The Boys Down South by Abbi Glines
1
scarlet north
Bleach and fried food. That’s what I smelled like. Every night when I walked into the trailer I now called home, I immediately stripped off my clothes and tossed them in the washer. The place was small. Maybe tiny was a better description. It wasn’t a regular trailer. It was a camper trailer, but the rent was cheap. And the aroma from the country diner where I worked was so over powering that it would cause the entire place to stink.
It was bad enough that it smelled of mildew. I didn’t need to add the stench of my work environment to it. I’d be back at the diner at six in the morning. I was lucky this town went to bed early. Getting home at ten wasn’t so bad. I had time to shower and get the food smell off me then enjoy the silence of my trailer before going to bed and doing it again the next day.
Seven days a week. Fifteen hours a day. Six to nine or nine thirty, if I had to clean up after we closed. The tips weren’t terrible. Better than I had expected. I was paying my rent, utilities, my new cell phone and food, while also managing to put back enough for the junior college in the next town. I wanted to start classes in the fall.
My work hours would be cut back if I took classes, but Ethel, my boss and owner of Bright Eyes Diner, said that the summer crowd was big money. Robertsdale, Alabama, wasn’t a big town. It was small and similar to Malroy, where I’d grown up. But the highway that ran right through it was the road that led to Alabama’s beaches. Which meant we got the summer traffic.
If I worked like I was working now, I should be able to afford both semesters next school term. I needed a degree. I wasn’t going to be able to work in a diner my entire life. I also didn’t want to be stuck here. I just knew I couldn’t go home. Living there… it wasn’t good for me. It had been two brothers that finally caused me to run. But even as I did it, it wasn’t my mistake with the Sutton boys my mind was on. It was the freedom of getting out of that house. Away from my mother and the darkness that would always be there. No longer living in that house or that town, I realized my thoughts weren’t so dark. I wanted to find a life for myself. Learn to live happy.
I stopped at the kitchen bar after dropping my clothes in the washing machine. Still naked and needing to get the greasy food smell off my skin, I paused to pick up the white invitation still staring at me. It had been doing so since I received it in the mail last week. I had needed a post office box for my phone bill and to give to my best friend, Dixie Monroe. I trusted her, but I didn’t trust her not to break down and come find me if she had my real address. Dixie would never understand this trailer and this fresh start. How it was so much better than what I left behind. Because Dixie never really knew me. No one had.
I looked at it every day as the RSVP card still laid there next to it unreturned. The small message handwritten, from Dixie, begging me to come to her wedding.
Going wasn’t an option for me. I should have been the maid of honor. We had planned our weddings since we were kids. I would stand by her and she by me at my wedding. We’d marry brothers and live next door to each other. Our kids would grow up best friends and our holidays would always be shared. I’d have a large Christmas party at my house and they all would come. When I say all, I mean the Sutton boys, their wives and kids. It had been a fantasy. One I went along with. Smiled as we talked about it, knowing that wasn’t in my future. I’d become the queen of pretend long before I’d become friends with Dixie Monroe.
Dixie thought I had run because of what had happened with Brent, Bray and me.
Loving two Sutton boys instead of just one had been a mistake, but it wasn’t why I’d left. My reasons were darker than that. Dixie thought I should come back home. She had done the same thing, loved two Sutton boys, but she hadn’t screwed it up the way I had. She’d loved two of them at different times. She hadn’t hurt them. She hadn’t been with one brother and cheated on him with his twin. No, that mistake was all mine. I hadn’t been alone in my cheating. Bray Sutton had been right there with me. He’d made me love him. I had gotten so consumed with him, so freaking obsessed with him, that I saw nothing else, no one else. Not the damage that I would inevitably cause. Nothing. I had just seen Bray.
Where I had loved Brent. I hadn’t been in love with him. Only Bray. My heart still squeezed so tightly I lost my breath when I smelled his cologne. Bray had made me want something I never imagined I could have. I had been ruined, twisted, long before him. I didn’t feel things like other girls. I’d started doing things with boys at eleven years old in an attempt to feel good. I wanted something to take the numbness away.
Bray had made me feel. Which had led to me hurting someone innocent. It had been something my mother would have done. I cringed. I didn’t want to be like her. I was gone from all that now. Four hours away. Working all day. Living in a sketchy part of town because I needed to save to go to college. I was alone. And it was the first real relief from the heaviness that was a constant in my chest.
Christmas Day, I had eaten leftovers from work and sat at the table in the tiny kitchen I was currently standing in, yet it had been the happiest Christmas I’d ever had. There was no pain or tears. No sadness or fear. I knew my leaving had saved Brent and Bray, but it had also saved me.
Brent had forgiven Bray. Dixie had made sure to tell me in her text messages. She said they were both dating again. Brent was happy. He’d moved on. Bray was never happy. It was just his way. That was one reason I was drawn to him at first. The constant cloud over him. His ability to show the world he was angry, that he didn’t want to smile. He was brave enough not to hide his issues. I wanted to be like that.
With the same regret I felt every time I saw the wedding invitation for Dixie Monroe and Asher Sutton, I laid it back down. I wanted to see Dixie marry the boy she had loved since we were kids. Like me, she had loved another Sutton boy for a time, but she hadn’t been in love with Steel Sutton. She had always and would always be in love with Asher.
Now, she was getting the man she dreamed of and I was thrilled for her. Although I also felt jealousy and pain. I didn’t have that dream anymore. Hopefully one day I could build a dream, any dream. Something to bring me joy. Because in my life all that had felt remotely close to joy was when Bray Sutton touched me. When he held me. Needing Bray to keep me waking up each day and facing my demons was unhealthy. But it was what I clung to. Until that crumbled.
“I wish I could come, Dixie,” I whispered to the four walls around me, “but I can’t see him. They don’t need to see me. I can’t need him again.”
They were moving on. The Sutton boys were the way they should be. No one was fighting. There was no rift between them. My return would cause issues. They didn’t need to see me. To be reminded of what had happened.
Leaving the invitation behind, I went into the bathroom with a simple sink, toilet, and shower big enough for one. My hands could touch all four walls with my elbows pressed against my ribs while I stood in the center of the space and spun around. The water took three minutes to warm up to a tolerable temperature. Although it never reached hot, it did get warm for about five minutes. I had to hurry to wash and rinse my hair and body before it turned cold. First, though, it was a waiting game for the icy temp to heat. Things like this were new to me. But I embraced them.
My old life had appeared privileged to others looking in. I’d let them think it too. Smiling, partying, accepting a sports car from the man I had called my father. The day I drove away, my mother had three words for me: “Good riddance, bitch.” That would surprise or hurt most girls. But those words were nothing. She’d already done her damage long ago.
When you grow up living in fear of what might happen next in your house, after that nothing else compares. Which is why I didn’t fall apart when I had to live in my car for three weeks. Or panic when I went three days without any food. I knew of worse things than starvation or even death. Seven months later, I was living on my own successfully. Every day that passed I felt more secure. The nightmares still came, but I always woke up.
Just before the water got warm, my phone rang. I paused and debated ignoring it to get in the shower or turning it off and waiting thirty minutes for the water to recycle and warm up yet again.
I was tired. My feet hurt. I needed to wash the stench off my body and whoever was calling could leave a message. No one called much anyway. Sometimes Ethel called about a shift change. But it was rare. And that could wait. I needed this warm shower.
The ringing stopped just as I stepped into the shower and then started again. They were calling back. What in the world? Ethel never did that. This number was known by a limited amount of people. I went through the list as I growled in frustration and turned off the water. Jerking the towel off the hook, that had probably rusted in the 1980’s, I wrapped it around myself then went to get the phone. Looking at the screen, hoping nothing was seriously wrong, I sighed and closed my eyes as I saw the number.
I got this call about once every eight weeks or so. The first time I was surprised. I couldn’t figure out how the youngest Sutton brother had my new phone number. I thought maybe there had been an accident and Dixie had given it to him to get in touch with me because she couldn’t. It hadn’t been an emergency. He’d simply given me an update on Bray. He didn’t ask me any questions. Tell me anything about Brent. Just told me how Bray was doing and ended the call. It had been odd. He’d never said how he had gotten my number. He rarely let me speak. Much less ask him questions. And after three more times, I knew what to expect.
“Hello,” I said, preparing myself for whatever he would say.
“It’s time you come home,” Dallas Sutton said simply.
“What?” I asked taken aback by his change of topic.
“You heard me,” was the only response I got before he hung up.
I held the cell phone in my hand and stared at it for several minutes. Dallas was still in high school. He and I had never been close. Yet he called me. Left these informative messages. It had been odd. But this had been the most bizarre. I wouldn’t go back there. The past, my memories, it all dwelled there. Every inch of that town would remind me. Haunt me. Shaking my head, I told the silence around me, “No. I can’t go back there.”
