Page 30 of Where You Left Me

Luckily the rumble of the truck’s old exhaust is loud, and the country radio station is spitting out 90’s bangers one after the other. I get lost for a while in the familiar tunes of Shania Twain and Garth Brooks. But Jones and I were never very good about sitting in silence.

A Brooks and Dunn song comes on and Jones hums along. Darn it if the sound doesn’t send a humming of my own straight through my core. He begins singing, joining them for the chorus and I’m not even sure he knows he’s doing it. I try not to glance his way, but he’s attracting me like a magnet.

His large hand grips the steering wheel while the other taps the top of the shifter. The muscles in his forearms tense. His hair is tucked underneath a backward ballcap and the way he licks his lips in between singing, has me remembering how they felt pressed against mine the other day. The comfort in his voice feels intimate and when he turns his head and we lock eyes, I sense a rush between my thighs.

“I don’t mind the silence, but since we do have the next two hours, might as well tell me what you’ve been up to the last eight years,” he says.

At this moment, gazing at him, and riding shotgun in his truck, I don’t want to think about my time without him.

But that’s all in the past.

Tearing my eyes from him, I face forward and pay attention to the road. The breathtaking view of the Rockies, and dry terrain is something I’ve missed. But as much as I might not want to admit it to myself, maybe I’ve missed the sight of Jones more.

“You really want to talk about that?” I ask, still peering out the front windshield.

“I don’t want to hear about all the guys you’ve fucked, Mia,” my name punches out of his chest, and I hate the way it sounds.

I snort, glancing his way again. “Yeah, I wouldn’t think so.”

“Damnit, now you’ve got me thinking about it.” His grip tightens around the steering wheel like the idea of this makes him want to strangle someone. “I’m not naïve but just let me continue to live in the fantasy I’ve built the last eight years that you’ve been saving yourself for me until you came back.”

“Okay, Jones,” I answer seriously. If that’s what he needs, I want to give him that. Yet, my brain can’t keep my mouth from asking, “What else happens in this fantasy? You know…when I come back?” My heart beats faster, my stomach twists, and my eyes dance over his side profile while I wait for him to answer.

“I tell you to fuck off,” he bites out.

The air all but drains from my lungs.

“I tell you that just because you’re back doesn’t mean I’m gonna forgive you and take you back and everything’s gonna go back to normal.” He finally turns to look at me, and when he does, I can’t miss the sadness in his blue-grey eyes. I can’t miss the hurt in his tense jawline. “But then I do and it does.”

A quiet gasp escapes my lips at his confession.

He gives a shrug, trying to play it off as if it’s nonchalant but we both know it’s anything but. With his attention back on the road he says, “Because you’re you. And I’m me. And I don’t know how we’d be in the same town and not be together.”

A lump slides up my throat and it doesn’t matter how much I swallow; I can’t seem to rid of it. I might as well get used to it because I’m beginning to assume it’s going to make a permanent home there while I’m in Jones’s presence.

Tension fills the cab of the truck. I don’t know what kind, if it’s good or bad, or if it’s just the kind that exists between two people who were once each other’s everything. It’s heavy and laced with memories and pain of the past that we share and can’t be undone.

After what feels like an entire Kenny Chesney song plays out, he finally breaks through the tension. “How about all mention of sexual partners is off the table?”

I nod. “Deal.” The image of another woman with her hands on Jones creates a taste of displeasure in my mouth.

“What have you been up to?”

“I live in Connecticut,” I pause, still trying to put only the appropriate details from the last eight years into a box that I can pull from and share with him.

This means I won’t tell him about my current fuckbuddy, the one I call when I’m lonely and missing Jones. The one who lives too busy of a life for a woman and calls me after a work dinnerand he’s horny. I won’t tell him about the only guy I allowed myself to get serious with but ultimately just couldn’t commit once he proposed.

Deep down I knew, I wouldn’t fully love him. Not in the way he deserved because I’d already given my heart away when I was fifteen years old.

“After I graduated with an economics degree, I completed an internship with Brown Harris Stevens in New York and now I’m back in Connecticut working at the university.”

He keeps his focus on the road but says, “Sounds impressive.”

I hunch my shoulders. “I don’t know if I’d say that.”

“That’s more than Maple Ridge could’ve offered you.”

Or whathecould’ve offered me, is what I dissect from his words.

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