The realization doesn’t stop me. All I want is to exist in a world where Gabriel never hurt me, where our slates have been wiped clean, and we are together again without all the pain of the past.
I know that’s impossible, and yet, here I go, out the door.
CHAPTER 8
GABRIEL
The biggest parkin Sugar Creek has been transformed for the fair.
Weeks of setup all for this three-day weekend.
It doesn’t disappoint.
Everywhere I look is an explosion of color. Families.Children.
There’s something about small kids that delivers an invisible gut punch. Especially ones who are around three or four. Avery and I didn’t make Lulu on that trip to St. Lucia, but we would have eventually. If I hadn’t blown it, Avery and I would be the happy family at the fair, eating deep fried food on a stick.
It’s one of many colossal regrets.
I walk around, offering to relieve people I know who are running tables, and watch everyone else have a great time.
I’ve just settled onto a bench after manning Jane’s booth for fifteen minutes while she took a break when I spot Avery meandering through a crowd. I stare, transfixed, like I was the first time I met her. I still cannot believe she’s here. Normally I’d think maybe I’d been given a gift, a shot, but I must be out of second chances by now.
She’s alone. The fabric of her dress moves around her thighs, and she holds a cone of cotton candy. I watch her pluck off a piece, pushing the sugary pink cloud into her mouth. She pivots, and her eyes find mine as if she’d been looking for me.
I see it. I feel it. The sparks, the electricity, the sheer magnetism that has always existed between us.
She stares at me, then draws back her shoulders and comes my way. I’d been certain she’d turn around and go in the opposite direction, and now I’m in shock watching her come closer. Her hips switch, and her cheeks are pink. She is different, but familiar. I’m not sure how that’s possible, but it is. I’ve read her book, so I know she has grown in our time apart, likely in more ways than is detailed on the pages.
“Hey,” she says when she reaches me. She shifts from one foot to the other, looking back over her shoulder like maybe she made the wrong choice by coming over here.
I scoot over on the bench, silently inviting her to sit.
She accepts my unspoken offer and sinks down. She pulls off more cotton candy and eats it.
“This is really cute.” She motions out to the fair. “Better than the state fair. That place is always so crowded.”
I watch her speak. I’m in awe of her, especially after reading her book. “I’ve never been.”
She gapes at me. “You never went to the state fair? But you grew up in Phoenix.”
“My parents didn’t take us.”
Avery’s eyes widen at my casual reference to Nash. Prison was its own brand of hell, but it gave me an unexpected opportunity: time. Time to think, to sit deep in my feelings, to sift through all that happened that landed me in that place. When you’re stripped bare, you don’t need a mirror to see yourself clearly. Between my own reflecting, all the books I read,and the group therapy I chose to attend while I was in, I learned about myself and my choices.
Avery recovers. “Come on, Doug and Corinne,” she says, playfully scolding my parents.
I smile. It feels intimate, the way she uses their names.
“How are your parents?” she asks, pulling off a whorl of fluffed sugar.
“Good, I suppose. My dad retired a little over a year ago.”
Avery’s eyebrows lift in surprise. “He loved his job.”
“He loved it less when he didn’t have a son to share it with. Those were his words.” He’d told me during one of his visits to the prison. He probably hadn’t intended to pour salt on a wound, but for me it was like adding more collateral damage to my tally.
Avery nods and offers me cotton candy, and I take some. She watches me, smiling mischievously. Cotton candy is on a short list of foods I’d rather not eat.
