“Will arguing with you about it for another ten minutes change your mind?”
“No, Momma.”
“Then I accept your decision. Have you talked to Scott?”
I rolled over on the bed and buried my face in the sheets. “He called me today,” I said, voice muffled by the pillow. “Didn’t leave a voicemail. Sent a text saying he wanted to talk.”
“And did you?”
“I don’t want to talk to him, Momma.”
“I know,” she said in a soothing voice. “But eventually you’ll have to. What’s going to happen with your business? The food truck? Have you broken your shared apartment lease?”
“I don’t know, Momma.”
She let out the sigh that meant she knew she wasn’t going to get through to me. “Take all the time you need. But you know you can’t run from your problems forever, sweet pea.”
“I know, Momma.”
We chatted about more lighthearted things for a while. Momma had a way of talking about her day—her Meals on Wheels route, the post office lady whose son was accepted into Georgia Tech, the arthritis in Dad’s knee—that was soothing in its normalcy. It helped me pretend like everything was going to be all right. That there were things going on besides the crappy little town of Eastland and the remaining hundred-or-so hours of community service hanging over my head.
After that, I went back to the motel lobby to buy something sweet. There was a new six-pack in the fridge, which I eyed for a moment, but then grabbed a Diet Coke and a pack of M&Ms instead. I carried them over to Billy, who was surfing the web on the old lobby computer.
“You checkin’ out?” he asked without looking away from the screen.
“No, why?”
He looked at me like I was an idiot. “You ain’t paid for tonight. So either you’re checkin’ out, or you’re tryin’ to stiff me.”
I groaned. “I’m not trying to stiff you, Billy. I forgot.” I pulled my wallet out.
“Good,” he said with a harsh nod. “‘Cause it’d be a real mistake rippin’ off the sheriff’s motel.”
“The what?”
“He’d hunt you down across Georgia to get you to pay your bill. Seen him do it.”
“The sheriff owns the motel?” I patted the desk. “Thismotel?”
He blinked as if it was never in doubt. “Of course. Not that it means much. We don’t get hardly any business, except when he catches some fool speedin’ through town.” He chuckled. “Like you.”
I bit back a curse. So that explained why he’d found an excuse to pull me over on a rainy night, and why the judge had suspended my license and given me so many community service hours. To essentially condemn me to this town for a few weeks.
“On second thought,” I said, “I’ll take the six-pack instead of the soda.”
I cracked open the beer in my room and thought about what momma had said. She was right about how I was running from my problems. That wasexactlywhat I was doing. It was easy to pretend like I was focusing on getting this community service out of the way before dealing with the rest of my life, but deep down I knew that was just an excuse to avoid Scott.
I drank half my beer while staring at his text.Can we talk?Simple. No greeting or apology. That was the thing about Scott: he knew when to get to the point.
After thinking of half a hundred ways to text him back, I decided to listen to the rest of the voicemail from the other day instead.
“Hey,” came Scott’s voice. Even though it was the same message, tonight it sounded uncomfortable and regretful. “It’s, uh, me. Listen, Charlotte. I didn’t want you to find out that way. I should’ve told you about Tammy. We’ve been seeing each other for a month. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but we just sort of hit it off. You know? I wasn’t sure how to tell you because I was afraid of hurting you. That was my biggest concern in all this. You know I care about you very…”
I hung up and drank the rest of my beer. I couldn’t listen to any more of it. They justhit it off? When had he found the time? We’d been working eighteen-hour days since buying the food truck. Was he seeing her in the middle of the night, slipping away while I was asleep?
I drank half of another beer. Like the first can, this one didn’t possess any answers. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Scott was seeing someone else, and it was over, and I was stuck in this crummy motel in this backwater town.
I heard a rumbling. The same sound I’d heard earlier today, like a swarm of bees, but deeper. More ominous.