Page 34 of Where You Left Me

Me

Gross. You know this fucking conversation is off-limits. I’m never texting you again.

Maverick

You can’t help yourself, you’ll text me after you make her come.

After I get our ice cream, I join Mia at the table and hand her one of the cones. She accepts it with a wide smile. I straddle the bench across from her, not wanting a front-row seat to her licking her ice cream. My damn imagination would picture her licking my cock with that much pleasure.

It would be torture.

“That was a lot of peaches,” she muses. “I think my mom will have to freeze some.”

“So will the bar. Guess it will save me a trip from coming out here next week.”

A family is seated at the table next to ours. The two kids eat their ice cream cones while they argue, and the parents try to ignore them.

“You sure you don’t want to come anyway?”

I frown and she continues.

“You know, so you can seeRonnie?” she says her name in a mocking, whiny way.

I groan. “I already said, It’s not like that. Not anymore. Not since she and Vince got engaged.”

She nods, like she just needed confirmation and luckily drops the subject. “I forgot how good their ice cream is,” she says after a moment.

“Nothing better,” I answer, taking a bite off the top.

But my tastebuds cause my brain to snag on a memory. The two of us sitting here years ago, devouring peach ice cream, talking about our future. Later we ate peaches while we lay in the bed of my truck, gazing up at the stars. That was the first night she let me go down on her. That was the night I gave her the nickname.

Peaches.

The arguing between the kids next to us picks up momentum and draws both of our attention. The little girl looks to be about seven or eight years old, and her little brother is picking on her. The girl’s eyes water and at the same time, my heart squeezes in my chest. I can’t help but think about the baby we lost. How she’d be about this girl’s age right now.

It’s fucked up that my brain does this. How something like this would trigger it. My breathing accelerates and I shoot off the bench like there’s a fire beneath me. Suddenly Mia is standing too. I whip my attention on her and find tears streaming down her cheeks.

Shit.

Without thinking, I round the table and rush to her. She’s already shaking by the time I reach her. I loop my arm around her waist. “C’mon, Peaches. Let’s go.”

She nods and lets me help her untangle her legs from underneath the picnic table. It feels unnatural to be the strong one in this situation. I’ve grown accustomed to being alone in my grief. But as much as it hurts, having her beside me and leaning on me as we shuffle toward my truck is comforting.

“I shouldn’t have come. I don’t know what I was thinking,” she says, wiping her tears away once we’re back in the truck.

“Mia—”

“You were right,” she interrupts me, though I’m not even sure what I was going to say. “We can’t do this.Ican’t do this…with you.”

The followingday goes by tortuously slow. I can’t seem to get a beautiful raven-haired woman off my mind.

Since Mia’s been back in Maple Ridge, she’s wreaked havoc in my life. She confessed our secret on The Pines karaoke stage, she told me it hurt to look at me, we shared an intense kiss on the hiking trail, and then we shared a moment of vulnerability at the farm.

She didn’t talk to me the entire drive from Palisades to Maple Ridge. I haven’t heard from her since I dropped her off after the orchard, but in all honesty, I wasn’t expecting to.

My brain doesn’t seem to get the memo of how tired I am after a long shift at the bar. It keeps on going and won’t let me sleep. When I get restless like this, I often become destructive. I make dumb choices I end up regretting. Like texting a random girl and telling her to come over.

But tonight, I go into the garage that connects to the bar and the alleyway and set my phone out of arms reach. I push the button for the garage door opener, and it slides up. The glare from the streetlamps shines inside. It’s just after two a.m. and it’s quiet. All the shops on the street are closed for the night.

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