“Well, you sure got the hell out of town quickly. I mean, we were supposed to leave for college, Ty. You would have been leaving anyway. But you just wanted away from me, didn’t you?” A tear sprung free, and I quickly swiped it away. I didn’t want him to know how much he’d hurt me.
That I’d never really recovered.
He reached for my hand, and I didn’t stop him. Not while we were pouring our hearts out.
“Is that what you thought? That I wanted to get away from you?” he asked, just as Mae came around the corner carrying two burgers and two cokes on her tray. He nodded. “I hope you don’t mind I ordered your favorite.”
Mae set down the drinks beside our waters and winked at me. I couldn’t be mad at her for playing along with Ty’s game. It was inevitable that we would talk. I pulled my hand away and placed my napkin in my lap and thanked her before she walked away.
“Of course, that’s what I thought,” I hissed. “You were done with me. And after all those years, you didn’t even give me the proper breakup talk. You know… the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech. Nope. You just said you were leaving, and then you vanished from my life.” More tears fell and I used my napkin to wipe them away this time.
He studied me, his dark gaze so full of empathy. “I couldn’t go to college with you, Ivy.”
“Because you wanted to break up with me? You didn’t think I could handle us being at the same school if we weren’t together? You didn’t think we should have at least talked about it?” I asked.
“Because I had no money. My father had drained his and my mom’s bank account apparently, along with Talia’s and my college funds. We left with the clothes in our suitcase.”
I shook my head with confusion. The Greenes had always been a wealthy family in town, not that it mattered to me, but it was just known. “Why wouldn’t you just tell me that?”
“Because I was embarrassed. Ashamed. I felt like I was walking around town with a scarlet letter.”
“Ty, I would never have cared about that. You know that. That’s not reason enough to walk away from what we had. With no explanation,” I said, using my fingers again to clear away the moisture beneath my eyes.
He covered his face with his hands and let out a long breath. “There was so much going on. I had to help Talia to quickly get financial aid so she could start her fall semester as my father had written a tuition check that bounced. My mother was an absolute mess. She was barely functioning. I loaded our car and drove straight to Nashville. My mom had a credit card that we’d managed to max out on our road trip just getting there. You remember, my mom’s whole family lived there, and they were such a support system, and we needed help. I didn’t know if she’d make it, Ivy. She was so down and broken at the time. It was as if both of my parents had checked out in a lot of ways. One from being a selfish asshole, and the other from being so damaged. Talia was crying to me every day over the phone from school, because she had no money, and our family was falling apart. So I did what I needed to do. I started singing in a few local hotspots in Nashville when Zane discovered me. I didn’t make a lot of money at first, but it helped. I was sending Talia money, and we were staying with my grandparents.”
“Oh my gosh, Ty. I had no idea. I would’ve helped you.”
“I know you would’ve. But I didn’t want my girlfriend to help me. I was so embarrassed about what we were going through at the time. I was in a really low place, Ivy. Everything I thought my future would be was suddenly imploding. My instinct was to help my mom and to make sure Talia was okay.”
I stopped swiping away the tears and just let them fall. Because I wanted to hate Ty, but I couldn’t.
“And I was… what? Just an afterthought?”
He reached across the table and took both my hands in his. The look in his eyes had the breath catching in my throat. “Never. You were always… everything. Everything good. And I wasn’t in a place for anything good, Ivy.”
“I don’t understand why you wouldn’t have just told me. Everything could have been different.” I hiccupped and pulled my hands away to reach for my water. Touching Ty was something I wasn’t ready for.
“What would you have done?” he asked, his tone pleading with me to understand.
“I would have delayed school a year and gone with you. Helped you and your mom and Talia any way I could. Gotten a job and done my part to help. I would have, Ty. But you didn’t trust me enough to tell me.”
“That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you. I mean, it’s mostly why. That’s the last thing I wanted you to do. I had to deal with things on my own. And I did. I pulled us out of that hell we were living in after we left Willow Springs. I sure as shit didn’t need to bring you down with me.”
I nodded and we both just stared at one another before he picked up his soda and took a long sip and shrugged. I don’t know why it made me laugh. Here we were having this heavy conversation and then he’s slurping on his straw. That was Ty though, wasn’t it? He could always make me laugh.
“We were so close. You were my best friend. It just doesn’t make any sense that you didn’t tell me. You could have insisted that I go to school.” I felt like he was still holding back. He’d been going through so much, and I’d just been focused on my broken heart.
He scrubbed a hand over his face and then studied me. “Eat. It’s going to get cold.”
He picked up his burger and I picked up mine and we both took a bite. I took a sip of water after and raised a brow. “I’m eating. Answer the question.”
He finished chewing. “I thought about telling you, Ive. I really did. I came here to think the day everything blew up at my house. My mom was breaking shit and crying. My first instinct was to come to you.”
“So, what stopped you?”
“I came here, to the Rusty Pelican, to meet Talia. She’d come home from school that weekend when everything blew up. We were both in shock and trying to process what to do. Word was spreading all over town because Shayla wanted everyone to know she was pregnant with my father’s child. Remember all the gossip about her by that point? Because she was near the end of her pregnancy, and everyone wondered who the father was. Never in a million years did I think it could be my father. I’d called you and we’d talked about what I’d found out, but I didn’t know at the time what we were going to do. That we were going to leave.”
I thought back to that day when he’d come to see me. “Right. I remember. We talked on the phone, and you were really upset, but you certainly didn’t say anything about leaving town. Or about not going to school with me.”
“Right. I’d just found out I had no college fund left, because the school reached out to tell me the funds never arrived. Talia received a similar call. We were a mess. We came here to hide out and felt like everyone was staring at us, so Mae moved us into the back room. We were seated in the corner, so thankfully no one bothered us,” he said, as he paused to take a sip of his water.