Page 68 of A Way Out
And then Izzie said, “Where’s Riley?” and he had no idea how to respond, other than, “In Washington.”
“In Washington?” A frown marred his mother’s forehead. “Why?”
“I don’t know.” He grabbed a beer from the fridge and dropped onto the couch like the weight of the world was on his shoulders.
Mom sat down next to him. “What happened, mijo?”
The shitty part was, most of what happened while he’d been away was great. The band’s sudden fame. The two sold-out concerts in Tulsa. The wedding. The time he spent growing closer with Maria.
“I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “One minute, everything was fine, the next…she was gone.”
Mom patted his leg. “Have you talked to her?”
“I tried. She didn’t want to talk to me.”
“So what are you going to do?”
Sit here and mope, obviously. He took a pull from his beer. “I don’t know.”
“Let me rephrase that. What should you do?”
He should reach out. He should try to convince Maria to open up to him. He should… “Do you think it’s too forward if I drive up there to talk to her? What if something really is wrong? What if I can help her?”
Mom smiled. “I think you’ve decided.”
Christ. He had, hadn’t he?
Turned out, his ancient Civic hatchback could have made it to Missouri. Oz based this on the fact that he drove to a small town an hour east of Seattle without his car breaking down.
Which was completely beside the point. He slowly cruised through downtown Roma—all two blocks of it—with no idea what to do next.
Should he text Maria and tell her he was in town? Was that really the best way to say, “Hey, I care about you so much that I drove all the way up the coast and I really want to talk?” Because honestly, he had nothing else.
“Maria, I love you, and I really want to figure out a way to make us work” seemed potentially premature, especially given he was at least a little afraid she’d come back to reunite with her ex-husband.
Which meant texting was definitely off the table. If this thing between them was ending, he wanted it to happen face-to-face. Not on his phone via a handful of sentences with poor punctuation.
He parked the car to give himself a minute to think up some sort of plan. He glanced out the windshield—he’d pulled up in front of a bridal shop.
Hadn’t Maria mentioned that her bridesmaid’s dress had come from a bridal shop in Roma? Surely, there weren’t two of them in a town this small.
An idea forming, Oz climbed out of his car and headed toward the shop. The exterior was two stories tall and looked as if it had been around since the Old West days. The interior painted a very different picture.
Plush carpet. Shiny banister on the staircase leading up to the second level, where, according to a sign written in looping calligraphy, the suits were located. Mannequins dressed in high-end wedding attire were lined up in the windows overlooking the street.
The dressing area featured a fancy seating area, complete with a massive, crystal chandelier giving off a soft, no doubt complementary light. Shawn Mendes crooned at a low volume from hidden speakers.
“Well, hello there.”
Oz watched a tall person with a square jaw and broad shoulders and an Adam’s apple teeter toward him in pink over-the-knee boots with a stacked heel. The person wore a clingy black sweater dress and chunky gold jewelry Oz had a feeling was real. A platinum blonde wig with fringe bangs completed the stylish and admittedly attractive look.
“Er, do you work here?” he asked.
The dressed-to-the-nines person fluttered bedazzled lashes.
“Sweetie pie, I own this joint.” They eyed Oz, from his messy hair to the studs in his ears, touching on the silver hoop in his lip, down to the hoodie that covered most, but not all, of his tattoos.
“And you look like someone who would never, ever live in this tiny slice of conservativeness, although, hmm…turn around, would you?”
