AGO
The first timeI met Gage Palmer, I was twelve and he was a stunning seventeen-year-old. A heroic male figure coming into my world just as the number one man in my life had become the villain.
And I’d become his vile sidekick…
With my parents’ marriage having disintegrated because of my mistake, Mom had moved us to Cherry Bay with Nan. There she’d joined a single parents group the members laughingly called the 5-H club because all the members’ names started with an H. They were meeting that night in Holland Palmer’s closed bar, and I was being forced to mingle with the other 5-H children in the empty rental apartment above it. Mom thought it would be good for me to meet a few of the kids I’d be starting schoolwith in the fall, but I didn’t see the point. Not when we’d be moving back to D.C. once the divorce was final. We’d only be in this tiny town for a few months. Weeks maybe.
I needed us back in D.C. so I could fix what I’d broken.
As I stomped my way up the steps behind the bar, the sound of little kid giggles and soft girly laughter poured from the apartment’s windows along with the lyrics to a song I knew well. My feet came to a stop as “Could This Be Love” by The Guess Who drifted down to me. Most kids my age didn’t even know who the band was, but I’d listened to them on vinyl with Dad for years.
Curiosity filled me as I approached the open doorway. There was a girl about my age with long blond hair and green eyes holding the hands of two toddlers as they danced to the music. Both boys stared up at her as if she was an angel. One of the toddlers had dark hair and dark eyes while the other had a riot of red curls bouncing around a chubby little face. He was barely able to stumble through the moves on his tiny legs. I was just about to ask how they knew about The Guess Who when another boy emerged from the hallway off to the side.
No… not a boy… a guy… a man. Or maybe not a man yet either, but somewhere close. He was tall. Taller than my dad. And he had ebony-colored hair that shimmered in the fading light. His face was the kind movie superheroes had, square and strong, but it was his eyes as they found mine that made my heart forget to beat. They were the gray of storm clouds. A summer storm full of electricity and thunder that might pelt you with hail. That’s what it felt like. As if my entire body was being pricked with falling ice.
