“You need to slow down, Flynn. I’m going to break my ankle,” I said.
“Sorry. I’ll slow down,” he responded, walking beside me.
“It feels strange being back here,” I admitted.
“It feels strange having you here,” Flynn added in that flat, unemotional way of his that often left me wondering whether I should be offended or not.
“Oh yeah?” I asked lightly, trying not to get angry. It didn’t matter that I had left Wellston three years ago to go to school. It didn’t matter that I had worked my ass off to get my Bachelor’s degree. It didn’t even matter that I was a girl now living with her boyfriend, doing normal, healthy adult stuff.
Deep down, I would always be that little girl abandoned by her mother. Unwanted by her foster families. Unloved by everyone.
I was scared to death of rejection and the age old response to kick Flynn before he had the chance to kick me was clawing wildly at my insides. I wanted to say nasty, horrible things. I wanted to push him so hard and so far that he’d never want to be with me. The urge to self-destruct was hard to resist.
It took every ounce of willpower I possessed, every bit of that new Ellie McCallum I had worked so hard to become, not to do any of those things.
And in the end, the new, improved me won out.
Flynn tentatively put his arm around my shoulders. He leaned into me ever so slightly and I felt an odd sort of giddiness that effectively pummeled the bitter resentful Ellie into non-existence. The knots in my stomach coiled and then retracted. My lungs finally expanded, allowing me to breathe.
“In a good way though. I like having you here,” Flynn said, his voice gruff.I glanced up at him and he was looking at Murphy whose nose was buried in a pile of leaves as he rooted and searched for something to hunt.
“This is your home. With me,” he continued, and I could see him swallowing. His Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.
I grinned. An un-Ellie-like full-toothed smile that made my cheeks ache.
“Yep. My home is with you,” I agreed.
**
After Flynn left to go to work I got a shower and then sat down at the laptop Flynn had set up on the desk in the living room. I opened up the online classifieds and looked at what was available.
Not a whole hell of a lot.
Shit.
Here I was with a fucking degree and the most promising job involved waste disposal or working on a road crew.
Okay. Not a problem. I’d just have to expand my search a bit. I would need to look a little farther away. So what if I had to commute. Lots of people commute to their jobs. I’d just be joining the ranks of every other working stiff in America. No big deal.
Except itwasa big deal.
The longer I looked, the less I found. There was an opening for a paralegal forty-five minutes away, but I knew next to nothing about law. There was a minimum wage position available at the local independent bookstore in the next town. But the thought of earning $7.25 an hour was depressing.
It seemed I didn’t have much in the way of options. I found that I was getting nowhere fast.
I closed the screen and grabbed my keys. Maybe I just needed to go old school and get out there and beat the pavement.
As I drove into Wellston and couldn’t help but laugh at the idea of trying to get a decent job there of all places.
Wellston wasn’t the sort of place that generated employment opportunities. I took notice of the people on the streets, looking for familiar faces.
I recognized Pete Gochenour who had been a year younger than me in school and had taken over his dad’s hardware store once he graduated. He was chatting with Cheryl Jacobs, a co-worker of Julie’s, that I remembered from my days in the system.
As I passed by Darla’s Drink and Dine, I saw Mr. Cox, my old probation officer leaving with a bag of what I presumed to be Darla’s famous donuts. He hadn’t changed. He was still balding. Still overweight. Still looking like someone had pissed in his cornflakes. I may have put my foot down on the accelerator as I passed, not wanting to be noticed by that particular individual.
I drove by JAC’s and saw Jeb, my former boss inside. Feeling a touch nostalgic, I stopped the car and got out.
The bell above the door rang when I opened it. It seemed Jeb had finally gotten around to replacing it. It no longer sounded like a dying cow.
