Page 144 of We Drank the Dawn

Maybe it was stupid, but I held the Thompsons in the highest regard. They probably didn’t remember meeting me—I was a snot-nosed kid with an attitude the size of Texas—but I met their family when they visited the ranch for a summer vacation all those years ago. I had the rare and unique privilege of trail riding with them in the middle of a work day. In fact, I brought up the rear on an old horse named Lone Ranger.

And I remembered just watching them all laughing and carrying on.

They were a blend of chaos and peace, sunshine and rain. I remembered one of their boys getting stung by a wasp and the way his parents handled it—rubbing him on the back, gently encouraging him to take a deep breath, distracting him until he was laughing again.

I remember wondering if they just acted nice in public.

Wondering if that boy had ever familiarized himself with the local dumpsters. Or if he’d ever had to take a shit in a bathtub because the water got cut off. Or if he’d ever been traded for drugs.

But when the mom pulled out a food basket and laid out a lunch fit for a prince, I decided that boy didn’t know what any of those things were like. The mom and the dad fluttered between the pack of kids like a pair of robins around a nest, stuffing chirping mouths with giant worms.

I was so jealous.

Imagine my surprise when that same family came back into our lives with a vengeance, restoring every damn thing they touched like they were all a walking King Midas with gold in their hands. Man, I hated it at first. Hated that people so good encroached on Tag, turning him into a settled, happy human that I was forced to despise because I couldn’t be any such thing.

But I met Hollie.

Then Peter—the boy that got stung by a wasp.

And I couldn’t deny that I cared about them both. They’d become my friends, and I started to hope that maybe happiness was attainable. If people as good and lovable as the Thompsons could appreciate someone like me, maybe I wouldn’t have to be miserable forever.

But even allowing myself to think that direction was stupid in the first place. So I rehearsed my list of reasons not to care. Why people were more trouble than they were worth. Giving up on the book, I dropped it in the hay and rolled to my side, letting my gaze roam the cracks of the closed loft door. When it was open, it faced the barnyard and provided a perfect birdseye view.

But it was chilly this evening, so I’d left it closed, using the booklight Hollie gave me to illuminate the space.

In that moment of silence, I heard when Peter took his spot on the barrel.

Normally, I listened to music while I was up here, but tonight, I didn’t have my headphones. His voice traveled up the loft ladder and into my space as if he were talking to me.

“Sarah…” His voice was hollow, shattered. “Sarah…I’m so…so sorry.”

He could barely force the words out as heartbroken sobs broke up his sentences.

“I don’t know…what to do…”

Those sounds carved a hole in my chest, hacking my disillusionment into a thousand pieces.

“Please…please forgive me…please…”

I was so close to throwing open the loft doors and spewing my dinner into the barnyard. Because if Peter Thompson couldn’t hold a relationship, what real hope did I have?

Eventually, his cries tapered off, leaving an eerie silence hanging over the barn like a fog. Slowly, I crept down to the ladder and eased myself through the hole. He looked awful—pink eyes and nose, disheveled hair, face puffy.

“You okay?” I asked.

“No.” He said, his voice rasping. “That hit me out of left field.”

“But you’re not changing anything about your plan, are you?”

He rubbed his lips together with a shake of his head. “I still have to try.”

I nodded, glad he wasn’t going to give up. “Nothing’s final. Not yet anyway.”

“I’ve hurt her over and over. I even kissed someone else which was just icing on the whole damn cake.” He shook his head. “I don’t blame her for wanting a divorce.”

Now that I knew Peter, him kissing someone other than Sarah felt so…odd to me. Not impossible, just really difficult to imagine. “I forgot Cody told me about that.”

His eyes flicked toward where I sat, not quite finding me—drifting to the left, just barely. “Do you know the details of what happened, by the way? No new memories of that night have resurfaced so I’ve hardly even thought about it.”