The Midwife’s Playlist: A Now Entering Hillford Novel Read online

  Why is it surprising? Why am I sitting here, stunned by some revelation I should have had years ago? Of course I’m still in love with her. I didn’t sever my heart from the rest of me when I passed the Leaving Hillford sign. I stayed up four days straight, driving with a gut full of trucker pills just so I could put that much more distance between us, that much faster. I drank like a fish, or my father, every year on her birthday, just so I didn’t have to think about the way Easton Lawrence still made me feel, no matter how far apart we were.

  I didn’t want to think about her hair, how it smelled like that cheap apple shampoo from Owens Drugstore, or how it tickled my face all those nights I lay beside her.

  The bubble of her laugh from her throat, whenever I said something witty and surprising. The way she’d painted her ring fingernails a different color from the rest, always, as long as I’d known her.

  Her skin against mine the first time we dared take things further, how her arms felt ice-cold on top and then warm underneath, my lips traveling back and forth from that sunbaked skin to the pale, smooth part the world couldn’t touch.

  How she’d keep shaking after I made her come, thighs tense and hips rocking up to mine. The way her aftershocks were so powerful, they’d make me finish just seconds later. Like it wasn’t just Easton I was getting off to, but her pleasure—knowing I made her feel something no one else did.

  I still think about how my life always felt red. If I’d had her abilities when we were kids, I just knew that’s what the sounds of my life would’ve looked like: hot, alarm-siren red, all the time.

  But Easton was a cool, blurred blue, washing across it every time things felt like they would fissure and explode. The right color at the right time.

  How could I not be?

  This time, Easton meets me halfway for the kiss. I feel a tear from her face transfer to mine and think of that night she found me on the tire swing: the first time I saw her cry. I remember being floored by the fact she would cry for me. That anyone would. But especially her, and especially then.

  I wonder why she’s crying now. I get the feeling it’s not for me, this time. Just because of me.

  My fingertips feel the seeping wetness through her shorts; I rub up and down a moment, feeling her open for me through the fabric. Feeling her want me.

  I steady my rhythm and change it to a circle, tight and focused around her clit. The fabric rubbing against her skin is drowned by the engine, so I pause and turn it off. I want to hear every sound.

  She’s soaked. Tears build on her lashes.

  I can hear how wet she is. The moans she wants to make but won’t, balled up in her throat.

  She shuts her eyes, the telltale sign that she’s close. I’ve never forgotten.

  My hand presses harder. The friction builds. My erection strains against my jeans as her chest swells and shudders with every breath.

  “Stop,” she whispers. I pray—actually pray in my head, with an “amen” and everything—that she doesn’t mean it.

  But when she says it again, using my name this time, I shut my eyes and listen, painful as it is.

  “We can’t do this.” She grabs my hand with both of hers and moves it away less than an inch, like it’s painful for her to stop, too.

  “Not even once?” I smirk, half-joking.

  She crosses her legs and takes a long breath, which answers my question. No, not even once. Never again.

  “I think about you so much.” I touch her bottom lip with my thumb and study it, wondering how I ever left Hillford with a mouth like this belonging to me. A girl like this. A heart as beautiful as hers.

  How I’ll ever manage to leave again.

  But I will. I know it, and she knows it. Which is probably why she just shakes her head at me, blinking hard and sending the tears down her cheeks, instead of saying anything back.

  Ford drives me back to my parents’ house. We don’t speak. As discreetly as possible, I check to make sure the damp spot on my shorts isn’t visible; it’s not. Thank God.

  Telling him to stop removed a good five years from my life just now, I’m sure. I don’t think the human brain was meant to pull those kinds of maneuvers, pivoting from wild pleasure and pent-up desire to painful responsibility. My central nervous system has whiplash.

  But that’s nothing compared to what he did to me—the words he just said, my greatest hope and most crippling fear rolled into one, now confirmed.

  He still loves me.

  If only he hated me with the same stomach-twisting fury I hate him. Things would be exponentially easier if Ford felt the same sting in his brain that I did, whenever thoughts of me flitted through. I wish he saw cars that looked like mine and cursed at them on the highway. I wish he hated the smell of something, perfume or cut grass, just for linking a few brain cells to memories of me, the way I hate cigarette smoke, spilled oil, and dry dirt kicked up in a breeze.

  If Ford hated me, at least then I could keep telling myself I really do hate him.

  “I shouldn’t have....” His sentence fills the car, too big for my open window to bail out.

  I just nod. He shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have let him.

  “We stopped,” I remind him quietly. “That’s what’s important.”

  “Yeah.” He downshifts as we near my parents’ house. There’s a tightness to his voice that wasn’t there before. “Guess so.”

  My pulse is still tearing through my head. The sound of the emergency brake when he yanks it up is a whip against the inside of my skull.

  “At least we, uh...” He shrugs as he rubs the corner of his eye. “At least we moved past the whole awkward part of seeing each other again. Like, I’m just really relieved you don’t actually hate me.”

  Call it petty, or childish, but I want the hatred back: the white-hot rage that boils my brain every time I think of him. It was hell, but at least it was easy.

  I undo my seatbelt and grab the milk from the backseat. “Who says I don’t?”

  Ford laughs, but stops when I slam my door shut and start for the house.

  “Whoa, whoa, you don’t get to play that game.” He slams his door, too. “Don’t run hot and cold with me, Easy. Pick one.”

  “Cold.” I hitch my purse onto my shoulder. “Ice. But thank you for fixing the car. I do appreciate that.”

  “And the rest?”

  I halt, halfway to the porch, and set my jaw. I knew it would happen just like this: if I let Ford back into my life even an inch, he’d drive in by a mile and then some.

  “Like I said: good thing we stopped.”

  Ford rests his arms on the roof, clasping his hands in front of him with this smirk that makes me want to hurl the milk jug at his head.

  Worse, it also makes me want to get back in the car, drive out to a field with him, and finish what we started.

  “You’re going to think about me later.”

  If there’s one thing I know about Ford, it’s that he expects me to push back. He might even thrive on it. Maybe the only way to win this game is to play it his way, at least a little.

  “Probably. I’m chopping cucumbers for a salad, so.”

  “Ouch.” He laughs, but his eyebrows raise. I’ve surprised him.

  Time to do it again.

  “Here’s the thing, Ford.” I pause, long enough to ensure he’ll listen. “The fact I still find you sexually attractive is totally irrelevant to me. All biology, no emotion. Whether I think about you like that or not—if I touch myself tonight and pretend it’s you—means absolutely nothing, no matter how much you wish it did.”

  Slowly, his smile sets into a line. I see his Adam’s apple shift, but he stays silent.

  “In fact,” I go on, “I probably will touch myself tonight.” I pretend to wipe a smudge from the metal, polishing the red paint like the skin of an apple. When I look up at him, I make sure my hair has fallen over my face a bit, the way he used to love.

  “And as soon as it’s over,” I whisper, “I’ll remember exa
ctly why I’ve spent so much time hating you: because you’re the kind of guy who leaves as soon as the high ends. A jackass who gets what he wants, then bails because shit gets hard. And speaking of hard?” Now I mimic his smirk. It’s easier than I expected; I’ve only had it memorized for over a decade. “Have fun jacking off knowing I’d rather fuck myself than you.”

  Ford’s jaw tightens. I see him tuck his tongue against his cheek, pretending to restrain the perfect comeback for my sake. Truth is, he’s pissed he can’t think of one. I know him well.

  And God, how I wish I didn’t.

  “We should at least attempt civility, here,” he calls. I stop, but don’t turn. “We’re going to be neighbors again, for a little while.”

  I laugh, and it’s not even to get on his nerves: I genuinely find this funny. His cockiness, his naiveté, the fucking audacity to assume he knows every detail of my life, just because he used to.

  “I don’t live here anymore,” I say, over my shoulder. “Remember? So, no—we aren’t ‘neighbors again.’ And we never will be.”

  I hope he doesn’t catch the snag in my voice when I add this last part. We never will be.

  There are a hundred things Ford and I will never be.

  Neighbors is just the start.

  * * *

  “Mom, stop.”

  “If you don’t take the leftovers, they’ll just rot in the fridge.” She shoves the Tupperware at me again. “Honestly, Easton, it’s free food.”

  “It’ll rot in my fridge.” I slide it right back onto the counter. “My roommates are vegan. And I can’t eat almost an entire lasagna by myself.”

  From the living room, where he’s half-hibernating in a recliner with a cup of black coffee and his pants undone, Dad calls, “Tell her to freeze it.”

  Mom nods and looks at me with her eyebrow raised. “Freeze it.”

  I stifle my sigh and compromise: half the lasagna goes with me, the other half stays here, in perfectly portioned containers. She’ll find someone who wants them.

  After our goodbyes, with my stained plastic full of meat and noodles I’m never going to finish, I step out onto the porch and kiss Grandma goodbye. She’s busy being an absolute Southern cliché: white rocking chair, sweet tea in one hand, paper fan in the other, as though we don’t have the modern miracle of air conditioning blasting through the house.

  “Thanks again for letting me drive the car,” I tell her. “It was fun.”

  She nods, smiling. “’Night, April. Don’t stay out too late.”

  I freeze, one hand on the railing, the other balancing the lasagna. My skin goes cold.

  “Easton,” I correct. “And I’m not.... I won’t be coming back. I don’t live here anymore, remember?” It would amaze me how differently I said these same words to Ford, less than an hour ago—if I weren’t holding my breath, waiting for her to realize her mistake.

  Grandma squints at me, like she can’t decide if I’m being a brat or not, before shaking her head. “Easton,” she says. “Of course, of course. You’re taking that leftover lasagna, I hope? Your mama’s been going on about it all day. ‘I’m making extra for Easton,’ that’s all I’ve been hearing.”

  I smile and let the relief numb the worries still spinning in my head. “Yeah, I’ve got it. She and Dad insisted.”

  Grandma nods, laughing to herself, and sips her tea. I say goodnight again. This time, she gets my name right.

  Eight

  “Chrissy said she saw you with Easton, today.”

  I barely glance at Caroline, mostly because her tone instantly pisses me off. I’m not sure why. We bust each other’s chops all day long.

  Maybe it’s not her I’m pissed at.

  “Yeah, I was with her. What do you care?”

  Dad glances up from Bentley, who he’s been holding—and staring at—for an hour straight. If he noticed me out in the garage with Easton this afternoon, he pretends he didn’t.

  Caroline bites into another Twizzler from the pack I bought her. It was her most powerful pregnancy craving, and apparently still going strong. Her head snaps back a little when it breaks. “I thought Easton hated you.”

  “She doesn’t hate me.” To be honest, I no longer have any clue what she feels for me. Today created way more questions than it answered. But I like pretending.

  “Did you guys talk?”

  I stare at the television and rearrange the hospital-issued pillows in the chair behind me, silent.

  “Fine, don’t tell me.” Caroline waves her hand. She passes me the Twizzlers. I take one, just to have something to do.

  Bentley stretches in his sleep, freeing one arm from his swaddle. Dad is quick on the draw: he bundles him back up in half a second. The smile he gives that kid, just for existing, makes me feel something weird. I’m happy, but there’s also this feeling like, where was this when we were kids? Not jealousy: just bitterness. They say people are better grandparents than they were parents. It must be true, because our father has turned into a sitcom character overnight. Except for the dying-and-it-shows part.

  “Dad,” I prompt, and nod at the clock when he tears his attention from the baby. “We should get going. You have to take your medicine at eight.”

  “Five minutes,” he mutters, like I’m being ridiculous.

  I knead the headache down from my sinuses and ask Caroline what time she’s getting released in the morning.

  “They said ten. Can you pick me up?”

  “Yeah, just have to install the car seat.” As soon as I say it, I curse. “Wait: no rear seats in Dad’s truck.”

  Caroline draws a breath. Her mouth twists. It’s not a scared face, just thinking, but it hits me the same way. Bennett’s not here to make things easier on her, so it’s up to me.

  “I’ll figure it out,” I promise.

  “What about Bennett’s family?” Dad nods at me, my signal to come take Bentley from his arms and place him back into Caroline’s. “They should be helping you out. Could’ve left you that station wagon of theirs, at the damn least.”

  “His parents sent me a check,” she says quietly. I squeeze her shoulder. Dad isn’t very tactful.

  “They haven’t visited? I know they moved to Florida right after the funeral, but shit, you’d think—”

  “It’s a long drive,” I interrupt, noticing Caroline’s imminent tears. “I’m sure they’ll visit soon. But for right now, let’s figure out the car thing.”

  “The Lawrences.” Dad points at me, like this is some brilliant plan he’s surprised I didn’t come up with myself. Gee, wonder why.

  “We haven’t talked to them in months, Dad.” Caroline readjusts Bentley’s hat. “That’d be weird, asking them for a favor like that.”

  I squeeze her shoulder again; she’s definitely saying this for my benefit. But fact is, the Lawrences might be our best option. I’ll just have to suck it up.

  In the parking deck, Dad watches me light a cigarette. I half-expect him to remind me I can’t smoke on the hospital grounds, what with all his sudden fatherly abilities, but he just hits my arm and asks to bum one.

  “Thought you were quitting.” I hand him the pack and my lighter. We climb into the truck, hot-boxing ourselves until we’re off hospital property and can open the windows.

  “Harder than I thought.” He exhales, then stares at the cigarette. “Maybe because I know it won’t make a difference.”

  I nod. Caroline is sensitive to comments like these; any mention of Dad’s condition or impending death make her burst into tears. For some reason, it doesn’t have the same effect on me. It barely has any effect on me, actually.

  Might want to look into that. Sounds like a therapy goldmine, not that I’d ever step foot in a shrink’s office.

  “Hungry? We could grab some food from Spoonbread. Hudson owes me a couple dinners for felling that tree at the back of his mom’s property.”

  Dad shakes his head, then shrugs, so I pull into the diner parking lot.

  Hudson nods hello
when he sees me through the pass-through to the kitchen. “Calling in the favor?”

  I slink my way past the counter and through the swinging door. Not exactly allowed, but nothing I’d get in trouble for, either: Hudson, Tanner, Bram and I ran all over this place back in the day.

  “If you aren’t busy.” He insists he isn’t, even with the ticket wheel basically packed. I pick something easy. “Two grilled cheeses? And fries. But only if you have some already dropped, I don’t want—”

  “Got you, man.” He glances at me from underneath his hat bill. Hudson was the other “quiet one” in our group besides me, if you could assign any of us a role like that: once we were together, we were all pretty loud, rowdy, and a mild—yet persistent—headache to local law enforcement.

  Still, Hudson’s always been the one who talks the least, sees the most, and measures life in favors given and favors received. Not because he gives a shit if someone owes him anything. He just hates owing other people.

  While he works, we excavate the same vein of small talk we managed when I first moved back: work, weather, broad strokes on the families.

  “Heard Caroline had the baby,” he says, after a pause. I’m positive it was some impromptu moment of silence for Bennett. “A boy, right?”

  I nod. “They come home tomorrow. Dad turned my old room into a nursery. I don’t think he’s been this excited over anything in years.”

  Hudson adjusts the grill press on the sandwiches. “He doing any better?”

  Usually, I’d guard personal news like a murder confession. Hillford has a way of taking a tiny secret and blowing it up into a verified crisis, so I can only imagine what it would do to “Reese McLean is dying.” We’d get mourners bringing casserole to the house long before he’s gone, church ladies flooding every room to mop up dust and gossip, and as many fake well-wishers as real ones. No, thanks.