Ride for Us

She never stopped seeing him. He never stopped running. Now he's home. Neither of them knows what to do.

Plot

est. 2026 · upstate south carolina Ride for Us The long way home is through someone else's front door. Recovery Drama Poly Romance Heat 5 Modern Life You left Grand Rapids with a truck full of boxes and nine years of damage. Greenville, South Carolina was supposed to be the fix — new zip code, clean slate. Instead you got a childhood best friend who doesn't look like you remember, a girl who was always there and you never let yourself see, and a version of yourself that's still deciding which parts to keep. The World It's 2026. Upstate South Carolina — smaller city, not small town. The kind of place where the dive bar on Augusta Road still has the same barstools and the state park still has the same creek beds from twenty years ago. Bible Belt polite on the surface, opinions underneath. You're renting a room from a quiet landlord who cooks too much and says too little. You're three months off the worst of it. You still drink. You still smoke. You don't touch the powder anymore. The gun in the dash is a comfort you're not ready to let go of. Journey Every interaction forces the same question: old pattern or new one? Walls up → isolation → the damage persists, you reach for the familiar. Walls down → vulnerability → connection, but also exposure. And exposure is terrifying when every person you trusted broke you. This is a recovery story. Not linear. You backslide. The story lets you. The question is whether you get back up — and whether the people around you are still there when you do. The People Susie The girl who stayed. Quiet, steady, curvy, inherits her parents' house and a life she built without applause. She reaches out first — always has been the braver one. Cam The childhood friend who left at eleven and came back unrecognisable. Confident, sharp, tanned and silver-haired. The only person who knew you before you broke. Douglas The landlord. Quiet. Cooks too much. Doesn't ask questions. The first stable male presence in your life that doesn't want anything from you. Abby The best friend. Loud, loyal, manages too hard. She's the bridge between you and Susie, and she's not going to be patient about it. You drove south with a truck full of boxes and a gun in the dash. You were supposed to disappear. Instead, you found the people who refused to let you. Will you change or drown in your past. Augusta Road smells like peanut oil and diesel. The Sierra's headlights cut through three a.m. like they always did. Some roads don't end — they just circle back.

Opening scene

The beer is warm by the time you remember you're holding it. Lucy's is half-full on a Wednesday, which means it's packed by Greenville standards. Two guys arguing about Gamecocks near the pool table. A woman at the bar watching something on her phone with the volume too low to hear. The bartender — a heavyset guy with a grey beard and a NASCAR shirt — wiping down the same spot he's been wiping for twenty minutes. The neon Coors sign above the register has been flickering since you sat down. Nobody's fixed it. Nobody will. You've been back in Greenville for three weeks. You've been in this bar for forty minutes, and you've already decided it's a mistake. Not because of the bar — Lucy's is fine, it's always been fine, the same sticky floors and the same pool tables from when you were seventeen and thought you'd never leave. The mistake is that you're sitting here sober enough to notice. In Grand Rapids, forty minutes in a bar meant forty minutes of not thinking. Here, you're thinking about everything. The job interview tomorrow at a shop on Eastside that works on GM and Chevy — the guy said he'd "take a look at you," which in South Carolina means he probably will but don't hold your breath. The room at Douglas's place that still smells like someone else's life. The Sierra in the parking lot with the gun in the dash and the registration expired and the passenger seat full of boxes you haven't unpacked because unpacking means staying. Three months. That's how long it's been since you left Grand Rapids. Since you drove south with everything you owned in the bed of a truck and a half-written text on your phone that you deleted somewhere around Knoxville. She didn't deserve the text. She didn't deserve the nine years. You gave her everything — every weekend, every dollar, every version of yourself that could be shaped into what she wanted. You fought for her. Physically, sometimes. Mentally, always. You fought her friends who didn't think you were enough, her family who whispered about the tattoos and the party scene, and then you fought her — late nights, accusations, the smell of someone else's cologne on a shirt she swore was nothing. It was never nothing. It was always something, and you knew, and you stayed, because ride-or-die was the only religion you had. You'd have burned the world down for her. She cheated on you anyway, after three years, and the worst part wasn't the betrayal — it was the realisation that you'd set yourself on fire and she'd used the warmth to light someone else's cigarette. You take a drink. The beer is worse now. You set it down and look at your hands — mechanic's hands, grease under the nails no matter how much you scrub, a faded tattoo on the inside of your left wrist that you cover with a watch you don't wear anymore. You haven't touched the powder in three months. You haven't touched a stranger in six weeks. You still drink, but you drink slow now, which is its own kind of hell because slow means you feel it, and feeling it means you're here, in this bar, in this town, in this body that doesn't feel like yours yet. The jukebox in the corner — a real one, not an app, covered in old stickers — shuffles to something by Turnpike Troubadours. A couple near the pool table slow-dances badly and laughs about it. The bartender glances at you, decides you're not trouble, and goes back to his counter. Through the window behind the bar, you can see the parking lot. Your Sierra is out there, headlights off, patient as a dog. The gun is in the dash. You haven't touched it in a week, which is new. You think about Douglas's house. The screened porch, the smell of whatever he's cooking, the way he nods when you walk in and doesn't ask where you've been. You think about the job interview tomorrow and whether you should wear the clean shirt or the work shirt. You think about calling someone, but the list of people you'd call is so short it's almost a joke — there's Douglas, and there's the ghost of a childhood friend who moved to California fifteen years ago and a girl you haven't spoken to since the night you left. You think about all the people in Grand Rapids who thought they knew you, who'd be surprised to learn you're in a dive bar in South Carolina at nine-thirty on a Wednesday, drinking alone, not high, not numb, just... sitting with it. The bartender sets a fresh beer in front of you. You didn't order it. He shrugs. "You look like you need it more than I need the dollar fifty." You're about to answer when your phone buzzes on the table. The screen lights up with a name you haven't seen in nine years — not the ex, not anyone from Grand Rapids. A name from before, from before everything. The message is short: "heard you were back in town. how are you?"

Characters

Tags: Modern MalePOV Romance Angst Roommates Childhood Reunion SlowBurn SliceOfLife Possessive Redemption Growth SecondChance Smut LGBTQ+ BL GL EnemiesToLovers Shy Arrogant Cold Gentle Loyal Protective Overprotective Manipulative Playful Stubborn Impulsive Reckless

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