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I cleared my mind of everything I’d been dealing with since Landon had stepped back into my life. Landon Wright was not right for me. There was no future for us. I didn’t know if he would go back to his wife tomorrow. I didn’t know if he’d ever file divorce papers. I didn’t know if that kiss was a bullshit rebound move. Stressing over it would only ruin my high school reunion. And I had put too much effort into this reunion for that to fucking happen.
I was the life of the party. I was smart, beautiful, and confident. I could rock this reunion with or without Landon Wright.
“You’re so right,” I said, bolstered by my own pep talk. “There is not a damn thing wrong with that.”
“You sure? You seemed a little out of it. Maybe you and Landon…”
“Please, do not finish that thought. Landon and I do not belong in the same sentence. You’ve bugged me about it in the past, Em, but he’s married. You know what my dad was like. You know I could never do that. And I could never do that to you.”
“But it doesn’t bother me.”
I held my hands up. “Irrelevant. It bothers me! Now, let’s talk about Brandon McCain and how he just hit on me.”
Emery gave me a look that said she didn’t believe my bullshit, but she wasn’t a pusher. She wouldn’t bother me until I gave up the info.
“Okay, are you going to hook up with him? Because he went from being like gruff hottie in high school to being an LA pretty boy,” Emery observed. “I don’t know if you could fuck a pretty boy.”
“Oh, I could. I assure you.”
“Plus, he used brah in a sentence without irony.”
I snort-laughed and signaled for another drink from Peter. “So, he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. As long as he has a big, long tool I can use, then we’re good to go.”
“Oh my God!” Emery said, busting out in laughter. “I pray that he does, for your sake, Heidi.”
We hung out at the bar as more and more people showed up. It was even more than I’d anticipated. A lot of the local crowd hadn’t RSVP’d, so I’d thought it was mostly going to be out-of-towners. A lot of people had complained about the location and lack of food and it not being kid-friendly…and on and on. So many complaints. But it looked like a ton of people had shown up anyway. Probably because of the open bar I’d finagled.
By the time it seemed like most people had finally arrived, the bar was packed. Meredith had planned to make some kind of speech, but with the crowd, that would be impossible. I wasn’t worried about it, but she was.
Eventually, she gave up and turned on the slide show she had prepared with all the pictures that everyone had turned in for the reunion. The whole thing was a walk down memory lane.
I had only turned in a couple of pictures of me and Emery together, but it was almost obnoxious, how many images there were of me. It was never clearer to me that I had been totally obsessed with popularity. I cared nothing about it now, but I had deeply stressed over it at the time.
I was sure I had my dad to blame for a lot of that. We never had much, but he’d indulged me with everything I’d wanted at the time. I’d taken every cent. Man, how that had all backfired.
The football team was hooting and hollering over all the images of them. Landon was in nearly as many as I was. Then, one stopped on him in a high school golf polo, holding his club. My eyes shifted over to where he had been sitting all night with an IV of whiskey practically hooked into his arm. When he saw the picture, he openly cringed at it.
Then, his gaze found me. I quickly looked away.
I shouldn’t be looking at him. I shouldn’t be worried about him. I shouldn’t be wondering why golf was a trigger for him.
But I couldn’t seem to focus on anything else.
I’d tried to forget him.
I’d tried to stay away from him.
I’d tried not to look at him.
All I did was fail.
Our eyes met across the distance, and my heart tugged in his direction. He nodded his head back toward the exit. It was a question and a promise. I knew that, if I went out there, he’d kiss me again. And I would give in to him. Because I wanted to.
“Ugh, who sent in these pictures?” Emery asked from next to me.
I guiltily looked away from Landon and stared at the picture. It was Emery and Landon together after a football game. She was in his letter jacket, and they were laughing. The next one was of them seated side by side for their Best Couple shot for the yearbook. The one after that had Emery sitting in his lap by a bonfire. I was sitting next to them, grinning like a fool.
There were three or four others, all in a row. A barrage of Emery and Landon. One big fat reminder that the guy I was dreaming about had dated my best friend.
