Page 41 of Never Stay Gone
Don’t kiss that boy.
Don’t fall in love with him.
Don’t ever say the word.
Don’t.
Shane slowly inched forward, toward his home. Something was in his driveway, and after a moment the heap became clear: Shelly was piling up suitcases and duffels and boxes. Someone was moving out, and from the look of things, that someone was him.
He backed into the drive, checked inside one of the bags—yep, his clothes—and started loading them into the bed of his truck. The boxes weren’t taped, and he flipped open the flaps and rummaged through some of the crap he’d collected and never thrown out. College textbooks from a degree he never finished. Half-deflated footballs.
The only things he cared to keep, he’d dug out of hiding that morning, when he brought Shelly’s cell phone back to the house.
He should take everything else to the dump, then hit the road and just drive. Go far, far away.
Shelly appeared on the porch, her eyes red and cheeks blotchy, like she’d spent the day sobbing. “Shane,” she said. Her voice wavered.
Shane saw their neighbors across the street sitting on their front porch. Saw Mildred and Wynona standing in Wynona’s front yard behind her rosebushes, three houses down.We all knew they wouldn’t last. Shane Carson can’t do anything right.
Failure son.
He sighed. “You want me to go?”
“We should talk first.” She held open the door. He eased his way through, careful not to brush up against her. Her eyes welled up again, and she walked into the kitchen, grabbed a coffee cup in both hands, and stared out the picture window over the sink.
Shane’s eyes fell to the table, to the pill bottle standing alone. His stomach sank.
“I found that when I was packing up your things.”
Well, that’s what happens when you go where you’re not supposed to, he wanted to say. Like eavesdroppers hearing things they shouldn’t, snoops found things they didn’t want to know.
Except he and Shelly were engaged, and they lived together, and everything in the house was supposed to be theirs. He wasn’t supposed to be keeping any secrets from her. But that pill bottle, right there, said he was. He definitely was.
Years ago, when they first got together, Shane had driven down to Presidio, crossed into Mexico, and found a pharmacy that sold pills without a prescription. He spent more than he could afford on 180 tabs of Viagra, smuggled the pills back across the border, and had hidden them, he thought, where Shelly couldn’t find them.
The bottle wasn’t even half-empty. Not much lovemaking to show for a five-year relationship.
“This isn’t what I want,” Shelly said softly. “This isn’t the life I want, Shane. I want a man who loves me. Who craves me. Who is over-the-moon excited about being with me. I know you’ve never been overly effusive, but I thought we had built a special, you-and-me kind of love. Something that was ours. I understood you—I thought—and you understood me.”
He stared at the floor, at the tiles between his boots.
“We used to be together. Reallybetogether. We used to hike and mountain bike and raft the river. We used to enjoy spending time together, but now it’s like we’re strangers.”
He wasn’t any good at dating, he’d figured out, wasn’t any good at going out to eat and making conversation. He didn’t know how to talk about a future he couldn’t imagine. But they both loved the outdoors, and he’d liked spending time with Shelly on the mesas and in the desert.
Shelly could have been a great friend in another life.
“We’ve been treading water for a while.” Shelly sighed. “Did you ask me to marry you because you really wanted to, or because…” Her voice faded into a soft sigh.
You better marry that Shelly Atchinson.He’d dithered and dragged his feet and pushed it off, but his father’s words kept roiling inside him. The newness of his and Shelly’s relationship had waned, and their adventures had slowed. They’d found a routine of work and Netflix and Shane slipping himself a pill every now and then, and that seemed to work for a while.
Big Bend High needs a new quarterback. Why haven’t those two gotten married yet? What’s a girl like that doing with a guy like Shane Carson?
He said nothing.
Shelly nodded, the silence answer enough. “I probably should have left you a long time ago, Shane.”
“Yeah,” he finally said. His voice caught, and he cleared his throat. “You probably should have. Because you’re right. I’m not the guy you need.”
