Page 8 of Barbed Wire Fences
“Oh wow, I had no idea,” I say though of course, I didn’t know any of that. When I left, I made a point not to keep up with anyone from this town and deleted my social media accounts years ago to forget the place I spent most of my formidable years. There were simply too many painful memories and bad decisions made in Whitewood Creek, and I needed a clean break.
“The real question is, what are you doing here?” he asks. “I ran into your mom a few months ago at the bank and asked about you. She said you were a big-shot ICU nurse working in Virginia now?”
Owen asked my mom about me?
Of course, my mom never mentioned it to me, why would she, when we haven’t spoken in years? I bite down on my lip,unsettled by the thought of my high school boyfriend asking around town about me. Things between us hadn’t ended on a high note, and the last thing I want is to drag old wounds into the middle of a small-town, hardware store where nosy ears are everywhere.
Still… there’s a little thrill buried in the idea that after all this time, he’s been thinking about me.
People can change, right?
Or maybe this is just me getting tangled up in unhealed emotions because it feels like for once a man is choosing me.
No. Don’t think that.
Except my therapist’s words creep in any way, the ones that dug their way into me back when I started therapy in Virginia. That was the first time that I realized just how deep my childhood wounds run. Because my parents never really chose me, I’ve spent years chasing men who were just as broken as me. Clinging to the hope they’d pick me in the way my parents never did. Holding onto any scrap of attention or love that I craved and didn’t receive. I wanted—no, Ineeded—that feeling of being chosen after a lifetime of being overlooked and ignored without having my basic needs met. And it kept me in relationships far longer than I should’ve stayed, hoping love would come if I just held on tightly enough and ignored the red flags.
I push that thought to the back of my mind despite it screaming at me to slow down and get out of this conversation quick. Owen had been my first crush when my parents moved me to Whitewood Creek as a teenager, and someone who I’d pined after for years until we finally started dating my senior year of high school. And for whatever reason, that draw to him seems to still exist.
“Yes, I’ve been working in the ICU in Richmond as a nurse for the past few years, but I recently switched to traveling nursing. I took an assignment that has me stationed here for the next month. The local hospital in Whitewood Creek has been asking for someone with ICU experience, and the pay was too good to pass up,” I say, leaving out the part about my estranged, dead father and my mother who practically dragged me back here so she wouldn’t have to deal with his will on her own.
He nods, his smile some sort of cross between a smirk and a smolder. My stomach flips again as I stare up at him. He’s changed, clearly aged as we all have, but the younger guy I’d used to crush on seems like he’s still under the surface. I wonder if he’s become less of a dick, too.
People can change…
“Do you have any plans for this weekend?” He asks.
Is he asking me out?I tell myself not to rehash why we broke up, or the last words that he said to me before I skipped town.
Would it be the worst thing in the world to go on a date with my old high school boyfriend? It hadn’t beenallbad when we were together. There were some good memories, too.
“Um… you know, I haven’t thought that far ahead,” I admit, adjusting the strap of my bag on my shoulder nervously and feeling like a kid again. “I was thinking of hitting up some of my old friends, but I haven’t talked to any of them in years.”
Owen raises a brow. “Oh? Who were you thinking of calling?”
“Probably Lainey… or Molly,” I reply, their names tasting both familiar and foreign after all this time.
He nods knowingly. “Lainey’s still around, and so is Molly. Lainey married Lark. Don’t know if you remember him.”
Wow, Lainey got married. “Yes, I remember him.”
Lark had been friends with Rhett, one of my old neighbors and the guy I spent every summer evening and after-school hour with for years. Just thinking his name makes my chest tighten, my pulse kick harder, and my heel bounce nervously against the shop’s concrete floor. Do I even want to know if he’s still around? If he still lives here? If he’s married now? The questions swarm before I can stop them, but I know I can’t ask Owen given my history with both of them.
“And Molly’s engaged to Colt Marshall,” he adds casually, like it’s nothing.
“Oh… that’s incredible,” I answer, blinking through my surprise. And it is. Genuinely. Good for her.
Molly and her older brother, Maverick, had been my neighbors in the trailer park. They understood better than anyone the grind of that life, the constant scramble, the way our parents put themselves first and left their kids to deal with the fallout. Molly’s dad and mine had even been drinking and gambling buddies back then, wasting their paychecks together while we kids tried to carve out our own little worlds.
I wonder if her dad’s still hanging on, or if he went out the same way mine did.
“Well,” Owen says, breaking my train of thought, “if you’re free this weekend, the high schools got a football game Thursday night at seven. I’d love to go with you. We could grab burgers and beer atSmoky Mountain Grill and Doghouseafter, just like old times.” He winks, and the mention of that grill hits me like a time machine.
Suddenly I’m seventeen again, scrounging together every penny I can find to scrape up enough for a basket of fries or a single scoop of ice cream to fill the ache in my stomach.
The memory pulls me back further, to sweltering summer afternoons spent with Rhett. We’d pool our loose change to split a basket of fries and, on the rare occasion that we could swing it, a chocolate-dipped cone. The grill had been our escape after Rhett got his driver’s license, a place where time slowed down and the world didn’t feel so heavy.
I haven’t thought about Rhett in years and yet here I am, talking to Owen and thinking about Rhett on repeat. It’s a bittersweet nostalgia wrapped up in a full body ache. I can’t help but think about the last time I saw him, the weight of that goodbye heavier now than it felt back then. Tears prick at the corner of my eyes as I wonder if he still hates me. I’m dying to know if he’s still around and at the same time, I know I shouldn’t care. Scratch that, Ican’tcare.
