Rounding Third - Michelle Lynn Page 0,51

playing for the Tigers up in Ridgemont.”

He looks down at me with a smug look splashed across his face, and I want to smack it off.

“Ella?” My mom’s hand grips my forearm, and wetness blurs my vision.

Pushing my tears back, I look up at her, swallowing the large lump that’s recently formed in my throat.

“Is it true?” she asks.

I briefly weigh my options. I could lie, but she’d know I was lying. Maybe she’d let it go, but maybe she’d use that pointed glare, too. Or I could tell the truth and wait for the lecture to start and continue for the rest of my time here.

“Yeah,” I say.

“Have you”—she places her hand over her heart, as though she can’t bear the thought—“seen him?”

I nod.

“Ella, answer me.” She’s lowered her voice, not to alert the eavesdropping, gossiping patrons that she’s doesn’t have control over her child.

“Yes.”

I leave out the fact that I made out with him a week ago.

“Oh, Ella.” From her disappointing tone, an outsider would assume that I’d announced I was pregnant.

“I’m sorry, Cinderella. I figured you’d told your mom,” Xavier says.

I whip around fast, my face heating from my anger toward him.

“You knew. You know, you were his friend once upon a time.”

I jab him in the chest with my finger, but he doesn’t budge. He doesn’t even roll back on his heels. Nothing. He’s like a brick wall.

“It was an accident,” I seethe through my teeth. I look around at everyone in the grocery store. “It could have been any one of you, so why were you hell-bent on pointing the finger at him?”

Tears well up in my eyes. As I’m unable to find an escape, they fall down my cheeks.

“We should have each other’s backs, not chastise and banish one another. It was horrible for us. When I say us, I mean, me and Crosby. We are the ones who relive that nightmare every day.”

“He killed them,” Xavier mumbles next to me.

I use all my force to knock him from that pedestal he somehow feels entitled to stand on.

“Fuck you,” I say.

My mom gasps along with all the other women in the store.

I turn around to face my mom. Her mouth is hanging open, and her eyes are pinging at anyone but me.

“I’ll be in the car.”

With that, I don’t wait, but when I reach the car, it’s locked. Not wanting to stand in front of the car until she’s done apologizing for her daughter’s outburst, I figure a walk will cool me off.

I’m halfway down Main Street where all the shops line each side of the road with rows of autumn red trees. You could easily confuse us with Vermont or Maine, but Beltline holds its own against the New England fall trees.

“Ella Keaton?” a voice calls out from the opposite side of the street.

I roll my eyes, searching for who’s ready to point fingers now.

I glance up to find Uncle Wally. He’s wearing his tie-dyed shirt and Birkenstocks, smoking a cigarette outside his store, Groovy Self. This is what happens when you have clout in a town. My paternal ancestors were the founders of Beltline, and that fact is a huge deal here. So, when Wally suggested opening a hippie-type store back in the sixties, no one objected. Here he is, fifty years later, still in his ratty, worn-in sandals and his signature chest-length beard, gray now, but everything else screams young and youthful.

“Uncle Wally!” I scream, looking both ways before crossing the street.

I rush into his arms, and he tosses the cigarette in his ashtray, holding me tight. Suddenly, all the emotions overtake me, and I start crying into his smoke and patchouli-scented shirt.

“Come in.” He guides me into the store, directing me to his rainbow-colored hammock chair. He sits down in one of his own, waiting for me to talk.

“Where’s Aunt Darla?”

“She’s out in Colorado.” He winks.

I laugh. They’ve been going out there to work at stores with their friends on the chance that Kentucky will legalize marijuana, so they can open a store. I doubt being from the founding family will be enough to warrant this town to agree to a pot store.

“So, how long are we going to make small talk? Why are you crying?”

He crisscrosses his legs, sitting up, showing his undivided attention. I love Uncle Wally. He’s the only one who told me to chase after Crosby when he left. The only one who said to never let him go because we had a rare love. Sadly,