Late June

“You still have this old truck?” Malone laughs as she comes out of her childhood home, laughing when she sees the same truck I picked her up in for our first date. This Chevy has seen a lot, seen me through a lot.

“I do.” I wave at her parents as she walks down the steps. They’re peeking out of the front door, obviously spying on us. She comes to a stop at the passenger side door. “It’s got almost four-hundred thousand miles on it and a lifetime of memories.” Our eyes meet and I can tell she’s remembering the same thing I am. The hot summer night we lost our virginity in the back on a mattress made of old blankets and a pool float.

“How many other girls have you had in here since I left?” She tilts her head to the side, her curls falling down her back.

“That shotgun seats still yours, Mal. Nobody else has ever sat in it but you.”

Those words are the most honest I’ve ever spoken. In college, when I met up with a girl, she drove and I drove separately, no one spent the night. That was the rule. Since I’ve been in the majors, I’ve only been serious with one woman, but her presence suffocated me to the point I had to call it off. Even as a young kid, I’d never felt that with Malone.

Pleasure at my words lights up her face, and I’m happy to have put the look there. “Let’s go, I haven’t been to the drive-in in a long time. I’m ready for this.”

I want to tell her I am too, but I don’t want to appear too eager, act like this is my first date ever. The truth is though, I haven’t been this excited about a date since the first one I took her on.

Within minutes we’re driving down the same back roads we drove down as teenagers. “How’s the bakery going?” I ask over the noise of the wind flowing through the open windows. One thing this truck doesn’t have is air conditioning. It actually never did.

“You know, I kinda thought I’d be wasting my PR degree there, but not so much. I’ve been able to help institute some stuff that’s worked out pretty well. I’m having a great time and there’s no stress, at least no work stress.”

“That’s awesome, when you find something you love.” I love hearing the enthusiasm in her voice; it’s contagious.

“It is, I just wish what I love paid the bills.” She grimaces.

“Are you doing okay?” I know she doesn’t like to talk about money, but I care about her, and anything I can do to help, I will.

“I’m gonna need to get another job, I think.” She frowns. “Which sucks, because I love it there. Loving it though, isn’t helping me.”

“What would you like to do?” I grip the steering wheel as I take a particularly sharp turn, hitting the brakes and letting the truck ease through it. She might be old, but she’s well cared for.

“Ideally I could find something to do in the off-time of the bakery. With my PR background I could do something online, or even when there’s less busy times there. That would be best-case scenario.” She pulls her curls back in one hand as she glances over at me.

“My charity is looking for a social media person. I don’t know the correct term, but we need someone to handle our accounts, do giveaways, answer questions, and keep us active on all the grams, books, and whatever the fuck else there is. Because we’re a non-profit, our budget is pretty thin, and honestly I think our salary is on the low end, but it may work for you. It might just be what you need to supplement your income enough to let you keep working at the bakery.”

“You wouldn’t hire me, would you?” she asks as she looks across the bench seat at me.

“No,” I laugh. “I actually don’t have much to say when it comes to any of that. I trust the woman in charge. She’s old enough to be my grandmother, and she’s hardcore about her job. I can, however get her your info, if that’s cool with you, and the two of you can move on from there?”

“I’d love that.” She smiles over at me. “I just don’t want you to think I can’t handle myself, that I’m not good at what I used to do. Because I was. One of the best in my company.”

“What happened with that?” I come to a stop at a red light and give her some of my attention. “If you loved it so much, why’d you have to let it go?”

“I got fucked over, in a bad way.”

“How?” There’s a part of me that doesn’t like to see that she’s been fucked over, but there’s a small part of the kid with the broken heart that thinks maybe karma got her back in some small way.

“My boss kept hitting on me, and another female in the office got jealous. It was the shitshows to end all shitshows.”

“How did you end up fired if he was harassing you?” I’m genuinely confused.

“That, Slater, is the question of the year. I went to HR about it, told them everything, showed them all my proof. He turned it around on me, and the other female went along with him. She told them I was the one instigating it, and when he turned me down, I turned into a jealous bitch.” She gives a hollow laugh. “Do you know those fuckers are getting married next week?”

“Sounds like they deserve each other.” I take one of my hands off the steering wheel and place it on her thigh. It feels weird to touch her freely, and I’m worried that she may take it as me being too forward and fling my hand from the skin exposed by her jean shorts.

She wrinkles her nose as she looks at me. “They totally do.”

I laugh because the move and the words are so her. “Damn, I’ve missed you, Mal.”

“I missed you too” is out of my mouth before I can stop it.

There’s a silence in the truck, as the radio plays softly in the background. No satellite radio in this vehicle, no fancy glowing dashboards, and the simplicity of the moment washes over me. “Can we go to the dock? Instead of the drive-in?”

“You wanna go to the dock?” he asks softly, almost as if he can’t believe I’ve asked to go there.

The dock is where we’d spent our summer nights with one another, where I’d given myself to him under a full-moon, he’d proposed there, and it was where I’d broken his heart. “Yeah, yeah I do.”

The hand that’s on my thigh grips it tighter as he pulls into someone’s driveway and turns around, heading to the one place we’d been able to go as teenagers.

On those hot, humid nights, there’d always been a breeze blowing down there, usually ten to fifteen degrees cooler than anywhere else. And we’d always been alone. Not many people knew about the dock, and hopefully that hasn’t changed.

When we get to the gravel and dirt road that will take us back there, he comes to a stop, putting the truck in park. “You sure you want to do this?”

“I’m sure,” I answer again. “I think it’s time to clear the air. If we want to be friends, or whatever this is-” I shrug “-we’ve gotta get it out in the open.”

“I agree.” He nods as he puts the truck back into gear and slowly takes us down what’s now a trail. “Obviously no one ever came back here after we left,” he jokes as he puts his bright lights on.

“Good, I kinda feel like this has always been our place, and I’d hate to think that anyone else got to experience the magic of it.”

His hand reaches over, fingers lacing in mine. “Same here.”

For long minutes he drives slowly and suddenly the air becomes cool and I can hear the water moving along the creek bed, can make out the light the county keeps over the dock. There’s a section of mowed grass, Slater parks in it, putting the emergency brake on.

“You wanna get out? Sit on the tailgate?”

“Can your knee handle that?”

“We’ll find out for sure, won’t we?”

The two of us get out, walking around the back. I watch as he lowers the tailgate. “Let me get up first, just in case you need help.”

I scramble up, feeling his eyes on my ass as I get situated. “Come on.” I hold out my hand to him.

“Fuck it,” he mumbles as he reaches down, takes the brace off, and lifts himself with the strength of his arms.

“Should you take the brace off?”

“I’m not sure, but I’m trying to get over the fear of it hurting,” he explains as he leans back on his arms. “I have a cooler back here if you get thirsty, have blankets in case we get cold…”

“You’re rambling, Slater.”

“I do that sometimes when I get nervous. If you’ve seen any of my interviews, you’d know that.”

I laugh loudly. “I don’t have to see your interviews to know that. You’ve always done this, whether you know it or not.”

“You would know.” He grins, elbowing me. “I’ve never been so nervous as I was when I asked you out on a date, except when I asked you to marry me.”

“Those were pretty nerve-racking moments for me too.” My voice is soft as I think back to those memories that mean more now than they have in a long time.

“Ya know,” I start, “for so long I’ve been scared to remember, probably the same way you’re scared to use your knee. I’ve been scared that the memories would hurt.”

“Why?” He tilts his head to the side, those brown eyes of his blazing hot as they look into mine.

“There’s always been one memory that stood out the most. The pain in your eyes that night when I told you I wasn’t going with you to Alabama.” I lay the elephant in the room down at our feet.

His voice is deep. “Those words were like a goddamn knife to my heart, Mal. Not only did you stab me, you dug around and twisted that shit, before you finally drug it out. Nothing before that or since then has hurt that much, not even this damn knee. But I’ve come to realize something.” He runs a hand through his hair. “It took me a long fuckin’ time, but I’ve come to realize I never let you explain. I never asked you why you couldn’t be with me, I never stopped to listen to your reasons or even try to understand your side of what was happening.”

“No, you didn’t,” I whisper.

“And maybe that’s come with maturity and age. Maybe it’s a natural progression of where we are right now, but Malone, if you want to tell me, I’ll listen. All night if that’s how long it takes.”

I give him a smile. “Let me get back here in this cooler and get us something to drink, and then I’ll take you up on it. I need to tell you what was going on, need to get this off my chest. Until that happens, I feel like we can’t move on.”

“You wanna move on with me?” He raises an eyebrow, hope is so strong in his voice. “You wanna give this thing another try?”

“If friendship is all we ever have, I’m good with that.” I realize as I say the words they’re true. This is about cleansing my soul, putting this all to rest, and finding out if we’ve really grown up or not.

“I will be too.” He reaches over, cupping my cheek in his hand. “But I’d be lying if I said I haven’t enjoyed hanging out with you, and it hasn’t made me think about what would happen if we could get over the bullshit.”

I don’t have anything to say to that, at least nothing I feel like I could say without breaking down crying. Instead, I go back and open up the cooler. When I see the bottled root beer, I want to cry, because he’s remembered it’s my favorite, and someone who remembers your favorites isn’t someone you should throw away, not like I did with him.