The Way Back to Us

by Jamie Howard

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  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

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  For Lynn

  Prologue: Gavin

  I’ve always been a bowtie kinda guy. Sophisticated, spiffy, jaunty. I straightened the edge of my pink and navy polka dotted neckwear in the bathroom mirror before running my hands down my gray lapels. Snazzy. Felix may have won the Sexiest Man Alive title, and he may have also been the reason we were all at this fancy schmancy charity gala, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t planning on taking full advantage of it. I wasn’t entirely sure, but I’d have bet money I’d spotted Cara Delevingne across the room.

  Okay, maybe only a five spot, but still.

  As the bathroom door swung shut behind me, I stepped back into crushing pandemonium. People were jam packed from wall to wall, de la Rentas brushing up against McQueens. Cater waiters zigzagged through the crowd, trays of champagne and hors d’oeuvres impossibly balanced on small circular trays. I snagged a flute of bubbly on the way back to the table, taking a swig as I hooked my chair with my foot and pulled it out.

  My hand went immediately for the bread basket. “Find Jules yet?”

  Felix shook his head, the expression on his face competing with Ben’s for grumpiest of the evening. “What’s his problem?” I hooked my thumb in Ben’s direction, tossing the question to Ian.

  Ian bumped his adorably intertwined fingers with Bianca against the table. The two of them were so cute together it was sickening. “He’s just pissy that he decided to go stag tonight.”

  I stuffed a chunk of bread in my mouth, talking around it. “Are you kidding? This place is the ideal place to fly solo. Have you even looked around? The only thing I’m missing at the moment is a drink—” I flicked a glance at my champagne, “—a real one, and maybe some pie, but I’ll settle for the drink right now.”

  Felix leaned back in his chair, waving his hand in a come-hither motion. The crowd parted like a multicolored curtain, making way for a pint-size server to sneak through. It was her bangs I noticed first—long and fringed—the sheen of her red hair making every muscle in my body automatically tense. It wasn’t even a conscious response anymore but a conditioned one. An internal flinch that even this many years later I couldn’t convince my body to give up.

  Her head cleared Felix’s shoulder and the flinch transformed into a full-on frozen panic. My expression stuck to my face as that customary cocktail of emotions intensified into a maelstrom that pummeled me from the inside—my mouth caught somewhere between my usual smile and spitting out my drink order, eyes wide and unblinking, fingers crushing the other half of my roll. I could actually feel the blood drain from my face like a vampire was suctioned to my neck and sucking me dry. A Nina-Dobrev-style vampire, not the Robert Pattinson variety.

  The only thing she was willing to give up was a brief flare of her nostrils as she sucked in a breath and a miniscule tightening of her eyes around the corners. If I didn’t know her face almost as well as I knew my own I would have missed it entirely.

  My mind catapulted me into the past, to me staring into those cornflower blue eyes, her red hair, shades lighter, fanned out across my pillow as she laughed. A laugh that was too big for her body, too loud to be ignored. The memory was replaced with another starker one, that same pillow colored with shadows, empty and cold except for the Chinese food menu lying diagonally across it. The bottom corner was bent back, a grease stain splattering the right quarter, and the words I’m sorry hastily scrawled across the middle.

  By definition, a second is supposed to be a short thing—a blink, an inhale, a pinprick of time. But this particular second defied all expectations of what it was supposed to be. It lasted an entire lifetime. Maybe two. Letting me travel through time only to arrive back right back in my seat, my chest hollowed out on the inside and aching like I’d lifted my ban on all cardio-related activities and insanely decided to try my hand at a marathon.

  I forced myself to sit straighter, to breathe deeper.

  Felix prodded my arm, his voice rushing toward me in a wall of sound. “You want a beer or are you going straight for the hard stuff?”

  I glanced at my champagne flute then back over his shoulder at the ghost that came back to haunt me. At Dani. Just her name sent me into another tailspin, my brain too muddled and spinning to form words.

  Fingers snapped in front of my face. “Earth to Gavin. Are you gonna tell us what you want to drink, or are we just supposed to guess?”

  I tried to focus on Felix, his confused and mildly concerned stare as I continued to sit there without uttering a word. Understandably, the fact that I was speechless was equivalent to the shock value of waking up in the middle of the night to actually find the tooth fairy stealing your tooth. Directly from your mouth with a pair of rusted plyers. Except also that the tooth fairy was a middle-aged, balding man in a pink tutu with glittering wings.

  My attention slipped back over his shoulder, and for the briefest instant she met my gaze, all the churning emotions I was feeling reflected back at me. But between one blink and the next she was gone, red hair disappearing behind a long swath of emerald silk, before I could even utter a word. If I could’ve even found one to utter.

  Felix’s chair creaked as he frowned back in the other direction and I took the distraction for what it really was—a chance to escape. I nearly tipped my chair over in my haste to get the hell out of there, my heart racing as it finally decided to get working again. My feet were moving faster than I was prepared for them to, nearly tripping me in the process and propelling me straight into CaraDelevingne. A tiny voice inside my head was cheering, shouting that I’d won my own shitty bet with myself, but the louder voice, the one that was broadcasting over the speakers said confidently, At least you were the one to leave this time. Payback’s a bitch, huh?

  Chapter 1: Gavin

  3 Weeks Later

  Living alone wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Sure, it had its perks—like the copious amounts of time I could walk around the condo naked as a jaybird—but my overall impression of solo living was: quiet and boring. I’d happily relocated to give Felix and Jules their own space, moving my bags and boxes a whole floor up to the condo directly above them, but I’d be lying if I said I would’ve been opposed to a whole Three’s Company situation.

  I readjusted myself in the fancy, modern chair I’d dragged over to the floor to ceiling windows, the leather giving an annoyed squeak at the motion. New leather, expensive leather, was a bitch.

  Rolling the blue rubber ball around my palm, I bounced it off the wood floor with a quick flick of my wrist. Meeting the glass with a satisfying thunk it arced back through the air and into my hand.

  Thirty seconds later my phone buzzed and I unearthed it from my pocket. Yes, pocket. Like I said, new leather was a bitch. A sticky bitch that made pants a necessity.

  Felix: Racquetball.

  I snickered at my phone.

  Me: You don’t get any points for repeats.

  Felix: Then stop repeating.

  Me: Don’t you have anything better to do than bother your neigh
bor? Like plan a wedding perhaps?

  I knew damn well the wedding planning was still in the earliest of stages, the wedding itself likely a year and half away. Celebrity weddings, as I was told by Juliet’s new high-strung wedding planner, Annabelle, required precision, planning, and preparation. The three P’s. My suggestion of a backyard wedding was not taken well and was greeted by stifled laughter from the newly-engaged couple and all the heat of raging hellfire in Annabelle’s fiery glare.

  Another message arrived with an insistent vibration.

  Felix: Dude, don’t even say that word. It’s Beetlejuice. Two more times and Annabelle will appear in a cloud of smoke with tablecloth swatches or forty different types of glassware to look at.

  Me: Remind me why Jules hired her?

  Felix: We both agreed to hire the person with the best references. Sadly, that was her.

  Me: Odds her previous employers were too scared of her to provide bad references?

  Felix: High.

  Felix: Four called her “fabulous.” Three went with “flawless.” Three more for “fantastic.”

  Me: More appropriate F word: ferocious.

  Felix: Or feral.

  I burst out laughing and managed to drop my phone. It bounced a little, landing face up. Underneath it, a corner of white poked out, taunting me. Immediately my hand went to my pocket, fingering it, but like I’d expected it was empty.

  I scooped up my phone first, leaving the offensive little rectangle lying on the floor, printed side up. Even without looking I knew what it said. Well I knew what it said generally. In a swooping, swirling font was the name of a catering company, below that a phone number, fax number, and email address.

  A week ago I’d casually asked Juliet about the catering company she’d used for the gala. A day later she’d slipped their business card in my hand with only a sympathetic glance doused in regret. Like, without me even telling her, she’d intuited absolutely everything that lay between Dani and me. Like she knew how that stupid little cardstock rectangle was both a present and poison.

  It’d been burning a hole in my pocket ever since. The possibility of it needling me, harassing me, making me wonder things I had no business wondering—like if they’d give me Dani’s number if I asked for it. Or if I even wanted it. What I’d do with it if I had it.

  I gritted my teeth together, hating myself for even considering it.

  I retrieved it off the floor in one smooth motion, striding over to the kitchen. My foot landed on the pedal of my garbage can, the lid dutifully opening. Everything inside me hesitated as I worried the edge of the business card with my fingernail, edging it closer to the garbage and then letting it retreat toward me.

  My head hurt. My heart ached. But on top of the layer of pain was a tiny speck of hope that was trying to take root. A little seedling of maybes and what ifs that would tear me apart if I let them, let her, back in my life. I’d been down that road already and fallen off the cliff when it had mysteriously vanished from underneath me. No way. Not again.

  Carefully, I folded the card in half, making sure the edges were flush. That wasn’t satisfying enough though. Unfolding it, I ripped it decidedly in half, then in half again for good measure, letting the pieces flutter out of my hand. They looked harmless sitting on top of a banana peel and next to a crumpled up to-go bag, but I knew they were anything but.

  I let the lid slam shut and reached for my phone again.

  Me: Meet me at the Blackbird?

  I was already throwing on my jacket when the response came through.

  Ben: Give me ten.

  Chapter 2: Gavin

  My pencil scratched across the cream-colored paper of my notebook, words flowing from my mind through that sharpened piece of lead with an unsurprising ease. It was always like that when it came to her, when I let my mind retreat into the darkest corners of my memories where Dani lived. I rarely let myself do it, but I allowed myself that small reprieve when it felt like my head would burst with all the things I wouldn’t let myself say.

  I did it with only two conditions. One: that it was always done in pencil. Something impermanent. A few angry strokes of the eraser and it would all be gone, banished in the way I could never get the ache in my heart to just disappear. And two: they would never, ever leave that paper. They’d never be recorded. They’d never be performed. It was my own personal catharsis that would never be shared.

  I tugged a hand through my hair, the other still studiously copying down the lyrics to my most recent never-gonna-happen song. The Blackbird was a blur behind me, the rest of the customers at the bar and the bartender existing only in the periphery of my thoughts. It wasn’t until I’d written the last word that the world came back to me. Or maybe it was the opposite, that I came back to the world.

  I blinked, looking around me, and started in surprise when I found Ben on the stool to my right, a small fizzy glass of something clear already sitting in front of him.

  He blinked back at me. “Welcome back.”

  I hastily shut my notebook, pressing a hand down on the worn black leather cover to keep it from curling back open. “Been here long?”

  He shrugged. “Long enough.”

  I ran my tongue over my lips, my mouth trying to work out what I wanted to say. Ben and I had been friends, bandmates for years, but we were sadly lacking one-on-one time. Normally my first call would have been to Felix, but times were a-changing. I knew that if I needed him he’d come at the drop of a hat, but there was something particularly grating about his sunny smile when I was wallowing in my own misery. Clearly if I needed to wallow—and I so, so did—then who better to wallow with than the man who walked around with his own personal rain cloud?

  He picked his glass up and swirled it, the ice cubes clinking together in a delightfully musical way. “You wanna talk about it?” The corners of his eyes tightened, as did his mouth. I think the appropriate term for the expression was cringing, which coaxed a smile out of me. The last, and I do mean the last, thing Ben would ever want to do is talk about it. Especially when the possibility for reciprocation existed. Ben lived in ever-existing fear of someone making him do that exact thing—talking about it.

  “I’ll make you a deal.” I leaned an elbow on the bar top, swinging my legs over to face him, my gaze coasting over the rest of the room. “I won’t talk about the thing I don’t want to talk about. You won’t talk about the same thing you never want to talk about yet are constantly thinking about. And we can each get blissfully lost in our drinks and talk about absolutely anything else.”

  “You know there was an easier way to say that.” He scowled at me. “Just, ‘no.’”

  I clapped my hand on his shoulder. “But, see, if we all talked like you, in as few words and syllables as possible, then we’d miss out on some really fantastic words. Like—” I gave my mind a quick search for some long ago stored SAT words, “—effervescent and verisimilitude and ignominy.” I held up a finger. “Plus, if I’d said ‘no’ then we’d just be sitting here. Staring sullenly at each other.”

  He muttered something under his breath that involved a string of curses and the Lord’s name.

  I spun around on my stool, my mood already lifting since I’d exorcised my mental demons and done a little bit of verbal sparring with Ben. “What’s with the service tonight?”

  “New girl.” Another shrug. “Bonnie’s showing her the ropes.”

  “New girl, huh?” I cocked an eyebrow, leaning forward to look down the length of the bar. Two figures stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the end, too far for me to pick out anything other than the fact that she was short and thin.

  “Consider me amazed that you can still come here and not get drinks thrown in your face.” He rolled his eyes. “Or that you can get drinks that haven’t been tampered with.”

  “C’mon, man. There’s never any ill will where I’m concerned because I’m honest. They all know that it’s a one night thing and they shouldn’t expect any more. Sometimes there are some
repeat customers, but even then they know what the expectations are—sex, mind-blowing orgasms, the fun stuff.” My ass hit the stool and I sighed as my stomach growled. “Honestly, you should take a page out of my book. And no, I’m not just talking about the no-strings sex, though you could certainly use some of that.” I winked at him. “But I think you’d manage to dispel some of this whole doom and gloom attitude if you just laid it all out on the table with Rachel.”

  He glowered—yes, fucking glowered—at me. “I thought we weren’t talking about it.”

  The thing about Ben was that he was tragically hung up on our long-time friend, his brother’s best friend, Rachel. At least we thought that was the case. When it came to Rachel, Ben was even less talkative, which was to say that he didn’t talk about her at all.

  I held up a finger. “Technically, I said you wouldn’t have to talk about what you didn’t want to talk about, not that I couldn’t talk about it to you.”

  “You’re a little shit, you know that?”

  My laugh was cut off by the long overdue appearance of Bonnie and her supposed trainee. “Sorry, Gav. What can we get for you tonight?”

  And then for the second time in three weeks, it happened. Time stretched, my heart fell out of my chest and splatted onto the floor, and I forgot how to speak. Because Bonnie’s new sidekick just happened to be the thing I didn’t want to talk about.

  Dani’s chin lifted, her shoulders inching almost imperceptibly higher. This time around I was able to take in a few more details—the thin silver ring that pierced her nose, the dark sweep of eyeliner that lined the top and bottom of her eyes, the sharp edges of her collarbone peeking out from underneath her black T-shirt.

  I tried to force myself to breathe, to relax, to chill the hell out.

  What actually happened was that I sucked in a breath, nearly choked on it, and managed to spit out, “Four Roses, neat.” I shook my head, instantly remembering that the shock of Dani mixed with a bender wasn’t the best combination. Been there, done that. “No, water.”