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“You’re Addie, right? I’m your new neighbor. My name’s—”
“Brad,” I squeaked, wiping my nose on my sleeve. Brad, with his beautiful black hair and brown eyes, moved in next door and whose bedroom was across from mine. Brad who liked to jog in the mornings with my brother and play basketball with his dad at night. Brad, the first-ever boy I didn’t think was gross.
“Yeah, that’s right. What happened, Addie?” he asked, crouching down and lifting my chin with his hand.
“Tried to jump, and I fell.”
“Oh no. Can I help you home?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, brave Addie. Let’s leave your bike for now, and I’ll come back for it later.”
I nodded, and he smiled, showing a mouth full of braces that only made him cuter. He helped me up, wobbly knees and all, and lifted me effortlessly onto his bike handlebars to take me home.
The memory hit me out of nowhere, zapping my senses and making my temples throb. I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing, but it didn’t stop the memories from blinking before my eyes like a View-Master straight from my childhood.
Blink. I had my first kiss in seventh grade and pretended it was him.
Blink. Brad brought home a girl, and I watched them kiss from my bedroom.
Blink. He brought home a different girl, but I finally got boobs and I swear he noticed.
Blink. We kissed, but it was sloppy and didn’t feel like I thought it would.
Blink. Brad got his college girlfriend pregnant, and I was devastated.
Blink. They were married.
I didn’t see him for two years after that, finally able to move on from my stupid unrequited crush. But that changed the night of my twenty-second birthday when I ran into Brad dejected at a hotel bar. I was meeting the girls for dinner at the swanky hotel restaurant but blew them off the second I saw him. Biggest mistake I’d ever made.
“She left me, brave Addie. I got the papers today.” He held up the glass of brown liquor and finished it in one swallow, signaling for another one. “Come up to my room, please?”
“That’s not a good idea, Brad. You’re still married.”
“No, I’m not,” he said, putting his hand on my bare thigh. The thing I’d wanted for so long was right there for the taking, but something didn’t feel right. It felt dirty and tainted.
“Just one drink, okay?”
“Brad, you’re the only one I’ve never been able to say no to.”
“So, don’t say no. Come on.”
I should have walked away, but I didn’t.
The next morning I sat with my knees to my chest on the rumpled white hotel sheets with the icky feeling back tenfold. His cell phone buzzed on the opposite side of the bed, and I reached for it, listening to him humming tunelessly in the shower through the partially open door. The phone was locked, but the notification still lit up the screen, and bile burned the back of my throat as I read the messages.
Susan: Don’t forget the OB appt at ten, we find out the gender!
Susan: Hope the conference was terrific.
Susan: All our love to you, babe. See you soon.
It seemed like he was still married, and they were also pregnant with their second child. I fumbled over to his suit jacket, haphazardly hung over a chair in the room next to the bed, digging around in his pockets for proof I was wrong. Maybe the texts were from earlier and his phone had glitched. When my hand brushed against cool metal, and I pulled out the plain gold ring, I knew I’d been kidding myself, barely making it to the trash can before I was sick. Afterward, I laid the ring on his phone, pulled on my dress, and grabbed my shoes, leaving without a word. I hadn’t spoken to him since.
I looked at my reflection again, touching up my makeup. I wouldn’t give that fucker the satisfaction of knowing he got to me. If I could rub my good looks in his face and see a spark of jealousy in his shit-brown eyes, so be it. Maybe my pettiness would fill up some of the aching nausea in my stomach. After almost eight goddamn years of letting that fucker seep into every insecurity and self-depriving thought about relationships, here I was, finally thinking I’d moved on.
Nope.
