author's note: I love Cresswell to the moon and back.
Written for Lizzie (TheNextFolchart) as a secret santa gift 2016, otherwise known as the December she changed her OTP from Cresswell to The Winter Soldier. #boo you whore
can't tell me nothin' (they say be careful what you wish for)
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i.
The single lane dirt roads are just as Cress remembers them. She bumps along the unpaved ground in her glossy black BMW rental car and, with practiced ease, swerves past the pothole by old Mr. Park's house. Four years in New York City can't erase the habit she'd made from the many nights of sneaking out during high school and avoiding that dang pothole so she wouldn't wake up the neighbors and give them any gossip to spread during Sunday church. Cress is not about to bust a tire and cause a ruckus now.
Especially not when her homecoming is commotion enough for her sleepy little town in the backwoods of Georgia.
Once upon a time, Cress swore that she would never come back to this place. But with the sun shining through the leaves and the creek bubbling off to her right, Cress can hardly remember why she had ever wanted to leave this small piece of paradise. She rolls down her window so that the wind can playfully tug free her city-appropriate French braid. With one hand on the steering wheel, she raises the volume on her stereo and then sticks her head out the window to inhale the scent of sunbaked fresh air. And in this moment, she privately admits to herself that okay, maybe she actually did miss Gainesville. But only a teensy bit.
Five minutes later, Cress is pulling up to 835 Ivy Wall Drive. Home sweet home. The shutters and front door are still teal blue and the night-blooming jasmine underneath her bedroom window seems to have tripled in size since the last time she saw it. Cress notices that her father's car is in the driveway; he must've come home early from work to meet her.
Sure enough, the porch door opens just as she cuts the engine. She runs excitedly out of the car and into his waiting arms.
"Daddy!"
"Pumpkin!" Sage Darnel greets her with a spin hug, a tradition leftover from Cress's childhood. When he sets her down, he says,"Oh, baby girl, it's been way too long. What was I thinkin', lettin' you go traipsin' off to them fancy big cities?"
Cress rolls her eyes good-naturedly. "You're the one who always said that I should follow my dreams," she reminds him.
"I take it back," Sage teases. He gives her another squeeze. "It's good to have you home, pumpkin. I've missed you."
"I missed you too, Daddy."
Sage discreetly wipes his eyes. Then, he releases Cress and makes to compose himself. "Alright, now where's your luggage? I'll bring them up to your tower for you."
"Daddy, you don't have to do that. I know that with your leg and all -"
"Nonsense," Sage interrupts. "My leg's fine. Pop open your trunk, would you?"
Cress hesitates. It was only January of this year that he had slid on a slippery patch of ice and broken his ankle. She's never broken a bone before but she's pretty sure his leg will never truly be well enough to be classified as 'fine.'
"Crescent Moon Darnel, you open that trunk right now or so help me God." His tone is firm, and even though she's now a grown woman of twenty-four, her father's scolding makes her feel like a naughty child again.
"Alright, alright!" Cress does so with a huff. "Bossy old man."
"Hmph," is all he says as he lugs her suitcases out of the BMW and up the porch stairs. She's already at the door, opening it for him. "You worry too much," Sage says in a gruff voice. His eyes soften minutely. "Just like your mama."
Cress blushes and smiles down at her feet. Normally he doesn't talk about her mother but Cress loves it whenever he does share any tidbit about her.
She follows her father into the house. Her smile drops when she realizes that she doesn't recognize a single thing. Cress spins around in a circle, a bubble of anxiety rising in the pit of her stomach as she tries to locate something familiar but can't.
" -put your suitcases in your tower. We haven't changed a thing, except to go in and dust and vacuum every now and then." Sage comes down the staircase empty-handed but pauses midway when Cress turns to him with a look that is filled with both anguish and accusation.
"Daddy?" she asks, not knowing how to verbalize the question she really wants to say.
He sighs and doesn't even pretend to not know what Cress is upset about. "Don't you think it's time to move on, pumpkin?"
"Move on?" Cress repeats. She narrows her eyes. "Are those your words or hers?"
Sage comes down the rest of the steps and moves towards Cress but she immediately backs up. Hurt flashes briefly in his eyes. Cress feels a twinge of guilt. However, that's quickly overridden by anger.
"Daddy, how could you? This was Mama's dream house. All of the furniture that was in here was what she had picked out," Cress argues. She wrinkles her nose at all of the new décor that obviously the stepmonster had chosen. Seriously, who even has gold-plated footstools covered in white faux fur anymore?
"I know, pumpkin." Sage rubs a hand over his head tiredly. With a jolt, Cress realizes that her father is going bald. And, are those bags underneath his eyes? She stares at him, suddenly seeing how time has slowly worn him down. Just like that, the fight goes out of her. "It's all waitin' in storage for when you get a place of your own and want to decorate. I know how much they mean to you."
Cress is relieved to hear that her father hadn't gotten rid of the furniture like she'd originally thought. "But why'd you redecorate?"
"Like I said, it's time to move on, Cress. Sybil and I are goin' on ten years of marriage -"
"Please don't remind me," Cress groans.
" -and our tastes, which are different from what your mother's and mine were back in the '10s, should be reflected in our house and life."
It's a fair enough explanation but it doesn't mean that Cress has to like it.
"Where is the stepmonster anyway?" she asks, glancing around.
"Don't call Sybil names," Sage reprimands Cress not for the first time. "And she went out to lunch in Atlanta with a few friends. She should be back any minute, though."
Cress takes that as her cue to leave. "Um, you know, I think I just got hit really hard with the jet lag. I think I'm gonna go walk around downtown for a bit, okay?"
"New York's in the same timezone as us, pumpkin."
"Yeah, well, planes still sure suck the energy out of me." Cress lets out a huge dramatic yawn. "Some fresh air'll do me good. Do you need anything while I'm out?"
Sage shakes his head. "Nah, that's alright. You be safe, you hear?"
She nods without really listening to his unsolicited advice as she leaves. "Yes, Daddy. I always am."
It takes some effort but Cress makes it to her rental car without any dramatic outbursts. Once inside, though, all bets are off. Cress blows out a breath and maybe a little bit of a mini-scream as she buckles her seatbelt. Even though she just arrived at her house, she's actually kind of ready to leave. She thought she could handle coming back to Gainesville, but Cress over-estimated herself and her tolerance for the stepmonster. While Sybil may not be physically present at the moment, the witch of a woman has a far-reaching sphere of influence. Seeing how the stepmonster has managed to convert her father over the years into someone Cress doesn't know makes Cress's fingers tighten into a chokehold on the steering wheel. He isn't even close to being the same strong man from Cress's childhood.
She backs out of the driveway and quickly exits her neighborhood. Anything, really, to avoid the chance of running into the stepmonster more than absolutely necessary. Cress mutters to herself as she turns back onto the dirt roads that will take her out to the black top.
"Getting rid of Mama's things! Hmph. I'd like to get rid of her -"
With her right hand, Cress turns up the volume on the radio. The local country station interrupts her ranting against her stepmonster with some angry ex-girlfriend song. It goes along with Cress's black mood quite nicely. Soon, she's shouting along with Miranda Lambert, changing the lyrics as needed to fit her situation, of course.
"I'm goin' home, gonna load my shotgun, wait by the door, and light a cigarette. If she wants a fight, well now she's got one, and she ain't seen me crazy yet!"
It's quite a picture imagining her five-foot self holding her father's hunting rifle and waiting behind the front door for Sybil to come prancing in with her string of pearls and Lilly Pulitzer shift dress. Cress laughs at herself and her daydream. Guns and camo aren't really her style. She's more of the type to hack into Sybil's phone and change her passcode or rearrange all of the icons on her computer desktop.
"I'm goin' to show her what little girls are made of - AHH!"
Cress screams as her left front wheel takes a dangerous dip down off the road. Reflexively, she stomps on the brakes. It's almost a near miss, but Cress manages to thrust her arm out in time to prevent her purse from flying into the windshield. The BMW makes an awful grinding sound as it comes to a halt. Cress presses a hand to her heart in an attempt to slow its racing pulse and hold in her gasping breaths.
"He pulls in the drive… the gravel flies. He don't know what's waiting here this time," Miranda keeps singing in the background, completely unaware of Cress's situation.
"Sweet baby Jesus," Cress swears underneath her breath. She unsnaps her seatbelt and clambers out of the car, completely unprepared for the sight that greets her.
Caught up in her angry karaoke tirade against the stepmonster, Cress had forgotten to avoid the damn pothole. Now, the BMW sits awkwardly on a slant. The right side is up on the gravel while the left front tire disappears into the hole. There must've been a nail or something in the road because she can hear air steadily hissing out of one of the tires. She checks for a spare but the rental car doesn't seem to have one.
Cress stands knee-deep in the hole with her hands on her hip, frowning as she assesses the situation. If she tries to back out, she'll scrape up the rental even more and her tires will spin on the gravel and create deeper ruts in the ground. She knows she's not strong enough to push her car out by herself, either. Cress glances in the direction of Mr. Park's house but immediately cuts her eyes away. There is no way in hell that she'll go to that old grouch for help. Not after he did a hit-and-run to her cat the senior year of high school.
She sighs. The only other option she can think of is to call Triple A to come tow her. Cress reaches into the back pocket of her jean shorts and pulls out her cell phone.
"You've reached Triple A. This is Savannah speaking, how may I help you?" a perky voice answers Cress's call.
Cress is really not in the mood to deal with someone so chipper and ditsy. Mama always said that it was easier to catch more flies with honey than vinegar, though, so Cress puts her Juilliard acting lessons to use and pretends that she is an ambassador of a foreign country trying to make her point to some diplomats. She's going for firm yet polite.
"Hello, Savannah," Cress responds. To get even more in character, she alters her voice so that her consonants become crisper and she loses the Manhattan accent she's acquired from her four years of living in New York City. "My name is Crescent Darnel. I'm in Gainesville and I've got a flat tire and am stranded in the middle of the road."
"Ooh, that doesn't sound like fun," Savannah hums sympathetically. "Well, hon, how 'bout you give me your Triple A club code and membership number located on the front of your card? I'll also need the make, model, color, and year of your vehicle. Then I'll see what I can do, yeah?"
Cress provides her with the information she requested. Savannah then puts her on hold.
It's getting warm out. Cress climbs out of the pothole - honestly, at this point she's more inclined to view it as a crater - and dusts off her shorts. With her phone in hand, she walks over to the right side of the once-black-now-grey BMW and leans gingerly against the front passenger door. It may be only early May, but there's nothing quite like summer in Georgia. Cress can feel droplets of sweat slide down the nape of her neck. The flyaways from her braid stick to the sides of her face uncomfortably.
Thankfully, the road she is on isn't that busy. Since she is stuck in the middle, there really isn't that much that she could do even if a car were to try to pass her. Cress looks around for lack of anything better to do while she waits for Savannah to come back on the line.
The houses around here aren't built close together. Because Gainesville is in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, the road goes up and down a lot and front yards aren't separated from the neighbors' with fences or hedges. Instead, there is a more gradient property line division based on lawn maintenance. Cress can tell where Jael Hunter's home borders the Kesley's because the latter keeps their lawn watered with military precision whereas Jael's grass is all wilted and brown.
"Cress?"
"Savannah! Hi! Do you know how to fix my car?" Cress asks breathlessly as she dives for her phone before Savannah can put her on hold for eternity again. Then she remembers that she's supposed to be acting as cool as a cucumber. Whoops.
Savannah laughs. It's high-pitched and girly and reminds Cress of a tiny dog barking. "Oh, no, I couldn't help you fix your car. I barely know how to change my oil! I always get the transmission fluid dipstick and the oil dipstick mixed up, you know?" She giggle-snorts again. "But I've called Linh's Mechanics and Auto-Repair Shop and they've already dispatched a tow truck to come help you. They're about twenty miles away, so it's covered by Triple A and all free of charge. Shouldn't be long until they arrive, now. Is there anything else you need, Ms. Darnel?"
Cress needs to never hear Savannah's laugh again. "No, I think I'll be good. Thank you so much for your help, Savannah."
"Anytime! Bye now."
Cress pockets her phone and kicks up a leg behind her as she resumes her leaning position against the front passenger door. The metal is nice and toasty against her back but only something she can handle in brief spurts. She tilts her face up to the sky and closes her eyes. The air is so much clearer here than in New York. The pace of life is a lot slower, too. Down in the South, no one is ever in a hurry. Even if the tow truck left the mechanic's shop right when Savannah had said so, there's no way it will be here within the next half hour.
Cress doesn't mind the wait just as long as she isn't stuck in the middle of the road when the stepmonster comes back to the house. Cress can only imagine how many times Sybil will manage to worm this embarrassing tidbit into future conversations if she caught wind that Cress had missed avoiding the pothole that everybody in Gainesville knows to avoid.
She shakes her hair loose and then re-braids it. Her mouth is getting kind of dry. If she didn't hate Mr. Park so much, she would've knocked on his door and asked for a glass of sweet tea by now.
If he didn't hate her so much, Cress reckons that he would've come out and offered her a glass of sweet tea by now. After all, that's what any good Southern neighbor would've done.
She starts looking at the sky and making pictures out of the clouds. A bunny in a tutu, a train, and four potatoes later, Cress hears the crunch of gravel underneath a heavy vehicle. The truck turns off the main road and heads in her direction. Cress reads LINH'S MECHANICS on the cab of the tow truck and exhales a sigh of relief.
The feeling of goodwill is short-lived, though. When the driver parks and jumps out, Cress wishes that she had gone to Mr. Park for help after all.
Standing in front of her, with a smirk she'd love to smack off his face, is none other than Carswell Thorne.
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