“Are you blind or just stupid?” she asks.
“This is my house! Don’t come in here and talk to me like that.”
“He loves you!” she shouts. I’ve never seen the woman show so much emotion. “What does he have to do? Tattoo it on his ass? Take out a billboard?”
“Go fuck yourself, Maggie,” I say, having wanted to say that for a long time.
“You think because he won’t use the word, he doesn’t feel it?” she asks. “Are you so insecure that you have to have him yell it from the rafters?”
“I didn’t need him to yell it. A quiet whisper to me would have been just fine,” I snark. “Either way, it’s not insecure to want to hear the father of your baby say he loves you, loves your child.”
“Ryder’s not scared of much,” she says. “I’ve seen the man do some idiotic things, but you? You scare him.”
“I’ve only loved him.”
She sits down on my sofa. “Love comes at a cost, and Ryder has paid more than you know.”
“I know about his mom, and the concert shooting, and I know there was something with some girlfriend, but it doesn’t change anything.”
“The girlfriend, Julia? Julia Cassidy?” she asks. “He told you the story, what happened with her?”
“No, of course not. He tells me nothing.”
Frustrated, I start throwing a few more things in boxes. I don’t have the time or energy for her, for this. I have my own life to put back together. Last time I moved, it was into that house with Ryder. I didn’t lift a damn finger. It feels good to have some control. Ryder can take that house and everything in it. I want none of it. Not that picture of us, not my bed, not his music room, or even one of his guitar picks. Something flashes in my mind. Wait? Julia Cassidy?
“J. C. His guitar picks.”
Maggie gives me a knowing nod then pulls out her phone. “Did you listen to all his albums?”
“Not all of them.”
“Hear a song called New Girl?”
“Don’t think so.”
She scrolls around on her phone then asks, “Remember I told you to look below the surface?” She hits play, and a song begins.
Like most country songs, the guitar comes first, driving the melody, but there’s something eerie about it. It’s slow, plodding, an edge to it. Then I hear Ryder’s brooding voice—haunting.
New girl in a small town
You were sixteen and so was I
Your momma warned you ’bout me
My daddy did the same
I was the jock
You were just the trouble I was looking for
Said the words I knew you wanted to hear
We went too far—way too far
Maggie hits the pause button. “His junior year of high school,” she starts. “I didn’t really know him. He was the star quarterback. Not much for the music program. A new girl started at the high school. She and Ryder became the popular couple in school.”
I recall the lyrics. “The words she ‘wanted to hear.’ Ryder told her he loved her?”
Maggie nods. “And they slept together. Ryder’s first time.”
“Did he really love her?” I ask. “Or was he just saying that to get her into bed?”
“Listen,” she says, starting the song again, skipping the chorus.
They say I’m tough, hardcore
The crowd pleaser
You called me a liar
If I lied, I didn’t know it
By summer,
I called it quits
There are things you shouldn’t say
Growing up in a small town
Too young to mean the words
But can’t take ’em back
She pauses the song again. “He believed it when he said he loved her,” Maggie says. “They broke up right before summer.”
Questions swirl in my head, but before I can say anything, she starts the song again.
You said you needed to talk
But you never told me
You never told me
Just threw my words in my face
Some words live forever
Some we take to our grave
New girl buried in a small town
Matching graves in a small town
My eyes pop in my head. “She’s dead?”
Maggie hits pause and nods. “And a part of Ryder is buried with her.”
“How did she die?”
“Listen to the chorus,” Maggie says then starts the song again.
We sat on that old porch swing
Swinging, swinging
We jump in the lake off that old rope
Swinging, swinging
Dancing under the stars, I twirled you around
Swinging, swinging
A horrible image flashes through my mind, and chills rush all over my body. “She hung herself?”
Maggie nods. “From the goal post on the football field.”
“Oh my God, did Ryder see her?”
“Football team was doing two-a-days in the summer. They showed up really early in the morning and found her. Ryder was there. Spray painted in the end zone next to the ladder, she wrote the words: You told me you loved me.”
So much starts clicking into place.
“He wasn’t the same kid after that,” Maggie says. “Small town, the whole community was wrecked. Ryder would hide out in the music room to avoid everyone at lunch, in the halls. Skipped most his classes.”
“That’s when you got him into music?”
She nods. “I remember the first time I handed him a guitar. He was so angry, so devastated. He strummed that thing so hard, he broke all the strings.”
“So you taught him how to channel all that emotion into music?”
“He started spending every free minute practicing. It seemed to bring him some peace. And he was a natural,” she says. “Poured everything he couldn’t say into music. Gave him an outlet. Ended up leaving school and running to Nashville.”
“And you went with him?”
Maggie doesn’t smile often, but a small one slips out. “He was just a kid. A talented kid who was hurting more than one person ever should. I had to.”
“I didn’t know any of this.”
“No one does,” Maggie says. “He can’t talk about it.”
“This is why he doesn’t use the word love anymore,” I whisper.
“It cost him too much,” Maggie says. “The day she was buried, he stood at her grave and promised he’d never say those words to another woman.”
Maggie hits the play button again, letting the song finish. We sit surrounded by Ryder’s voice, the sadness. Silent tears roll down my cheeks.
The song runs through my head. “There was a lyric,” I say. “Something about needing to talk. Was that just . . .”
“You’re starting to look below the surface,” Maggie says.
“What was it she never told him?” I ask.
Maggie leans forward and takes my hand. “The day before she died, she came to see Ryder, said she needed to talk. But she didn’t tell him.”
“Tell him what?”
“She was pregnant.”
Oh my God! My heart splits in two.
Two babies?
He’s lost two babies?
I couldn’t survive that.
Tears rush down my face. My heart and soul mourn for Ryder. I’ve never cried more for a person than I do in this moment.