Page 36 of Small Town Sizzle

She straightens, her grip tightening on the broom. I can tell she’s waiting for me to say more, but I don’t. Not right away. She deserves the truth, but digging up the past feels like prying open an old wound.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

I lean against one of the tables, crossing my arms over my chest. “It’s not exactly a fun story,” I admit. “But you deserve to know.”

She leans the broom against the wall and steps closer, her full attention on me now. “I’m listening.”

I take a deep breath, trying to decide where to start. “I was… headstrong. Rebellious. Thought I was invincible. Football was my life back then. I was good—good enough to play in college, maybe even go pro. I had all the Big Ten schools looking at me for a scholarship. But senior year, I took a bad hit that gave me another concussion, and the doctor said if I took another one, I’d probably die. Just like that, everything I’d been working for was gone.”

She doesn’t interrupt. It makes it harder and easier at the same time.

“Around the same time, my dad died of a heart attack, and a good friend of mine died from cancer the same damn day.” My voice catches, but I force myself to keep going. “I was pissed at the world, at everything. I started hanging out with the wrongcrowd, doing stupid stuff. Mom couldn’t control me. Ethan and I…we were getting into physical fights; it was bad. One night, we were drunk driving—me and a few so-called friends—and one of them drove the car straight into the front of Miss Betty’s Diner.”

Maya’s hand flies to her mouth, her eyes wide. “Oh my God. Was anyone hurt?”

“Yeah,” I say, my voice heavy. “A guy sitting by the window got pinned under the wreckage. It wasn’t good. I don’t even remember much of the crash. By the time the cops showed up, everyone else had scattered. I’d been knocked out from the impact. I could have died from that alone.”

“Oh, wow,” she breathes as she sits back down in a chair.

“I got blamed for the whole thing. The cops thought I was driving, that I’d been alone. It was my truck, after all. My family… we’re well off. That didn’t help. Everyone assumed I was some rich kid who thought he could get away with anything.”

“What happened? Did you—”

“I almost went to jail,” I say bluntly, the words feel stuck in my throat as if not speaking them will cause me to suffocate with the weight of them. “I would’ve if the man who got hurt hadn’t woken up and told the police it was impossible for me to have been driving. I had dreams of going to the University of Tennessee to play for the Vols, and so I was always wearing this bright orange UT hoodie. They had to cut it off me. The man was adamant that the driver was wearing a gray hoodie, and people remembered seeing Jack, the guy who was driving, wearing it just an hour before. That man saved me, but it didn’t matter. By then, everything had fallen apart. My so-called friends? They weren’t my friends. My mom? She was so disappointed in me—rightfully so. She was talking about sending me to the Army. I felt like I let everyone down. So, I left.”

I’ve never spoken those words aloud to anyone else, not even my ex-wife. I never felt like I could or wanted to, but standingin front of Maya and her big green eyes looking back at me with such affection and understanding, it felt wrong not to.

The silence between us feels heavy, like the weight of my past is pressing down on both of us. Maya’s expression softens, and I think she might reach out to me. But she doesn’t.

“That’s why you haven’t been back,” she says quietly.

I nod. “This is the first time I’ve set foot in Hicks Creek since I left. Mom… she tried to help me. She saw what I was going through, even when I didn’t. But I was too angry to listen. And Megs…your sister is probably the person who saved me.”

“What do you mean?”

“We were friends throughout high school, dated on and off, but…we’d kind of fallen off track. She’s the only one who reached out to me after everything. She tried to help. I lived in the city, and she’d come to visit me when she was in college up there. We were both so toxic to each other. We both tried to stop but couldn’t. There was one time, she got clean for a bit. She hid the alcohol and pills from me.”

“That sounds like her.”

“Yeah,” I chuckle. “I had stopped drinking for a few weeks because she told me that unless I helped myself, she couldn’t be around me anymore. She came over one night, and I was drunk, high, whatever, and things were said. She blocked my number after that.”

Maya lets out a slow breath, her eyes flicking to the room around us. “We’re not our past. It helped shape us into who we are, but it doesn’t define us. Think of all of the positives. Your mom made something incredible here in hopes of saving another teenage boy,” she says, her voice full of emotion. “And so did you, Garrett. Just by being here tonight, you helped.”

“I don’t know about that,” I mutter, running a hand through my hair.

“I do,” she says firmly. “You might not see it, but you’re making a difference.”

“Well,” I say, breaking the tension, “if you ever need help with another karaoke night, you know where to find me.”

“You really think you can outdo Mason and his fog machine antics?”

“Easily,” I say with a grin. “I’ve got tricks he hasn’t even thought of.”

She rolls her eyes but smiles, and then suddenly she’s leaning in and wrapping her arms around my neck. She reaches up on her tiptoes and kisses me gently. My hands go to her hips, tugging her into me as I deepen this kiss, not wanting to let her go.

I didn’t realize just how much I needed to feel her until now.

Chapter Twelve

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