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CHAPTER ONE
AMELIA
Ihaveonejobto do at my high school's ten-year reunion tonight: tell my high school boyfriend, Heath Riley, he has a son. That thought is on repeat in my head as I watch my kids playing happily in the pool. How did my life get so complicated? It doesn't feel like all that long ago I was just a kid myself, not a care in the world. But that's not my reality these days.
"Ruby, Connor, come dry off for dinner." My sister Jasmine calls the kids, holding their towels up. And I know my time to procrastinate is over. “Go get dressed,” she tells me in that bossy tone she reserves for her sisters.
I roll my eyes dramatically in Cassandra’s direction, and she stifles a giggle, knowing how persistent Jasmine can be. I don’t want to move from my comfy spot of the reclining pool chair. The afternoon sun has warmed my skin and made me sleepy. Jasmine and Cassandra have been listing all the reasons I can't miss tonight's reunion, like a chance to show my classmates how successful I am, running my own fashion label. And if that was all tonight was about, I'd probably be okay about going. But it's not.
“Geez, you're bossy today,” I mutter, making a move for the house.
“Someone has to get you there. It’s for your own good, Millie,” she tells me like I don’t already know I have to go to this thing. I know I do. I just don’t want to.
I take a quick shower, piping-hot, hoping the temperature will wake me up. When I hop out, the room is filled with steam. I wrap a towel around myself so I can wipe off the fogged-up bathroom mirror. My long blonde bob is a tangled mess, but a quick work through with my blowout brush and I'm looking myself again.
It’s been ten years since I graduated high school, and tonight, along with the rest of my class, I’m torturing myself and taking a trip down memory lane. I know the night is going to be a massive punishment, but I’m going anyway. It’s that awkward feeling of knowing you have to see people you haven’t in so long and explain how your life maybe didn’t quite turn out the way you planned back when you were young and so full of hopes and dreams. Divorced at twenty-eight with two kids in tow wasn’t how I saw this life going. At least my business is doing well. I’ll just direct conversation back onto that.
I give my reflection a little nod in the mirror, trying to imbue myself with more confidence than I feel. That’s right. I’m a successful businesswoman with a fashion label and a chain of shops across America selling my designs, including my signature boutique here in Palm Springs. I have achieved a hell of a lot in ten years!
As I apply my concealer, I can’t help but notice the fine lines creeping in from all the sleepless nights trying to juggle raising my two kids and running a business. I don’t quite look like the fresh-faced teen I was leaving that place. No one can say I haven’t worked my ass off to achieve my success because it shows all over my face. Luckily, I have my trusty cover-up stick to hide all the worst parts.
Jasmine comes to stand in the doorway, watching me with a knowing assessment, as I apply my smoke-and-mirrors mask of make-up to cover the truth. “The kids are eating dinner,” she tells me.
“Thank you.” I smile toward her, so grateful for the help. “Are you sure you're okay with having them tonight?” I’m not sure why, but I find it so hard to ask for help from anyone, including my sisters. Even though they have insisted I go to this thing and are doing whatever they can to make it happen.
“We have movies and popcorn. I think their two favorite aunties can handle it.”
I really appreciate my sisters coming to help me tonight. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t have gotten there. Normally Mom would have the kids for me if I was desperate; she and my father live just ten minutes from me, but they had some important dinner with all of Palm Springs’ elite, on tonight, so they couldn’t.
I force my lips to smile. “I’m sure. Sorry, I’m just nervous.” My stomach is churning uncomfortably. It’s been doing that all day. As a psychologist, she deals with people’s issues for a living and has to know how much this is making me sick. This isn’t just a normal reunion.
“Yeah, I can tell, you can barely apply your make-up you’re shaking so much.”
“Leave her alone, Jas, she’s nervous enough without your observations,” calls Cassie.
I glance at my trembling fingers and sigh out loud. Maybe I can’t do this. Maybe there will be a better time to tell him.
“Is he going to be there? Is that why you’re a wreck?” She gives me that look, the one where I know she’s about to analyze me and my inability to deal with this certain situation.
“I’m not a wreck.” I glare at her for even suggesting I might be. “I’m not one-hundred percent sure if he's coming, that’s what his mother said when I talked to her, but we haven’t exactly been in contact lately.” Or for the last ten years at all. When Heath left, we promised we would call and keep in touch, but I couldn’t do it. He called me a few times, and I guess when I didn’t pick up, he gave up. It was for the best. He had his new life, and I was coming to terms with mine.
It might not have been the life I planned, but it was the one I had, so I was trying to do my best to get on with it. A call from him would have been a reminder of what I was missing out on. If I picked up, I would have fallen apart and begged him to come home. But that would have been selfish. My dad always said that expression about setting someone free, and if they come back, they’re yours, if not, it wasn’t meant to be. I think it was supposed to make me feel better when my heart was breaking over him leaving, but it didn’t.
I knew I made the right choice for Heath and the other boys in his band. He needed to follow his dreams with the opportunity that came totally out of left field the night they performed in our town's annual battle-of-the-bands competition and were discovered. It wasn’t about us anymore; I had to let him go.
“From what I can see, until this week, he’s had a demanding touring schedule. He might be too busy to attend.” I try to shrug it off like it doesn’t bother me either way, but it definitely does. I need to see him. I can’t keep carrying this secret around. It’s eating away my insides with the stress of it. He needs to know the truth, even if it kills him and he hates me for the rest of my life.
“I bet he will. Who could resist coming home and rubbing your worldwide fame and success in your classmates’ faces?” pipes up my little sister Cassandra, who has been sitting on the end of my bed choosing songs for my get-ready playlist to try to pump me up for the night.
Both my beautiful sisters have offered to help me out tonight with the kids. And as much as I fight it, I’m glad they’re here. Jasmine lives not far from me and has brought her stepdaughter Hannah with her, and Cassie is in from New York for a few days and is staying with me. It’s rare that I bother getting dressed up and go out at night since Declan, my ex-husband, left. I couldn’t really be bothered with all the fuss, and the truth is I like hanging at home with my kids. I’m so busy with work most of the time that I actually enjoy the downtime we have together. But this is important and maybe the only way I can actually talk to him, so I’m forcing myself to go.
“We all knowyouwouldn’t be able to resist bragging, Cass,” Jasmine teases her.
She is the youngest of the four of us sisters, a dancer, and loves to be the center of attention. Me, I would rather hide backstage fussing over the costumes. But that’s me and my three sisters; we’re all super close but completely different. “But I don’t think Heath is like that. What do I know? It’s been so long since I talked to him. Maybe fame has changed him and he is all cocky these days?”
“You haven’t talked to him at all? I thought you said you were going to call him and tell him as soon as you found out. That was three months ago now,” Cass calls overRock Your Bodyby Justin Timberlake, the latest song on her playlist.
Jasmine gives me her therapist look, likethat is exactly what I told you to do. And I know it is. After I found out, she was such a support to me, stopping me from completely falling apart when I wanted to, talking me through the steps to deal with my new situation. But they don’t get it, neither of them has ever had to deal with something like this before. No one I know has.
