I huffed. “Especially my mom.”

He cleared his throat and rounded his shoulders forward. “I’m Jackson Paul Emery,” he calmly stated, locking his stare with mine. “I can’t whistle, but I can do three backflips in a row. I got my car skills from my dad and my art skills from my mother. Last summer, I ate twenty-five hot dogs in a row like a professional badass. Alex recorded the whole thing. I can make the best shrimp fried rice, and—”

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Telling you about myself.”

“Yeah. But…why?”

He brushed his hand against the back of his neck and slightly shrugged. “So I’ll no longer be a stranger and you can talk to me.”

Oh, Jackson…

First, he’s sour, then shockingly sweet.

The gentle monster.

His gesture surprised me, but perhaps he was learning to zoom in like I was learning to see him. Maybe, for the first time, the two of us were truly seeing one another.

“I don’t know how to talk about it,” I confessed. I didn’t have a clue what to say.

“What’s the hardest part?” he asked me. “What hurts the most?”

“Oh, that’s easy.” I lowered my head and wrapped my arms around me. “The betrayal of the situation, and the next hardest part is being alone. I don’t know how to be alone. When Finn and I got married, I believed it was set in stone. You build your whole life around another person, and you think you’ll never be alone again, but then you are. It’s the hardest feeling to deal with. Loneliness hurts. It burns in a way that feels worse than fire.”

“The burning never stops,” he told me. “You just kind of become numb to it.”

“How long have you been lonely?”

He gave me a broken smile, which told me his deepest truths.

“Oh, Jackson,” I whispered, my hand gently brushing against his cheek. “You’re way too young to be this sad.”

He closed his eyes, and I felt his warm breaths falling from his slightly parted lips. “You’re doing that thing that you do, princess.”

“Doing what?”

“Putting others’ hurts before your own.”

I smiled and slightly shrugged. “It’s my gift, my curse.”

“It’s not a selfish thing, you know.” He opened his eyes, and the intensity I felt as he stared my way sent chills down my spine. He leaned in close, whispering against my ear as if he was revealing the biggest secret in the world. “You’re allowed to choose yourself first.”

What a wonderful thought, though the world I grew up in taught me the complete opposite. Where I came from, it was always give yourself to others first and whatever was left was what one used on themselves.

It just turned out that most of the time, nothing ever remained, and my tank for self-love was left on empty.

When it came time for me to leave, he offered to walk me home, and I once again declined. “But thank you for this…for helping me.”

He gave me a halfway smile, or at least I pretended he did. “Are you all right?”

“No.”

“That’s fine,” he declared. “You don’t have to be.”

Why did that make me feel a little bit better?

“Jackson?”

“Yes?”

“You’re nothing like your father.”

He frowned and cleared his throat as he looked down at the ground and crossed his arms. “I am when he’s sober.”

16

Grace

As I walked back to Judy’s house, I smiled as I saw a friendly face sitting on my front porch. “Hi, friend,” I said, walking up to Josie who had two extra-large cups from KitKat’s 1950s Diner.

“Hi, friend,” she replied, standing up.

“How long have you been waiting?”

“Long enough to finish two of these drinks and go back to KitKat’s to grab two new ones.” She frowned, studying my face. “What happened?” she asked, nodding toward the bandage.

I touched my cheek. “Just some emotional release.”

“Are you all right?”

“If what’s in that cup of yours is what I think it is, I’ll be better soon enough.”

She smirked, handing a cup my way. “If I remember correctly, you were a Diet Coke girl with a few shots of whiskey.” When we were younger, we always used the extra-large cups from KitKat’s Diner when we wanted to get wasted in town but didn’t want anyone to know that the perfect Harris girl even knew what alcohol was. It was, of course, Josie’s idea. She was pretty great at secretly letting me break free for a small bit of time.

I grabbed the cup and laughed. “Yes.” I took a sip and made a face. “Geez, Josie!”

“I might have been a bit heavy-handed with that whiskey,” she told me.

“This is straight-up whiskey with a splash of Diet Coke, I think.”

“Confession—there’s no Diet Coke in that.” She placed her hand on my shoulder and lightly squeezed. “If anyone deserves straight whiskey, it’s you right now. How are you holding up?”

“I could be better.”

“Want to go egg Autumn’s house? I have a dozen eggs around the corner,” she joked. Well, I thought she was joking until I saw the seriousness in her eyes.

“No, Josie, we aren’t egging her house.”

“But can we toilet paper it? I got two-ply tissue. Only the best quality, too. It’s quilted. Soft as a down comforter. If anything, it’ll be like we’re wrapping the jerk’s place in a soft blanket.” She bit her bottom lip. “And then we’ll throw egg yolks at the tissue.”

I laughed, which felt so odd. Josie had that ability, though, to make the saddest person find a second of laughter. “I think we’ll hold off on the revenge.”

“Okay, but when it’s time, just say the word.”

“I promise I will.”

“Want to go to our old stomping grounds where we would people watch and get drunk without them knowing?” Josie asked, wiggling her eyebrows in hopes that I’d agree.

“Sounds like a plan.”

We walked through town to Kap Park and sat down on the bench that faced downtown Chester. When we were younger, we’d see so many insane things from that park bench. The drama that unfolded as we sipped our “Diet Cokes” and laughed was always entertaining.

But that day, everything felt different. The small town that used to make me laugh felt like a foreign country to me.

“You’re okay, buddy,” Josie said as we stared out at the events of the night. “I mean, you’re not, but you will be.”

Part of me believed her, while another part thought it to be nothing but a lie.

“Josephine and Gracelyn Mae, I haven’t seen you ladies sitting on this bench together in what seems like forever,” Charlotte stated, walking over to us in her high heels. Her pink painted lips curved into a wide smile on her face, and my stomach turned. The last thing I wanted to do that afternoon was deal with Charlotte’s nosy self.

She made herself at home and sat down right beside me. “How are you doing, Grace? You know, I’ve been hearing rumors. And I actually just saw you a bit earlier running through town with Jackson Emery’s hand in yours. What was that about? Is everything okay?” She said the words as if she was concerned about my well-being, but I knew better now.

She was just being Charlotte—a gossip queen.

If I wasn’t careful, I’d read about my life in her newspaper column come Sunday afternoon.

“What makes you think you have the right to ask her anything like that, Charlotte?” Josie barked, backing me up because she knew I wasn’t going to stand up for myself.

I didn’t know how.

“I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?” Charlotte questioned, pressing her hand to her chest.

“You said everything wrong. Now, if you don’t mind, Grace and I were having a private conversation, and we’d like to get back to it without having busybodies like you interrupting,” Josie told her.

“Well, the attitude isn’t needed,” Charlotte huffed, standing from the bench.

“Yeah, well, neither were your invasive questions. Have a blessed day,” Josie remarked, smiling brightly toward Charlotte, who was walking off in annoyance.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “If I would’ve ever said that, my mama would’ve shamed me for life.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not you, and my mama can’t stand that girl as much. Plus, Charlotte is, after all, my own cousin. If anyone should’ve told her to shut her trap, it should’ve been family.”

“Thank you, Josie. For being you.”

“It’s all I know how to be,” she remarked, nudging me in my shoulder. “Now if you just want to sit here in silence, we can do that. Or if you want to talk, we can do that too, okay? Whatever you need, we can do.”

“I just hate her…” I confessed. “I know I shouldn’t because I was taught that hate doesn’t do anyone any good, but I do. I hate her so much.”

“You’re not alone in your hate for her. Autumn has always been a hard one for me. She always seemed so…fake.”