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Her entire face transforms. Shock and awe becomes joy and light as she smiles in a way I've never seen before. It's brighter than all the stars above us, bigger than the sky that makes her feel so small. It's my most favorite thing I've ever seen.
“I love you too.” She pulls me down on top of her, giddy and giggling. “Oh my god, Cole. I love you too. I really do.”
Suddenly, everything in the world is completely and utterly right. I feel the force of my love for her so deeply it seeps into my soul and changes me forever. And I think to myself that nothing bad can ever happen again, so long as I love Thea and she loves me too.
Present Day
January air stabstiny needles into my cheeks as I walk the light-strung streets of Tupelo. Though Christmas has been over for weeks now, the memory of it lingers in the pine-scented breeze and frosted windows of the stores on Main Street.
I burrow my face deeper into the thick wool of my scarf, quickening my pace in a bid to escape the cold. It's needless, though, because the moment I catch sight of the city park ahead of me, my footsteps falter.
Images flash before me, a film reel of memories from my younger years. Images of a boy with an overgrown haircut who loved the town he lived in and a girl with starry eyes who dreamed of bigger things. And though the park is shrouded in darkness, I can see the smile on that boy's face as clear as if the sun was beaming down on him.
He always thought he could love her enough to make her stay.
He couldn't.
One night, she took a flight to LA and I never saw her again—in real life, that is.
It was only eight months after she left that I saw her on a billboard for the first time. Some perfume ad or something. I don't remember exactly.
I do remember the way she looked, though. Her red hair curled in twirling flames that swept out to the side as a wind fan blew behind the camera. Green irises sparkled like gemstones, though not as brightly as they used to when we were together. And her alabaster skin was flawless, the freckles that used to dapple her cheeks hidden away by layers of product as if they never even existed.
But I remember them.
All three hundred and fifty-eight of them. I counted them once, on what was supposed to be the night of our senior prom. We skipped it to lie side by side under the stars in the park instead. And by moonlight, I lay over her and counted her freckles as she blinked up at me, her eyes wide with adoration.
It was the night I told her I loved her.
And though I didn't know it in that moment, it was the last night I’d ever have with her.
I tear my gaze away from the park and walk onward, leaving the ghosts of my past behind. But habit should have taught me by now that forgetting her isn't as easy as that. Memories of my first love haunt me the entire walk home and remain even as India, my girlfriend of six months, meets me at the door with a smile.
It should be India I'm thinking about as she presses her lips to my cheek in greeting and slips her hand into mine. It should be her face I see in my mind whenever I close my eyes or the sound of her laugh that finds me in my dreams.
But it's not.
It'sher.
Althea.
* * *
Not much about this town has changed in the six years since Althea went to LA and left me behind. It's as if time froze the moment she touched down on Californian soil. The world stopped turning, the clock stopped ticking and Tupelo ground to a halt. Like me, it mourned the girl whose wishful eyes always sparkled brighter than the Christmas lights that were still wound through the branches of every tree in town.
Half a decade later and this place hasn’t changed.
Thea would hate it.
Thea.
I haven't called her that since the days of secret kisses in the barn on my parents’ farm. The days of sitting side by side on the swings in the park and prank calling school friends just to ease the misery of small-town life.
But it was never misery to me.
I've never felt happiness like I did in those moments. She was my best friend in the whole world. The love of my fucking life. Misery wasn't a feeling I was even capable of when she was around.
I guess the first time I ever understood the meaning of the word was the morning I learned she’d left. I’d been parked outside her house, ready to take her to breakfast as I always did on the weekends. It was only after an hour had passed that her dad finally took pity on me and came out to break the news.
