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“No.” I shake my head. “Not there. I don’t want…”
“To be seen?”
Pizza sounds good. And lots of margaritas sounds fantastic. My lonely hotel room back in the city seems dreadful now, but…
“I just don’t want to run into anyone,” I tell her. “Thanks, though.”
She holds my eyes for a moment. “He’s not in town right now. If that’s what you’re worried about.”
I look at her just long enough for her to take that as an affirmative and run around the front of the car to climb into the passenger seat.
He wasn’t in town? Where was he?
But it was none of my business. Whatever.
I sit down, seeing her pull on her seatbelt. I start the car, a little weirded out, but I have a feeling she doesn’t like the word no, and I’m not a fan of confrontation.
“Where do you live?” I ask.
I can give her a ride home, I guess.
But she just pushes her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose and replies, “Margaritas first.”
By the next morning she was dragging my hungover ass to the airport so I didn’t miss my flight. We had started at Sticks and taxied to Meridian City where we drank more at Realm, and then crashed in my hotel room.
I hated her and her amazing body and her pretty face and all the times I couldn’t help but think about how he’d touched her and held her. Yet I couldn’t hate her, because she was absolutely splendid despite how she’d struggled in life.
I’d woken up with a splitting headache, and then I hated her more for the hangover, but… she texted, she called, she checked up on me over the months until I was convinced that I might actually be likable.
Until I remembered she was Will’s good friend, and I was keeping a secret she might hate me for.
Will stood in the foyer facing me, his eyes on fire, and I wanted to take him to my room, close the door, and hold him forever, but he knew how this would end tonight.
I wouldn’t grovel, and I was leaving.
I shoved Alex away and darted for the door, but she caught me and threw me to the floor.
I crashed, my body wracking with pain as I caught my breath and glared up at her from the marble floor.
I didn’t waste another second. Blasting off the ground, I lunged for her, ready to tear right through her if I had to, because…
Because the only person I knew how to fight for was myself.
Emory
Nine Years Ago
I folded the tie slowly and stuck it in the Ziploc bag, followed by my Cove Ride-All-Day bracelet from last night, and the collapsed, empty box of Milk Duds he got me at the movie theater.
Squishing the air out of the bag, I sealed it, tears hanging at the corner of my eyes as I dropped it into an empty coffee can and capped it, setting the whole thing in the two-foot deep hole.
I couldn’t keep him close, but I couldn’t throw him away, either. Maybe someday I’d dig up my little time capsule and be able to laugh at how little any of it meant anymore.
I hope.
An engine roared to my right, and I looked up from where I knelt on the foundation of the gazebo and saw Damon’s BMW slide into a spot in the alley next to Sticks.
He jumped out of the car and walked inside, the whole place booming with activity.
