Page 26 of A Photo Finish
Pretty_in_Purple:Come on! I’m lonely. You obviously are too. Let’s just be friends.
Golddigger85:Why am I obviously lonely?
Pretty_in_Purple:Do I really need to answer that?
Touché, internet girl. And no. Please don’t rub my nose in how pathetic I’ve become. “Does having a pen pal make me more or less pathetic?” I ask myself out loud as I rub a hand over my stubble and stare at the screen.
I would ask her, but that involves admitting I think I’m pathetic. I refuse to go there. Deflect. Redirect. That’s what I’ll do.
Golddigger85:Maybe I’m just a control freak.
Pretty_in_Purple:Maybe you’re both?
I snort. Touché, internet girl. Tou. Ché.
* * *
I’m gettingmighty tired of carrying Violet out of a truck. It’s like she has no regard for her own well-being. At least this time she doesn’t feel limp in my arms.
I rip open the freezer and pull out one of my ice packs, agitation lining every movement. I was already annoyed when I walked in after a long week of working at the clusterfuck that is our company’s new investment to find her shiteverywhere.Water glasses abandoned around the house, shoes tossed carelessly by the front door, dishes piled in the sink, and a sweatshirt draped over the back of a chair almost made me go nuclear.
I’m the bachelor. I’m supposed to be the messy one. But instead, I have a twenty-something-year-old living in my space, a now world-famous athlete, who can’t put simple things back where they belong. My feet stomped on the worn hardwood floors the entire time I cleaned up the place. Not what I felt like doing on a Friday night, but then I don’t know what else I’d do in Ruby Creek.
With the ice pack in hand, I grab a water bottle from the fridge and walk back over to Violet. “Here.” I hold the water out to her before I come to kneel by the couch.
I undo the Velcro straps on her air cast as she crinkles the plastic water bottle and regards me curiously. “What are you doing?”
“Getting ice on your leg so that you can get on a horse again one day.” The mere thought of that sends a lance of anxiety through my chest, but I push it away. This is her journey, not mine.
“Did you know that plastic water bottles are bad for the environment?”
My god. She really doesn’t stop with the questions. I don’t respond, which she apparently takes as a sign that she should keep talking. “They don’t decompose. Instead, they end up in the oceans—”
I roll my eyes. Has she tasted the tap water here? “Why did you try to walk home on a leg that you know you’re supposed to be resting?”
I know something is up. It had been my job for years to sense when something was off.
Violet is ranting about water bottles, and Billie acted weird on the phone. The strained, tittering laugh when she suggested Violet might need help seemed panicky. I could feel the unspoken words, the tension.
She rolls her lips together nervously, and her crystalline blue eyes go wide. They only look brighter next to the pink blooming on the apples of her cheeks.
“Why are you blushing?”
“Now who’s the one with all the questions?” she replies with fake bravado. A little tremor in her voice gives her away. The woman is an open book. No poker face to speak of.
“Violet.” I scold her, pulling the cast away to assess her ankle below the hem of her leggings. Swollen. My teeth grind.
Her sigh comes out loud and ragged, her voice a little too quiet. “Okay. I just needed to get out of there. I didn’t think it through.”
“Why?”
Her eyes dart away, and I cup her heel delicately, the smell of her vanilla body cream in the air as I press the ice pack to her swollen leg. She hisses and gives her attention back to me—which is what I was going for.
“I’m just . . .” Her voice quivers, and she strokes her fingers through her golden locks. Her tell. She does it when she’s nervous. “You know. Really disappointed. Really bored. Really.. .choked about the current state of my life. I didn’t want to talk about it.” She pauses, and I sit back on my heels, moving my hands down onto my thighs to listen, not wanting to touch her any longer. Her eyes are sparkling with unshed tears. I could tell that she’d been crying earlier, just like she’s close right now.
“So, I told them about us instead,” she rushes out, looking at me pleadingly. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” I go still. Stuck in place. “I swear it was all just really general.”
“Them?”
