Against A Wall: A Stonecut County Romance by Cate C. Wells

Author:Cate C. Wells [Wells, Cate C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-01-20T16:00:00+00:00

7

GLENNA

Cash wouldn’t leave until I agreed to go to Sunday dinner at his parents’. I was reeling from Toby and the moment in the kitchen and my stale beer stink and my fuzzy teeth. I got flustered, and I said yes.

Thank goodness, Cash didn’t drop by work on Saturday. Toby was being weird, interspersing the cold shoulder with long, piercing looks. He did that all the time when we dated. It made me so anxious. I’d ask him what was wrong, and he’d say nothing, then ignore me, then give me the look again. Rinse, repeat.

I’d end up bursting into tears, and Toby would say I was being crazy and hormonal.

It’s strange how I recognized the pattern years ago, but I never could break it. I’d be outside of myself, peering in. Oh, here’s Toby stonewalling. Now my stomach hurts. Here’s the long look. I try to talk to him about it. Next, he gaslights me. Now, I lose it.

I knew exactly what was happening, but I danced to his tune anyway like a marionette.

Why?

‘Cause I’m that type of person? The easily susceptible kind, the weak-willed sucker who can be manipulated? Or because going along is easier than pushing back?

Like I’m going along with Cash?

Why the hell am I doing it?

Yeah, maybe fake dating Mr. Popular will improve the situation in town a little bit, take some pressure off Dad. Going by the date at Birdy’s—I don’t know. Maybe there’s something to it. Only Addison was straight-out rude to me. That’s probably a much smaller number than if I’d gone out to a bar alone.

But how is dinner with his folks going to make things better for the Dobbs family? I don’t believe the Walls are behind any of the hate mail. They’re too classy. And churchy.

And whatever happened in the kitchen had nothing to do with fake dating. We were both sober. Nervous. Even though Cash was being his usual arrogant self, he wasn’t grabby. He was—careful.

And it felt—

Familiar.

Maybe because we did hang out a lot when we were kids. I never thought of it that way—that I was hanging out with Cash, too. Dina was my friend, but wasn’t Cash always around? I don’t usually think about the year or so before Mom died. It’s too close to the event.

I love thinking about when I was little and she’d take me to the park, swing me on the swings and sing, “Say, say, oh, playmate.” How she’d cut my peppers and arrange them in a flower. How she set up a little desk next to hers at the newspaper with all my craft supplies and my own Rolodex which I used as a sticker book.

But I try not to remember middle school. All those memories have shadows.

Cash texted that he’d pick me up at five, and it’s only noon. It’s my day off, so I drove up to the mountain. I’m hiking my usual trail from Lowland Notch to Harrow Ridge. Mr. Henry said he saw Phat Thom out this way a few weeks ago.

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