Page 10 of Meet Me in Ivy Falls

‘No,’ she snapped. ‘Only my friends get to call me that name.’

Yeah. Armor fully in place.

‘And I take it after what just happened in the courtyard we’re not friends anymore?’

‘I haven’t seen or talked to you in a decade, Beck. What makes you think we’d be friends?’

Since I’d moved back to Tennessee, I’d imagined this moment so many times. How her eyes would flare when she saw me again, but this was not the kind of spark I wanted.

It was hard not to spill everything pinging around inside my head. How Ivy Falls was always on my mind. That even though I’d had to walk away from her, that choice haunted my every waking moment. But this wasn’t the time for confession. What I needed was an act of contrition.

‘I’m sorry about the auction. It looked like you wanted the house. Well, my old house. Why?’

She jammed the truck into park and cut the engine. ‘Really? It looked like I wanted the house? What gave you that idea? Was it me outbidding everyone else until you swooped in like a jackass and made it impossible for me to counter?’

Her voice grew rougher and panic built in my chest. This was not how I wanted this to go. I was screwing it up like every other relationship in my life.

‘The house, I bought it because…’ I wavered. What could I say about Piper? That since the day we’d lost our parents, she’d descended into a black hole she could never climb her way out of. ‘I did it for Piper. It’ll be good for her to see the place restored. And my parents, they…’ I hesitated trying to find the right words. ‘Well, they loved the house. If they were alive, they’d be sad to see the way it is now.’

Her shoulders gave a little and she said, ‘I’m sorry they’re gone.’

Even though it’d been years since I’d lost my mom and dad, I still hadn’t gotten over the ache that gripped my heart whenever people offered their condolences.

‘Thanks,’ I said quietly.

‘What happened? Why did you never come back to Ivy Falls, Beck?’ Her gaze searched mine, begging for an answer I wasn’t ready to share.

‘I was sad to hear about your mom,’ I said, desperate to change the subject. ‘Diego told me she passed a little while ago.’

Her distant stare swiveled to the front window like she couldn’t bear to look at me. ‘Yeah. It’ll be a year in June.’

A quiet intensity hung in the air. Hints of her jasmine perfume wafted toward me. The scent memory took me back to days when the only things we worried about were high school grades and how her notoriously early curfew made our make-out sessions frenzied.

‘How is Piper?’ she finally asked.

‘She’s hanging in there,’ I mumbled.

Hasn’t been in jail for a while.

Sober again after another stint in rehab. I think.

All the responses flew through my head, but I replied, ‘She lives in New York City. Waitressing and auditioning for TV shows and small theater productions.’

‘That’s good. I remember how much she loved the Ivy Falls theater. Miss Cheri still runs it. I’d bet she’d love to know about Piper.’

I expected the tension in her shoulders to ease a little as we talked about my sister whom she’d always adored, but her fingers stayed gripped to the edges of the steering wheel.

‘How is Tessa?’

Like I’d said the absolute wrong thing, the tight lines around her mouth went firm again.

‘She’s okay.’

There were subtle things about her that had changed over the years. Her hair was a darker shade of gold now. Instead of one, three earrings now decorated her lobe. There was a small tattoo of the number eight behind her left ear. A raw instinct inside of me ached to reach out and trace the shape. I pushed down the urge, curling my fingers into fists.

‘I don’t know why you’re here, Beck, but I’m going to ask one thing of you.’ Her voice went cold like I was no better than some stranger she’d met on the street. ‘Don’t screw up the house. Too many places in Ivy Falls have had their historical bones stripped away, and the town is slowly losing important pieces of its legacy. A few months ago an independent contractor gutted the Sorenson place that was built in 1890. Then a developer came in and leveled the Sandersons’ early-twentieth-century Folk Victorian to build a few townhouses,’ she said, gritting her teeth. ‘In one fucking fell swoop, over a hundred years of Ivy Falls history was gone.’

As kids when she wanted to make a point she always gave a dead-eye stare, refusing to blink, or give any indication that she cared, even though she really did. She was giving me that same look right now and it made me sweat.