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“Bye, Riley,” I said, taking a step back.
“Bye.”
I’d just turned around to leave when she said my name.
“Yeah?” I asked, facing her again.
“Take care of yourself. Okay?”
“I will. You do the same.”
Our conversation stopped again and we stared at each other like before. As the seconds passed, I could feel myself being pulled to Riley like a magnet. She still had such an overpowering effect on me and probably always would.
“Hey, Rhys?” Macie said, breaking the trance that I was in. “We’re going to see Ms. Lenora after we leave here. Would you like to go with us and let her predict your future?”
“I appreciate the invitation, but I already know my future. It’s living right here in Cypress Hills.”
I looked back at Riley and she softly smiled at me. After doing the same to her, I told Macie and Rachel goodbye and started walking to my truck across the parking lot.
A few miles from my house on the lake, I dropped my head when Brantley Gilbert’s song “You Don’t Know Her Like I Do” started playing on my radio. The last time I heard it was when Riley ended us.
After watching her drive away, I went over to the swing on my parents’ front porch, sat down, and had the most brutal cry of my life. Thankfully, my parents weren’t at home when all of that happened. I needed to be alone, but afterward, I wanted some company.
I started to call my brother to ask him to meet me at Cheers and Beers, but I decided against it because I felt that directly involving him in what had happened between Riley and me wouldn’t be wise. Since he was married to Rachel, it would’ve put him in an awkward position, and I didn’t want that for him. So I called my buddy, Colton, instead, and he was there to join me in drowning out my pain.
We were sitting at the bar with our glasses of whiskey in our hands and he began criticizing Riley for breaking up with me. He had just called her “heartless and selfish” when Brantley Gilbert’s song started playing on the jukebox. I asked him if he’d ever heard of it, and he said no. It was then that I enlightened him about the song’s forgiving message. Afterward, he didn’t say another critical word about Riley.
He didn’t know her like I did or what she and I had been through. Even though Colton meant well by jumping into my corner, I couldn’t take listening to him or anyone cutting down the love of my life. It didn’t matter that she had torn my world apart.
I pulled up in front of my house and sat in my truck until the song ended. Then I killed the engine and stared at the tattoo on the base of my ring finger. It was a key that went to the heart-shaped locket tattooed on Riley’s ring finger.
Earlier, I glanced at her left hand to see if the ink was still there, and it was. I spotted part of the locket peeking out from underneath Riley’s diamond engagement ring. I knew it was wrong, but I was happy that she still had half of our couple’s tattoos on her skin. As for the key on my finger, it would always be there.
CH 4 - #fortuneteller
Riley
“YOU STILL DON’T look right, sister. Seeing Rhys really did a job on you,” Rachel said. She, Macie, and I had just left the grocery store with our bags of snacks.
“Yeah…it did. Crossing paths with him again was bound to happen at some point, but nothing could’ve prepared me for it.”
“Would you like to know what stood out to me?” Macie asked.
“Nope.”
“I’m going to tell you anyway. First, you and Rhys kept holding each other’s hand after shaking them. The second is how you both kept looking at each other.”
“It was just the shock of coming face-to-face again after all this time.”
“It was more than that. The fire is still burning between you and Rhys.”
I stopped walking across the parking lot and buried my face in my hands because I was starting to cry. My girls were beside me within seconds.
“I don’t mean to be so emotional,” I told them, sniffling. “It must be the wine that’s making me like this.”
Macie shook her head in disagreement. “It isn’t the wine, BFF. You had only one glass. Your tearful reaction to running into your tall, well-built, blond-haired, blue-eyed, dimple-blessed, handsome-as-hell high school sweetheart was to be expected.”
“You’re not helping, describing Rhys like that to me.”
