Page 60 of Mountain Pine
It’s a chicken salad sandwich and my favorite chips. “Where did you find these?”
“I had to run an hour out of town this afternoon to get them.”
Holy crap, she went out of her way like that for me? “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She sits down with her own little plate and has a different side with her sandwich. “And don’t worry, I bought all they had so there’s more at my house for you. Eat those up and enjoy them, Con.”
I’m not going to get all in my feels over a bag of special seasoned kettle chips. Nope. Not even if she knows I would make one snack bag last days because they were so hard to find when I was young and more expensive.
“This is amazing.” The first crunch and burst of flavor and the addiction begins. I stuff two more in my mouth. “You didn’t have to do that, Taylor. I don’t want you going out of your way for me.”
“I go where I want, anyway I want. Now shut up and eat your dinner.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The sandwich is also one of my favorites. No one makes chicken salad like Taylor, except her mother. There was a time in my teen years that Corrine would pack my lunch along with Taylor’s every day—because she knew my parents didn’t have a lot of food in the house—and it was always a fat asschicken salad sandwich on honey wheat.
“This brings me back,” I say, chomping down on another big bite. “I swear this stuff was in my veins freshman year of high school.”
Taylor groans. “Ugh, don’t even mention that time of our youth. What a nightmare.”
“How so?” Because I had a blast and she was with me for most of it.
“Homecoming that year ruined all other dances for me. I still carry negative juju from that shit.”
My stomach knots. “What do you mean? I thought you had a great time at HoCo with Feral Daryl.” He was aptly nicknamed that after he got bit by a racoon and had to get rabies shots.
“I didn’t go with him.”
Okay, she’s lost her damn head. “Yes, you did. I remember. He asked you last minute, and you were so excited to go.”
“He did ask me, but…” She flicks a piece of her bread into the fire. “He wanted me to meet him at the park before the dance so we could walk together.”
Okay, that right there is unacceptable. She shouldn’t have had to go anywhere by herself late at night. In a dress and presumably heels. What a fucktwat.
“Why didn’t he just pick you up at your house?”
“Because it was all a joke,” she says, making my chicken salad turn to acid in my gut. “He asked me on a dare and told me to meet him at the park so we could walk to the dance together. But he never showed up. I went to his house after waiting for an hour, scared something happened to him. He was home playing video games. Stared at me like I was crazy for showing up. Then he called me out in front of all his onlinefriends, which he then put on surround sound so I could hear them laugh through their video game.”
The amount of rage that boils in my veins is going to cause an aneurysm. “Why didn’t I know about this?”
“Because no one knew about it. You, Dean, and Bennet never went to the dance, so it was easy to hide from you all that night.” She shrugs. “And Nick and Carly didn’t show up either, which I only found out about because when I was walking home super late, I ran into them at the diner, and she apologized for not showing up to the dance. I went along with it and the next day I pretended that I had a great time when you asked about it.”
“You mean you lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie. Ididhave a great time. Just not at homecoming.” She takes another bite of her sandwich and chews as she talks. “Nick, Carly, and I stole her mom’s car, and we went mudding with it.”
“And Daryl got away with humiliating you.”
I hate it here.
“Daryl doesn’t have that kind of power over me, Con. He was a loser. So were his friends. But it hurt my feelings a lot, and I was glad he was one of the cyber school kids, so I didn’t have to see him in the hallways every day.”
Rage boils in my veins. “You should have throat-punched him.”
“That’s a Conner move. Not a Taylor move.”
“No, a Taylor move would be to ignore it and move on.” I look over at her. “It’s not in me to be like that.”
