I didn’t leave the apartment for a solid week after that. Not for food. Not for booze. Not for work. Not for friends. I didn’t know where else to be, even if it wasn’t a sanctuary. I was trapped in here with myself, after all. Myself and my past. I didn’t know how to escape from either one of those.
I knew I’d never hear from Amy again. I knew it in my bones. I’d hurt her badly enough to drive her away, and that was for the best. She didn’t need me anymore, and I certainly didn’t need her. I didn’t want her around, didn’t want her spending time with my friends in my town. She’d done enough damage, and I’d damaged her in response.
I wasn’t proud of it; it was just the truth.
But exactly a week and a day of sleeping too much and wandering the rooms of my prison, my friends reached out to me.
I awoke one morning to a text message from Jack. “We’re calling an emergency Horizon MC meeting,” it read. “Get to the bar ASAP.”
I frowned at my phone screen for a few long moments before swinging my legs out of bed. What in the hell happened? The last crisis that I could think of was that we weren’t going to get a beer delivery in time for a fundraiser, so we had to partly raid the cold storage of the bar and then buy out the liquor store’s storage room. We were a fairly sedate motorcycle club, as far as those things went, and definitely didn’t get up to the kind of business that constituted emergency club meetings.
I got dressed in record time, worried about each of my friends in turn. Could it be Jack? Could he have remembered something else, or gotten his memory back completely? What about Brody? Did he finally get his brewer’s license, like he had been threatening to do, and turn the Horizon MC Bar into a dreadful hipster craft beer monstrosity? Was Chuck having flashbacks about losing his sister again? Had her killer been paroled? Had Ace been caught sleeping around? Was Katie on a violent, murderous rampage because of it?
It could be anything, honestly. Even if Horizon MC was sedate by definition, its members were as wild as they came.
The entrance to the bar was open, even if the sign said it was closed. When I walked inside, the rest of the club was already assembled in the booth, a bottle of whiskey in the middle of the table, glasses with various degrees of fullness at each seat. The glass was reasonably full on my seat, the only empty spot left in the booth. Oh. Whatever it was, the situation really was serious. We usually sipped on a bucket of beers during official meetings. Whiskey made everything seem a lot more dire.
“Is everything all right?” I asked, stepping over. “What’s going on?”
“We called this emergency meeting because of you,” Jack said. “Why don’t you have a seat?”
“I don’t want to have a seat,” I said. “I want to know why I’m here.”
“Why do you think you’re here?” Brody countered. “Could you tell us that?”
I shrugged, my arms dangling loosely to my sides. “I don’t know. Did I forget to pay my club dues?”
“You always remember club dues,” Ace said. “Guess again.”
“Are you finally going to make me pay off my running bar tab?” I fished around in my pockets for my wallet. “I don’t even think my credit limit is that big. I can start settling my debt, but it has to be in installments. Otherwise, I’d have to sell my house, I’m guessing.”
“Maybe your body, too,” Chuck said. “I’ve seen that bar tab. It is steep.”
“But it’s not about that, why we called you here,” Jack said.
“I wish you’d get around to telling me why,” I interrupted him. “I have things I need to be doing.”
“Like what?” he asked, sounding like he was genuinely interested. “Because from what I’ve heard, you’ve been doing a whole lot of nothing.”
“Who the hell told you that?” I demanded, then shook my head, answering my own question. “Damn this small town and every single person in it.”
“We’re just worried about you, Sloan,” Brody said, dropping the douchebag facade he so often threw up for once. “Can you at least tell us what’s going on so we can help?”
“It’s nothing you need to worry about,” I tried to assure him, tried to assure them all, even though I was sure I was doing a piss-poor job of convincing them everything was all right.
“It has to do with Amy,” Chuck said. “What’s going on there?”
“Why would you think it had anything to do with her?” I asked quickly, wondering why I was so eager to leap to her defense, even after everything. “Maybe I’m just going through a funk.”
“We all saw you leave with her the other day,” Ace pointed out.
“And you are all a rotten bunch of gossips,” I said.
“We’re not trying to attack you,” he said quickly. “We’re really not. That’s about the exact opposite of what this meeting’s about, isn’t it, Jack?”
“That’s right,” he said. “I asked Brody, officially, what the deal was between you and Amy.”
“And Brody gave it up,” I said. “Excellent work, man. You’re a true friend.”
If that had fazed Brody, he didn’t show it. “You’ve been withdrawing from the rest of us. It hasn’t just been this last week. It’s been happening too much. If they know what happened to you, what the stakes are between you and Amy, they’ll understand how to help you.”
“Sloan, stop it. Relax.”
I didn’t realize I’d been pulling on my own hair until Jack’s sharp command, and I relaxed my grip. Ace shook his head and edged a glass of whiskey closer to me. I took it just to have something in my hand, something to focus on.
“There’s a reason I never told you all about my time in the Navy,” I said. “And it’s what drove the stake between Amy and me. Is that what you want to start hating me? To kick me out of Horizon?”
“No one’s saying that,” Chuck pleaded. “Can’t you understand? All we’re trying to do is get to the bottom of this thing. We support you. You’re our brother, Sloan.”
“All you need to know is that I did terrible things,” I said. “Really, really bad things. And now Amy knows exactly what they are, and she’s going to write about them, and that will be the end of me.”
“That won’t be the end of you,” Brody assured me, glancing quickly at Jack, who’d gone suspiciously quiet. “Everyone who’s done anything like the kinds of things we did serving this country could attest to some regrets. That doesn’t mean something bad is going to happen to you.”
“I deserve anything bad that happens to me,” I said, feeling like I was broken in two. “I don’t deserve to be happy, or to have friends, or”
I bit my tongue, unwilling to go there. Because of course I didn’t deserve Amy. I’d been cruel to her. Driven her away on purpose. It didn’t matter that it felt like I had lost a piece of me along the way. It was most troubling to consider that the piece of me I had missing was my past, was the Navy SEALs, was that history I’d tried to purge, tried to wrap around Amy like some kind of cursed blanket or something. I had told her I was washing my hands of it, and of her, but now that she was gone, I was no longer whole.
“You know all of us,” Chuck was saying steadily. Ace was watching Jack, and I did now, too, just to have something else to focus on. “We’ve all made mistakes in the past. It doesn’t mean we don’t like each other any less because of it now.”
Jack cleared his throat and that seemed to clear his mind, as well. Whatever had been lurking around the shadows of his mind had seeped back into the darkness again for now.
“If you think whatever Amy might write about you is going to be enough to get rid of us, then you’ve got another thing coming,” he said, his voice a little unsteady. “How about you at least give us a preview so we can be responsible for making up our own minds about it?”
God help me, but I told them. I told them everything I’d told Amy, even if the retelling was a little abridged; even if I left out little details here and there about the way I saw Margo in Amy, the method in which I’d used that to drive Amy away. The regret I had. Just the awful, burning regret.
I didn’t even know whose arms wrapped around me first, and I guessed it didn’t really matter. All that mattered was, in that simple gesture, that I knew my friends were there for me, that they supported me no matter what. They didn’t care about my past. They just cared about my present and future, and what I was doing right or wrong to be the best version of myself. They cared if I was hurting, and wanted to figure out why so they could put a stop to it. They would even bar girls from bars, if you asked them to, if there was too much drama for you to handle.
I just wished they could find a way to take me out of my own skin every once in a while. It was sometimes exhausting to be in it.
After things calmed down, after the guys were convinced I’d be all right, I went home a different way that night, feeling like I wanted to take the back roads to prolong the breeze through my hair as long as I could. It was comforting, like someone’s fingers carding through the strands, and I knew it was because getting that sappy but touching group hug from all the guys had reminded me that, in spite of my recent hermitage, I really did like physical contact with people. There just wasn’t exactly anyone in town who would be willing to be my cuddle buddy for tonight or several nights. As long as I needed it, as selfish as that sounded.
I didn’t realize where I was going until I was already there, eyeing the empty lot, wondering if the motel would have to fold like so many other Rio Seco businesses before it. Maybe we needed to work with the city’s elected officials to try and boost tourism in the town. That would be a good mission for Horizon MC. How could we keep people here and draw more people in? Maybe even one of us could run for a fancy chairman or council member or whatever title.
Of course, all that free association was distracting me from the most basic truth. The empty lot meant that there wasn’t a soul staying here. They’d probably even sent the guy who manned the desk home for the night to avoid paying him for just loafing around.
It hurt most of all to see that Amy’s rental car was gone from the motel parking lot. I knew that I’d wanted her gone, had no desire to see her again for the rest of my life, but to have it so final and definite now was something completely different. We hadn’t even really said goodbye. Not really. It wasn’t so much a lack of closure as it was a wound that gaped open and spilled blood every time I moved, every time I breathed. It was for the best. That was what I kept telling myself. It was for the best that there wasn’t some long, protracted process of her extricating herself from my life. Her leaving so swiftly was preferable, like ripping the bandage off a wound instead of drawing out the pain, bit by bit.
Except, of course, that the wound hadn’t been ready to go without a bandage yet.
I even took the step of deleting her number from my phone to eliminate any temptation I might’ve had to contact her. It didn’t really matter. I would’ve recognized her number, had it popped up on my display. Even if it didn’t. Even if I probably could’ve punched it in by heart if I’d really wanted to. I didn’t know why I had it memorized. I didn’t know why I did anything.
But like I’d promised Margo all that time ago, time healed all wounds. It might leave your scarred both physically and emotionally, but it would do its best if you tried, too. I got my work schedule back to normal, socialized regularly with the rest of the guys again, stopped hurting so damn much all the time. I didn’t know if life would ever return to normal after Amy Ovalle had blown through Rio Seco, but I had to have some kind of faith. Things got better the longer I held on.
It was a lazy Sunday morning and we were having brunch at the bar though that perhaps sounded a little fancier than it actually was. For our infrequent Sunday brunches at the bar, all the Horizon guys and our various cohorts would gather. Someone would bring a greasy paper sack full of foil-wrapped breakfast tacos, and Ace or Haley would get to mixing micheladas a delicious and curative cocktail that replaced the vodka in a bloody Mary with beer. Sunday brunches weren’t a regular occurrence by any means, and that just made them all the more special, all of us fighting over the bacon and egg breakfast tacos and bemoaning the fact that we shouldn’t even buy the potato and egg ones in the first place, red beer dripping down the sides of cold glasses, the occasional regular slipping in unnoticed and joining us for the fun. We would never turn anyone away from Sunday brunch.
Gradually, though, the bar quieted back down. Jack kept it open Sundays for anyone who didn’t have anywhere else to be, and that usually applied to more people than one might’ve thought. I was one of them almost regularly, couched in the booth, engrossed in social media on my phone. There wasn’t even anything important on all those sites I belonged to, just political opinions that made me cringe, photos of kids I would never be able to identify with, and the overly personal details of someone I hadn’t spoken with since I was in the seventh grade, pimply and awkward and eager to both please and fit in.
Losing myself in the minutiae of other people’s lives was the easiest way to get outside of my own skin, I’d found. I could take a break from my own problems and wonder collectively with others why one woman’s toddler was so slow to take to potty training, among other situations. It was like a technological drug, making pleasure centers in my brain fire off their synapses regardless of whether or not I even liked a post.
I was so distracted from the world around me thanks to the world in the palm of my hands, that it scared me a little when Jack approached. I hadn’t even realized he’d gotten up from the booth.
He tapped me on the shoulder to try and get my attention. “Someone here to see you. A woman. She’s pretty hot. I think you know her.”
Jesus, was he talking about Amy? My fingers paused in scrolling for a split second before resuming again. I didn’t want Jack to know how much that name affected me still, even after the time and space I’d had from her.
“I don’t really want to see her,” I said, not looking up from my phone.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“I’ll send her away.”
“Don’t” What was I doing? Even Jack raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Don’t be cruel,” I finished lamely. “This is the only bar in town. If Amy’s here to get a little buzz going, you can’t deny her that. It’s her God-given right, and all that. The pursuit of happiness.”
“You’re a generous man,” Jack mused. “I’d turn her out, though, if you really wanted me to.”
“It’s a kind gesture. But she’s fine.”
“All right. Your choice.”
I was a little suspicious, and afraid that maybe Jack knew something I didn’t. But I continued poking away at my phone those Facebook posts weren’t going to read themselves in an effort to distract myself. Of course I hadn’t seen Amy since I’d told her all the gruesome details of my story, every last one of them, and I assumed today would be no different. It hadn’t surprised me that she’d stayed away after that. I’d meant for her to, had expected her to want to move on, away from the thing she’d come to Rio Seco for: my history. What she was doing back here in the bar was her business, not mine. I halfway didn’t even believe that she was really here. Maybe Jack was just trying to get a rise out of me. I wouldn’t have put it past him.
My Facebook browsing was interrupted by a sudden text message from an unknown number, and I frowned as I opened it.
“This still you, Sloan?” it read. “It’s the old Razzle Dazzle, here. Brave thing you did.”
I gaped at the message. What the hell was this? I hadn’t heard from Raj since I’d returned from Iraq. It had been years. I’d had no idea I’d even given him my number, or that he’d even cared enough to keep it.
I started typing a reply, still taken aback: “Good to hear from you, Raz, it’s been ages,” when another text alert distracted me.
“Some things never change. Our Slo-Mo is still a fame whore.” It was accompanied by a smiley face emoji, and it was another number I didn’t recognize, but I knew it was good-natured at heart because of who it had come from another old friend from Iraq.
A third message alert came before I could so much as process that one.
“I’m glad more people can understand what we went through with this,” it read. “Margo would’ve been proud.”
My eyesight blurred and I knew I was in danger of wetting my phone with tears. It was overwhelming receiving all these messages from people I hadn’t heard from in so long. It was even harder to fathom it without understanding why they were contacting me.
I swallowed hard and finished typing my response to Raj, adding a quick, “But I have no idea what you’re talking about” to the end of it. I had to ignore other text message alerts on my phone it was becoming a regular Navy SEALs reunion on there so I could just focus on the pulsing indication that Raj was in the middle of texting me back.
Instead of an explanation, though, a link popped up. I hesitated only a moment before pressing it with a finger that trembled slightly. The shaking intensified when I realized it was a news site, that the headline talked about a veteran of the Navy SEALs coming forward to share what his team had been through, that the byline just below the headline read Amy Ovalle. I checked the top of the page again, even more bewildered. This was a real news site, and a reputable one at that. It should’ve been a given, especially since the headline wasn’t exactly clickbait, but it still surprised me. Amy had obviously written her story. She just hadn’t done it for the rag she’d originally promised it to.
I read the first few lines, hands trembling so badly it was difficult to follow.
Sloan Norris used to believe in heroes because everyone told him he was one. By definition, it was true. He was a Navy SEAL, accompanying his team on a number of missions through the Middle East, some still classified, others he can’t bear to talk about to this day. Norris was a good SEAL. He followed orders, was loyal to his comrades, and when he and what was left of his team were finally discharged, became one thousands of veterans who were first forgotten, then lambasted for the sacrifices they made. Norris is tired of people denigrating his service, dismissing the life or death decisions he made on a daily basis as political fodder, never able to understand just what he went through pursuing American interests in Iraq.
Amy was a writer. She’d probably always been a writer. It didn’t matter if she hadn’t been published yet. There was something about her prose that drew me in, even if I already knew what it was going to say, seeing how it was my story. She was a natural writer, and she shouldn’t have needed this story to realize it about herself.
I read on, but the only surprise was the style in which she’d told my story. It felt like she was really there, like she had been able to step into the recording she’d made of me and live alongside me. I could practically taste the hot dust in my mouth back in Iraq, and I was sure anyone else who was reading the story could too, whether they’d experienced anything like that before or not. I skimmed over her detailing of the missions, smiled at the little anecdotes showing how close the team was, and had trouble getting through the part about the child. It made me nervous that Amy had included that, but it was integral to my experience, the turning point of the story. I could only imagine the kind of vitriol that this story would kick up, both toward Amy and myself, let alone the rest of the team, but it was what came after that really gave me pause.
Norris had always been taught that heroes did the right thing, but this didn’t feel right. He’d grown up in a world where the line between good and evil was always clearly defined, and he knew that he would never misstep. That’s how sure of himself he was. But all of that changed after the incident. Norris had been doing what he was supposed to. He had protected his team members in the only way he could. But this was the beginning of the end. The team began to disintegrate after that, and their superiors, the Navy, and the United States of America failed them because of it.
Amy went on to write about the fallout, about the inability of team members to cope with what had happened, the inefficacy of all efforts to help us until they simply gave up on us. The way we turned on each other, then on the ones we loved, then on ourselves.
Norris was supposed to be set up for life. He had been a good SEAL, and that should have been rewarded. He was going to ride a desk for the rest of his life, maybe, but as long as it got him away from the sand and heat of Iraq, he was committed to embracing it. Not many veterans got the same kind of setup after they returned. But once Margo Fletcher took her own life, unable to reconcile herself to the events that had caused her to lose her legs, Norris couldn’t do it anymore. He couldn’t have anything to do with the SEALs, or the Navy, or anything else that reminded him of that life. He left his home with nothing but his motorcycle and his backpack, and he struck out to find something new, something that could take his mind off everything that had gone wrong, redefine the line between good and evil that he saw himself straddling all too often.
What he found instead was another desert. One he can’t stand during the summer, but one he’ll tolerate because if Norris is anything, he’s loyal, most of all. He built another team, another support system full of people who understood,if not exactly what he had been through, then at least the idea of it other veterans of various branches of the military, former police officers, men who knew what it was like to make the kinds of sacrifices Norris had made.
Amy continued the article with statistics about veteran suicide, PTSD rates, all the various ways veterans were helped or not helped, but my story was the voice that kept everything personal, the narrative thread that brought even more importance to the crux of her story. The ending was another surprise in a rollercoaster of them.
This reporter first met Sloan Norris in the small town he now calls home. The impression wasn’t a good one. He crossed paths with a group of activists protesting a troop surge in Iraq, and it got heated. Norris came out of the altercation looking unhinged, looking like the stereotype of unstable veterans we’re taught to expect, looking like the exact thing we made him. But Norris is so much more than that, and persists in spite of the rest of us. We might have failed Sloan Norris, but he never failed us.
I looked up from my phone in absolute shock to see Amy sitting across from me in the booth. Jack had vacated his seat, and was currently in the middle of testing the stools one by one at the bar to try and find the VIP seat. (In cases like these, whenever Jack got inquisitive like this, whoever was manning the bar or noticed it first moved the seat back into Brody’s office to keep up the illusion of there being no VIP seat. It was kind of an ongoing thing, one of many pranks we kept up just for fun.)
Amy gave me a small smile and then pushed the thick newspaper she’d been holding across the table toward me. It was a hard copy of the story I’d just read, and it seemed to carry more weight than the version on my phone.
“You’re a writer, now,” I said, not quite trusting my own voice. “And on the front page, too. Not bad for a first showing.”
“I kind of thought so, too,” she said. “Are you going to read it?”
“I just did,” I said, flashing my phone screen at her. “My old colleagues have been texting me today. One of them sent me the link.”
She bit her bottom lip. “What did you think of the story?”
“I lived the story, Amy. There’s not much more thought I can give to it.”
Her shoulders slumped a little. “I can understand that.”
God, I was stupid. “That’s just the content, though. Your writing is great. Fantastic. Transformative. There’s a reason why all my old buddies are contacting me today, and your writing is it.”
“You shouldn’t feel like you have to flatter me, Sloan.”
“I’m not. You’re a hell of a writer, Amy.”
“Well, thank you.” The shoulders that had slumped previously now set themselves doggedly. “You should know, though, that this isn’t the story I was going to write.”
“It isn’t?”
She shook her head. “The story that I was originally supposed to write, for that rag of a newspaper I’d contacted, and that awful editor, was supposed to look a lot different. It was supposed to paint you and your team as monsters. It was supposed to take your friend’s death as an admission of guilt for what you all did over there what happened.”
“I see.”
“You should also know that I wanted to write that story,” Amy continued, like she was pushing herself to speak. “That’s how badly I wanted to be a writer. I bought into what my editor told me without even doubting that it might not be true, that his perception might be skewed.”
“You said it in your story,” I said with a shrug. “There’s plenty of people who think what we did was wrong. Evidence, too, now, shows there wasn’t any reason for us to be there.”
“You were following orders,” she said. “Doing what everyone at the time thought was right.”
“I didn’t always think it was right,” I said. “I can’t say that I’m a good person just because I followed orders. There are things I wish didn’t happen. Things I wish I hadn’t done.”
“That was what I didn’t understand before what I couldn’t understand, because I hadn’t talked with you yet.” Amy pushed her hair back out of her face, her features intense with focus. “There are so many levels of this, so many notions of right and wrong. It is so complicated and that’s what people don’t understand. What you used to not understand. That sometimes, it isn’t so easy to see what’s good and what’s bad. And even if you do something good, there can still be bad elements to it. That’s what I wanted to show. That’s what I wanted to write.”
“I think you did it,” I said. “The people who’ve been texting me have had nothing but positive things to say, though I’m sure there are plenty of people who don’t share that opinion.”
“Don’t you see? This isn’t about me. This is about you.”
“I mean, it might be my story, but it’s your story, now, too,” I told her. “You’re the one who wrote it. You’re the one who’s going to make people see differently.”
“I’m not the hero of this story,” she said, tears glimmering in her eyes. “Sloan, I was ready to use you for my own gains. I wanted to be a writer so badly that I almost wrote the wrong story. And I hurt you, still, by writing the right story.”
“You didn’t hurt me.”
“You’re shaking.”
I looked at my hands. She was right. “I’m just not used to thinking about what happened so much,” I said. “I’ve been distracting myself from it for years. And now that everyone knows about what happened, about what I did…”
“I’m sorry, Sloan. I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t think there’s anything for you to be sorry about,” I said. “I’m…I’m glad that I’m not carrying that around inside me anymore. It feels better to have it out there. Maybe it can even change some people’s minds about me, about other veterans. It might make people think twice before spewing shit at us for political reasons. Because people on the ground, people like me we’re not thinking about politics when we’re following orders, when we’re serving our country. We’re only thinking about life and death.”
Amy took my trembling hand in hers, raised it to her lips, and kissed my knuckles softly. We stayed in that position for a long time, tears gently rolling down Amy’s face, and me feeling like well, it was hard to describe what I was feeling. I felt lighter, freer than I had in ages. Sure, there was a little fear of being exposed, of catching flak for what I’d revealed, but it was effective. I had been the humanizing factor of Amy’s story, but it had been about much bigger issues than me. She had used her story to bring more visibility to the plight of some veterans whose wars hadn’t ended when they returned home, like Margo. There were so many more people like Margo just trying to get from one day to the next. That was the most important thing.
“I’d understand if you didn’t want me around anymore,” Amy said finally, breaking the silence. “But I don’t want you to think that I got what I came for and now I’m moving on to ruin someone else’s life.”
“You didn’t ruin my life,” I corrected her. “You made me face some uncomfortable things, but you didn’t ruin my life. Where are you going to go?”
She lifted her shoulders. “I’ve been getting lots of emails. Lots of calls. Lots of job offers.”
“I think that’s wonderful.”
“I don’t want them.”
I let out a startled laugh. It was probably just pent up tension, trapped energy, but she laughed alongside me.
“And now you’re thinking that I’m the worst bitch in the world the one who doesn’t know what she wants,” Amy said, grinning. “I’m sorry you’ve had to even meet me.”
“You have to know that’s not what I think about you,” I said, but she only shrugged. “Come on, Amy.”
“I just…I don’t want the jobs because I don’t want to be pigeonholed into something that’s not me,” she explained. “I’m not looking to write these massive exposés and bring the man down, or whatever. I want to keep telling people’s stories. I want to raise awareness of topics that aren’t dictated to me by some editor with an agenda. I want to make my own decisions, do my own research, pitch my own stories.”
I tapped the newspaper in between us. “I think that after the one you just wrote, people are going to be more than happy to accept you on whatever terms you name.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I absolutely think so.”
She heaved a sigh. “I just really wanted to apologize, Sloan.”
“And I’m sitting here trying to tell you that it’s not necessary to apologize.”
“That’s really sweet of you,” Amy said. “Thank you. Thank you for everything.”
God, there was so much I could’ve said to her, so much that needed to be said, and instead I just nodded, watched her get up from the table, then walk out the door. We had gone through so much. Was there even anything else that could have been said? It had been hard to sum up the different levels of our relationship with each other with just a few minutes of careful speaking. Was it better to let the majority of things go unsaid? Like how I pined for her even now, even after the pain we had caused each other? How I wished there would be some way she could stay in Rio Seco and still fulfill her dream of working as a writer, even though I knew she had a life in Los Angeles and had put it on hold to do this. Maybe, though, it just wasn’t meant to be. Our paths had only been meant to cross for a brief period of time. It was as beautiful as it was painful. I only wished it didn’t have to be like that. That there might be some other option I just wasn’t seeing.
Jack was staring at me from his perch at the bar. I frowned at him.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked, standing.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, standing up, as well.
I squinted at him. “Are you mad because I let her sit in the club booth?”
“No, idiot,” Jack groused. “I’m mad because you’re just letting her walk away.”
“What are you talking about?” We’d said our goodbyes. Amy was going to move on. There was nothing for her anymore in Rio Seco, not after she’d finished her article. Her life’s purpose was to tell other people’s stories, and that was what she was going to do.
“If someone doesn’t hold me back, I’m going to have to beat some sense into you,” Jack warned me, cracking his knuckles. “Can’t you see? The two of you are in love with each other, and you both are about to fuck all of this up.”
I blinked at him. “It doesn’t matter how I feel about her. She’s pursuing her dreams. I would only hold her back.”
“Dumbass!” Jack thumped me on the head. “She doesn’t want to take another job because she doesn’t want to leave you. Even I could understand that.”
“Were you just eavesdropping on us the entire time?”
He spread his arms. “What else is there to do in here? It’s a slow day.”
“You could mind your own business, how’s that for something to do?”
“If I minded my own business, you would be in the middle of making the biggest mistake of your life,” he all but shouted. “Go after her! Tell her how you feel. She can work from anywhere in the world now, am I right? Her story was that good. People will just have to accept her terms if they want her writing. She’s leaving because you didn’t tell her to stay.”
I gulped, was pushing past Jack before I realized what I was doing, was squinting against the sudden glare of the sun, was running after Amy’s retreating form, already at the end of the street, toward the park, toward her motel room. Away from me.
“I love you,” I blurted out as she turned, her cheeks still wet with tears. Or she had just never stopped crying. Was my stupidity the cause of those tears? “I don’t want you to leave Rio Seco.”
“Sloan?”
“I’m sorry that I’m so stupid,” I continued, words leaving my mouth faster than I could vet them. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you how I felt about you.”
“Even after…after the story? You still feel that way for me after reading the story?”
“I love you even more after the story.” I took her face in my hands, wiped her tears away with my thumbs. “That story showed me that you understand me. You probably understand me even better than I understand myself. And I love you. I don’t want you to leave Rio Seco. I mean, unless you want to leave. Unless you have to.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here with you.”
“Because I figured you could work remotely from anywhere in the world, now, since you’re going to keep writing,” I said, dimly aware that I was babbling at this point, still desperate to prove something. “And I want, if you want it, you to stay here in Rio Seco. With me. Please.”
Amy threw her head back and laughed, then kissed me. “There’s nothing I want more in the world, Sloan.”
“I would understand if you didn’t want to,” I said, coming up for air. “Rio Seco is small, and dusty, and hot in the summer. My friends are all idiots. I’m an idiot, too, most of the time. But if you think you could tolerate it, I would love it”
“Sloan!” She was still laughing, and the only tears that were rolling down her face now were tears of mirth. “I already said yes.”
“Yes to what?”
“Yes, that I’m staying with you. Like it or not, Sloan Norris, you’re stuck with me now, because I’m in love with you, in love with this town.” She kissed me long and hard, an exclamation point to that statement. “Think you can handle it?”
“I’m looking forward to finding out,” I said, and we didn’t need any more words after that.