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Maybe it’s the fact that I’m one of them now, one of the brokenhearted, but I love it.
I love the melancholy. I love the misery. I love the fact that I can slow dance to this music and if I spill a few tears, no one questions it.
Because that’s what you do when you hear a sad love song. You cry.
It’s like crying in the rain.
And I cannot wait to get inside and lose myself in them.
I cannot wait to remember.
But as it turns out I’m not gonna need music to remember the mistake I made two years ago.
Because the reason that I made those mistakes… is here.
The reason why I did what I did and why I ended up at St. Mary’s is right here.
He is here.
And I see him as soon as I enter the bar.
Actually, he’s all I see. He’s the only thing I see and the sight of him forces me to halt.
The sight of Reed Roman Jackson.
After two years.
After two long, long years, it forces me to stop. It forces the earth to stop too.
At least for me.
For me, the earth has stopped spinning and all the people on it have stopped existing. For me, the music is no more and the stars have gone out.
Because he’s here.
Somehow.
How is he here?
Standing in the middle of the bar, he’s taller than everyone.
He’s broader than everyone too. And he has a spotlight on him.
Or maybe that’s just his marble-like, vampire skin. That glows.
That still glows.
That still absorbs all the light in the space, leaving nothing for the rest of us.
Not even the choice of looking somewhere else.
He is like gravity, see.
If he’s in the room, you can’t help but stare at him. You can’t help but revolve around him.
Even now, people are doing that.
People are revolving around him, giving him all their attention.
He’s surrounded by a bunch of guys, and a couple of girls who are hanging onto his arms, and God, it feels like two years ago.
It feels like I’m standing in the corridor of my old school, Bardstown High, and I’m watching him work his dark magic on a girl.
I’m watching him appear both aloof and interested.
As he drives her crazy with desire. So much so that she raises her hand to brush her fingers along the ends of his hair.
I’m watching him and watching him and my lips part as I exhale a breath.
What is he doing here? Where did he come from?
Why is he still so beautiful?
The heartbreaker of Bardstown High. The Wild Mustang.
The gorgeous villain.
The guy who broke my heart. And whose car I stole and drowned in the lake for revenge.
Who a second later looks away from the girl, his gaze landing on me.
Just like that.
Just like always.
As if he knew I was standing here, in this exact spot. As if he knew that I was watching him.
And so after two long years, on a random Friday night, standing in my favorite bar in Bardstown, I see him.
I see the guy I haven’t seen in two years.
The guy I never wanted to see after what he did to me.
The last time I saw Reed Roman Jackson, it was my last day of school, my freshman year.
I was walking over to the parking lot at the end of the day, to get to my brother, Ledger’s, truck so we could go home, when I saw him in his car.
Well, not his car.
His Mustang, from what I’d heard, was in the shop after what I did to it.
I didn’t know what he was doing there because I was under the impression that he’d left for the day. That was why I was taking that route, where I knew he usually parked his car.
But now that I’d seen him, I didn’t know what to do.
I was frozen in my spot. Unable to move. Unable to look away.
Maybe because he was alone and I hadn’t seen him alone since that night when everything happened.
Since that night, he’d always been with a group of people. He’d always been busy and surrounded, unaware of my existence.
That day though, he was alone.
He had his eyes closed and he was sitting in the car with the music on and the windows down. I was too far away to know what he was listening to but I remember wondering if it was one of our songs.
Songs that I danced to for him.
It was silly of me to think that, to even entertain that thought after everything.
But standing there, I couldn’t stop the rush of memories.
The rush of those moments when he’d drive me around in his Mustang and take me to the woods. When he’d put on music, sit on the hood of his car and watch me dance.
And the rush was so strong that my legs moved on their own.
