The history with Stone wasn’t completely between him and me. It was more between his father and mine, or to be more accurate, between my dad’s employer and my father. The timing was all suspect, but my dad was the manager for their grocery store. Then my mom was diagnosed with cancer and we tried to keep it under wraps, but rumor got out, and within a week my dad was served his walking papers.
While my dad was trying to find another job, my mom was about to start chemo when we lost our health insurance due to my father getting the boot. A month went by. Nothing. He wasn’t getting hired. Another month. Nothing. Three. Four. We were going on six months when finally, someone three towns over confided to a friend of a friend that word of mouth was saying not to hire Mitch Phillips.
He’d been blacklisted by Stone’s dad. Why? We had no idea.
We tried to find out the reason, but no one was fessing up until a friend of my mom’s overheard a man talking in the local bar. The guy was ranting about how Charles Reeves knew it was bad what he did, firing a man whose wife was just diagnosed with cancer, and he wanted to push the Phillips family out of town to stem any bad gossip.
It backfired.
This was all happening my senior year of school. Stone had gone on to join a D1 school and he was a rising football star, but he’d always been a superstar on the field. Another reason why Charles Reeves wanted to get my family out of town, in case media came sniffing around for a feel-good story about a local boy getting drafted by fancy colleges and maybe even the NFL down the road. He didn’t want us to give them a scandal instead, or so the gossip mill was saying.
Because we were so in debt from the cancer treatments, we lost the house.
We moved into an apartment close to the hospital so I could remain in school that last year, and then we found out three months later that the Reeves family bought our house and land from the bank for a steal. They renovated it into a local Airbnb.
Stone scored the winning touchdown for his football championship game, and that night my mom died. We had spiraled so far into debt, there was no getting out for us. I don’t think anyone could fault my family for the resentment that we held for the Reeves family. I knew there was some on my part. I expected equal amount on my dad’s part.
I hadn’t known there was some on Gail’s part.
And the next day, after I went with Siobhan to check on some seriously cute seahorses, I knew the time for my phone call had come. I would’ve signed up for anything else instead of having to call Gail and deal with this. Even spending time with Stone. Gasp. Shrinks in horror, but yes. Even spending time with Stone would be preferable than doing this.
All that said, I couldn’t stall anymore.
If they were threatening a lawsuit, I knew they’d go through with it. They had money. We did not. They’d already almost buried us. I didn’t want to give them another chance to dig that shovel down any further into our despair. I wasn’t sure how much more we could take, so I was sitting in my car, in my parking spot behind the house, as I made the call.
The house was still empty and I was assuming it would be until everyone returned the next day, or tonight, but I still didn’t want to chance being overheard.
“Honey! What a pleasant surprise.”
God. I ached inside. She was so happy.
“Your father and I are just moving out to the patio with a cup of coffee. I know you’re off, pursuing your dream, but I was just wishing you were here. A phone call is the best surprise yet.”
Christ.
This was going to be hard.
I closed my eyes, readying myself. “I got a phone call from Stone.”
She was quiet on her end.
I waited.
I heard my dad ask, “What’d she say?”
Still, she was quiet. Then, a soft, “Oh, honey. I didn’t want you to have to deal with that.”
My voice was low, gravelly, like Stone’s had been. “He sent me the text you sent to Barb.”
“Oh, dear.”
That was so not what I wanted to hear.
“Oh, dear?” I repeated her words to her. “What were you thinking?”
“I thought since Stone is down there, and you’re there, and I’ve heard so many stories about how close the two of you were—”
I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
Her words were twisting around in my head, mixing with my own memories, and all of it was bad. All of it was tainted. I could feel my mom. I could feel when her hand went slack. I was back there instead, in the room when she died, and Gail was on the phone instead of her.
“Stop,” I yelled, my voice hoarse. I was so raw, so fucking raw. “Just. Stop.”
My mom.
She’d been there.
Then she was gone.
The chemo hadn’t worked. The cancer progressed too fast.
I watched my mother die.
“Dusty, honey.”
My dad’s rough voice broke out, “Let me talk to her! I’ll handle this.”
“No!” Gail snapped back with a voice I had never heard before from her. She said harshly, “You’ll make it worse.” Then she was back, and quieter, soft again. “Honey. I’m sorry. I just thought he’s down there. You’re there. I’ve seen you both suffer so much, and his family owes us. His family owes you.”
“No!” I couldn’t stomach anymore. Gail came into the picture after my mom was buried. She heard the stories, and I was now realizing she’d been getting ideas that I did not want her to have. “Let me explain this.” I was speaking in a voice I had never heard before myself. My skin had been turned inside out. There was nothing to hide behind now. I felt like everything was scraped off of me. That’s what enduring that year had done to me. “You really need to hear me.”
I waited. I needed a moment to gather myself.
I felt like I was crumbling.
“I hate Stone Reeves.”
I heard her gasp on the other end.
I kept on, “I hate him with a passion I didn’t even know I possessed, and I was already hating him long before what his father did to us. I moved down here because my mom told me to reach for my dreams. I moved down here because I went through something; well, something that taught me life is actually short and I need to be making decisions for me. And saying that, it was something that I hadn’t already learned through losing my mother. But having said that, life is not short enough where I would ever want Stone Reeves back in it.”
She was sniffling now.
I refused to. “Let it go. Let whatever notion you have in your head about how this is going to resolve itself because it’s not going to happen.”
“But—”
“He called me. He texted me. He said they’ll sue if you don’t stop. Gail, please. Don’t put my father and me through more pain.”
I was there again, holding my mom’s hand.
“I can’t survive another round with that family.”
I felt her hand go, again. It was always again. Over and over again, and I worked so hard to push that memory away, but it was back.
It was going to haunt me.
“Please.” A whisper from me.
I heard more sniffling on her end, and then a pause before she said, so quietly, “Okay.”
I felt dead inside. “Tell my father I love him.” Then I hung up and texted Stone.
Me: It’s done.
I didn’t give him a chance to respond. I blocked his number.
As far as I was concerned, Stone Reeves was out of my life for good.
