“Shelby?” It’s Grandma’s voice.
“Yeah?”
She comes in with a plate covered in foil. “I thought you might be hungry.”
“I’m fine,” I say automatically.
She sets it on my nightstand anyway. “Humor me.”
She looks at me for a long moment, eyes kind and sharp, all at once. “You okay?”
I force a smile. “Yeah.”
It’s a lie, and she knows it.
She sits on the edge of my bed.
“I’m more embarrassed than anything. Waylon is Waylon. I, of all people, know he’s not reliable.”
“Oh, I don’t know. The man I’ve seen is nothing like the boy he used to be,” she says. “Maybe he had a good reason.”
“Maybe. But he could have called or texted or sent up a smoke signal. But he didn’t. Which tells me all I need to know.”
She pats my leg. “That’s fair.”
After she leaves, I sit here in the quiet, the weight of the evening pressing down on me.
I was stood up.
Stood up by Waylon fucking Ludlow.
Even just thinking it makes my jaw tighten so hard that my teeth ache. I should have known better. I had known better. That’s the part that hurts the most—not that he didn’t show, but that I’d let myself believe he would.
I’m not crying.
I’m not sad …
I’m fucking angry.
At him.
And even more at myself.
For thinking, even for one second, that he had changed.
Ifucked up.
There’s no other way to say it, no prettier version that makes me look less like an asshole. I fucked up, plain and simple.
It was the night I told Ruby about her mom.
I didn’t plan it. I didn’t sit there, thinking,Tonight’s the night I shatter my kid’s heart.It just had to be done. One of those moments where the truth was the only way to protect someone you loved.
I sat her down on the couch. Her little face creased with worry because she could sense something was off all day. The overattentiveness from both me and her grandparents had her on edge.
So, I told her that her mommy was with Jesus now. That she wasn’t coming back. That she didn’t leave because she didn’t love her, but because, sometimes, people got taken from us too soon and it was nobody’s fault.
Ruby’s face crumpled in a way that would haunt me for the rest of my life.
