Page 6 of No Place Like Home

And it had happened. Once upon a time, I was a recruiter's wet dream. Number one pick in the country. I had it all, but the higher you rise, the harder you fall…and my fall had been a bitch.

Still, it took one girl to call me out on my bullshit, and it had ruined me. Wasn’t it always that way? It took one girl to change the game? I had been too cocky, too prideful, and too fucking scared. I was man enough to admit that.

My ego was bruised, so I gave it time. When I tried to reach out, the message on the line telling me that number no longer existed was answer enough to know where we stood. It wasn’t like I could go chasing after her, either.

“Quincy.” Leo, my agent, knocked on the door that separated me from the rest of the bus.

“Coming,” I said.

I stood and made my way to the front, where the windows were all opened. The scenery was out of a fucking movie. Green everywhere around us.

“Look to the other side!” the director yelled, and I did.

The sign that saidWelcome to Sunny Pinesstood there amidst a couple of pine trees. At the bottom, someone had planted flowers, and they were in full bloom.

That feeling, the one that felt like my body was on three hours of sleep and two cans of Monster, came back. And it wasn’t anxiety because of the show. Far from it. I knew it was because of her. She still crossed my mind in the last few years, and it was often. I liked to call her “wildflower,” but I didn’t know how hard that would hit me until after she wasn’t a part of my life.

Jessamine Morrison cultivated her friendship with me in the span of a decade. When that friendship was in full bloom and I wanted more, she fucking wanted an out.

And now we were going to be stuck in the same little town for the next few weeks, and if I knew anything, it was that the town was not big enough to avoid each other.

I stayed by the window taking in the town with new eyes. It hadn’t been long since my last visit, but something was new every time I came back. I didn’t want to miss a thing. I’d missed this place.

“Quincy, how does it feel to be back home?” the documentary producer asked.

“There’s no place like home,” I replied as I grinned at the camera.

“Okay, everyone, this is great!” the producer said.

Leo came to sit next to me and handed me a sheet of paper. “These are things they will ask you about, and this is a list of things you should mention per your sponsors. They will interview a couple of people from the town.”

“Who?” I asked as I turned to look at him, paying attention to what he’d said.

“I’m still narrowing the list down.”

Her name was on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it back. But then I knew this was the excuse I fucking needed. You put the cameras on us, and there would be no denying that we had fucked. We needed to remain cordial, and it gave me the push I needed to look for her.

“Jess Morrison. Add her name to the list,” I said as I stood up now that the bus was making its way onto Main Street.

“I did a background on your friends, and she was never mentioned,” Leo added without looking at me.

“I said to add her.”

His response was to give me a tense nod. I didn’t care if I was going against his agenda. I’d stopped thinking rationally the moment I saw that sign.

The bus stopped, and I was the first to get off. I knew they all had accommodations at Lee’s Bed and Breakfast. I did my part, and it was time to relax before the official shooting began.

I grabbed the baseball cap from my back pocket and put it on backward as I made my way down Main Street. Not that I needed the anonymity, since I was the only six-foot-four Black man in this town. There was something about the air here that was crisper. Fresher.

I could see City Hall on the other end of the street, and I made my way down to where I could see the kiosk peeking through. I passed the restaurants, the hardware store, and the flower shop, nodding my head and waving at all the people who greeted me.

When I made it in front of the yellow diner, it really hit home that time went on and things changed. I still remembered when it used to be a coffee shop. Just coffee and treats, and now the place had expanded.

I pulled the door, and the bell rang. The diner was mostly empty, but I knew at least Emma would be here. Her car was in the parking lot.

The first thing I noticed was that blackboard, and a bittersweet feeling came over me. Maybe not everything changed, and it made us appreciative of the things that remained.

“Don’t look at it. That shit is possessed.”