Page 163 of Riding the Sugar High

“Hey.”

With a tired sigh, he sits beside me. “It’s been a while, huh?”

I look at him questioningly, and when he gestures at the table, flashbacks of our childhood hit me all at once. Aaron, Josie, Simon and me, running around the table as our parents and their friends ate lunch. Then a grown-up version of us sitting at the table too, every Sunday, waiting for lunch to be over so we could smoke weed somewhere in the fields. “Yeah, it has.”

Josie comes out of the kitchen with my mom, and she glances at me and Aaron before looking away. “Are you guys still...”

“Yes, still divorcing.” He swallows, lips rolling over his teeth. “I don’t know how...how we’re going to explain it to Sadie.”

“Would it help if I told you that, in the end, the happier you are, the happier she’ll be?”

“I don’t think it would,” he says with a sad smile. “But it’d help to know you’ll be there.” Meeting my gaze for a moment, he shrugs. “For Sadie.”

“I’ll always be there for her. And...you.” When he turns to me, I release the breath I’ve been holding for what feels like five years. “Got your back, remember?”

His eyes flare as they flick to my back, where the ink he inspired still sits, then he looks down at his hands. His eyes moisten, but with a sniffle, he looks away and finds his composure again. “I quit my job.”

My mouth opens as I turn to him, and he chuckles. “What—seriously?”

“Seriously.” He crosses his legs, stretching back, and now that I think about it, I haven’t seen him this relaxed in...shit, years. “I’m done. I’ve worked twelve hours a day for five years. It’s time to do something else—something that makes me happy.”

“Do you, uh, want to come work at the farm?”

He studies me for a long moment, then shakes his head. “No, the farm is yours. I need to find my own thing.”

I’m about to ask if he already knows what that might be when Primrose’s melodic voice reaches me again, and I find her with my dad, Sadie between her arms as she whispers into her ear.

“What about you? Are you ready for her to leave?”

I swallow, wishing there was alcohol on the table already. “Do I look like it?”

“No, you don’t.”

Well, fuck, I’m not. How can I sit here and pretend to be okay with it? How can I go through driving her to the airport knowing this morning was the last time I'd hear that little gasp she makes when I bottom out inside her?

Not the last time, I guess, because we’ll meet again. Soon. When winter hits, I’ll see her in Mayfield, and my mom invited her to spend Christmas with us before she even set foot in the house earlier today.

But right now, it doesn’t feel like enough.

“By the way, I wanted you to know, uh...”

“That you’ve given her the money?” Aaron laughs, rubbing his stubble. “Kyle inadvertently told me already.”

Seriously,whydo I keep that idiot around?

“I invested it in her,” I specify. He doesn’t need to know that it wasn’t my original intention. “We’ll draw up a contract and everything.”

“It’s your money,” he says. “And Kyle also said you’ve had to pass on some clients because of the new volume of orders, so...you’re free to choose how you spend it.”

I nod. I should probably thank him—I still haven’t—but I think it’ll take me some time. The fact that we’re sitting at the same table and no heads are flying is a miracle in itself.

With a long, deep sigh, he shakes his head. “She’s been here for what, sixteen days?”

I’d tell him to back off, but he’s right. And in that time, I’ve fallen for her harder and faster than I ever thought possible. Even so, I can’t let her walk away from her dream.

She deserves to have it all.

“Seventeen.” I shrug, then mumble, “She’ll go. I’ll be fine.”

---