Her tuition was paid directly by her father’s GI Bill. Her rent was paid, too. It wasn’t Ben’s business whether she let the apartment sit empty for six months. Her ongoing tuition was another matter. However, the spring semester had just begun. She could drop her classes, pause her tuition assistance, and not have to pay any of the money back. Her monthly stipend would end, but she had enough in savings to cover her for at least six months. On top of that, when she turned twenty-five, she would receive the first payout on the trust fund her grandparents set up for her.
Ben and her mom might kick her out, but she could well afford a place to live. She’d have to get a job, but she wasn’t above doing that either.
“How much time have I got?” she asked.
“For what?”
“To decide what I’m going to do.”
“However much time you need.”
Ben left, and a few minutes later, her mom knocked on the door. “Can I come in?”
She might as well leave the damn thing open since evidently today would be a revolving door of therapy. She wondered who might show up after her mom. As long as Billy Patterson wasn’t on the visitor list, she could pretend to listen to anyone else who decided to throw their unwanted two cents into her life.
“Yes, Mom, you can come in.” Renie stood near the window with her arms folded.
“Ben tells me you’re not going back to school.”
“That’s right.”
“Not now, or not ever?”
“Ever.”
“You’ve taken breaks before, and gone back.”
Yes, she had. When her mom broke her neck in a barrel-racing accident, she took a semester off.
“You can start up again in the summer and still hold your place in the vet program this fall.”
“I’m not interested in becoming a vet anymore, and since I don’t know what I want to do, there’s no point in wasting any more money on tuition.”
Her mom walked over and put her hands on Renie’s shoulders. “Who are you and what have you done with my daughter?” When most people said something like that, they meant it as a joke. There was no mistaking that her mother wasn’t trying to be funny.
“I know you think I’m making more of this than I should, but, Mom, this is my life. I will figure it out on my own. It doesn’t matter what you, or Ben, or Dottie, or anyone else has to say to me. I’m not listening. You don’t know how I feel. You can’t know.”
“I think I do,” Ben said from the doorway.
Renie folded her arms and turned her back to him. “Everybody’s an expert on things they don’t know jack-shit about,” she mumbled.
“You’ve done a fan-freaking-tastic job of hiding your feelings for years, Renie. Years. You’ve spent your entire life thinking you were in love with Billy Patterson. Now that you’ve decided your life will never be what you imagined it to be, you can’t see past that. You have no idea what the rest of your life will look like, and you’re not interested in figuring it out. Yet.”
Renie didn’t turn around, or answer Ben. Mainly because somehow he’d hit the nail on the head. She couldn’t look someone in the eye who managed to drill into her deepest, darkest insecurities when it came to Billy.
Ben was right. For twenty-three years, she fantasized that one day, she and Billy would marry and raise a family together. She’d become a large animal vet, they’d have a ranch, raise live and rough stock, and everything would be perfect. Now that she’d been forced to leave that fantasy by the side of the road, she had no idea what to do with her life.
Silent tears slid down her cheeks that she couldn’t hide because her mom and Ben were still in the room. Crying for Billy was something she did in private. It was her secret, just like loving him all those years had been.
“We’ll leave you alone for now, sweetheart, but when you’re ready, come upstairs and we’ll figure out what to do with your apartment, and the rest of it.”
She nodded. The rest of it her mother was talking about was her horse. Billy had Pooh, and getting her from him, meant she had to see him, and she couldn’t do that.
Renie picked up her phone knowing she shouldn’t. She had to stop caring whether Billy was trying to reach her or not. She had to stop caring about Billy.
She knew what everyone thought without them needing to say so. Maybe it made her a horrible person, but she couldn’t become a surrogate mom to Billy’s dead girlfriend’s baby.
He told her he’d never been in a relationship, but now she didn’t believe him. You don’t make a baby with someone you sleep with once, if you’re using protection. As naive as she was, she sure as hell knew that much.