I choke on my guffaw, pick up my napkin and start to clean her face.
“You’re a mess, Ry,” her mom tells her.
“And so cute,” I add.
She waits until I’m done cleaning her before leaning forward and kissing me quickly. Then she places her plate in front of me. I welcome the food and look across the table at Holly. She’s watching Riley with a frown on her face. Then she blinks and as if coming to, she notices me watching her. Riley’s hand’s on mine now, still on her leg under the table.
Holly clears her throat. “So do you guys have plans for tomorrow?” she asks.
Riley’s eyes widen slightly when her gaze shifts between us. “Nothing solid,” she says hesitantly.
Holly nods.
I chime in. “I was actually thinking of going into town. I need to get some supplies. But I need to be home in the morning,” I tell them. “I’m expecting a delivery.”
“Oh yeah?” Riley asks. “Of what?”
“Car shell.”
“For the engine?” She smiles. “You’re ready to move on?”
“Yep. Moving on. With you, Riley Hudson.”
* * *
Riley: You in your garage?
Dylan: Youxstalking again, Hudson?
Riley: Open the door.
I open the garage door just high enough for her to duck underneath and then close it again. She’s wearing my shirt from yesterday and I’m pretty sure not much else. “What’s up?” I ask as she walks past me and toward the workbench. She uses the stepladder set up in front of it to climb onto the bench and sits down to face me. “Nothing. Just wanted to see you.”
“Yeah?” I walk over and clean my hands on an old rag, throwing it over my shoulder before standing in front of her and rubbing my hands on her bare legs. “I just left you an hour ago. Already missing me, huh?”
She places her forearms on my shoulders and spreads her legs, bringing me closer to her. “My mom came and spoke to me after you left.”
I kiss her quickly. “How did that go?”
“It was… freeing, I guess.”
“Freeing how?”
“She told me you wrote her a letter.”
I nod.
“She didn’t tell me what was in it though. She just said it helped open her eyes to what was happening with me. And the fact that she had no real clue what was going on was a huge wake up call for her.” She lowers her arms and places her palms flat on my chest, her eyes focused on the touch. “She admitted some stuff that kind of had me realizing that I’d been pushing her away since the night I lost it. I think we were both drowning in so much guilt—guilt I didn’t know she was carrying—that we lost focus on ourselves and each other and even though we lived together, we couldn’t be further apart.”
My eyes narrow in confusion. “She carries guilt?”
“Apparently,” she says, her gaze and her hands dropping. “She said she felt responsible for the accident. Not with Jeremy, but with me. She thinks she should’ve noticed my self-destruction as it was happening instead of when it was too late. She knows I tried to talk to her… It was hard for her to hear what I’d gone through that day at the lake so instead of listening she chose to ignore me. It was easier for her that way, but it’s something she regrets. I feel horrible, Dylan.”
“Why?”
“Because I should’ve seen it. I shouldn’t have walked around pretending to be blind to it all. She could’ve let me go to court, had them deal with me… she sold her salon that she worked her entire life to create, sold her pride to the town, lost clients. Now she rents a chair from a chain salon and makes half the money she used to and she did that because she cared about me and she loved me. At the time, I thought she did it to hide her shame.” I let her speak, because it’s important she talks about it, maybe remove some of the weight that’s constantly pushing her down. She adds, “I chose to become a recluse after the mandatory house arrest because I didn’t want people looking at me and judging her. I don’t even know how the drinking started. She hates that she let it go on for so long, encouraged it even. I guess she was trying to help dull the pain, you know?”
I hold her closer, her chest pressed against mine.
She cries more than a year’s worth of tears, releases more than a year’s worth of pain, and when she pulls away, her eyes red and unfocused, she says, “Jeremy—he was such a good kid.” And I can see the smile breaking through caused by the memory of happiness only they could share. “He was always happy. Always smiling. He’d talk to anyone and everyone that approached him and he’d stick up for the shy quiet kids. I wondered if it was because of me that he did that, so I asked him once and he just shrugged and said ‘if all the quiet ones have as much to say as you do, then the world needs to hear it.’ He was always thinking about other people, but beneath that—there was something deep brewing, like he wanted to change the world somehow. He wanted to leave a legacy when he died, you know?”
More tears.
Bigger smiles.
“He had this one postcard in his locker he got from Myrtle Beach and it said ‘facta non verba.’”
“Actions speak louder than words?”
She nods. “I shouldn’t have let the words of others control my actions. If he was around to see how badly I let it ruin me, he would’ve been so mad. Not so much at them, but at me. And I’m just pissed off because it’s not what he would’ve wanted, you know? I should’ve done better. For him. I should’ve done more. Like, what’s his legacy now?”