Hey there guys! I know I took over a month to update last time, but the missus and I were moving, and we rescued a little baby dog so I’ve been super busy. So sorry about that. Anyway, to the real news. If my math is checking, which I hope it is, Homecoming should have about seven or eight more chapters left. These are relatively long chapters so I won’t be uploading once a week, but once every two weeks. If I manage to get them quicker, well, I’ll upload quicker but yeah, it should be close to once every two weeks.
That was it. Hope you enjoy this chapter and, as always, thanks for reading.
“Do you regret what happened afterwards?” she asks.
I sigh, trying to find the right words to express my thoughts. Then I realized it didn’t matter. “I know I’m supposed to say I regret it. To say it was a mistake and that I should’ve known better. That if I could go back in time I would change everything that happened that weekend. Truth is I wouldn’t. I do not regret it and if I could go back in time I would gladly make that mistake purposely.”
“But you still call it a mistake.”
“Because it was. Consciously I know the pain it caused. All the things that happened because of it… I know. But I would still do it. I loved her.”
The next day, Faye didn’t go to work, so I finished putting everything on its place by myself. I thought it was understandable. We hadn’t really been nice to each other and I thought she needed time, but when she didn’t go to work on Friday it made me, well… angry. I wasn’t paying her, and deep down she had no obligation towards the bookstore, or towards me, but that didn’t make my anger go away.
I called her, but she wouldn’t pick up, none of the seven times. I felt tempted to give Scott a try but I didn’t feel like explaining to him why his wife was not speaking to me now. Especially not after I had ruined our friendship at the Paintball field. Also, Faye and Scott weren’t in the best of terms.
I decided to wait. Once she’d calmed down she’d called. At least, that’s what I thought. I closed up the store, went home and waited for her called. And I never got it.
That night I couldn’t sleep well and for the first time, the reason was not my nightmares. I felt bad about it. I didn’t quite understand why but I felt bad and I needed to talk to her. It was three am maybe, so calling her was insanity, but my head pushed the insanity thing at the back of my head, and I picked up my phone and dialed.
To my surprise, she answered. Her voice was drowsy and thick. I had clearly woken her up. “What?” she whispered.
“You finally pick up,” I said.
I heard noise in the other side of the line. As if she were sitting up in her bed. “You can’t take a hint, can you?”
“I can… I just don’t want to. I needed to talk to you.”
She sighed, a bit annoyed with my calling at three am. “And why is that, Riley?”
“I need to tell you something.”
“It’s three in the morning, can’t it wait?”
“No.”
“So it has to be now.”
“Yes.”
There must have been something in my voice that made her reconsider, because she sighed again and said, “Alright. You wanna talk? Come.”
“What?”
“I want you to come here.”
“It’s three in the morning.”
“I know, that’s what I said, but you didn’t listen so how about you come to me for once.”
“What about Scott?”
“I’m not with Scott. I haven’t gone home in two days. I’m at my mom’s. It should be a quick five-minute jog. I’ll wait around the back.”
She didn’t allow me to reply. She hung up the phone without a positive answer because that was not the point. The point was going to her, doing as she said because she was angry with me and I was angry with her. But that didn’t put any walls between us. I was still going to meet her, and she was still going to wait for me.
I put on sweatpants, shoes and a hoody and just as she said, I jogged to her house. The lights were off, so I sneaked around the fence and headed towards the back. The shed lights were on and even though the windows were painted white so you couldn’t see inside, the glare was still visible.
I knocked on the door and Faye opened up. The shed hadn’t changed at all. Maybe it needed some painting on the walls but that was about it. As I walked inside Faye asked me to sit by the bed and asked if I wanted anything to drink. I frowned at that until I saw her pull a Coke can from the small fridge against the back wall. I shook my head as a response.
“That thing still works?” she nodded. “Jesus. Dad bought it for me when I came to live here, remember? So I wouldn’t have to get up and walk all the twenty feet to the kitchen in the middle of the night if I wanted something to drink. Why do you keep stuff inside? No one lives here.”
“I come every now and then to just sit down and think.”
“And what do you think of?”
She sat next to me, opened the can and let the air leave her lungs as a smile came to her lips. “Absolutely nothing.”
I smiled at that. What I wouldn’t give to not think of anything.
“So, what is it?” she asked taking a sip of her Coke. “What you wanted to tell me.”
I licked my lips and closed my eyes. I had just thought it today, about what was it that was making things between us so abrasive. Why was she so angry, why was I so angry, and how was that making us aggressive towards each other.
I tried to convince my brain to keep the track of the conversation; to, for once, not forget what I was going to say and what point I was going to make.
When I was ready, I opened my eyes and looked at her. “I’m sorry.”
She frowned. “What?” she seemed confused.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come back. I’m sorry I didn’t marry you when you asked me to. I’m sorry because I haven’t really been too understanding of what you went through. I’m sorry I never really apologized for leaving you alone, or for making that very important decision on my own, without even consulting you. I’m sorry for making you wait and then not showing up. I’m sorry I’m so… messed up right now. I’m sorry you have to keep track of my pills and my physical therapy sessions. I’m sorry we’ve being fighting so much. I’m sorry because I’m not the Riley who left, and I’m sorry because you will never ever see that Riley again. I’m so sorry I ruined everything.”
Faye covered her mouth and began to cry silently. She was gasping and tears fell down her eyes. My eyes were watery too, but I didn’t cry. I had finally released what was on my chest and now, everything left to do, was wait. Wait for what she’d say.
Faye sobbed in silence for close to four minutes. Once she could pull herself back together, she said, “I like keeping track of your pills and your therapy sessions. It doesn’t bother me.”
That silly statement made me smile. She held me and I knew it was okay. That everything would be okay from then on. At least that’s what I believed at the time.
We didn’t pronounce word for what seemed like an eternity. Then she pushed away, and with a smile replied, “Thank you for that.”
“Don’t thank me. I never really thought about the pain I had caused you. I just thought about being away from you and how to deal with that. I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying you’re sorry!”
She placed her hand on mine and smiled. And there it was, those tiny feelings you keep trying to ignore, but at one point or the other, those sons of bitches just become too loud to ignore. But there was something that kept nagging me in the back of my head.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Why did you marry Scott?”
She pulled away immediately. “Riley, please.”
“I’ll tell you everything. I’ll tell you what happened to me, how I got these injuries and… how I managed to come back. I’ll be a hundred percent honest with you. But I need the same, and I know you are hiding something when it comes to Scott.”
She liked her lips and replied, “I will tell you… but you must promise you won’t do anything.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Promise, Riley.”
“I promise.”
“Okay, here it goes. After you left, Scott and I began to spend a lot of time together. At the beginning I think he did it because you asked him to take care of me, but eventually I noticed he changed toward me. Became much more… sweet, I guess. He was a true friend, always had been. But there was something different in his attitude. I noticed it, but I didn’t say anything, and neither did he. I think out of respect to you.
“But then you broke up with me, and guess in whose shoulder I cried? I went running to Scott. He held me, he was patient and caring and I was so grateful to have a friend like him in my life. He was a rock. I was vulnerable so he saw an opening and told me about his feelings for me. I suspected he had a crushed, but I thought it was just a thing, you know how Scott is. Whoever the hell he likes today, he doesn’t like tomorrow. But he said he was in love with me. Not just a crush or a silly thing for me. In love. He had been great to me, so patient and loving.”
“That’s when you started having feelings for him…”
“No,” she replied calmly, but leaving no space for doubt. “I rejected him.”
“But you… liked him…”
“No. Not like that. For various reason but mostly, because of you. It didn’t matter if we weren’t together anymore. I still loved you.” Those words made me swallow dry.
“Then when did you begin to have feelings for him?”
Faye snorted, that’s when the first truth came out. “I didn’t. Despite me reject him he kept trying and insisting, asking me out, promising we would have a great time and that we could just go from there. I kept saying no. At the beginning I tried to be understanding, but he wasn’t getting the message. He became more and more pushy and I became more and more annoyed. Everything Scott accomplished by being so insisting, was pushing me away. It ruined our friendship. I stopped spending time with him and even began to avoid him.”
“Jesus. Then how on earth did you two…?”
“I’m getting there. It had probably been a month since I had spoken with Scott for the last time when it happened. Dad died. We spent a lot of money in the funeral only to find out a couple of weeks later that dad had asked for a loan. A fifty-thousand-dollar loan from the bank. Which he’d miss-invested. Now the money was gone and the only thing in the middle, was the house.”
“Your house?” she nodded.
“We couldn’t do anything to save it. The bank got the house. I don’t know if you know, but we lived with your parents for close to a month after they’d taken it.” I let her know I didn’t. “It doesn’t matter. Point was we didn’t have a place to stay and things weren’t looking great. Then one day, Scott tells me that he has great news. I hadn’t spoken to him in over two months and now he has great news? Well, guess what happened.”
“He bought the house back from the bank and you felt in dept.”
“No. Not even close. You’re still thinking about sweet Scott. Scott who was your best friend and actually cared about people. No. My Scott would never do that. He did something a lot better. He did buy the house back by half its price, and when he told me that, for a moment, a split second I thought ‘Maybe I could love him. Maybe I could really love him’. But then, he told me the catch… He bought the house under his company’s name.” My eyes widened as Faye looked at me to say what I was already thinking. “Instead of giving the house back to my mom, he put it under the company’s name. My mom is living in a house that belongs to Scott’s company. I do what he says, so my mom can have a roof over her head.”
It took a while to sink in. It took me a while to process that Scott, my best friend, would do something so manipulative. Ruthless. Especially to someone he claimed he loved.
I stayed calmed and asked, “Then what?”
“He asked me out again. There was no need for him to tell me, I knew the leverage he had. And it was a big one. I accepted and six months later, he proposed. I accepted again. Thing is… Scott is not a truly bad guy. He’s not a bad husband. He doesn’t mistreat me or abuse me physically. But being married to him it’s like being trapped in a cell, where you know the walls are caving in, you can feel the terror, coming closer and closer, and you can hear them, but it happens so slowly you can’t see them.”
“I promised you I wouldn’t do anything…”
“I need you not to. I haven’t figured out how to get the house back from him or get my mom another place to stay and truth is, at her age, she’s not getting anything better than the job she’s got… if anything at all, and I won’t have her living in a rat’s nest.”
“I understand… I won’t do anything, I promise.”
“Thank you.”
“But you have to answer something else.”
“Anything.”
“Do you love me?”
I thought that question would get her off guard. That her eyes would open like plates and her jaw would tense up. It didn’t. She grinned at me.
“You really are blind. How can you possibly be so blind?” she replied. “You must know. At this point you just… you must know, Riley.”
“You do?” I asked fearing I wasn’t getting it right.
She laughed. “I love you so much I would kiss your feet if you ask me. I would get you that stupid brownie marshmallow thing again. I would… God knows what I’d do. How can you not know that? I told you, I’ll love you forever.”
My lips were shivering; I couldn’t find words to communicate what I was thinking. Mostly because inside my head, there was a mini Riley running around in circles screaming with joy.
“I… you know me. I’m not great at figuring those things out.”
“Yeah…” she said placing her hand on my cheek. “You’re really not.”
The real question is, would I stop myself? If I were to go back in time to that exact moment and get the opportunity to tell myself to stop, would I? No. Of course not, because I had never wanted anything in my life as much as I wanted to kiss her then, and I had never felt what I felt when I leaned forward to touch her lips with mine. Not even when we kissed as kids. So no. The world, and all the pain that kiss caused can go fuck itself. I wouldn’t change it for anything.
As my lips touched Faye’s, I felt her hand leaving my cheek to go down slowly towards my neck. She didn’t pull away. I can assure you she didn’t even think of pulling away. Neither of us did. Neither of us thought ‘what are we doing’, because we knew exactly what we were doing. In that moment, the only thing that made sense was us.
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