I shake my head. I haven't felt so anxious in months. A horn blares behind us, and mom pulls away from the airport doors.
"Why does it seem like there's more?" Mom urges.
Anything horrible that could have happened in the last few weeks has happened. I think about leaving Ashton out, but I figure she already knows everything else. I close my eyes, resting them.
"I saw Ashton in Nashville."
Her voice is rushed and panicked, "You didn't sleep with him, did you?"
My eyes fly open, turning straight to her with a hateful look. "No!"
"Well, why are you so upset?"
I turn my head to look out the window, "He just messes with my head."
"Only because you allow him to. As long as he knows he can get inside your head, that's exactly where he will be."
I straighten my shoulders, "It's not that simple."
A sigh escapes my lips as I chug the water out of my bottle, fighting the urge to tell her more. Instead, I choke it down. I'm always choking.
I reach for the dial and turn the music up, but the song makes me think of Eric. Everything does. Words I hear on the radio, the burnt orange in the sky at sunset, gunmetal gray trucks that pass by, strangers that walk down the street.
I pull up our messages and scroll back through them, smiling at how carefree they are. There is one message that I read over and over, one that helps fill the hole in my heart.
I'm not sorry that we happened.
I tilt my head back against the headrest and close my eyes. There isn't anything else to do. He didn't respond to my text, and now I'm worried that I said too much.
The rest of the twenty-minute drive to my mom and dad's house is filled with the radio. When we pull through the iron gate into the driveway, my stomach twists, and I swallow hard, my throat all of a sudden feeling dry.
Eric is standing there, leaning against his truck.
I do a double take, seriously thinking that I wished him into existence.
"Looks like someone wants to talk," Mom acknowledges, turning the ignition off. "I'll be inside if you need me."
I replay her words in my mind as I slowly open the door. It's easy. It should be easy.
This isn't easy anymore.
My breath hitches when I look at him. His hair is hidden beneath a baseball cap, the edges just long enough to curl out of the bottom. I know what's beneath it, though. I remember how my hands felt laced through his silky dark hair.
I'm not usually so flustered around men, but something about this one turns me into a hot mess. My palms sweat, and I start throbbing in all the right places. I look into his eyes, and it's like stained glass, each separate fleck a different memory. A different shade of blue.
"Hi," I say softly. "How did you know where I was?"
"I called your mom," he admits. "I've been here since you landed. I was going to pick you up from the airport, but your mom insisted."
I muster up a sad smile, walking around the back of mom's car to pull my suitcase out and transfer it to mine.
"We need to talk," he begs, grabbing the suitcase from my hands and hoisting it into my trunk without much hassle.
"There isn't anything to say," I remind him. "We can't be together."
"Because of Hanna?" He questions, beginning to look desperate.
I shake my head, "Because of me. I'm… broken."