Everywhere, Everything. ★ STURNIOLO TRIPLETS

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

AUTHOR'S NOTE: SURPRISSEEE! In honor of the start of tour (and your unwavering patience and support) here is the next chapter! I hope you love it <3 MUAH xoxo N

Morin Hill was dead silent this time of night. I'd gotten used to how the towns out here closed up before the sun could set, but sometimes it still surprised me to see all the shop lights out and not a single person on the sidewalk after 7pm. Back home, kids hung out at gas stations and grocery store parking lots well into the early morning. You could leave your house at any time during the night and find a group of at least five people huddled around a park bench or bus stop doing God knows what. But not here.

I never thought I'd miss the familiarity of the streets back home, of knowing that even when I felt most alone, I could crack my bedroom window and hear conversations from strangers.

When I cracked the passenger window, the only sound I could hear was the distant clanking of a flagpole.

We barely made it to the Henry Morin memorial before Jenny said, "Don't think you're getting out of telling me what happened."

She lowered the radio, and my head dropped against the headrest. Stevie Nicks' voice was a whisper, singing "But time makes you bolder, even children get older, and I'm gettin' older, too."

I was hoping we'd at least make it halfway to Woodbury before getting into it, or, I don't know - never.

"Do we have to talk about it right now?" I pulled my legs up onto the seat and picked at dirt embedded in the denim.

Jenny cut me one of her signature looks. I had my answer.

I groaned, then blew out a long breath, catching a glimpse into the dark windows of The Nest as we drove. An onslaught of images hit me like a semi truck and I did my best to detach from the memories that lived there.

I licked my thumb and scrubbed at a spot of dried mud on my knee. "They lied," I said simply. "About pretty much everything."

Jenny turned the volume dial down completely so that the sound of asphalt beneath our tires was clear. "And what is everything?"

I told her about Carter, about the tour, about my mom and Mark and how I let myself fall for a boy that I knew would hurt me. And I did it all without crying, which was shocking, but I suppose my body had to run out of tears eventually.

We were crossing over into Colchester by the time I finished.

Jenny took a couple of moments to process, and I picked at the skin around my thumb. Laying it all out made it hard to ignore how badly I was hurting. Everything happened so fast, one shitty occurrence after another, and now that I was in the wake of it all - I wasn't sure what to do with the pain.

"Have I ever told you about my first love?" Jenny asked. Her tone was soft, borderline sentimental, and I shook my head.

Jenny never had children. From what I knew, she'd never been married either, and while I assumed she'd been in love at some point in her life, it didn't feel like my place to ask.

"What was their name?" I watched a wistful smile spread across her thin lips. The wrinkle around her mouth deepened.

"Jimmy. James Mills...Jr." she emphasized the suffix by raising her index finger and pointing at me.

"Why does that name sound familiar?" I thought out loud.

"It should, you've seen it half a dozen times sitting down on that dock."

She waited for the pieces to click into place and when they did I whipped my head towards her, slamming my hands on the center console. "James Mills. As in Old Mill Lake?"