“I get it. What happened to you and Colt was just awful.”
I give her a tight smile, but I have no words. What happened between me and Colt was awful. Maybe we would have gotten through it or maybe we wouldn’t have, but now we’ll never know. I took that away from us. I broke us into a hundred thousand tiny little pieces, and it seems like me coming back made us shatter into a million more.
“I always thought wild horses couldn’t tear you two apart.”
“Yeah, well, now we can’t stand to be in the same room as one another.” I sigh and shake my head. “Enough about me. What have you been doing since high school?”
“Oh, nothin’ much. Just bought myself a diner, is all.”
My eyes grow as round as saucers. “The Buttermilk?”
“Yes, ma’am. I figured it was time to pay them back for all of those milkshakes and fries we ran out on without paying for as kids.”
I laugh. “Oh my God. I’d forgotten all about that.”
“Well Betty hadn’t. She almost wouldn’t sell me the damn place.”
I chuckle and turn to glance at the corner booth we always occupied in our teens. Irene Bennett glares back, and leans in to whisper to Wilma Withington over their coffee and pie. Looking over the rest of the diner’s patrons—several sets of eyes dart to their food or out the window abruptly. Some things never change. I was the talk of the town as a wild seventeen-year-old, and now that I’m a grown woman who has made something of herself, people are still damn talking.
I roll my eyes and turn back to Zadie before picking up my menu. “So, what’s good here?”
“Girl, you know everything is good here. You’ve been away too long.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Lemon
Eighteen years old
I pace the floor of my tiny bedroom and stare at the object in my hand. Positive. I squeeze my eyes tightly closed and sit on my bed.
“Lemonade?” Wyatt bursts into my room. “Mama says …” He frowns, staring at the expression on my face and then his eyes slide to the pregnancy test in my hands.
“Oh, fuck!” For a minute he just stands there and stares, and then I start to cry and he closes my bedroom door and comes to sit by me on the bed. “What’s it say?”
“I’m pregnant.”
“Holy shit.”
“I’ve barely finished high school. I got plans for college.”
Wyatt frowns and pulls away. “What?”
“I got a scholarship for art school in New York.”
Wyatt shakes his head. “You’re leavin’? Since when? Do Mama and Daddy know about this?”
I shake my head. “No one does. I didn’t even know how to tell Colt.”
“But … you’re not leaving now, right? I mean, you can’t move to New York now that you’re pregnant.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know, Wyatt. I don’t know what the hell to do.”
“Lemonade?” Colt calls from the stairs, and Wyatt jumps to his feet.
“Shit. What do you want me to tell him?”
I wipe the tears from my cheeks and stash the pregnancy test under my pillow. “Nothing. He’s gotta find out sometime, right?”
“Wait, you’re gonna tell him with Mama and Daddy on the front porch?”
I roll my eyes. “I’m not stupid, Wyatt.”
“You’re righ—”
“Lemon?” Colt calls from the other side of the door and opens it wide. His smile dissolves instantly. “Darlin’, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Let’s just go.”
“Lemon?”
“Bye, Wyatt.” I jump up off the bed and grab Colt’s hand, leading him down the stairs. “Come on, before Daddy changes his mind about letting us go to the fair.”
We head out to Colt’s truck and I pull him toward the vehicle before Daddy can stop us for another lecture. As if he can read my mind, my father calls, “Not a minute after ten.”
“Eleven,” I counter.
“Lemon,” he warns.
“Please, Daddy?”
“Fine. Colt, you have her back at eleven on the dot.”
“Yes, sir.”
We pile into the cab of the truck but I don’t smother him in kisses the way I normally would, and worry etches itself into the muscles around Colt’s mouth. “Lemon, you gotta tell me what’s going on.”
“I will. I just … I wanna have fun tonight. I just want to eat too much funnel cake and ride the Ferris wheel.”
“I don’t know if I can have fun when you’ve clearly been crying your eyes out all afternoon.”
“I’m okay. Would you please just get me out of here before someone else comes to stall us?”
Colt frowns. “Yeah, sure.”
He starts the engine and gives my folks a wave as he peels away from the house and floors it. We don’t talk much on the drive. I couldn’t even hold a conversation right now. The only thing going through my head is that little plus sign on the pregnancy test. How am I gonna explain this to Daddy? I’ve just celebrated my eighteenth birthday and I’m pregnant right out of high school. What will everyone say?
I chew my lip. My thoughts send me spiraling. Colt places his palm faceup on the bench seat of his truck—an invitation. I slip my hand in his and interlace our fingers. How does he know without saying a damn word just how to make me feel better? How do I tell him he’s going to be a daddy at twenty-two years old?
We go to the county fair, but we don’t stay long. I can feel the tension in Colt when he pulls me close and I’m a giant ball of anxious energy too. The sights and scents of the fair are making me dizzy and nauseous.
“You wanna get out of here?” I whisper in his ear. “Go somewhere quiet?”
“Yeah, I’d like that.” He takes my hand and leads me out of the fair to his truck.
We drive to the town reservoir, a place we often hang out, and when we’re alone at the top, all the way above our little town with its lights twinkling in the summer breeze, he grabs my hand. “Are you finally gonna tell me what’s going on with you?”
“I don’t know how to say this …”
“Just say it.” He draws my hand to his lips and presses a tender kiss to it. “Whatever it is, everything will be okay. Just tell me, Lemonade.”
I take a deep breath and blurt, “I’m pregnant.”
All the blood drains from Colt’s face and I start crying again as he pulls his hand free of mine and drives them both into his hair. He stares as if he’s looking right through me and shakes his head in disbelief. “How? We used protection.”
I shrug and a sob escapes me. “Apparently not enough.”
“Your daddy’s gonna kill me,” he whispers. I cry, huge ugly sobs that wrack my whole body and Colt pulls me close. “Hey, don’t cry. It’s okay.”
“How? How is this okay? I’m barely eighteen, Colt. You’re twenty-two. We’re both just kids as it is.”
“I don’t know, but we’ll get through it.”