Page 18 of The Hometown Heartbreaker

Graduation night, I went with my classmates to celebrate at Bluewater Inn, which was a senior rite of passage. We had four rooms booked and everyone was staying the night, except Sadie. Buddy was very strict and even on graduation she had a curfew of midnight. I almost went home with her, but it was grad night, and I justified staying to let off steam. The truth was, I knew if I went home, I’d be expected to get up early for chores, that’s what ranch life was, and I didn’t want to do that hungover. So I stayed.

All I remember is drinking beers with Donovan Valentine, Gio and a few other guys from the football team in one of the rooms, and the next memory I have is waking up in bed with Vicki Blair in nothing but my boxer-briefs. I scrambled out of that bed, horrified, but it was too late. Sadie had come by with coffee and donuts, and she saw us through the window. I was so hungover, my head was killing me as I clumsily tried to get dressed and go after her.

I did manage to catch up with her at Buddy’s, but her mind was already made up, she was leaving. She’d already packed her bags and had a flight leaving SeaTac that night. She wouldn’t tell me where she was going or how long she’d be gone. She just handed her promise ring back to me and told me goodbye.

The finality in her farewell still broke my heart to this day. There was no screaming, no arguing, no fighting, just tears silently sliding down her face as she handed me the promise ring I’d bought her for her sixteenth birthday. I begged her to say something, anything, to yell at me, call me names, because I deserved it, but she wouldn’t do any of that. I could see the heartbreak in her eyes, feel the betrayal radiating off of her and it didn’t just break my heart, it annihilated it. She simply told me that there was nothing left to say, kissed me on my cheek, and climbed into Herbie, with Buddy in the driver’s seat, and drove away.

That was the last time I saw or spoke to her before yesterday.

It’s not like I’d just let Sadie slip away. I’d tried, fuck, I’d tried to make it right. In the months after she left, I bombarded every possible avenue in attempts to contact her, text, phone, DMs, email, every social media account, desperate for a single word from her. But she went dark. It was like she’d been vaporized from the earth. She blocked me on every platform, so I got creative and went old school. I wrote her actual letters. I gave them to Buddy, and he assured me that he’d make sure she got them, but she never responded. Not once.

I understood. She deserved so much better than I’d given her. After what happened, how could I expect her to even read my name without her stomach turning? I tried to put myself in her shoes. I’d imagine her as the one who’d done what I’d done.

Would I have forgiven her?

The answer was always immediate and the same…of course, I would have. All it would have taken was seeing her or hearing her voice, just knowing she was sorry and that she still loved me. I could never throw away what we had on a stupid mistake. But I wasn’t Sadie. She had every right to set her boundaries, and she had. I had no one to blame for losing her and the future we’d planned but myself.

The first few weeks after she left, I tried to stay busy. I went on a trip to Vegas with my friends and tried to drink my heartache away. Then when we got back to town, I threw myself into work on the ranch. But even when I was covered in mud and sweat, cleaning stalls or doing repairs, my mind would worm its way right back to Sadie.

I’d see her everywhere: in the way a horse flicked its ears, in the sunrise over the eastern hills, in the wildflowers she used to stick behind her ear every May. Night was always the worst. At night I’d lie on my back, staring up at the ceiling, and try to remember the exact pitch of her laugh, or how her hair smelled after a day on the water. I’d count the hours since she’d left and try to convince myself I was getting over her, but every time I closed my eyes, I saw her walking away from me, head held high, shoulders set like steel. I’d imagine her in some city a thousand miles away, drinking artisanal coffee or reading on a subway, and wonder if she ever thought of me at all.

Then days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, months turned into years and at some point I looked back and realized that the pain wasn’t any better, but at least it was behind me. But now she was back. And the pain was still there, like it just happened yesterday.

No matter how hard I’d tried to rest, my mind wouldn’t shut off, which is why I hadn’t been able to sleep at all. Even with the windows open, the air inside my bedroom had felt suffocating. I’d tossed and turned in my own sleepless sweat. By 4:00 a.m. I’d given up and just gone into the ranch for the day. I told myself that the animals always needed feeding, and moving, and medicating, and unlike people, they didn’t expect explanations for silence.

The forty-degree dawn burned off the last of my mental fog. I’d parked my truck behind the main barn and started in on the horses, letting the repetition of the chores drown out the mess in my head. It worked right up until my walkie buzzed with a call from the main house. Mom’s voice came through loud and clear, “Dawson, sweetie, I need your help in the kitchen.”

It wasn’t uncommon for me to get called up to the house. All three of my brothers worked at the ranch, but as the oldest Lockhart, I was still the first on the list for anything my mom needed. I let Fernando, the barn manager, know where I was at with the stalls and headed up the gravel path toward the main house, past the admin offices and maintenance building.

I took the back porch steps two at a time. As I approached the sunroom, I could hear voices and laughter. One laugh in particular stopped me in my tracks. It had been so long since I heard it that it struck me square in the gut. I was sucker punched with a bowling ball. The sound danced through me like wind chimes in a warm breeze, light and musical, curling around my ribs and settling near my heart. It was sunshine in sound form. I stood, paralyzed, and waited for the world to stop tilting.

Despite being off-kilter, I was drawn inside by the siren’s call. I opened the door, and there she was. Sadie Rose Shepard. The sight of her at our family kitchen table nearly knocked me over, even though I’d spent the night prepping myself for exactly this moment. It was a sight I’d seen a thousand times over the years we were together. She looked identical and yet a dozen years older and a thousand miles more complicated. Same thick dark hair falling around her face, same hands wrapping tight around a coffee mug, but there was a watchful set to her jaw now, a glimmer of armor I hadn’t seen before.

Had Sadie stayed at the ranch the night before? She must have. When she left the reception to go to the hospital, I thought that meant she was gone. It didn’t occur to me she might be staying here.

The dogs noticed me first and rushed up to greet me. My mom had five domestic animals: a cat named Banjo, who was a terror, two German Shepherds named Ranger and Rex, and two golden Labs named Lady and Duchess. All four dogs abandoned their posts begging for food and rushed towards me for scritches. I bent down and gave them each good scratches behind their ears.

“Good morning, honey,” Mom chirped cheerily, and then, to Sadie, “I don’t know why he’s their favorite. I walk them, feed them, play with them… it has to be an alpha thing.”

Animals and babies had always gravitated towards me, from the time I was a kid. I couldn’t explain it. Some people said it was a pheromone thing, others, like Mom, claimed it was my alpha-energy. I think they just sensed I wasn’t a dick.

I straightened to a standing position. “Right, and you’re not alpha?” I teased.

Mom grinned, and her eyes narrowed. “Okay, then I think you have hidden chicken in your pockets.”

I walked over, leaned down, and kissed my mom on the top of her head. “Whatever you need to believe to make you feel better.”

My mom swatted me playfully on the arm, and Sadie’s eyes flicked up to mine. They were still that ridiculous shade of sea-glass blue. As soon as our gazes locked, I felt something in the center of my chest crumble, perhaps the walls of protection I’d attempted to build. It had been over a decade since we were together, but it was like I’d never built up any callus.

“Morning.” She smiled.

“Morning,” I managed to speak over my heart, which had lodged itself somewhere above my collarbone.

I was doing my level best not to stare, or drool, but Sadie just sat there at the table, framed perfectly by the window, the soft golden light of morning slanting across her hair in a way that made her look both breathtakingly familiar and impossibly out of reach. It was like déjà vu, times a thousand, and yet—something was off. Her shoulders were hunched, her gaze fixed on the swirling cream in her coffee, and even her breath seemed held, waiting for the next blow.

Mom bustled between us, pouring water into a kettle, flipping omelets, the very picture of orchestrated hospitality. But her eyes kept darting—not just at me, but between us, as if she could bridge the entire chasm of history with enough French toast and maple sausage. She started talking, fast, her hands moving even faster. “I was going to run Sadie to the hospital,” she began, “but I forgot I promised the Miller’s I’d drop off dog food at their place before ten because Betty is still recovering from her hip surgery and they have all those rescues⁠—”

“I can call an Uber,” Sadie cut in, her voice crisp and businesslike. She stood, chair scraping across the tile, and reached for her bag. Today, instead of a blue summer dress she wore a white V-neck T-shirt and blue jeans. She looked just as, if not more beautiful in her casual clothes. Her stance was defensive, like she expected me to lunge or argue, but all I could do was watch the way the sunlight caught the gold flecks in her hair.