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Chapter 34: Something I Can Never Have

Chapter 34: Something I Can Never Have 

February

Later that afternoon, I'm getting dressed for football, and all the guys are giving me a hard time about my promposal. 

I figured this would be coming.

She'll probably get it worse than I do. Pick-six Princess and all. It was a little over the top, but she makes me want to go over the top for her.

"Hey Chaplin," Geno says. "Who knew you were such a romantic bro? Rico Suave over here."

Lucas chimes in. "Yeah, I don't remember these displays of affection with Bree. How do you plan to tell her she's been replaced?"

"She's in Nashville. I doubt she gives a flying fuck about me." I shrug.

"That's not what I heard." Lucas raises his eyebrows.

"What did you hear?"

"Beto thinks he saw her last week. He had to take the day off school to drive his Grandma to the doctor. Anyway, when he went to Oakwood, he thought he saw Bree. It was like eleven in the morning. Said he saw 'that orange cheerleader' when she should have been at school."

"Well, lots of girls get spray tans." I sit on the bench and start tying my cleats. "Doesn't mean it was her. What's Oakwood?"

"It's a mobile home park. Beto's Grandma lives there," Lucas says.

I look up at him. "Bree lives with her Gram in a big house near the school."

"Yeah. It's weird. Hey, Beto! Come here."

Beto pulls his T-shirt on as he ambles over. "Que pasa?"

"Tell Chaplin what you told me, about seeing Bree."

"Oh, man. Yeah. It was so loco. I barely recognized her at first. She wasn't wearing any makeup. Hair was all scraggly. And she had on this oversized men's plaid flannel."

What the fuck?  

"It probably wasn't even her." I stand up and grab my sweatshirt out of the locker. 

"There's not that many orange chicks with white hair around here. Got a good look at her when I was walking Abuela to the car. Bree was lugging a basket of clothes across the lot to the laundry."

I feel nauseous all of a sudden. Something doesn't add up.

But if she really is back, I need to tell her about Peyton. I don't want her to be blindsided.

*****

After practice, I pack my stuff up and stand in the breezeway waiting for Peyton to come out of the girl's locker room.

"Hey," she says, smiling.

"Hey," I say back. "I'm going to run some errands, but I'll be by your house to pick you up around 7:30 for our big Valentine's Day celebration."

I hug her goodbye and run out into the pouring rain toward my car.

I open my map app on my phone and enter "Oakwood Mobile Home Park." It's a five-minute drive south on FM 350.

My heart is practically beating out of my chest as I pull into the rutted lot.

I have no idea which trailer is her dad's.

Sometimes I'm such an idiot.

The rain is pounding against my windshield, so I have to really focus. There are rows and rows of them—long, low white structures with narrow ends facing the gravel and dirt lot, each with a window on that end, peering into the gravel driveway with one window, like rows of square cyclops. I wind slowly through the park, searching for a white jeep.