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One
Of course I would see him for the first time in two years while I was struggling.
Mother insisted on seeing the dress in her three-way mirror. Never mind that I didn’t have a car. Catalina has a car, doesn’t she? I could see Mother’s pursed lips in my mind. Go with her. I need to see this dress outside of the store before you walk down the aisle in it.
So of course, that left me and Cat struggling to get a firm hold on my wedding dress, to shove it into the back of the car. Cat’s car would be in the shop that day, so we had to rent one. Unfortunately for me, the problem with a ballgown wedding dress was precisely what I envisioned: too much dress, not enough space.
“Just push it in.” Cat let out a little grunt as she attempted to move it through the doorway of the car. One lone drop of sweat trickled down her face and I feared that any minute, she would explode. “Why did we rent such a tiny-ass car to pick up this monster of a dress?”
“Hindsight is a bitch.” I let out a curse as I jammed my finger between the dress and the car door. “We have no choice but to keep trying.”
“Alicia?”
I turned my eyes toward the voice like a man follows a siren’s song. My watch beeped at me frantically. Take a breath. Take a breath! I tipped my head back to meet his eyes.
Andrew.
A clean Caesar had taken the place of the high-top fade I was so used to. His lips—which almost always held a frown of some sort—seemed more tender-looking than before. More lush. More kissable.
The graphic-T / loose jeans combination of our high school days had faded into fitted jeans and a plain white tee. The shirt molded to the curves of his arms, bunched up a little on the hill of his bicep. It conjured up pictures of long hours spent at the gym or doing pushups. I could see Andrew in my mind’s eye, at the squat rack or at the bar doing chest presses, sweat pooling at his collarbone or soaking his shirt. I practically salivated at the thought.
I longed to run my fingertips over his broad shoulders; my heart sped up at the thought of my fingers getting tangled in his shirt. Looking at him that day, I wondered if he was going to burst through the shirt if he turned the wrong way. While the thought of a semi-naked Andrew was always enough to make me blush, my heart ached for the stick-thin Skinny Minnie that earned him the nickname in high school. I met him when he inhabited that body, had lustful teenage thoughts about him even when he was a beanpole. It felt wrong, somehow, that we had grown into adults.
Despite all the delicious ways that time had done him well, he was still Andrew Parker. His light brown eyes still held the gentle mischief, the leisurely and calm confidence I remembered from so long ago. His eyes roamed over my wedding dress, and then over my face, possessing it and staking his claim. His gaze stopped at my lips then flashed back to my eyes. I knew that even with my dark skin, he could sense the blush, everpresent in our early days, creep over my face. He smiled.
“Hey.” I tried to continue with our arduous task, but Cat took this moment to do her best statue impression. Traitor. I glared at her and tugged on the dress for emphasis. “How’ve you been?”
“Good,” he said, looking back toward the dress. I felt the familiar tingle as his voice—smooth, low, and warm—wrapped itself around me like a blanket straight from the dryer. His eyes flashed back to mine again. “You’re getting married.”
“Two more months!” Even to my own ears, I could hear the false note of cheer. Andrew tilted his head a little, a small frown playing between his brows. My traitorous heart melted at the sight even as my watch beeped again. My hand itched to smooth his brow, the way he did for me all those years ago.
He tapped his palm over his fist before deciding to shove both hands deep into his pockets. He looked away from me, squinted into the distance. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
I flashed back to the memories of Andrew’s face not even twitching when I felt like I was coming unraveled. Of the two of us, I was always the one on the move—tapping my fingers, pacing. His slow, easy heartbeat had been my anchor, and his calmness was always comforting. I paused at what I saw now.
“I saw you the other day, coming out of a coffee shop. It didn’t look like a good time to talk, though. Seemed like you were arguing with someone on the phone.”
“Probably was.” Something in my voice made him narrow his eyes. I flashed back to all of those times when I was constantly fighting with some guy or another, Andrew looking on with interest and slight disapproval. Not much had changed in that department—just that I was fighting different people now. Different battles.
“It made me realize that I couldn’t call you.” When I raised my eyebrows, he coughed and looked away. “I don’t have your number saved in my phone anymore. After, you know, everything.”
So he did it. The full purge. My heart lurched. I could feel the tears threatening to come up, so I blinked and looked down at the dress as I spoke. “I can text you. Is your number the same?”
Our eyes met over the gown with an almost audible click. He took a deep breath, and I could almost hear the echoes of our conversation, so many years ago, playing in his head as well as my own.
“Yeah, it’s the same.” Almost as if it had a mind of its own, Andrew’s voice lowered, the deep resonance betraying his surprise and pleasure.
I dipped my head briefly, a curt nod. “Talk to you then.”
“If we were ever to stop being friends, I’d do a full purge,” I announced. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Andrew stop chewing and hit pause on the Goosebumps episode we were watching.
“A full purge?” he asked.
“Everything that even remotely reminded me of you would go.”
“Everything?”
“What are you, an echo?”
