“I guess you have a point,” She gives me a soft smile.
“Don’t go dropping out now.” I give her a wink.
“Are you and Dean together?” Sierra asks me bluntly. “I promise I won’t post it anywhere if you are.”
“We’re…we’re not.” I shake my head no.
“You’re not?”
“We’re friends.” If you could call us that.
“I could have sworn I heard you guys kissing the other day.” She calls it out with no qualms and shrugs.
“Oh. No, we were,” I laugh, admitting it to her face, matching her honesty. There is no getting past this girl. “But we’re not together.”
“Shame, I liked you the best out of all his girlfriends. I wish I had a boyfriend.” We have a hearty laugh about that but are interrupted when Dean returns holding a turkey sandwich in a plastic container. “Lord, what took you so long?” Sierra snatches the sandwich from his hands.
“Hey, give me half of that,” Dean holds his hand out for the other half.
“What for? You got this for me.” She turns away, hiding the sandwich out of his reach.
“Brother tax.”
“Fine.” She takes a bite out of half and offers it to him. He takes it anyway.
“I’ll give you guys some space.” I stand up, shaking my hands off on my pants, walking past Dean and Sierra before either of them can dispute it. This place is starting to give me heart palpitations.
Stepping outside, I stuff my hands into my jacket pockets. I pull out a crumpled receipt for Dean’s record. I want to toss it on the ground and stop all over it with my dirty shoes, turning it into nothing but a paste, but instead, I crumple it back up and return it to its place in my pocket for later.
Dean is right: this blows.
The whoosh of the doors blows my hair into my face, and Dean and Sierra step out into the cold next to me. “We’re going to take Sierra home, and then I’ll take you home. Sound good?” Dean asks.
“Fine with me.” I’m moving past the feeling that this is all about to blow up in my face. I’ll return home and things will go back to just the way they were. Except they won’t. I can’t knowingly patronize Martell Pharmacy after what Craig said about me in that article.
I sit in the front seat, with Sierra behind me —this time it’s about a 45 minute drive.
“Can we listen to Taylor Swift?” Sierra asks immediately after buckling her seatbelt, before we can even pull out of the parking lot. Dean automatically puts her discography on shuffle before reversing.
“You good back there?” He asks.
“Just fine and dandy,” Sierra answers raising her broken arm, and I watch her rest her head back in the rearview mirror.
“Good. Let me know if you need to stop,” Dean says, adjusting the mirror so she’s out of my view.
“It’s 40 minutes. I think I’ll be okay.”
We drive in relative silence only stopping to say “Look, there’s some horses” From flat out closing my eyes to watching the road disappear under us instead, I try everything I can think of to not look at Dean.
But eventually, when I feel like I’ve run out of things to catalog in my brain, my eyes slip to his hands on the wheel, to his wristwatch, to the way his flannel shirt is too long so he’s cuffed it at his wrists.
I gaze across the console at Dean, my eyes fixed on his side profile. He’s always the same in the best way. There’s something in him I can always count on. I feel gutted knowing I won’t see much of him, if ever at all, after this. I turn my body towards the window, so I’m forced to take my eyes off of him. I need to get used to not having this.
Unfamiliar trees turn into familiar ones as we approach their house on the hill. In the daylight, I can see that it's painted cream color, with ivy growing up the side, even in the winter. There’s a distressed looking woman standing on the porch, who I guess must be Dean and Sierra’s mother, dressed in pajama pants and a cardigan.
“You told her?” Sierra asks. “Come on!”
“She was going to find out anyway. You have a broken arm. And the car? Come on,” Dean says. He parks the van in the nowempty driveway, and opens the door for Sierra, who reluctantly hops out.
