“I’m scenery!” he protested.
I laughed and inched closer to the doorway, hopefully giving him a hint it was time to be done.
“You know the boys made me get permission from Jake before I could go out with you.”
All thoughts of fleeing into my house vanished. “Is he there already? Did I miss him moving in?”
“He moved in a few days ago.”
“That jerk never called me.”
Briggs’s face turned sympathetic. “I think his daughter’s had a rough transition. He’s probably been occupied with all that.”
His daughter.
Jake was now a grown adult who lived on his own and paid bills and worried about childcare andhad a daughter. She would be…four now? There had been so many changes since we last saw each other I wondered if he’d be the same person. He hadn’t ever spoken to me personally about his divorce, but what I could squeak out of Tessa and Kelsey made it sound like Miranda had done a number on him. But my texts and calls had mostly gone unanswered.
He’d gone dark, and I had let him.
Thankfully, Briggs didn’t prolong our doorstep moment any longer. He gave me another high five this time, keeping a clear three feet between our bodies as he did so. I laughed and waved him away, grateful for his kindness, and stepped inside my house.
My dad and Belinda were snuggled on the couch, watching a show together. I wondered if it would ever stop being strange to walk into my house and have another woman there. After chatting with them for a few minutes, I headed upstairs to my room. Usually, after a date, my mind replayed all the ways I had been a disaster. Tonight, however, my thoughts strayed in a different direction.
After Jake’s wedding five years ago, he and Miranda had settled in Washington state, and our relationship had developed a natural distance. He wasn’t on social media, big surprise, so we kept up through an occasional phone call or text. Though we’d been more or less siblings our entire lives, it didn’t feel right to be messaging a married man, so I had always included Miranda in our texts, though her line had remained silent.
Eventually, our communication slowed until it became virtually non-existent.
After his divorce, I tried calling him to make sure he was okay, but he never picked up. Since that time, we’d exchangeda few texts, but it was clear Jake didn’t want to talk about anything personal.
So I left him alone. But now…
Jake was here.
For the first time all night, there was a feeling of hope buzzing inside. Change had never been something I craved or sought out. There was a comfort in doing things how they’d always been done. But there had been a restlessness growing inside of me the past few weeks. A need to be different. So many of my friends and family had moved on, moved away, gotten married, started their careers, had babies…while I was still here, rubbing shoulders with the same people, working at the same school I’d graduated from, and living at my dad’s house. I had told myself it was to take care of him, like I’d done my whole life, but now that he was a married man, he didn’t need me in the same way. I needed a change.
I needed to be different.
Already, visions of waking up at the crack of dawn to straighten my hair three days a week were taking shape. It was a stupid thing to care about so much, I knew that, but the truth was, I liked my hair like this. I liked how I felt in Tessa’s clothes. But I wasn’t moving to Boise just yet. I had one more summer here in Eugene.
One more summer with Jake.
It was like the gift of time was being rewarded to me. Fishing, shooting guns, and riding horses with Jake Evans seemed like the perfect parting gift of childhood before my move to the city and a real nine-to-five job. My childhood held some of the best memories of my life. And Jake was a major part of that.
Yes. A thousand times, yes.
And then I’d move out of Eugene for good and start the next phase of my life where I figured out how the heck to date men.
3
SHELBY
The last morningin my childhood home was spent packing my things. The cabin generously given to me for the next three months was small, and while I wouldn’t be moving all of my things from my dad’s house just yet, I would be moving to Boise with everything I owned in September. So, not to be overly dramatic or anything, but I was essentially packing up my entire childhood.
I also made good use of the garbage can.
The posters of NBA basketball greats taped to my walls and the ribbons from the county fair didn’t make the cut. Two large boxes of my clothes didn’t make the cut either. Yesterday, the day after my date with Briggs, I’d stolen Tessa away for an emergency trip to Idaho Falls to go shopping for new clothes. While Tessa definitely preferred wearing joggers and t-shirts, she at least knew the basics of fashion and how to fit clothes to my lean body with light curves that I had spent my entire life strapping down and hiding.
It had nothing to do with Briggs.