Page 19 of The Making of Mila and Blake
And as the two of them share a chuckle, I decide that now is the right moment to excuse myself for lunch.
8
I can’t get Blake off my mind. He consumes every thought and for the brief seconds where I do find myself distracted by something else, the image of his torn expression in his truck on Sunday creeps back in. It becomes unbearable, and I know I shouldn’t, but I have to see him. We need to talk.
It takes me until late Wednesday afternoon to finally pluck up the courage to go for it, but Dad left first thing in the rental to head to Nashville and has yet to return, so I beg Sheri to let me borrow her van instead.
“But whereare you going?” she challenged with great suspicion after I refused to tell her the truth. I know for a fact Sheri wouldn’t have approved of my plan to ambush Blake. That relationship has been over for two years and I should just let sleeping dogs lie,blah blah blah.
“I promise I’m not getting up to no good, and that’s all you need to know,” I pleaded, and with a wary look, Sheri passed me the keys.
Now I’m cruising through Fairview with my heart in my throat as Blake’s neighborhood draws close. I haven’t contacted him, so I can only pray that he’s home, otherwise I’ll have wasted gas and all this nervous energy for nothing. I didn’t want to give him a heads-up in case he told me to take a hike, but I desperately want to talk things through.
My anxiety spikes when I catch sight of the stars and stripes fluttering from Blake’s porch up ahead. I slow to a crawl and scope out the house from afar, feeling relieved when I see that there’s only one vehicle in the driveway: Blake’s truck. LeAnne, his mom, is not here. Thank God. She hated me when I was Blake’s girlfriend.
I park behind Blake’s truck and take a minute to compose myself. I have no speech rehearsed, no questions prepared, because I’m confident that as soon as Blake is standing in front of me, I will know exactly what to say.
Suddenly, the gate to the yard swings open and Blake steps out onto the drive, raising a hand over his eyes and squinting through the sunlight at Sheri’s van. Oops, the engine is still running. There goes the element of surprise.
There’s clearly no time to compose myself with breathing techniques, so I turn off the van and climb out. I remain by the vehicle and Blake doesn’t move from the gate.
“I was in the yard when I heard someone pull up,” Blake says, dropping his hand from his eyes. “Mila. . . What are you doing here?”
“I was worried about you after what happened with your dad. I wanted to check in and see if you were okay.” I tread carefully forward. “Are you?”
He holds open the gate and nods to the backyard. It’s my cue, a positive sign that Blakewillengage with me, and I act on the invitation and head into the yard. My feet root themselves to the ground when I see the cabin in the back corner, and it’s happening again– the flashbacks. The last memory I have of that cabin is. . . intense. Beads of sweat form around my hairline, my palms grow clammy, my body stiffens—
Woof.
I break my fixation on the cabin and the rush of emotions melts away at the sight of Bailey. He doesn’t bound across the yard toward me like I expect him to; he pads across the grass and warily approaches. I offer out my palm and he sniffs me thoroughly, then his tail begins to wag faster as he recognizes something once familiar. He nuzzles his big golden head into my stomach and I scratch behind his ears. His face has changed, his body has become stockier.
“Hey, Bailey! You grew up!”
“Yeah,” Blake says. “He’s nearly three now, so he’s mellowed out.”
I can’t stop myself from grinning goofily into Bailey’s adorable face, but I manage to at least glance at Blake for a nanosecond to ask, “Your mom keeps him when you’re at college?”
“Are you insane? No way,” he says. “He stays at my aunt’s ranch when I’m at school. Myles takes care of him.” He scavenges the shrubbery for a stick, then hurls it across the yard. Bailey takes off after it, but doesn’t fetch it. The big floof that he is sprawls out on the grass, the stick secured between his fluffy paws, and gnaws on it contently. “See? Totally mellow,” Blake says, then points to the rattan furniture up on the deck. “Come sit down.”
We sit far apart from one another, Blake on one side of the decking and me on the other. It’s not cold, yet I sit with my knees locked together and my arms hugged around myself. Blake silently watches Bailey across the yard, and around us there is the occasional tweet of a bird, all singsong and lyrical.
“So?” I prompt. “Areyou okay?”
The time it takes Blake to look at me makes it seem like a monumental struggle for him. “Yeah, I’m good,” he finally answers. “My dad isn’t too bad during the week when he has work to get to. He still works construction. It seems to just be the weekends where he totally throws in the towel, so I have. . .” He glances at the silver watch on his wrist. “Around twenty-four hours before I need to start stressing about him again.”
“I wish things could have worked out for him,” I say. “He told me he quit music again, so that sucks. But you’re still playing, right?”
Blake narrows his eyes at me and interlocks his hands in his lap. “Seriously, Mila, what are you doing here? We aren’t. . . We aren’t friends.”
“I think we should talk about that.”
“It’s been years,” he reminds me, then has to nerve to remark, “What is there to talk about?”
There iseverythingto talk about. I drop my arms and straighten, poised to fight for the answers I need. His indifference rankles me, and my tone grows snarky. “Why you didn’t forgive me, maybe? Ibegged, Blake.Begged.”
“I’m with someone else now. This is. . .” He hastily stands and places his hands on his hips. “What’s the point?”
“The point? The point is that we were together. We were good, Blake. And I make one mistake, just one,and that was it– we were done. Over. We could have fixed things, but you didn’t let us.”
