Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

T ully

PAST

The grass always tickled my neck. Colson put down towels for us on the riverbank after we went swimming, but with all the kissing and rolling around we did, I always ended up on the grass.

“That one looks like a bunny!” I lazily lifted my arm and pointed out the fluffy white cloud in the shape of a rabbit. The swimming and sun had gotten to me. I could take a nap snuggled up to Colson.

He snorted and pointed at the cloud behind it. “That one looks like a pair of boobs.”

I sat up on my elbows and glared down at him. His skin was bronzed from all the afternoons we spent at the river. Colson had been working for the forest service each morning over the summer, making extra money and putting on muscle I particularly liked.

“Colson Wolfe! Watch your mouth or I’ll be telling your mama!”

I would not be telling Gigi any such thing, but a little threat here and there helped to keep him in line.

Colson gave me that grin that always made my insides flutter. “Not my fault you have such pretty boobs it’s all I can think about.”

We’d taken things to third base at the beginning of the summer. I knew I was torturing him with my insistence on waiting until we were adults. I knew Joey and Gabi had already gone all the way, but I figured I was worth waiting for. And so far, Colson had agreed.

“All you can think about is boobs? Really?” I sat up in a huff.

Colson sprang to his feet and pulled me upright, wrapping his arms around my waist so I couldn’t run off. “You know I think about more than that. I spend equal amount of time dreaming about turning eighteen and asking you to marry me.”

That had my heart melting. “Go on…”

His lips hooked to the side. “Every night when I go to sleep, I think about you in a white dress walking down the aisle toward me. You with my ring on your finger. The house I’m going to build you. I think about you all the time, Tully Cassio. All of you.”

He dipped his head and kissed me. My mind spun, and like it always did, time stretched out to where nothing outside of Colson mattered. He pulled back eventually, gazing down at me with so much love in those golden eyes.

“Would you be mad if I said I don’t want a traditional wedding?” I asked, giving voice to the niggling doubt in the back of my head. I liked Colson’s vision for us. Except for that one detail.

His eyebrows drew together. “You don’t? Why not, princess?”

I licked my lips and tried to explain why it sounded like something I wanted to avoid. “Gabi keeps talking about marrying Joey. She even has a binder with all these magazine clippings of everything she wants at her wedding.” Colson nodded, following along.

“But there’s this one page and it has a man in a tuxedo with the bride holding his elbow as they walk down the aisle.” My heart twisted in my chest. Grief built up so badly I felt like it might crush me. “My daddy can’t be there, Colson.”

My father had died one day at work when I was eight. Heart attack, they said. Mama had never been the same. Life changed for all of us that day. Mama quit her job at the high school and stayed home baking so many pies, I had to start giving them out to friends or risk the house being overrun with sugary goodness. I had to take over paying the bills and buying groceries. Mama quit leaving the house altogether. Her friends had rallied around her, though, in true Blueball fashion. At least one came by every day to check up on her. Colson and Gabi had been the ones to check up on me.

Colson’s arms went tight around my waist. “I understand. We’ll do a courthouse wedding.”

I stared up at him, my eyes filled with tears. “Really? You don’t mind?”

Nobody in Blueball did courthouse weddings unless they were pregnant and needed that piece of paper quickly and without a lot of gossip.

Colson dipped his head again to look me square in the eyes. “I will do anything for you, princess. Just say the word and it’s done.”

PRESENT

Seeing Colson after all these years had caused a headache to bloom. I changed into comfy sweatpants and a tank top, then told Mama all about our run-in at the fire station. She’d been angry at me for fighting with him.

“I will never understand you two.” She shook her head and went back in the kitchen to prep for tomorrow’s pie baking.

Years ago, I negotiated a way for Mama to make some money without leaving the house. The owner of Crazy Beans had been sweet enough to arrange for pickup every afternoon for the following day’s orders. Grocery delivery gave Mama the ingredients. Sometimes I wondered if I was just enabling her when I should be encouraging her to leave the house. Then I remembered all those times I forced her to leave and she cried and shook and looked so incredibly miserable that I gave in.

I followed her into the dated kitchen to get a glass of water to wash down the ibuprofen. When that was down the hatch, I explained to Mama what I would be doing for the firefighter fundraiser. Mama listened, but when she had all her pie pans out and ready to go, she pinned me with the kind of look mamas have perfected over the years.

“I’m glad you’re working here in Blueball, but you behave yourself, Tully. No more fighting with Colson. You’ll speak to him like a mature adult and not some young girl with her head in the clouds. You hear me?”

Well now, that hurt my feelings. Mama had never understood my need to leave town and make something of myself, but was that what she thought of me? That I had my head in the clouds?

I reached for the bottle of wine I’d bought this afternoon on my way home from the fire station. I silently thanked my past self for knowing I’d need it. “Thanks so much, Mama. I guess having a hit show for fifteen years was just pie-in-the-sky, young-girl stuff.”

Mama put her hands on my arms, stilling my efforts to get the cork out of the wine bottle. “That’s not what I mean. I’m proud of you and the work you’ve done. You’ve become so much more than I ever could be. But you could have been someone if you’d stayed married to Colson too.”

I shook my head, knowing deep in my soul that wasn’t true. “No, I couldn’t. And that’s why I left.”

Mama squeezed my arms and let go, looking her age suddenly. “Let’s agree to disagree, honey. I’m off to bed. Shut the lights off when you’re done.”

She walked out of the kitchen and left me to my dark thoughts. The cork finally popped out and I set it on the counter to fetch a wineglass out of the ‘70s avocado-green cabinet. The glass was lined with dust. I washed it in the sink and then dried it before pouring myself a hefty glass of wine. I thought about all the fancy parties I’d been to during my career. The dainty pours of alcohol and exotic drinks that flowed constantly. I’d never been one to drink alone, but Blueball wasn’t exactly the nightlife epicenter.

Sitting on the couch, I sipped my wine and contemplated life. People always talked about hitting rock bottom, but I brushed off their comments. I’d held my nose in the air and assumed they were just lazy people who reacted to life circumstances instead of taking the bull by the horns and making life happen for them. Now I was sitting in my mama’s house, in the town I left like my heels were on fire, drinking half a bottle of wine by myself, fired from the job I loved, and envisioning an extremely murky future.

I lifted my glass in the air. “Hello, rock bottom.”

I went to take a sip and realized the glass was empty. Oops. How did that happen? I stood up to get more, but felt the room sway. Maybe I should go to bed and sleep it off. Perhaps my midlife crisis would be magically solved in the morning. I snorted out a laugh and then clapped both hands over my mouth. Yep. I needed to put myself to bed. I headed for my bedroom and tried not to cringe at all the cheerleading pictures that still lined the walls. That girl smiling brightly had no idea she’d be back here one day, tail between her legs. I fell into bed and stared up at the ceiling.

Time ticked by and sleep eluded me. My brain spun, trying to come up with a solution to my laundry list of problems, but the wine was doing a fine job of inventing ridiculous ideas that even my drunk self knew would do nothing but complicate my life.

I thought back to what my therapist had said the day before I left Hollywood. I’d gone to see her one last time, showing up an absolute mess. She’d listened to my story about being fired, nodding and making the appropriate responses as I raged. With five minutes left in our session she interrupted me and told me to settle into exploring my old hometown. Told me to find new hobbies. Find out what makes me feel alive, other than being in front of a camera. I remembered frowning at her, wondering how the hell I’d been seeing her for fifteen years and never noticed she gave shit advice.

“What makes me feel alive?” I asked my ceiling. It did not answer. I stuck my tongue out at the silent ceiling fan and rolled the question around in my head. I had no idea anymore. At one time, I knew. Colson made me feel alive. Practically giddy. Then the prospect of designing homes had made my heart pump. Being in front of the camera did it too.

With all of that gone, I’d have to find new things to make me excited for life. I rolled right off my bed onto the floor.

“Oof!” My knees didn’t appreciate the dismount. I staggered to my feet, room still spinning, and found my flip-flops.

If I couldn’t sleep, I was going to go down to the river. After Daddy died, I used to go out there and talk to him. Weird, I knew, but it helped me. He and I used to swim out there in the summer when I was little, so it always felt like a place I could feel him. Then when I got older, it became the place Colson and I would meet. It was where I fell in love with the boy who turned into a man. I figured it might be the place I needed to visit to learn how to fall in love with life again.

I made it outside the house with minimal noise, but I tripped over a tree root on the way out to the river, cursing and grabbing my foot while I hopped around. My big toe was throbbing when I made it to the riverbank, so I ditched the flip-flops and dipped my foot into the river, sighing as the cold water soothed the pulsing. Water splashed up on my sweats and I grimaced. Wet sweatpants would not bring me joy.

So naturally, I stripped out of them. When I felt the cool breeze on my backside, I tilted my head back and gazed up at the stars. The sight of those faraway lights blinking back at me both soothed me and stoked my heart rate. Before I knew it, my sweatshirt was also off my body and lying on the huge rock I used to lay my clothes to dry as a kid. Moonlight on naked skin probably wasn’t the new hobby my therapist was thinking of, but it did feel amazing. And freeing. I could do with a little of both right now.

“Here’s to new hobbies!” I whispered into the night.

And then I jumped right into the river.

It was so cold it took my breath away. I hooted and tipped my head back so my hair floated behind me and my gaze stayed on those gorgeous stars. My nipples pierced the water’s surface like two lasers seeking heat. My heart was pumping and my lungs were expanding as I kicked my feet. Icy prickles attacked my extremities. The water kept flowing around me, carrying along even with this abrupt interruption in the middle of it. Kind of felt like a metaphor about my life. Hollywood kept right on going, even with me stuck in the mud and lost. Life kept going and I was either going to dive back in and go with the flow, or I’d be left behind. Twenty-year-old me would have dove back in in a heartbeat. Forty-two-year-old me was thinking I didn’t have the energy to reinvent myself.

When I couldn’t feel my feet and my fingers had gone pruny, I hauled myself out of the river and fumbled for my flip-flops. A shiver wracked my body, but I felt clearheaded.

It occurred to me that nothing said midlife crisis like skinny-dipping in the middle of the night.

I giggled at the thought. Then movement to my left caught my attention, causing me to freeze more than the chilly water.

Something, or someone, tackled me to the mud.