Nowhere but Home A Novel - By Liza Palmer Page 0,25

rings at the end of that school year. I began to call him Ever and thought it so romantic that our secret affair had borne its very own pet name. I never really get to have pet names, seeing as how my real name is just about as ridiculous as they come.

For years we relished every minute of our treacherous love. It made it dangerous. It made us feel like Romeo and Juliet fighting for our love in the most hopeless of worlds.

In our senior year Everett’s parents set him up with Laurel. She was from a proper family. He couldn’t find an excuse not to follow orders. Everett’s parents had always suspected he’d never gotten over me, and this was their way of testing his allegiance to the Coburn legacy. Laurel and Everett started very publicly dating and I became the mistress. And the sad part? The really sad part was that I felt lucky to have that.

I remember sitting in Fawn’s double-wide during one of Mom’s longer times away and thinking how much better than all these people I was. I was going to live on Paragon Ranch when Everett finally came for me. I was going to be welcomed into the family and trot through the town square on a Paragon quarter horse in the Fourth of July parade. I was going to be happy. But as our senior year wore on, it became harder and harder for me to watch as Laurel swanned around town on Everett’s arm. Despite his tortured whispers about really loving me, they were crowned prom king and queen as I sat at home with Merry Carole, no Mom, and a fussy newborn.

I grew uncomfortable with being Everett Coburn’s dirty little secret.

We tried to keep away from each other when we were both at the University of Texas. As teenagers we had fantasies about stealing away to Austin and finally being together out in the open. But when Laurel also attended the university, it became clear that we were doomed sooner rather than later. We tried to stay away from each other, but we were each other’s addiction. We always needed one more drink. Always hungry. Always craving more.

But the writing was on the wall. It was time for Everett to grow up, settle down, and become the heir to the Coburn mythology. As Everett and I went into our final year at the University of Texas, we were desperate and raw. We knew our time together was running out and that our life in the shadows was coming to an end. Whenever I left him, I felt half of a whole. He undid me. I knew my life was about to be slashed into eras: With Everett and Without. And a life without Everett was the one thing I felt I couldn’t survive.

So I ran. I ran to Dallas so I didn’t think about those brown-and-yellow-pinwheeled green eyes and the way our bodies melded into each other as if we were made for each other. And I ran to Aspen so I wouldn’t remember the way he tugged his cowboy hat off whenever he walked into a room. And I ran to Branson to forget how his light brown hair curled and swirled around my fingers in the dark of the night. And I ran to Taos so I didn’t think about how his face lit up when he saw me. And I ran to Albuquerque to forget how tightly he held me as I finally sobbed about my mom dying. And I ran to Las Vegas to erase how we lay in each other’s arms that first time in that cheap motel just outside town, speechless and swept away. And I ran to San Diego so I didn’t have to think about Everett and Laurel standing arm and arm, their parents beaming and proud. And I ran to San Francisco so I didn’t have to make up another lie to Merry Carole and Dee for why I never dated anyone. And I ran to Los Angeles to forget how I didn’t shed a single tear when he told me he was going to marry Laurel because their parents felt it was the right thing to do. And I ran to New York to try to understand why the man I loved didn’t love me enough to be with me in the light of day.

“That’ll be one dollar, Queenie,” the woman says. I hand her a dollar bill and know now