Free Dead on the Delta by Stacey Jay Page A

and snatching me up in another hug. I stiffen at the unexpected display. “We love you too, slut.”
    I shrug him off with an eye roll. “I just like it here. I like the people. Even Amity. We were cool before Cane.”
    “Well, she’s certainly not cool with you now,” he says. “Stay away from her, Lee. I’m serious. She wants to rip your face off.”
    “Maybe she’ll like me more in a few days.” Or weeks, or however long it takes for me to get up the ovaries to break up with her brother.
    Fern gasps. “You’re not! Are you? Right now? You can’t, not when he’s so in love with you that it sickens people walking down the street to see you together.”
    I squirm. “I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it.” The bell above the door tinkles again, and I turn to look over my shoulder. I intend to make certain it isn’t Amity coming to gut me, then maybe do a quick check on Gimpy to ensure he’s still asleep. But when I see who’s stepped into Swallows I forget I have a woman out for my blood, or a cat, or a huge smear of wing sauce on my chin.
    The smell of him hits first, a smell so achinglyfamiliar I would know who it belonged to if I were blind. It’s sage and soap and a hint of clove cigarette, topped with the spice of that gross green shampoo he loves, the one we’d called Martian Spooge and squirted all over the shower making alien-orgasm sounds one of many nights we had a few too many. It’s mint gum and the hint of the garlic-laden something he ate for lunch. It’s cotton and sunscreen and cherry Chapstick, because he’s allergic to synthetics, sunburns easily, and prides himself on having girly-soft lips that he knows exactly what to do with.
    It’s just … Hitch. It’s him. It
really
is.
    Something horrible I’ve forgotten I know how to feel fists around my chest, crushing my ribs. I forget how to breathe, how to think, how to move my napkin to my open mouth to wipe the mess away. All I can do is stare, and watch his cool blue eyes register a slight surprise as he recognizes the girl at the bar and then … nothing.
    Nothing.
Seeing me doesn’t affect him. He doesn’t feel the weight of everything that was once between us pressing down on his face, smothering the life out of him. He doesn’t feel regret and loss and misery slamming into his gut, followed closely by a flash flood of memories of the way it feels to hold my hand, to run down the street giggling and gasping for breath after we let the neighbor’s annoying yapping dogs out of their kennel, to slip all the knots free on my bikini and coax me, naked, into the dark water of the pond behind his house.
    He doesn’t remember that he loved me. That he should
still
love me.
    Because he
should.
If it was ever real, it should still be real. Love doesn’t stop just because you start hating someone. I still love my mother so much it makes me hate her even more every time I think about her. Seeing, remembering—it should hurt Hitch like that. It should hurt him the way it hurts me.

Seven
     
    I t feels like my skin’s been turned inside out and every secret, pathetic part of me is grotesquely exposed, a hot sloppy mess of organs and shame. What a lame-ass I am. What a dumped-so-long-ago-it-shouldn’t-matter-but-for-some-stupid-reason-it-does lame-ass.
    I recover fairly quickly—jaw closing, fingers spasming around the napkin Fern places in my hand—but I know Hitch has seen it. My weakness. He’s seen that I still love and hurt and regret. He knows that I’m the big loser in the game of love.
    Some game. Some dumb, shitty game. It makes me remember why I don’t want to play anymore.
    I silently resolve to end things with Cane immediately, before we have the power to do this to each other one hot, sunny afternoon down the road. I have to live in this town; I can’t deal with having a
real
ex tromping about, flashing his sex eyes and smelling his perfect smell where I could get a glance or a whiff at any time. It’ll