Chapter 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

I called Anna from the Ingles parking lot. Told her to drop everything and meet me at my place. I guess I must have sounded out of it enough that she did exactly that. Half an hour and a cup of tea later we were sitting cross-legged on my couch as I processed everything she’d just helped me remember about that night.

“He sat outside your door, you know?” Anna broke the thick silence.

“What?”

“He didn’t leave. Not until he was sure I had made it and you had someone to watch you.”

My eyes felt hot and my stomach churned. He… what? Why would he do something like that? On the one hand, a knee jerk reaction of mine was to be angry. Why couldn’t he just leave me be? I wasn’t some baby! I was a grown woman and perfectly capable of taking care of myself, especially when it came to a condition I’d been bearing on my shoulders my whole life. I didn’t need him.

I didn’t want him.

And yet…

It also felt good.

After decades of being the only one I could rely on, there was something about the thought of someone going out of their way for me that hit a part of my heart I barely knew existed. And that made me mad too. It made me mad how special it made me feel. I wanted to rage and cry at the same time.

My eyes settled for a subtle mist. I bit my lip.

It was terrifying, not only the thought that I needed—no, wanted— help, but also the thought that maybe I had been terribly, horribly, wretchedly wrong about him.

Melody may have been right.

“You know, Leah,” Anna started hesitantly, placing a hand on my arm. “I know you two have a rocky history, and he is just a lame guy, but… I don’t know, maybe he’s not so bad.”

A strangled laugh came out of me. Always leave it to my soulmate to know what I was thinking. But didn’t it mean something more if she was thinking it too? Not just reading my mind this time, but coming to the same conclusions? For Anna to say anything positive like that about a man was a miracle in and of itself.

Sighing, I closed my eyes against the chaos in my head and rubbed my neck. “I dunno, Annie. It’s—” My tongue caught in my throat for a second. “It’s… complicated.” I looked directly at her, and my expression turned from guarded to pleading.

She raised her hands. “I don’t know. It’s not my place to tell you what to do. You just really seem to think about him a lot, and clearly he thinks pretty highly of you.”

I found that thought so hard to wrap my head around. My mind conjured images of mocking smirks and name-calling, watching me struggle to dig. Those didn’t exactly seem like the actions of someone who ‘thought highly of me’. And yet… He had also been helping me since I got home; first with the bookshelf, then making sure I was okay at the mine, driving me home… Even the name-calling I was beginning to question.

It confused me, more than anything. “Maybe. I guess we’ll see.”

“Do you still hate him?”

Of course I do , almost lept from my lips, but I found my heart wasn’t in it anymore. “I don’t know… I guess we’ll see.”

Cicadas were starting to sing in full force, competing with the crickets and tree frogs as I sat twiddling my thumbs on the swing out in Nana and Papaw’s yard. Night was threatening to fall, and I was waiting for Spencer to show. I’d sent him a message, asked to meet on neutral ground. I couldn’t think of anywhere better. When in doubt Papaw could chase him off with a stick and Nana would feed me something delicious.

Coming back home had its challenges, but being near Nana and Papaw wasn’t one of them. It helped mitigate the loneliness and hiccups that came with my readjustment from city life. It was still hard for me not to leave thirty minutes early for everything, and I missed my Atlanta friends, and my parents of course, but I hadn’t lived near my grandparents since I was in elementary school, so having them so close was a balm and a joy.

The best part was they didn’t care. They didn’t care that I was broken.

Looks of pity had become my most familiar companions back in Georgia, and where there wasn’t pity, there was disappointment. I could see it in the faces of the girls I had danced with for years, as they played at sympathy, wishing me well and asking how I was before walking away and never looking back. I could see it in the face of my mother who couldn’t manage to accept that her only daughter was a failure.

But to Nana and Papaw I wasn’t really any different than I had always been. All they ever needed me to be was Leah. Which I was still trying to figure out—what it meant to be Leah without dance, that is. Thankfully though, they seemed to know. I just wished I could figure it out myself.

“You aren’t broken,” is what the Spencer in my memory had said. I had no idea if I could even trust it. Had he really said something so out of character? Or was it simply a projection of my own imagination—a wishful thought that maybe somehow, moving home meant that there was a super hot guy with a heart of gold waiting to welcome me back with open arms. That somehow he didn’t care either.

I laughed. I’d been reading too many books. ‘Enemies to Lovers’ didn’t happen in real life.

“Somethin’ funny?” Spencer’s amused voice spooked me, pulling me from my reverie and making me jump in my seat. He chuckled. I snapped my head up to see where he was coming around the swing from the direction of the house. “Mind if I have a seat?”

He motioned to the open spot on the wooden swing next to me. My heart was thundering in my ears, but I nodded. He gave one of those little charming half smiles before joining me. I was acutely aware of how close he was, the shape of him, the way the swing shifted under his weight. His broad shoulder was less than a foot from mine.

We were dead silent for a good minute or two, simply listening to the mountain’s lullaby and watching the fading light-line creep up the trees. Eventually, it was Spencer who broke the silence.

He cleared his throat, and reached into his shirt pocket, retrieving a little plastic canister. Spencer held it out to me. “Here. I brought this back to you, and… I figure I owe you an apology.”

I snorted.

“Yeah, yeah. I know,” he chuckled back. “Just—” He turned to face me, and I was captivated by his hazel eyes. Green, and gold, and brown, surrounded by a circle of deep blue. All the colors of the mountains in one set of eyes. “—hear me out.”

He took a deep breath before starting. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to undermine your achievement. You did really good at the mine, actually.” He gave me an amused look. I sensed there were some teasing caveats waiting beneath the surface like ‘for a city girl’, but he left them unsaid this time.

“I slipped this in your bucket”—he rattled the red stone in its plastic house— “because I found it in your hole after you quit digging.” Spencer looked away and his jaw worked with shame. “If I had just helped you like you had asked—like it was my job to—instead of being a jerk it would have been in your bucket anyways. You picked a good spot. You deserved it.”

Disbelief was all I could feel. Spencer Williams, the little boy I had hated practically since I had known the word, the annoying brat who would fight with me on playgrounds and steal my sandwiches was sitting beside me, a grown man, apologizing for his behavior. Someone should have pinched me so I knew I wasn’t dreaming. I swallowed hard. The truth was, I hadn’t been a saint either.

“I… I was kind of a jerk too. Maybe always… I’ll forgive you, if you forgive me?”

He raised an amused eyebrow.

“Truce?” I offered my hand to shake.

Spencer grabbed my hand, flipped it palm up, and placed the ruby in it. “Truce.”