Chapter 1
Romeo and Julietthemselves couldn't have cast Mom and Dad better if they tried. In fact, if they’d ever had the chance to meet, my parents as a young couple splayed out on their high school stage would have been pretty tight-knit with Shakespeare's tragic duo. I can envision their first conversation perfectly:
Talli and Steve:Ah, yes. Poison, you say?
Romeo and Juliet:Poison, yes, yes. And a dagger, too, if you can spare one?
Talli and Steve:In the name of love? Of course!
Romeo and Juliet:So kind, thank you. Perhaps the two of you might consider playing us on stage in the twentieth century?
Talli and Steve:Why, we’d be honored! Even better, we may just try to outdo you two in our time!
Romeo and Juliet:Hahaha, how swell!
I shake my head, knuckles whitening as my grip tightens on the picture. The pair of them had set the stage all right, Mom and Dad. Even in a decades-old photograph, their love bleeds through as they lay tangled in each other’s arms.
“Dammit, Lou,” Bobby barks, snapping me from my thoughts. My gaze trails to the weathered porch where he’s locking up the front door for me. I can hear it in his voice, the way his frustration is getting the better of him. Originally from Fort Worth, Texas, Bobby already has a heavy southern accent, but when he’s irritated it comes out extra thick. “You can’t keep ignorin’ me. Won’t you just stop and be rational about this for a second?”
I don’t pause to look back at him as I carefully slide the picture into my back pocket. I grab the final duffel bag from beside my feet, then cram it into the bed of my packed Toyota Tacoma before fitting a blue tarp from one end to the other.
“I’m not doing this again, Bobby.” I can’t have this conversation right now, not while I’m such an emotional wreck.
God. Just being at the house, seeing Grams’s small vegetable garden and getting a distant glimpse of the park I used to walk her to every morning . . . A fresh, deep ache settles in my chest, cozying up in a way that tells me it’ll be there for a while. There’s a lot more to see in Los Angeles than a beaten down park, but that didn’t stop it from being one of Grams’s favorite spots.
I suppress a groan at the memories bombarding me. Doesn’t Bobby know how hard this is already? How I’ve almost talked myself out of it time and time again? Six whole months since I broke things off with him, and today of all days is when he decides he wants to talk?
“Lou . . .” The porch steps creak as he trudges down them. With a reluctant sigh, I finally look at him. It isn’t until then, as I watch him drag his feet along the concrete driveway, his eyes cast downward and arms dangling hopelessly at his sides, that I begin to realize just how hard this move might be hitting him.
It doesn’t matter that it’s not his house I’m leaving, that he never could convince me to leave Grams behind and move in with him. To Bobby, seeing me walk away from this place is more of a goodbye than when I’d walked away from our relationship.
It’s not that Bobby is a bad guy. In fact, he’s one of the good ones underneath it all. When we first got together, he was the star of the basketball team, on his way to a full scholarship before he blew out a knee senior year. I couldn’t care less about the basketball thing, it wasn’t the game that drew me to him. We’d slipped into an easy friendship the same week he’d moved here, and eventually one thing led to another. What can I say? He was new and friendless, and the loner inside of me was drawn to it. Of course, the charming, goofy side of him didn’t hurt, either.
But five years is a long time. Things, like people, change. We aren’t in high school anymore, and I waited long enough for him to stop staring down the bottom of a beer bottle or at the TV screen.
He approaches me, his hat a little too snug above the newly formed creases between his eyebrows. “She left you the house for a reason, Lou. Maybe your grams wanted—” I cut him off with a warning glare, and he quickly changes tactic. “Look. I just . . . I don’t know when—ifI’m ever gonna see you again. And I have some things I need to say before you go.” He scratches the unshaven scruff on his chin with his thumb.
I know it isn’t easy for him, trying to open up like this.
What I want more than anything is to crank the engine and slam on the gas pedal, but instead, I’m patient. Leaning my left hip against the vehicle, hands tucked into the front pockets of my jeans, I listen.
“I get it, all right? I wasn’t the best boyfriend in the world toward the end there.” I cock an eyebrow.Come on, Bobby. You can do better than that. “I fucked up, didn’t always treat you like I should’ve. But sometimes . . . well, sometimes it takes losing someone to appreciate what you really had”—I snort. He ignores it—“I’m nothin’ without you. I should’ve begged you to come back to me then, the second you walked away, but I’m here now. And I . . . shit, I need you, Lou.”
There it is.He’snothing without me.Heneeds me.
What about what I need?
“This move isn’t about you, Bobby,” I mutter. He’s so far out of the story he’s clear across the library, as far as I’m concerned. My right sandal taps on the concrete, revealing the irritation I’m struggling to hide from my voice. “I just—I have to get out of here. This house . . .” I swallow, the pain swelling behind my eyes again. “I can’t stay.”
“So you move to Ventura. Santa Monica. Whatever. I’d understand that. But not clear across the damn country.”
“I never said I was going across the country. I—I don’t know—”
“Exactly. You don’t even know what you want,” he interrupts, kicking his voice up a notch. He starts pacing, lingering around my truck. I can smell the cheap beer on him now; it seeps off his skin, mixing with cigarette smoke, the habit he must have picked back up again since the last time I saw him.
“I know what I want,” I say. And it’s true. Kind of. I bounce my hip off the truck and maneuver my way to the driver’s seat, yanking the door open and climbing inside without a second thought.
My throat is thick, the nostalgia heavy in my chest. Grams is gone; her home is all I have left, and even though I know I have to leave, it isn’t easy.
