Always My Hero

Everyone knew the Dexter brothers. In school, they were royalty, and their kingdom was the football field, the crowd their subjects. While most people in our small town stayed and went to the community college nearby, the Dexter brothers all left, each with a full-ride football scholarship to play at some hotshot university on the other side of the country. I left too, but I only went one state away, far enough away to get out of the small town I grew up in. But now, ten years later, I was back, feeling like the same shy, nervous, eighteen-year-old girl I was when I left. All at once, it felt like everything and nothing had changed. But Archer Dexter was back, dreams of becoming a famous NFL player crushed because of a career-ending injury. He's now the town mechanic and tow-truck driver. And when my car breaks down, he's my only hope of getting out of this wretched town that I should have never come back to.