Page 65 of Stray

“Oh wow,” I moan, as the holidays literally have an orgasm on my tongue. “Okay, she can hate me. I forgive her.”

“Apple spice with maple frosting,” He smirks, taking a bite. “And she doesn’t hate you. If anything, she hates her daughter.”

I steal another bite as we walk towards the square. “Why is that?” I ask while sitting on the bench and sighing. We’ve been walking around for over an hour, and Niamh’s shoes are starting to rub me raw.

“Because we were supposed to get engaged.” He says simply, and I choke on my apple cider.

“W-hat?” I sputter, staring at him in shock. “Are you… what?”

He waves his hand. “We were high school sweethearts, and I use that term very, very loosely. Anyway, she went to the city to go to college and cheated on me within the first two weeks. She said she needed to travel and experience life before she settled on a rancher in a small town. So I told her to get all the experience she wanted because I wasn’t waiting for her.”

“Wow,” I breathe out, looking around at the lit trees. “What a cunt.” Jackson barks out a laugh and shakes his head.

“It’s alright. It was… fuck… two decades ago. Damn…” He trails off before looking back at me. “You know, I just realized I have no idea how old you are.” I give him a small shrug.

“You never asked. Don’t worry, I’m legal.”

“Ha,” he says dryly. “No, seriously, how old are you?”

“How old do I look?” I ask, and he lets out a surprised laugh.

“Oh no, I know better than to play that game, Tink.” I laugh lightly and shrug.

“I’m thirty-two. My birthday was back in October.” He looks at me in confusion.

“You had your birthday and didn’t say anything to any of us so that we could do something for it?” I wrinkle my nose and shake my head.

“It was movie night with Morris. I was doing what I wanted to do. He made me watch The Shining. Good movie, a little creepy, but I–”

“Ozzy,” he interrupts my rambling while turning to look at me better. “You have no idea how much you meant to him. He’s never opened up like that to anyone.” I shift uncomfortably, and I stare up at the black sky.

“If we keep going,” I manage in a whisper. “I’m going to start sobbing.” He gives me a soft chuckle before nodding.

“Fair enough… So is this how you looked before the tattoos?”

“Oh god, no,” I laugh while reaching into my purse and pulling out my phone. “Now, if I show you these and you laugh, we don’t get to be friends anymore.”

“I would never laugh,” Even as he says it, I can hear the laugh wanting to come out.

“Hmmm… not convincing, but okay. So this is my senior year.” I say, handing him my phone.

“Oh, my god!” He laughs, shaking his head. The picture is of an eighteen-year-old me: big, round glasses, braces, frizzy hair and unkempt eyebrows. I had a massive smile on my face while holding a trophy for a chess tournament I won. “You were so adorable! Look how excited you are!” I look at the picture fondly.

“I was excited,” I say while taking the phone back. “I beat my crush, Simon Montgomery, in the finals.”

“Ohhh… bet he loved that,” I shrug while scrolling through my photos.

“He ended up fucking my mom. I think they have a kid or something. I don’t really know. Oh, here.” I look up at the shocked look on his face and wave him off. “He was of age, and trust me, that’s not even in the top ten worst things my mom did. Anyway, this was me about a month before… well, you know.” I hand him the phone and watch him as he stares at the photo. The woman staring back is basically a stranger now. Shoulder-length black hair, glasses, a soft face, clear eyes, and a massive smile. I miss her so much. Back then, my trauma was dealing with my lack of a mother.

“I had a mullet,” Jackson says, breaking the silence. “And not like a luscious badass mullet either. It was wispy, strawberry blonde, and I had these straight across bangs and shaved sides–hey now! I didn’t laugh this hard at you!” He smiles, and I’m cackling at the mental image of a young Jackson with a mullet.

“Wait, is that why your hair is long?” Jackson laughs lightly.

“You know what, Tink, I have long hair because my hair is gorgeous.”

“Okay, fair enough. You do have gorgeous hair.” The night continues with mindless conversations and easy questions. I learned that Jackson taught his brother Jensen sign language when they were younger so Jensen could talk to him, even when it was too overwhelming to speak vocally. He doesn’t eat fish, and just about every night at two in the morning, he wakes up and wants a snack, so he keeps a snack drawer in his room.

I told him that I was a trauma nurse before my accident, and since I had been so afraid of people that, I worked part-time as a virtual nurse before getting hired on at the ranch. When I grew up, all I knew was that I wanted a puppy and that I’ve lived in busy cities my whole life, but I made sure to live in the loudest parts after my accident because the noise helped with the flashbacks.

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