Someone who could make me laugh on bad days.
Someone who could keep a secret after snowball fights on glittering farm fields caked with pearly ice.
Someone who was there to pull me out of trouble—without judgment—even if we always had this playful spark that made me think, hope, and dream it could burn into something brilliant and bigger and lasting.
That was Weston McKnight once upon a time.
That was the man I started to love when I was too young, too dumb, and too heartbroken to realize people change—and sometimes they lie.
Old memories rake my brain, my vision, like a cactus while I’m leaning against the tree.
I’m still in Dallas, but not in the current year.
* * *
Eleven Years Ago
The warm summer air buzzes with dandelion wisps and lazy bumblebees so fat they look like they’ll fall right out of the air.
Fresh cut grass makes my nostrils tingle. Grandpa just finished up with his old riding mower that Gram says is on its last legs.
I’m not sure what she means by that, but the smell makes me sad.
It reminds me of Dad cutting the neat lawn at our house in a little Minnesota suburb that already feels more like a dream than a real place.
Another life. Another time. Another family.
It’s not our house any longer. It was sold promptly after Mom and Dad died and we moved here.
I always loved coming here for the summers, sure, but I miss my parents.
I miss them like a severed limb I’ll never get back.
I ache for them so much that tears sting my eyes as I watch Grandpa drive his mower into the barn with a jolly wave, his green hat pulled over his brow. I hear Marty laughing. He’s in there with his friend Weston from next door.
That makes my brother happy, having a buddy his age nearby.
Me, I don’t have any friends who live close enough.
It’s not like the old place where we knew all the neighborhood kids. Bella and that Tory girl are plenty nice when they come every summer. They’re older, and they’re kind to me even though I’m not much good at dancing like Tory Three Names or horse riding with Bella and her gramps, Old Man Reed.
No denying I love to see their old mischief maker of a horse, though. I wish I could feed Edison candy canes with Bella alllll day.
Honestly, though, living out here with such wide fields and dusty little roads that seem to roll on forever, sometimes you forget you have neighbors at all.
Throw in the fact that it’s summer and there’s no school, and I’m one lonely lady.
I don’t get to see my friends very often, but Marty and Weston are always together. They’ve been in the barn since morning, tinkering with one of Grandpa’s old cars.
I wish I had a friend like Weston.
But I’m a girl and he’s a boy.
He’s older, too.
I’m only twelve.
He and Marty are sixteen.