“If you’re taking me somewhere to dump my body off a cliff, I came with my brother-in-law and he might get suspicious when I disappear,” I inform her, quickly buckling my seat belt as she takes the corner of the turnaround entirely too fast and then opens the car up on the long driveway to the main road.
“Don’t worry, I introduced myself to Daniel and told him I’d be giving you a lift home. He was quite pleased he wouldn’t have to leave early, so he won’t consider you a missing person for at least twelve hours,” she tells me with a straight face, her eyes never leaving the road in front of her.
Meredith has no reason to hate me, unless she’s still mad about the way I left Shelby all those years ago. But she’s also knows damn well I explained why I did that in all the letters I wrote to Shelby after I got my head out of my ass. It’s clear she’s still very good friends with her and is out to right whatever wrong she thinks I might have done.
I clench my hands in my lap thinking about that fucking kiss and how quickly her shock and anger turned to hunger. The softly playing music in Meredith’s car quickly reminds me of other kisses, of pulling Shelby’s car off the side of the road, turning down the car stereo until it was just background noise and losing myself in her. The wind rushing through the open car windows and ruffling my hair sends me back in time to riding horses with Shelby through the back acres of her family property, tying them up to a tree, and spreading a blanket out on the ground where we could touch and taste and do whatever we wanted to each other without anyone finding out.
I close my eyes as Meredith drives, listening to the quiet sounds of the local jazz station on the radio and feeling the warm Southern air on my face, and I think about how quickly Shelby’s body melted into mine tonight and how quickly she opened for me and let me in. She still tasted the same, smelled the same, and kissed the same, pouring everything she felt into me and it messed with my fucking head until I couldn’t take it anymore. As soon as I heard that little moan of need vibrating into my mouth, I pushed her away so I could breathe. She always had that power over me. With just a touch of her lips and the feel of her tongue gliding against mine, I forgot everything around me and all I cared about was her. Her pleasure, her happiness, her life. A few minutes in a dark room and there I was again, forgetting that the woman I loved no longer existed.
“Care to tell me where we’re going at such a high rate of speed?” I question, my eyes flying open and my hand grabbing on to the door handle when she suddenly makes a sharp left-hand turn onto another road.
“Care to tell me why I saw you go into an empty office with my best friend and then, a few minutes later, watched you stomp out of it all pissy and found her in there crumpled on the floor looking like someone just killed her dog?” she fires back.
I don’t answer her, not because I’m angry she’s calling me on this shit, but because I suddenly have that image of Shelby in my mind and it does something funny to my heart. I want to hate her for what she’s become. I want some time to be furious that I had a moment of weakness. I can’t do that when Meredith is giving me this image and making me wonder if there really is a little bit of my Shelby left inside there somewhere. I can’t let that penetrate my brain. I won’t allow it, because if it’s true, if she really is in there, buried underneath all the similarities to her mother, the things I said to her tonight would be really shitty and that would make me an asshole, just like Meredith called me.
Maybe I am an asshole and the things I said were a little out of line, but they were right, dammit. She can lie all she wants about how happy she is and how good her life is, but all I had to do was take one look at her to know the truth. She’s still here, in the same fucking spot I left her, because it was easier than trying for something more.
Neither one of us says anything else as Meredith continues into downtown Charleston, turning down a familiar road right on the opposite end of town. It’s the road my old public high school is on, and the school is the only building located on this stretch of road. A half mile down from the turnoff, Meredith turns into the school parking lot, killing her headlights in the middle of the empty lot and slowing the car down until she finally stops. I notice we’re on the south side of the sprawling, one-story brick building and it’s pitch dark over here, all the streetlights and spotlights located around the front main entrance, a few hundred yards from where we are now.
Turning my head, I see Meredith’s profile in the glow of the dashboard lights as she stares out the front windshield.
“You’ve been gone a long time, Eli,” she says softly, the sound of the idling engine forcing me to lean closer to hear what she’s saying.
“I’m glad you’re okay, but you’ve been gone a long time,” she says again.
“I think I know how long I was gone, Meredith. I have the scars to prove it.”
My hands clench into fists as they rest on top of my thighs, pissed off that I got in the car with her, just to listen to her tell me what an asshole she thinks I am. She has no idea what I went through to get back home. She has no idea the kinds of horrors I saw or lived through. Who the hell does she think she is? I get it. She’s Shelby’s best friend and she’s looking out for her, but give me a fucking break. Shelby doesn’t need a guard dog. She seems to be doing just fine in her happy little bullshit life.
Meredith laughs, but it’s hallow and there’s nothing funny about the serious look on her face as she continues staring at something in the dark out of the front windshield.
“You’re not the only one with scars, Eli. And I’ll say this again, you were gone for a long time. Maybe you should stop and think about the fact that she thought you were dead for five years. She loved you. She gave you everything. You broke up with her in a shitty note and then you died without giving her any kind of explanation or closure and she’s had to live with those thoughts in her head all this time. You gave her a kind of strength that I never thought possible for her, and then you left and she had to figure out how to pick up the pieces without that strength she so badly needed. I did what I could, Eli, but I couldn’t fill up the holes in her heart that your dying left behind,” Meredith says quietly, twisting the knife in my heart a little harder as she continues.