“Don’t get me wrong,” he says. “While on deployment, I’d miss this sort of food if I was on the ship, but when we got to go ashore for port calls and eat real food? I never did.”
“Where’d you go?” I ask.
“A bunch of places in Southeast Asia. My favorite was Vietnam, but Thailand and Indonesia were great, too. The food just bursts with flavor out there. Sweet and tangy with a good amount of spice. The first time I tasted papaya salad in Thailand, my brain chemistry changed. I would’ve been happy to eat that for the rest of my life.”
“And yet you live in a town with basically three restaurants,” I point out.
“I cook a lot,” he shrugs.
“You wouldn’t have to if you lived somewhere else,” I say. After a hesitation, I add, “Would you? Live somewhere else? Or, I guess what I want to know is: why did you come back?”
He places his elbows on the table and rests his chin on his steepled fingers.
“When I left,” he says after a while, “it was for one specific reason.” His father. I know that much. “But that reason was loaded. I didn’t just want to get away from my dad, but to find my path in life, away from what anyone else wanted for me, including the town. I needed to get away from all the scrutiny to figure it out.”
I get that.
“After leaving,” he continues, “any time I pictured my future, it was in Blue Ridge. It bothered me because I hated who I was when I lived here, how could I want to come back? It took finding a therapist to realize this town doesn’t define me. It’s understandable that I was swayed when I was a kid, but I’d changed. I wasn’t that same scared boyanymore, and I knew myself enough by that point to be at peace with returning.”
My heart squeezes for the tormented young man he was.
His smile is contemplative. “Same same but different.”
“Same same but different?” I ask.
“I heard that phrase everywhere in Southeast Asia, but it applied perfectly to me. I was the same in so many ways, but I was fundamentally different, too. And when I came back home, I could see Blue Ridge more objectively. There’s a lot that’s special here. Traveling all over the world helped me see that this really was home.”
I swallow.Could I ever see Blue Ridge that way?It’s doubtful. Even when this was home, I longed for a different one.
But I can’t deny the good here. My sisters. Lizzie. Tess and Dev. Sawyer.
“It’s a unique place,” he says. “Do you know any other small towns like this? That have festivals for Lunar New Year, Nowruz, and Holi? I mean, yeah, for some reason we only have three restaurants downtown, but there are some on the outskirts, and popups happen frequently. The farmers market usually sates any of my cravings for Asian food, and it doesn’t take long to get to Ridgedale.”
“True,” I say. What used to only harbor the drive-in and hospital has been hugely developed. I saw it in passing last week when I joined Gia and Lizzie on errands. “There’s even a Target now. When we were young, we just had Jiffy’s.”
He beams. ”Exactly.”
There is more to Blue Ridge than I previously imagined, but people here have always loved Sawyer. It’s different for me, I could never live here permanently.Not with them either clutching their pearls or offering me pity gifts like Mr. Clarke and the cornbread bites.
He pops one of them in his mouth before taking a sip of his soda, smacking his lips after. “Man, that’s good. It takes me right back, you know?”
I don’t.
“Wait, you didn’t tell me what your favorite flavor was. Let me guess, it isn’t even one they have here, is it? Probably one of the experimental ones they only ever had once.”
With every word my heart plummets more and more. I’m sad for the girl who didn’t get to try the exciting sodas. I’m sad for myself for not being able to taste the nostalgia in my can. And I’m sad for Sawyer for being here with someone who can’t relate to this thing that’s obviously exciting to him.
He looks at me expectantly.
Swallowing a lump down my throat, I say, “I always liked the idea of peach or blackberry.”
His smile freezes in place. “But they always had peach and blackberry.”
Oh god. Why did I say anything at all? He doesn’t get it. He wouldn’t get it.
My pulse races like I’m about to dive off a cliff.
“I didn’t go to the picnic,” I say.
