“To the airport. So let me guess. He came right to your house as soon as he dropped me off, didn’t he?”
I ran my fingers through my long hair and looked up to the sun with closed eyes. Of course we were going to go there. I give the fuck up. “Yeah, he stopped by,” I tried.
“Did he spend the night or just stop by?”
“Does it really matter? You told me that you were going to step out of the picture so that I could see if it was him that I wanted. How am I supposed to do that if I’m not around him?”
“So he did spend the night. You fucked him too, didn’t you?”
“Really Drew?”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. I won’t bother you anymore. You drive safe, okay.”
“Drew,” was all that I was able to get out before I heard the silence and looked to see his name blinking on my phone.
Fuck…
I wasn’t going to have to worry about choosing.
They were both pissed off now. Fine, I was better off. I could go anywhere I wanted to go. I wouldn’t live in Misty Bay or Vegas. They could both go to hell.
I went straight to my room, packed a bag, and got into my new car and headed south. I stopped at the coffee shop, had a cup of coffee and a pastry with Starlight before heading out.
“I wish there was something that I could do to help. I hate it that you are going through this, Ry,” Star said, sympathetically.
“I’ll be fine, Star. I have had a life that tends to make you pretty strong. I’ll get through it, one way or another.”
Star hugged me and told me that if I needed anything to call.
I put in the address for Rodanthe, North Carolina. I didn’t even groan when the robotic voice told me that I would be driving for almost fifteen hours. I was actually looking forward to it. I hoped that neither Drew nor Dawson called. I listened to Lauren and Levi on my satellite radio all the way until they signed off, and then changed it to an oldies rock station. It brought back memories of living in West Virginia.
I thought about my cousins that I hadn’t seen in years, my dad, who wasn’t my dad after all, and my grandma who passed away when I was only sixteen. I thought about my friends from school, which was really only Julie Waybright. She was as poor as me, and was just as much of an outcast as I was. She got herself pregnant when she was fifteen and had two kids living on welfare by the time she was eighteen. I wondered how she was, and hoped that she wasn’t another statistic, popping out kids and living with an alcoholic.
For some stupid reason, I reprogrammed my GPS
and headed right to my old hometown. I wasn’t sure why.
It was going to add eight hours to my destination, but what the hell. I had time. I wouldn’t stay. I just wanted to drive through, just for old times’ sake, not that the old times were pleasant but still.
I stopped and got a hotel in New York around nine at night, taking a pizza with me. I know I said that I hoped that Drew or Dawson didn’t call, but I was surprised that either of them hadn’t. Weren’t they worried about me or wondered where I was? Of course, they both did think that I wasn’t leaving until the next day. I still couldn’t believe that one of them hadn’t called. They didn’t, and when I checked my phone at seven the next morning, there was nothing from either of them. I know, I know, that’s what I wanted. Whatever.
It only took me four hours to make it to my old roots. Not a lot had changed. It looked as poor and rundown as it had the day I was forced to leave. It almost made me happy that Drew had bought me. I bought me. I laughed, saying that out loud. I turned down the old dirt road to the trailer. It was abandoned. The aluminum had been ripped off, probably for scrap, and the windows were all broken out. I’m not sure why, but I parked my expensive car in the drive. I looked around, nervously.
This wasn’t the place for a female in a fancy car to be poking around. The closest house was barely visible from our old trailer. I didn’t see anything that warned me not to go in, so I got out, locked the door with the two beeps, and walked up the old steps.
“Fuck,” I called out when my foot went through the rotten plywood on the little porch. It hurt. I felt the burn up my calf from the wood scrape. Of course my shoe had to fall underneath when I tried to pull it out of the hole. That should have been enough of a warning to get back in my car and get the hell out of there, but determined me had to go in. Once I retrieved my shoe, I walked along the edge of the porch so that I didn’t fall through again.