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Perfect? Ha.
It’s like she’s conveniently forgotten the hell he put me through back in the day—then again, I didn’t always share every little detail with them because I was too focused on trying to ignore everything rather than give it oxygen.
I shake my head. “I can’t.”
The girls look at each other before Tenley lifts a palm.
“I think you should strongly reconsider,” Tenley says. “And I stand by what I said—people are allowed to change. This could end up being advantageous for you.”
Spoken like a true lawyer.
“Advantageous how?” I ask, chuckling.
Maybe some people are allowed to change, but cruelty was basically Alec’s entire personality. That and running the town. Breaking hearts. Scoring all the points in all the sports. And inciting general mayhem any chance he got. The boy was starved for attention, and every time he got some, he only wanted more of it.
Good or bad, the attention was all the same to him.
“In ways you probably haven’t even imagined.” Tenley winks. “At minimum, he’s obviously familiar with the human body. I’m sure he has … skills.”
“Here’s the thing.” I’m about to dig my heels in, deep dive into a past I’d rather forget, and tell them there’s no way in hell I’ll subject myself to his brand of torture, when my phone lights up with a new message from him.
Before I can grab it, Mad snatches it away. “Oh my god—he wants to go out for drinks with you.”
My stomach falls.
I’m going to be sick.
“No,” I say without pause. “Absolutely not. I’d rather die. Seriously.”
Poor choice of words given that Campbell and her husband recently had a close call with death, but I cannot make myself clearer to these women.
“Why?” Tenley frowns. Doesn’t matter that we’ve been best friends forever; they’re all suddenly on Team Dickhead. “I’m sure he’s matured. You should give him a chance. He clearly wants to connect with you. That’s got to count for something. Maybe he wants to apologize?”
“You don’t get it. He …” My words taper off as I think back to the worst of what he did. My freshman year of high school, when all my friends started getting boyfriends and I was wishing for once a boy would notice me. I just never expected that boy would be Alec or that he’d notice me in all the ways I didn’t want him to. Waiting on the front stoop, hoping … I can’t finish my painful reverie. The humiliation stings, even now. “I can’t.”
“Too late,” Mad says, showing me the all-too-bubbly message that I’ve apparently sent to the bane of my existence.
SHutton07: Sure, I’m free tomorrow. Houlihan’s at 8?
I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to kill my best friend more.
2
Alec
SHutton07: Sure, I’m free tomorrow. Houlihan’s at 8?
I’m standing next to my Tacoma in a sub-zero windchill, the walls of the Maine Medical Center’s parking garage doing little to fend off the cold. I’d set my phone on the hood to dig in the pockets of my jacket for my car keys when that message from Stassi popped up.
Definitely not what I was expecting.
Fuck off probably would’ve been too nice for her, given the hell I put her through back in the day. Honestly, when I swiped right on her and sent a message, I wasn’t expecting a damn thing. I was just taking a chance because I had nothing to lose. That and as much as I’ve tried over the past ten years, getting her out of my head has been damn near impossible.
Harder than graduating med school at the top of my class, even.
Once my truck is warmed up, I make the short drive out of Portland, up past Yarmouth, to my old hometown of Sapphire Shores, a bedroom suburb full of old-moneyed houses perched upon the rocky shoreline.
My family home was one of them.
While our house is still there in all its better-than-thou glory, my family is not.
After my graduation, my parents shipped me off to MIT and shipped themselves down to what they thought were greener pastures—North Carolina. Eventually, I joined them at Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, where I did medical school and my residency.
Then the shit hit the fan.
Turned out that the long arm of the law extends pretty far, even into the greenest of pastures.
With my father’s assets frozen due to tax evasion and fraud and our reputation tarnished, I turned my sights elsewhere. It wasn’t long before I finished my residency and was offered a position in the biggest hospital in Maine—one that just so happens to be a stone’s throw from my hometown.
The decision to return here was bittersweet—partly because I’m not the kind of man who tends to spend much time glancing in the rearview, but also because there’s a piece of me that never really left.
For better or worse, this town has my heart … amongst other things.
