Starstruck - Book Two by Gemma Brooks

nothing.
     
    His boots scuffed the gravel beneath him as he walked
towards me. Cars whirred past us on the highway.
     
    “What did you want tonight?” he asked. “Why did you come
here?”
     
    “I don’t know, Luke,” I said as my arms dropped to my side.
“I guess I just think it’s weird that we’re not in each other’s lives anymore.”
     
    “That’s not my fault,” he said with a cocky shrug.
     
    My mouth dropped.
     
    “I’ll admit that I left town,” I said. “But you’re the one
who waited until I was already gone to tell me how you felt.”
     
    “And you didn’t even respond!” he yelled, his hands waving
in the air above him. “How do you think that made me feel?”
     
    “You shouldn’t have waited so long,” I said. “Luke, I’ve
loved you for years! And I know you knew. And now it’s too late.”
     
    “Yeah,” he said. “You’re right. Now it’s too late.”
     
    “Everything okay out here?” a bar patron on his way inside
asked.
     
    “Yes,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”
     
    Luke and I were a good ten feet apart. I knew we weren’t
getting any closer than that.
     
    “I need to get going,” I said to Luke as I accepted the fact
that this wasn’t going anywhere.
     
    He pinched his face as he spun around on his heel and headed
back inside. He wasn’t going to try to stop me.
     
    I climbed in my car and tried to fight the tears from
falling. I was happy with Hudson, but I also didn’t understand why Luke and I
couldn’t still be friends. I didn’t understand why Piper suddenly resented me.
Rock River wasn’t the same Rock River it was a month ago. Either I had changed
too much or everyone else had. I wasn’t quite sure.
     
    I headed over to my mom’s house to check on her. When I
walked in, I noticed the place was unusually clean. The lingering cat odor was
almost eliminated, and there were only a few beer bottles along the sink
instead of twenty.
     
    “Mom?” I called out.
     
    “In here,” she replied. “Brynn!”
     
    She climbed up off the couch and ran to me.
     
    “Oh, my goodness!” she said as she wrapped her arms around
me. “I’ve missed you so much.”
     
    “I’ve only been away a few weeks,” I said.
     
    “You’ve never been away this long before,” she said. “And
look at you.”
     
    She grabbed my bony wrist and examined it.
     
    “You’re so skinny,” she said as she stared at me with
wrinkled, concerned eyes. For the first time in a long time, she didn’t smell
like booze.
     
    “Look at you!” I said with a smile. “You look great. The
place is clean. What happened? What changed?”
     
    A coy smile flashed across her mouth as she shrugged her
shoulders and turned to her left.
     
    “Tom,” she called out. “Come out here. I want you to meet my
daughter, Brynn.”
     
    “You met a man?” I asked. Now it was all making sense. She
would never clean up her act for me, despite my begging and pleading with her
for the past fifteen years, but now that she’d met someone, she had all the
motivation she needed.
     
    A man came out of the back bedroom, buckling his pants, and
straightening his shirt. He was a little plump with balding grayish-blond hair,
and squinty blue eyes. He looked the way my dad probably would’ve looked had he
lived to be this old.
     
    He walked up to me and extended his hand. “Nice to meet you,
Brynn. Your mother speaks very highly of you.”
     
    “Thanks,” I said. I had to admit I was a little leery of
him, but then I remembered my mom had pretty much nothing to her name except
her little two bedroom house. He couldn’t have been after her for money or
anything like that. I told myself to cut him some slack. He’d made her sober up
for God’s sake. He shouldn’t been awarded a medal.
     
    We stood awkwardly in the living room as my mom and Tom made
googly eyes at each other and held hands. She hadn’t dated anyone since right
after my dad died when she dated a string of