The Tattooed Devil Wears Chucks

Chapter 58: The Mind of a Teenage Girl

"I know who Gary is," she nods.

"Yeah, obviously because when I walked in you were working.  I saw you behind the counter, you were smiling and trying to explain The Odyssey to some guy that I think liked you and honestly gave zero shits about Greek mythology." I chuckle and see a little bit a smile come through to her cheeks.  "I wanted to walk up to you so bad Gabby.  I wanted to grab you by the hand, run out the door with you, and never look back.  But then I heard you laugh and I knew you were okay.  You were where you needed to be.  You were in school, you had a job I knew was awesome because I had the same one when I was there, and you were alive.  You were safe.  I wasn't. I needed to keep you that way."

She sets down the jean skirt on top of the other folded clothes and looks back to me.  "That wasn't your choice to make.  None of it was."

"Gabby, someone was trying to kill us!"

"No Jax, someone was trying to kill you.  And I get it, that is fucking scary.  But you hid it from me, you and dad both did.  There are no tallies on my picture.  I was eighteen, an adult.  You and my dad knew exactly what you were doing.  I could have gone with you.  I could have met up with you a month later and gone to the same school as you.  But you guys knew that I would go to UNI with Cole and Morgan.  Dad knew I would be finally be away from the tattooed devil in chucks.  That's exactly what happened.  He just wasn't planning on me coming home pregnant that day and it ate at him that he may have ruined something real.  And you... you wanted me to have this normal college life that you didn't get to finish.  I didn't want to be normal! I wanted you!  I would have gone with you to any town, any school, as long as I was you I was going to be okay.  But you left me and I still didn't get to choose for myself.  I left this fucking town thinking that for once... I had made my own decision.  I was having a baby, going to school and I was NEVER coming back here.  Then I get dragged back here by my fiancé and my family and find out it was all a lie!  I didn't get to make any of those decisions for me."

"I'm sorry, Books.  I would do it again if I knew that there would never be a tally or an X on your picture.  Yours or Zooey's."

"My dad knew I was lonely in Minnesota.  I didn't date, Cole and Morgan weren't there and I refused to come home.  So he sent Kane to a football game.  One game, that's all it took.  I wasn't lonely anymore and he apologized for senior year, he was like a little slice of home, friends and family that I was missing.  You were gone.  You weren't an option..."

She buries her head in her hands with sobs as I try and stop the knot in my throat from unleashing my own.  "It's okay that you love him, Gabby.  I left, I never expected you to stay single."

"He's not you."

"Gabby..." I choke out her name and shake my head.  I don't want to listen to this anymore.

"I'm engaged.  And he's not you.  I love him though.  And I'm marrying him on Saturday."

"I know, Books. Trust me, I know."

"I found something weird!"  Sydney appears in the doorway holding the  stack of yearbooks.  Gabby and I both wipe our soaked faces and give her our attention.  She sits on the floor, pushing the cups, beer and board games back under the bed to give us room to spread out.  She tosses the books into the center.  "Gabby, look at those."

Gabby's face hardens as she looks at the covers of the yearbooks.  "Why would Courtney have Luxberg High yearbooks from 2012 through 2018 when she only went there for the 2018 school year?"

They are right. We moved here in 2018, these aren't her yearbooks. I pick one up and begin flipping through it. The girls each grab one and begin doing the same.

"Does yours have stickers?" Gabby looks to us and holds her book open for us to see. She's displaying the pictures towards the end of the book of the actual students by name. Some of them have stickers in the corners of their pictures. So I flip to the back of my book; sure enough, there are stickers on some of the photos. Not all of them, only a few.

"Mine has them."

"Mine too," Sydney agrees.

We pull another set of the books and begin flipping, more sticker filled pages appear. They are random stickers too. Some are stars, some are little hearts, some are Backstreet Boys. It's as if she was using whatever she had lying around.

"I have a sticker on me, maybe she was just putting stickers by her friends. I mean look, I have one," she skips the pages. "Lilly has one, Morgan has one..." Then she holds up an older book. "Kane and Felix both have one."

"But how the hell would Courtney know Thomas Kelley?" Sydney points to another random kid. "He moved away to Oregon before the Parkers moved here. This was his house. And look... Cole doesn't have a sticker. I thought they were friends."

Gabby shrugs and then pulls out her phone to look at the time. "Syd, we need to be back before Kane and Tyler get back with the truck. You need to glue those stupid nails on me."

Sydney gets up quickly to retrieve her pink caddy while Gabby begins stacking the yearbooks.

"Bar-Boy, didn't go to the carnival?"

She doesn't look at me as she stands with the books. "No. Their dad is dying of COPD and they are moving him into a nursing home after the wedding. They had to empty out their old rooms today."

"Sorry," I mutter, feeling like an ass. I can hate the Porter brothers all I want but I know they lost their mom to cancer too. Losing a family member sucks.

"You didn't know." She gives another shrug as she walks into the kitchen.

"Jax, can I take those yearbooks with me to work? I'll keep them hidden, I want to look into them further." I watch as Sydney begins to glue on nails to Gabby. Gabby looks as though she has zero interest in these, which knowing Books, she doesn't.

"Yeah, Syd. That's fine."