I Just Wanted to be Edgy Too

Chapter Seventy

Van

I'd driven her the long way to Llanddulas, a small town not far from where I grew up. Driven us through the streets I knew when I was younger. Past the sprawling beach where we'd light fires and toss back cheap whiskey until the authorities broke it up. She'd pined over the water, over the calmness of it even as it lapped the shoreline. She loved the sea, or so she said, and I smiled to myself knowing the house we were looking at had a decent view of the Irish Sea.

She'd frowned only twice, and it was as we'd waited in traffic and dealt with the chaos of the workday coming to a close. I sometimes underestimated Llandudno, especially at the end of a workday when season was beginning. I'd been away long enough that I'd almost forgotten it.

"Ya'lright, miss?"

"Yeah...it's just...I didn't realize Llandudno was this...big."

"It's a proper tourist trap it is." I said as I glanced out the window nervously for a moment, wondering if anyone who wasn't a local would recognize me. I frowned at the thought.

"You made it sound like you were from someplace much smaller." Her eyes narrowed.

"To be fair, it's not like this but in the spring and summer. And it's grown. Lots." And it had. New buildings replaced what used to be empty lots or near vacant houses, and the shops had multiplied further than the heart of downtown. It wasn't the Llandudno that I knew, just like I wasn't the Van it knew. We'd both grown. Become something.

"I prefer less people than this."

"Yet you live in one of the busiest cities in your state?" I laughed as I spoke.

"That's not my fault." She said proudly. "My mom and stepdad moved us around a lot, and before they moved closer to the mountains, we spent a lot of years outside of Charlotte. It was the last place that I had any real friends. And it's where I met...him. I just ended up staying. Never bothered to leave it. Even when he wasn't staying with me, or when we were cold...off." Her voice trailed off the longer she spoke.

"How'd you meet him." I guess a part of me wanted to know. A part of me wanted to understand the younger sides of her a little more. And we didn't broach the subject of Barns often, so when she did bring it up, I tried to keep conversation alive.

She hesitated for a moment. "Bumming around concert halls. I worked the ticket booth for a local venue. He'd come in with his friend, and he'd always tell me he was going to play the stage at the venue one day. I didn't believe him. He looked too rough to be taken seriously. He bet me. Said if he did play it, I had to go on a date with him. And when I asked him what would happen if he lost the bet, he said he wouldn't. There was no losing for him." She half smiled at the memory before it vanished entirely, not even leaving a trace.

I imagined it wasn't always bad and there were parts of her past, like the beginning, where things felt normal. But I could hear the threat in her memory, hear the poison in Barns' words back then. There was no losing.

I shivered at the thought, hate rolling through me like wildfire.

"What about you? How did your meet your ex?" And just like that, we were done discussing Barns. He was almost a memory to us at this point, and maybe if anyone knew where he was, he would be.

I had half a mind to ask which ex she was referring to, but I knew who she was talking about. The one before her. The one I thought I might have married. The one I lost myself over. The one I'd discussed with her in the heat of a fight all those months ago while she spit insults at me.

"She was a friend. Used to come to our shows. I'd dated others around her, and she was always there when I broke up with someone...always a rebound. One day, that turned into something more."