Free Heartbreak, Tennessee by Ruby Laska Page B

smile.
    “Sheryn, would you
mind too much if I tagged along to that movie?”
    “Not at all.” Despite
the trademark big grin on Sheryn’s face, Amber could tell her friend was
worried about her. At least she had the good judgment to give the subject a
rest. “I’ll even buy the popcorn.”
     
    Several hours later,
Amber reached for the air conditioning button on the console of Sheryn’s sporty
little Mercedes, but then changed her mind and slid down the windows as she
pulled out of the motel parking lot. The car was as comfortable to her as her
own, since she did most of the driving when she and Sheryn were together. She
relaxed in the buttery leather seat and enjoyed the rush of the wind on her
face.
    The movie had done her
good; a couple of hours in the cool darkness in the theater allowed her to take
a rest from her thoughts. The images on the screen barely registered, though
the light-hearted comedy had Sheryn in stitches, her unrestrained laughter
filling the near-empty theater.
    It was good to hear
her laugh. As had happened so many times before, Amber took comfort in her
friend’s happiness, burying her own worries in the comfort of close friendship.
Gray would be here soon, and Sheryn’s mood was sure to lift several more
notches.
    Still, Amber sensed a
phase of her life coming to an end. Not much longer, she could tell, would she
be content to live through others, her own tightly-controlled life pathetically
empty compared to those around her, who had families, children, hobbies,
dreams.
    Who had passion .
    Unresolved issues
demanded to be settled. It was time. She was an adult woman, and she had a life
to live. Parts of her long locked away sensed the coming release and demanded
to make themselves heard.
    Once, long ago, she
had followed wherever her heart led, opening her arms wide to take in all that
life had to offer. While she might never be so free again, she had to learn to
trust once more.
    The key was Mac. Seeing
him again had made it all so clear to her. She had been going through the
motions of living, but for so long she’d been just cruising along on
auto-pilot, choosing the safest path at every fork in the road. The feelings
she had for Dean were suddenly revealed for what they were, a thin comfort
built on the fear that she would never find anything better.
    Mac. If only...
    She angrily shook the
head, as though the motion could shake free all her feelings for him. Even if
things were different, if they lived in the same town, if they hadn’t pursued
dramatically different lifestyles, if there was a ghost of a chance they would
have enough in common after all these years...
    Even if all those things
were true, she reminded herself, they would never erase the fact that, when it
came down to the wire, Mac had looked over his options and chosen. When she’d
come to him and begged her to leave with her that night, to trust her and leave
Heartbreak in the rear view mirror of his old car, he’d said no.
    He’d made his choice,
and it was permanent.
    But he begged you to stay , said the voice inside, the one she worked so
hard to ignore, the one who never let her forget what she’d given up so long
ago. You never told him the whole story. And
if you had told him everything, Mac would have realized that Pete McBaine left
you no choice but to leave .
    Because if she stayed,
if she saw Mac again, even once, she wouldn’t be strong enough to keep the
awful bargain his father had driven.
    But Pete’s dead , her heart pleaded. What could it matter now?
    Dead, perhaps, to her.
But not to Mac. Pete McBaine lived on, growing bigger than life itself as the
years passed, becoming for Mac a symbol of his struggle to make it in the world.
He would figure into the stories Mac would pass down to his children, watch
over the family from some mythical place where fathers genuinely wanted the
best for their children, no matter what.
    There could be no
place for her in the picture.
    Sobered, Amber drove
slowly