Page 9 of Home to You
I nodded, and forced myself not to fidget with my hair. “Yeah. What’s up?”
He glanced around, giving me the impression that whatever he had to say, he didn’t want an audience for. That wouldn’t be a problem. The kids were on an overnight field trip at the museum, and I was fairly certain I was the only teacher still on campus since I’d had a ton of grading to catch up on.
Jake cleared his throat. “I wanted to apologize,” he said, his thumb working along the edge of his belt buckle. “For the other day. For shutting you down when you were just trying to do your job. I was kind of an asshole.”
“It’s fine, Jake,” I said, my grip tightening on my purse strap. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“Maybe not,” he replied, his voice dropping low. “But I didn’t like how that played out. How I felt about it afterward.”
The breeze picked up, chasing leaves across the lot. The days were still hot, but as evening approached, there was a crispness to the air that hadn’t been there even a week ago, that particular bite that warned of a long winter ahead. In the distance, the aspens on the mountainside were already touched with gold.
We stood there, the silence stretching long enough to turn awkward. I shifted my purse higher on my shoulder and shuffled my feet, preparing to walk away.
“You settling in okay?” he asked suddenly, stopping me in my tracks.
“I am,” I said slowly, weighing my words. “It’s strange being back, of course, but the kids are great. Your son, especially.”
That tugged a small smile out of him. “Yeah. He’s something.”
I hesitated. “He mentioned you tried to find me after school yesterday.”
“Yeah, but I saw you with someone. Thought maybe it wasn’t the right time.” His jaw tightened as he said it, the intensity of his expression catching me off guard.
“Oh, that was probably Ben,” I explained, though I wasn’t sure why I was offering up the information. Jake didn’t care who I was talking to or why; only that he hadn’t wanted to interrupt. “He was trying to convince me to come out and sing karaoke with him and his husband.”
His eyes darted back to mine. There was a flicker of something—relief, maybe—that softened the set of his shoulders.
“I seem to recall you loving karaoke,” he mused, his ears turning a bit pink, like he regretted admitting he knew things about me, or rather, the me I used to be.
“I used to like getting drunk. The karaoke was a natural progression. I’m afraid my singing days are over.”
For a second, neither of us spoke. Then he shifted, like he wasn’t sure how to keep going but had something left to ask.
“Did you ever … umm … think about me?” he asked suddenly, his voice stumbling over the words. He lifted his chin, and I could suddenly see everything written across his face—hope and dread warring in those amber eyes I’d never quite forgotten.
“Jake.”
“Just wondering,” he added quickly, his neck flushing above his collar as he looked away, wincing as if he regretted the words the second they left his mouth. “I used to look you up sometimes. You went off and built this whole exciting life with your fancy job and condo. I’d see you smiling in pictures with that guy … figured you had everything you wanted.”
“Of course I thought about you,” I said finally, my fingers automatically tucking a strand of hair behind my ear—an old nervous habit I’d never managed to kick. “Particularly when I’d hear Tim McGraw.” I chuckled, my face splitting into a grin asI recalled all the nights we’d driven the backroads around Three Pines with the windows rolled down, my hand riding the wind.
But then my smile fell as I also remembered what usually happened next on those nights … the way Jake made my body come alive under his expert touch.
His shoulders tensed, and his gaze dropped to the ground. He kicked at a pebble with the toe of his boot, his jaw working like he was chewing on words he wasn’t sure he should say. When he finally looked back up, there was something new in his expression that made my chest tighten.
“It looked like a good life.”
It was, in a way, but those old photos didn’t tell the whole story. I’d curated those moments carefully. I knew what angles and filters made my life look fuller than it felt.
“Parts of it were good,” I said softly, more to myself than to him.
And they were. Aside from the way my marriage ended, I’d been happy in Chicago. Well, happy-ish. Most of the time. Some of the time.
But standing here now, with Jake looking at me with something that resembled quiet concern, I realized how much of that happiness had been me trying to convince myself I’d made the right choice in leaving here in the first place.
Jake was quiet for a long moment. “What parts weren’t?” he asked softly.
The question hung between us, and I found myself caught between the instinct to deflect and an unexpected urge to tell him the truth. Maybe it was the way he was looking at me—without judgment, just genuine concern. Or maybe I was just tired of carrying it alone.
