After I say, Don’t, Easton stops talking. He keeps looking at me with the same lost, puzzled expression, but he doesn’t try to talk me into anything anymore.
“I should go,” I say, and turn away from him, heading for my truck.
I half expect him to call me back, but he doesn’t, and I’m glad. As I start the engine, I’m nothing but relieved.
Holding onto that thought, trying my best not to think about shared showers or skipped stones or anything of the things that might wreck me, I steer the truck toward the ranch.
So. I did it. It’s over. And the world didn’t end. I’m still… standing. My stomach feels jostled, like I’ve just stepped off a boat at the end of a long stormy ride, but I’m intact.
Easton will go to Colorado, I’ll stay here, and I’ll tuck all the loose ends in, like yarn strands into an aging sweater. I’ll tell my friends the truth, that it was just a fling, a brief loss of sanity, a sex snack. I’ll go back to trying to find a guy who’s not too famous, not too married, and not too weird, or I’ll just… take a break.
If my mother had been able to tell a fling from a serious relationship, she might not have let her movie-star boyfriend get her pregnant when she landed in LA as a naive striver.
Or twice more after he’d grudgingly married her.
And if she hadn’t leapt into—and been smacked out of—that first marriage, she might not have fallen so quickly into a second one—and the two kids that rapidly followed.
And for sure, after that marriage ended, if good sense had prevailed, she never would have let herself fall for my father, a barrel racer who, from the very beginning, told her that she could never compete with the rodeo.
She should have known better, just like I should have known better.
I park the truck and head inside.
“Hanna, that you?” my grandfather calls out.
“Yup!” I call back, coming into the living room. “Got a bunch of work to do! I’ll be in my room!”
“You hear anything from those brothers of yours?”
“Nope!” I lie. I keep my voice light and cheerful, and I almost believe myself.
My grandfather’s grumbling follows me down the hall.
I step into my bedroom. It’s still the same bedroom, the bedroom I didn’t let my mom decorate in pink. I sink down onto the bed and grab Leonard the pink bear, wrap my arms around him.
This is good, I think. This is neat and tidy. Not messy, like we feared. Not complicated. It’s its own kind of happily ever after, in which Easton and I each go on to do what’s right for us, him in Colorado, me in Rush Creek. When he comes home to visit, we’ll give each other crap in the old way, and this summer will be just a strange detour from a longstanding frenemyship.
But as my hand touches the hem of my tank top to pull it over my head—I’ve been in these clothes two days now—I pause. Stroke my fingers over the soft material of the first outfit Easton helped me pick out. I can still see him standing to my side and just behind, his reflection in the mirror as his eyes traveled over my body.
Being wanted isn’t a small thing.
There are lots of people in the world, and most of them see only whatever part of you they need to see.
But for a short time, it felt like Easton saw all of me. And that the more he saw, the more he wanted to see, until there wasn’t anything else left to hide from him…
Except how much I wanted him to keep wanting to see and know more.
As I peel my clothes off, it’s like I’m peeling him off. Peeling away our time together, this magic summer, all the kisses and touches, the small gifts—stones and t-shirts and boy shorts and his presence.
When I’m naked, I put on my comfiest, baggiest, rattiest old clothes, hoping they’ll remind me that I’m still me, no matter what gets peeled away.
I settle myself against my pillow, open the Netflix app and find Bridgerton, Season One.
I start watching again, from the beginning.
After a while, I reach out and pull Leonard the pink bear into my arms, because he’s better than nothing.
But I don’t cry.