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11
EVERETT
The thing about high school reunions is that attendees usually fall into one of two camps: those who had a good time and those who didn’t. There were a lot of reasons one could have fun at a high school reunion. Maybe they’d been a popular kid or had lots of friends. Maybe someone had been a nerd who’d blossomed in college and the reunion was all about doing a victory lap. Or maybe that kid who peaked in high school gets to relive the glory days, and that reunion is the most fun they’ve had in years.
On the other hand, if you were an outcast or otherwise had a miserable high school experience, going back would be as useful as a screen door on a submarine. Why would anyone want to relive a dismal time of life?
Unfortunately for me, even though I fell in with the first group since I was an athlete and pretty dang popular back in the day, I was about as excited to go to this shindig as the second group was.
Why? Well, because I’d spent all four years of high school blissfully in love with my childhood best friend, and the entire school—as well as the town at large—thought we’d someday show up to this event as a happily married couple with a few kids and a dog.
Instead, I hopped out of my truck as a single, broken man and headed inside the school’s gymnasium alone. It wasn’t like I didn’t have anything to be proud of. I held my head high; my time in the service and my future owning one of our town’s longest-running businesses was nothin’ to sneeze at. But even with all of that—success in just the right flavor for the likes of me—I was still alone.
I walked through the lamp-lit parking lot, nodding at a few people on the way in. Most everyone I went to school with hadn’t left Charlotte Oaks after graduating. They went on to get jobs around here or in neighboring areas, calling our little town home but commuting to work.
The guys I hung out with these days, apart from my brothers, were the same guys I’d hung out with in high school. In that way, this reunion wouldn’t be much of a big deal to me. But thanks to Laney and our surrounding drama? It definitely was.
“Everett,” my buddy Jack called from the refreshment table to the right.
I hustled over to where he stood with two of our other friends, Brandon and Clay, and gave them each a backslapping man hug. “Hey, y’all. How’s the party so far?”
“Better now that you’re here,” Clay said. “We only get two free drink tickets so we’re hopin’ you can sweet-talk Cindy into giving us more.”
I shook my head at him and looked in the direction where he’d jerked his chin. Cindy Jones, our class’s prom queen (and the first girl I’d dated after Laney and I split up), stood with a roll of red raffle tickets in her hand and a wide smile on her face.
Poor Cindy. No, wait, poor me. As far as my buddies were concerned, we’d given it a shot and it’d ended amicably. What really happened was much worse. I’d been nowhere near ready to start dating again after what happened with Laney, but these jokers I called friends had insisted the best way to get over a woman was to get back on the horse.
So, not even six months after the demise of my only relationship, I’d called up Cindy since it was common knowledge she’d had a crush on me in high school. She was a pharmacy tech, so I’d shown up at her work with flowers—then waited in the prescription pickup line for way too long—and asked her out on a date.
Cindy couldn’t have been more excited. She had a cute little apartment above a knitting shop where she offered to make me dinner. I accepted the invitation in hopes of getting over my broken heart in the arms of a pretty woman.
Instead, I’d started ugly crying halfway through the meal when she’d asked what happened with Laney. What can I say? The cheap red wine she’d served with the spaghetti and sauce from a jar had gone straight to my head, and I’d broken down like a toddler with a scraped knee.
As if that hadn’t been bad enough, we spent the rest of the night on the couch with my head in her lap while she petted my hair and talked to me about my feelings.
It was horrible. A nightmare of a situation that I still to this day can’t believe I let happen. I offered to pay the woman in free oil changes for the rest of her dang life if she promised never to tell anyone what happened. She hadn’t, as far as I knew, and she’d cashed in those oil changes every three months like clockwork in the years since.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I told my friends, then headed over to Cindy with a friendly smile. “Hey, there. How are ya?”
“Hey, yourself.” She gave me a wide, knowing smile and handed me my two drink tickets. Then she leaned closer and lowered her voice to a whisper. “She’s not here yet.”
I didn’t have to ask who she was referring to, of course. I chuckled, looking down at the drink tickets in my hand. “You mind if I snag a few more of these from you?”
“Hmm, I don’t know. I’ve seen what happens when you get too much alcohol in you.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “It was one glass of wine.”
“All the more reason you shouldn’t get more tickets.”
Laughing, I looked over my shoulder at my friends. “It’s for the guys. Reunions are all about tryin’ to look cool for your classmates, right? They seem to think I can convince you to sneak us a few more, and I promise I won’t overdo it and cause a scene.”
Cindy followed my gaze and looked over at my friends, then let out a sigh and ripped off four more tickets. “One more each. Don’t say I never did nothin’ for ya.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dare.” I flashed her a smile of thanks and headed back to my friends. “I was able to score one more each, but that’s it. She takes her job as the keeper of the drink tickets very seriously.”
“We’ll take it. Thanks, man,” Clay said, snatching the extra tickets and dividing them up.
“Why were you so late, anyhow?” Brandon asked. “Tryin’ to avoid a certain someone and her boyfriend?”
