If Someday Never Comes

Chapter 8

Sydney's POV

It's been exactly 8 weeks, three days, and 6 hours since Quinn and I booked our flights home and the minute the wheels touch down on the tarmac at the Indianapolis airport I feel like the air has been sucked out of my lungs. Sensing my tension Quinn looks at me like this was your idea, her eyes bugging out of her head telling me she is feeling the same way. 

It's 5 p.m. by the time we step out of our rental car and up to the door of my childhood home. From the outside nothing has changed, even the air smells the same here and the breeze is cool as it blows dust from the empty fields across the yard. The leaves are beginning to fall and the wet drizzly air makes me want to hop on the next flight back to North Carolina, that and the overwhelming ache of regret that is currently sitting in my gut. It all slightly dissipates when I see the look on both of my parent's faces as we walk through the kitchen. Before we can sit our bags on the floor my mom is clinging to me and my dad is scooping up Quinn. 

"Girls!" They both excitedly say as they squeeze us both tightly. "You're here." My mom says, cupping my cheeks and looking into my eyes. "You're home." 

"Hi, Mom." I smile studying her face, she looks thinner, her cheeks a little sunk in, and her eyes rimmed with dark circles. It catches me off guard and something alarming sounds in my gut, she must catch the questioning look in my eyes because she quickly lets me go and switches places with my dad. 

"It's about time you two come home. This ole house is boring without all you girls running around." my dad wraps his arm around my shoulders pulling me in close. 

"Coming from the dad who used to terrorize us!" Quinn giggles. 

"Now that was one time, are you girls ever going to forgive me?" 

"No." Mom, Quinn, and I all say in unison before we all rumble with laughter remembering the time my dad chased us through the house with a sheet over his head after we had watched a horror movie. It didn't end well for any of us when we woke Mom up with our screams in the middle of the night. 

Okay, maybe, I did miss it here and maybe, this trip won't be as bad as we thought. 

***

Two hours later Quinn and I unloaded our bags in my old bedroom, nothing in it had been touched. The pictures of us, Layla, Maddie, and the guys line the walls, collages of us at the lake, cheering, sitting at the diner, and Prom. It's as if time has stood still in this room and my instant reaction is to think we should have stayed in the hotel in the next town over. 

My mom was furious at the idea when we mentioned it to her so it looks like memory lane is where we will be crashing for the next few weeks. 

Quinn's parents got divorced two years ago and they sold the home she grew up in. Her mom moved in with her brother to help take care of the grandkids and her dad rented a small apartment in town so neither of them had the room for her to stay. 

 I walked around the room taking in the memories and twinged at the photo of Sam, Quinn, Brooks, and me that was sitting on top of my desk. It was from the weekend we spent down at Louisville for Brooks's birthday, the four of us were crammed into a booth for lunch, smiling. I couldn't bring myself to throw it away like I did all the others of Brooks and me. My hands traced the edge of the frame as Quinn stood by my side, "I think this is going to be good for us." she whispered. 

"I hope so." I swallow hard, "Now," I clear my throat and clap my hands together, "who wants to do some Black Wednesday celebrating?" 

"Well, I could definitely use a drink and this town only has one bar so I guess we're finally going to experience The Westville Tavern in all its glory."