AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Though, Onyx and I didn’t fuck much these days, and never when one or both of us was drunk.
The third option was for me to sleep on the couch, but now that my guys were gone and my mind had the freedom to wander, it was sliding into the pit I’d tried to avoid.
No one would care if I stepped out for some fresh air and to walk off this feeling.
I locked Onyx’s house behind me, pocketed his keys, and followed the same path back to Main Street that we’d taken to get here.
And there it was, the memories were back. It wasn’t as though anything extreme had happened to me. It wasn’t assault or anything, and I hated myself for being unable to shake this after so many years.
I’d been the good girl through high school, studied, gotten the best grades. And when I hit college, I realized I was missing out on a lot of things I wanted to explore.
I just didn’t know how.
I came back to Haddarville that summer, feeling burned out and lost. Walking into Onyx’s record store was like flipping on a light switch. It was a place I never wanted to leave. It hadn’t been his yet, but it was about to be, and his influence was already everywhere.
I knew who he was from school. Who Don was. They were the cute, I-don’t-give-a-fuck seniors when I was a sophomore. And they were hanging out with me.
My new best friends.
Late nights every night frequently led to Onyx checking out early because he had to work the next day, and Don and me staying up until dawn. Talking. Then kissing. Then fucking.
He hadn’t wanted me to tell anyone we were together. They’re going to think you’re a slut. And, you want people to like you for you, right? Not because you put out?
And so many other things he said that tore down lost little Alys who just wanted to fit in.
It turned out I wasn’t the only one he was doing that to. Another woman their age, Evie, had recently finished her time in the Marines, and he was feeding her the same bullshit.
Then there was the pregnancy scare. My period was a week late, I was nauseated in the mornings, and I was certain…
When I told Don, he’d freaked out. Called me so many names. When the pregnancy test came back negative, his mood didn’t improve much. And I’d tried too hard to prove to him I was still worth loving.
Looking back, the way I’d acted made me ill. I’d begged and cried and pleaded for him to not leave me. I thought I loved him, and that he loved me. He eventually caved, telling me no one else was going to take a slut like me, so he’d better do it.
It wasn’t long after the scare that Evie and I figured out he was cheating on us with each other. We both kicked his ass to the curb, and these days she and I were best friends. If I were a stronger person, all those scars would be gone. But no, some of the trauma lingered, more than fifteen years later.
When I’d run into Don a few months back, and again a few days ago, and he made a point of mentioning how I was creeping up on forty and hadn’t done anything with my life, I let it get to me.
Because he was a lying, cheating asshole, but he was right. I was a mid-level developer for someone else’s idea, and now I was going to be a single mom at thirty six, and I had no idea what I was doing with my life beyond tomorrow.
I really didn’t want to be in this place. It always reminded me I could be stupid. I wasn’t capable of handling myself. I was nothing like the strong, independent woman my mother tried to raise.
When we passed Evie’s hardware store earlier, I’d seen a light on in back, and as I neared her place now, that soft glow was still there. The kind of dim light that looked like the reflection of streetlamps and nothing more, unless one knew where to look.
I wasn’t surprised to see hints that she was still working—late nights were typical for Evie. As I approached I sent her a text that said knock, knock.
The glow inside grew then faded again, and a moment later, Aubrey let me in and locked up behind me. “She’s in the middle of a complex problem, but she muttered meeting time so you should join us.”
In other words Nerd Herd meeting. Excellent. “I’m in.”
Aubrey hooked her arm into mine, and we headed toward the back of the store. Once upon a time, I’d had a similar friends with benefits relationship with her to what I’d done with Onyx. Separate times, separate types of sex and fun. Unlike the way things surged and ebbed with Onyx, I’d stopped them with Aubrey.
She’d been in love with someone else. She still was, but the problem was, he loved two people who weren’t her.
As we neared the back room, I caught the whiff of burning metal. That meant Evie was soldering something. That was a much better complex problem for her to be working on than her trying to make social media ads work for her for the billionth time.
We found her putting away her goggles and setting aside her soldering gun.
“I’m glad the smoke wasn’t you thinking,” I teased.
