AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Kane enlisted in the Navy when I was eight and left town, but that hadn’t done anything to extinguish my feelings for him. If anything, his not being around only added fuel to the hopeless romantic fire in me.
Over the years, I’d built Kane Kingston up in my head. The crushes I had on Jake Ryan from Pretty in Pink or Christian Grey from Fifty Shades paled in comparison to what I felt for Kane. In my head, he wasn’t real. He was the epitome of the perfect man.
Except those characters were fictional. Kane Kingston was real. He was a former Navy SEAL and now single dad who moved home and became one of Wishing Well’s finest, sworn to protect and serve.
I only knew that much about him because my brother had mentioned it offhandedly. Kane had zero social media, and because he was an only child, it’s not like I could stalk him via sibling accounts, much to my great dismay.
I’d imagined us running into one another in hundreds of different scenarios, including, but not limited to, him coming to see me on Broadway, then sneaking backstage and declaring his love for me. Running into him in an airport while someone is asking for my autograph. Our eyes meeting as I cut the ribbon of the Ruby Sky Theater, I donated to Wishing Well High. Seeing him when I was jobless, homeless, friendless, and broke was not in the rotation of reunion fantasies.
The engine sputtered as I passed The Tipsy Cow on the outskirts of town. I’d never been inside the bar as a customer since I left town before I was of drinking age. The only time I’d stepped foot in it was when I’d gone to collect my mom after she’d had one too many.
Good times.
“Come on,” I encouraged Sally, whose gas light had been on for the past ten miles. “You can make it. We’re almost there.”
I held my breath as I drove through town, as if that would assist in my not running out of gas. I couldn’t help but notice that everything was pretty much how I remembered it, with only slight changes. The park surrounding the wishing well in the center of town square looked exactly the same. The Greasy Spoon diner, where my mom now worked, looked like it had gotten a fresh coat of white paint, and the trim, which used to be green, had been changed to red. The Best Hairhouse in Texas had gotten a facelift as well. The brick on the building had been whitewashed, and there was new, more modern signage hanging above the door. The Flower Pot façade was now painted a cheery yellow and had a white and black striped awning over the door. There were a few more stop signs, but no stoplights, chain restaurants, or big-box stores. The town looked like it had been hermetically sealed in a time capsule.
I exhaled as I pulled into the Pit Stop gas station on fumes and stopped beside the pump. Maybe my luck was changing. I wasn’t stuck on the side of the road, so maybe today wouldn’t be so bad after all.
When I stepped out of the car, I was simultaneously hit with equal parts dread and nostalgia. Nostalgia because even if growing up here hadn’t been idyllic, it was still home. And dread because I knew better than most that people ’round here were going to have something to say about that viral video and subsequent backlash, and more than likely, they wouldn’t be saying it to my face.
By the time I’d started kindergarten, I’d learned the hard way that whispers could hurt. I regularly overheard women talking under their breath about me and my mom in the grocery store and at town festivals.
Looking back, it made sense that we were a hot gossip target. I had several strikes against me. Strike one: I was the product of an affair my mom had with a married man who disowned me before my first birthday. Strike two: at the time my mom worked at Hooter’s a few towns over, which in a small conservative town might as well have been a strip club. And strike three: we lived in double-wide trailer in the only trailer park in Wishing Well city limits.
“Poor girl.”
“Trailer trash.”
“Homewrecker.”
“She’s her momma’s baby, daddy’s maybe.”
Those were just a few comments I heard on a regular basis.
So yeah, I was sure people would have a lot to say about my NSFW viral clip.
God help me.
A warm breeze fanned across my face as I started to put my card into the reader. I stopped when I saw a note over the slot saying:
Card reader not working. Fill up and pay inside. XO, Velma
It was strange to be back in a place where people were trusted to pay for services after they’d been rendered. Where doors were left unlocked, and you could walk down the block without pepper spray.
After filling up my tank, I grabbed my purse from the passenger seat and heard my phone ringing. I pulled it out and saw it was my ex, Peter, calling. I sent him to voicemail. Since I’d walked in on him and Jessica in the shower two days ago, he’d been calling my phone incessantly.
Would it be healthier to block him and cut off all communication? Sure.
It wasn’t a huge mystery as to why I couldn’t bring myself to do that. I didn’t need to waste money on therapy to know that I suffered from abandonment issues stemming from being rejected by the first man who was supposed to love and protect me. But I was trying to deal with only one trauma at a time here.
Holding my head as high as I could, I pushed the door open to the convenience store, and the bell dinged above me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Velma Ferguson, who had owned and operated the gas station with her husband Denny, since before I was born, standing behind the counter. She was shorter than I remembered, and her once jet-black hair was now more salt than pepper.
I wasn’t sure if she would remember me or not, but before I found out, I had to make a pit stop in the Pit Stop. I’d had a half-dozen energy drinks on my thirty-plus-hour drive, and I had a bladder the size of a tennis ball. After grabbing the horseshoe off the wall with the key dangling from a string, I rushed into the restroom.
After answering nature’s call, I stood at the tiny, white pedestal sink, washed my hands, and caught my reflection in the mirror. A small gasp escaped my mouth when I saw the woman looking back at me. I looked like an extra in The Walking Dead. My long blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail that had more flyaways than an air show. The dark circles under my bloodshot blue eyes stood out starkly against my pale complexion. I had always been fair-skinned, but I’d barely gotten out of bed the past eight weeks, and it showed. Also, I hadn’t slept in over thirty hours because I’d driven straight through. I’d planned to stop in Kentucky overnight, but for financial reasons, I had to abort the plan.
Truth be told, I was down to my last hundred dollars. Thanks to the high price of living in New York, I’d blown through my meager savings after getting released from the show and losing my job at the dance studio. I got hired at Triple Threat a month after I moved to New York. The owners had been like family to me. But a week after the videos appeared online, I got called into the office and told that they didn’t feel I had the values the studio held dear. I wasn’t sure if it was the fact that my boobs were all over the internet or if it had to do with the rumors that I was addicted to drugs or having a mental breakdown.
