Fifty First Times: A New Adult Anthology

by J. Lynn

  It’s actually ten dollars, by my calculations, but it’s only two days. I can eat McDonald’s for two bucks a pop and three years of my life.

  “I’m going to ask Sammie,” I admit as I open the car door, anxious to be on the road.

  “Oh, that’s going to go over like a lead balloon.”

  “She likes me.”

  Ashlee raises an eyebrow. “No, she liked you. Before you climbed up on—”

  “The roof. The pretzels. Trust me, I remember.” Sammie and Noel have been friends since they were kids, but even that night I saw compassion in her face. I’m hoping that she will remember that, and that she liked me before The Incident and let me crash on the couch in her hotel room. It’s terrible manners, but with ten bucks, my options are limited.

  “If Sammie says no, I’ll sleep in the car and shower at the Y.”

  I shoulder my bag before Ashlee can point out that I’ve never even set foot in a YMCA and give her a wobbly smile, my stomach tied in so many knots it would take a Boy Scout a week to undo them.

  “Wish me luck?”

  Ashlee pauses, trying her hardest to contain the smartass. I wait because I know she’ll fail.

  “Good luck not getting arrested.”

  “Thanks.”

  I give her a smile as I climb into the car. The leather seat burns the backs of my legs, even though it’s September in Chicago. It reminds me of summer, and as with everything these days, it recalls the summer that led me here—and the moment I knew I loved Noel Saunders. I’d choked back that first, unbidden confession, and it had been gagging me ever since.

  “PHONE, TRESSA.”

  I look up from my book, focusing on Wade’s pretty blue eyes. “What?”

  “Noel’s on the phone.”

  Unexpected warmth spills into my chest, and as hard as I try, the smile won’t leave my face. Wade gives me a look, one that says he didn’t miss my stupid expression.

  I grab the phone from Noel’s best friend and turn my back to him. “Hello?”

  “Hey!”

  “How are you?” I bite my lip, determined to stop grinning like a fool. He’s only been on vacation with his family for a few days.

  “Good. How are things there?”

  “Okay.” I glance through the door to the screened-in porch, where a bunch of our friends were laughing and dealing cards, cold beers sweating rings on the cheap plastic table. “We’re getting ready to play snaps.”

  “Figured out how to win yet?”

  “No, and I’ll thank you to stay out of my personal affairs.” I can hear the smile in my own voice. Damn.

  He laughs, and the heat in my stomach gets warmer. We’ve been dating a little over a month, since we’d both taken summer jobs at the same shitty Mexican restaurant.

  I hadn’t been looking for a relationship. It just kind of happened.

  “Well, I just wanted to say hi and that I miss you,” he says. I imagine a blush coming to his cheeks. “Oh! And I bought you something today.”

  “You did? What is it?”

  “It’s a surprise, nerd. I’ll see you in a few days.”

  “Okay. I—” The words “I love you” try to climb from my chest and onto my tongue, but I swallow them back.

  Fear fills my veins with sludge and ice water, those unspoken words glued to the inside of my mouth like the film left behind by over-hopped German beer. It ties my tongue into knots, stuffs my ears with cotton, and I hang up without saying good-bye.

  My summer plans do not include falling in love—in fact, none of my plans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one involve falling in love.

  I’m in college. I want to date, party, have fun. Not this.

  Two

  Noel

  WEDDINGS ARE DEFINITELY for girls. As much as I love Alice and want her to be happy, I’ve thought about bailing on all of this—tuxes and dinners and registries and bullshit—at least once a month since we got engaged.

  Not because I have doubts—I want to marry her. I just don’t care about the wedding.

  “Noel, honey, you can’t open the gifts and not write down who sent them. That’s not helpful.” Alice blows her fine blond hair out of her eyes, blue eyes begging for help.

  “Sorry. I’m writing them down.” I give her a smile, earning one in return.

  “How come you open the presents before the wedding? Isn’t that kind of backward?” Wade asks, grumpy about my insistence that he be here.

  “We’re getting a jump on the thank-yous so our honeymoon will be stress-free. It’s socially acceptable.”

  “Alice, I never believed for a moment you would commit a social faux pas,” Wade backpedals.

  My fiancée stands five-foot-two and barely weighs a hundred pounds, but she scares the pants off Wade. It doesn’t make sense, but Al does have presence, for a sprite.

  I pull shiny paper off another box, open the lid and peer inside, then wrestle the item free and hold it up. “Al, what in the fuck is this?”

  She squints and tips her head, making me want to kiss her. “I have no idea. Some kind of vase?”

  “It looks like a hollow penis,” Wade adds, ever helpful, then cracks up.

  Alice rolls her eyes, but the corners of her mouth twitch. “Who’s it from?”

  “The Andersons?”

  “My parents’ friends from college. They’re so strange.” She tilts her head to one side, then heaves a sigh. “We’ll just have to thank them for the lovely gift.”

  I snort, and the twitches on her lips turn into a full-blown smile, the one that turns her pretty face into something I know I can stare at every day for the rest of my life.

  The rest of my life. Shit.

  It doesn’t seem possible that I’m here, barely twenty-three years old and about to get married. I’ve really only had two girlfriends in my entire life, and calling Tressa a girlfriend is a fudge. She’d made damn sure to keep her feelings locked away and mine unspoken, no matter how crazy we’d been about each other.

  Wade digs into the enormous pile of gifts, intent on finishing so we can get to what he promises will be a low-key bachelor party. We’ve been friends since elementary school, which means he and I are aware we have different definitions of low-key, but I’m hoping to keep it under control. The rehearsal is tomorrow afternoon, followed by rehearsal dinner, and being hungover will put my ass in a sling.

  A knot lodges in my lower back and I stretch out the kinks, groaning a little at how good it feels. Alice has been wound tight over the wedding, and her anxiety affects me now that we’re living together. She tosses all night, making it impossible for me to get any rest. I’ll lie awake half the night, listening to her mumble in her sleep, sometimes wondering whether or not her restless nights are because of wedding stress or marriage stress. Whether or not she harbors any fears about, you know . . . forever.

  We finish opening the presents by four in the afternoon. Wade slams back the rest of his beer and stands, stretching in his old Sigma Nu shirt and popping more joints than anyone in his twenties should, then claps me on the shoulder. “You’re coming straight to the hotel to get ready, right? I need a haircut.”

  “Yeah. I’m ten minutes behind you.” We’d been giving each other haircuts since junior high. For some weird reason I missed it after we’d graduated and moved apart.

  “You wish you were behind me, perv.”

  The familiar banter makes me smile, as does the peace sign he drops over his shoulder on the way out the door. For all Wade’s insistence on acting like we’re still in college, he’s about to pull the trigger on proposing, too. His girlfriend Miranda is smart, gorgeous, and, most importantly, puts up with Wade like she’s born to do it.

  They fit together like they don’t have a choice.

  The silent reminder that I had felt that way, once, brushes the base of my skull. It spills dread down my spine, but as Alice catches my eye, worry darkening her sharp gaze, I try my best to ignore it.

  Expectations for a love tha
t’s special, set apart, have been cured for me. Being an adult means realizing that relationships take work and that even when they don’t seem worth it, at the end of the day, you and this girl are in it together.

  That’s what I have to believe, and Al and I are good. We are.

  But we’re not special. It’s a choice, being with her. Not an inevitability.

  She plops onto my lap and plants a lingering kiss on my lips. I hug her bony hips against me, kissing her back and wishing more than anything that the next two days were over and we could get on with the rest of our lives.

  “Are you going to behave yourself tonight?”

  Irritation spiked, heating my blood. “Do I ever not behave myself?”

  “No. I just love you. I don’t want to lose you.”

  If anything bothers me about Al, it’s her insistence on believing other girls are after me. Maybe it bothers me that, after all these years, she doesn’t know me better than that.

  “We’re getting married in two days, babe. You’re stuck with me.”

  She kisses me again, cooling my annoyance. It’s hard for me to understand, her insecurity, but it’s part of Alice. I don’t get to choose which pieces I want—after Saturday, I get them all.

  “Okay, well. I’m going out with my mom and my aunts to the spa, then the girls are coming over for mani-pedis.”

  “Have fun.” I kiss her again and then deposit her back on her feet, still trying to cast off my strange mood. Most of all, to evict the ill-timed, useless thoughts of Tressa.

  Alice loves me. She tries, every day, to make me happy. I’m in my third year of med school, and there are worse things than being sure of what’s waiting at home at the end of a long shift. Despite all the flickering moments of hope I’d imagined with Tressa, she had never admitted to loving me. Never gave me any reason to wait.

  The last night of our summer she’d refused to come to bed. Scared, I think, of the unexpected strength of our attachment, the surprising pain of pulling apart. I’d slept on the floor next to the couch, just to be near her.

  With her hand in mine, I’d tried desperately to pretend—like I’d pretended for the entire summer—that holding on to her body meant she belonged to me.

  I had been Tressa’s, but she had never been mine. She never would be.

  Three

  Tressa

  I ARRIVE AT the hotel with Sammie’s room number still a mystery. I’d left her a message from the road, but she hadn’t called me back. Luckily, my charm and ability to spin a disturbingly believable lie—and cry on cue—comes in handy with the pimply desk clerk, and I head upstairs with the key.

  The memory of the last time I saw Sammie, the night of the pretzel incident, stabs my gut with unease, but I’m out of options. One stop at McDonald’s between Chicago and Iowa City, and I’m down to seven dollars and fifty-three cents to get me through two more days.

  Even if Sammie thinks I’m nuts, I don’t think she has it in her to give me the boot. In addition to being genuinely nice, she’d been the only one at the party that night who’d acted as though she felt sorry for me. Like maybe she knew how I felt, just a little bit.

  I drop my duffel bag on the floor inside the door, then bend to dig out my toiletries and head for the bathroom. My mouth feels gritty after three hours on the road, and I need to put my face back together. Once I’ve cleaned my teeth, the rest of me feels gross, and I decide on a shower. Maybe it’s rude, to shower in a borrowed hotel room, but Sammie didn’t say I couldn’t stay with her. We just hadn’t worked out the details.

  The stream of super-hot water pinks my skin, loosens the knot of guilt at the base of my neck, and makes me feel slightly more prepared to face whatever’s waiting for me tonight. My plan is to call Noel and see if he’ll meet me for a drink or a cup of coffee. It’s after four in the afternoon, now, and I figure I’ll get up the nerve by seven or eight.

  I hop out and tuck a towel around me, reveling in the soft, fluffy cotton, and step out of the bathroom.

  “Tressa? What the fuck are you doing here?”

  The deep voice startles me so badly I stumble, but strong hands catch me before I end up in a naked heap on the floor. I look up to find Wade and his bright blue, worried eyes.

  “Does Sammie know you’re here?” Shock pinches a line between his eyebrows, and he lets me go, crossing his arms as though to ward off whatever trouble I’ve brought.

  Strangely, he doesn’t seem totally dismayed to see me.

  “What are you doing here?” I counter, not ready to confess to my level of crazy.

  “My girlfriend left her phone charger in my car, and I’m dropping it off.”

  “You have a girlfriend?” It seems weird, to me, even though Wade always has been attractive. Sweet guy, handsome face, killer body. He’d hooked up plenty, and none of those girls were ready to go when he tired of them, but a real girlfriend . . . that’s something.

  “It’s been two years since I’ve seen you, Tressa. Yes, I have a girlfriend. Noel’s getting married. But I’m guessing you already know that.” He eyes me, his gaze a mixture of trepidation and fondness.

  It reminds me we were friends once—are friends, maybe, if friendship doesn’t die when it’s shoved to life’s back burner. I step forward, my smile hesitant, but I know Wade almost as well as I know Noel. He folds me in a hug ten seconds later. His arms feel familiar, like slipping into a too-big, too-worn sweater.

  “It’s good to see you,” he murmurs, before pushing me away and folding his arms. “Now, what the fuck are you doing here?”

  “Um . . .”

  “Oh, Jesus. Really? I’m going to get to witness another epic Tressa meltdown?” He’s only half kidding. “I can’t decide whether I prefer emotionally flailing you or bottled-up you. Do you have a middle setting?”

  “I’m not going to melt down, or freak out, or assault anyone with snack food, I swear. I just want to talk to him.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to.”

  Wade’s eyes search mine. “What about what Noel needs?”

  The question slides needles beneath my skin. Ashlee made the same point—that it’s selfish of me to focus on relieving my regret without regard of what coming here will do to Noel. But I doubt it will do anything but reinforce his decision. The last time we were together, I tried to tell him everything—that not only did I love him, but I’d always loved him. He hadn’t wanted to hear it.

  But I still needed to say it.

  “Maybe it’s selfish, Wade, but I have to.”

  He stares at me for a long time, expression unreadable. “Listen, we’re doing his bachelor thing tonight. We’re going out for a few drinks at Shakespeare’s—you know, the piano bar?”

  “Why are you telling me this?” It’s too much to hope that, after everything, Wade might still believe I’m the best girl for his friend.

  “You’re not screwing this up for him, Tressa. You fucked him up for a solid two years, maybe more, and that’s enough. He’s over it. You need to get over it. If that means you talk to him tonight and get the hell out of town before the wedding, then that’s what we’re going to do.”

  His words hit me like a slap in the face, deserved maybe, but harsh. Unexpected from gentle Wade, who throws the parties, grins at everyone, and minds his own business. But Wade is right. Four years should be long enough to get over something. Someone.

  I’d let Noel down, all those nights when he tried so hard to tell me how he felt, to get me to admit I felt that way, too. I’d refused because I was scared. Immature.

  In the end, though, he’d let me down, too.

  Four

  Noel

  WADE LISTENED TO me, at least, in coming to Shakespeare’s. It reminds me of college since we spent tons of time here while we were undergrads, but it’s not crowded. The campus bars are busier on Thursday nights, with tons of cheap beer specials and the bonus of being within walking distance of most of the dorms. It’s not empty here, by any means, thou
gh. Wade reserved a table for the five of us, and if he hadn’t, we’d be standing. Fatigue drags through my blood, not helped by the beer, but it’s my last night out with the guys.

  “To Noel! To sleeping with one woman for the rest of your life.”

  We clink glasses, no one mentioning the fact that I’d only slept with two women in my entire life. Alice had been my first, when we’d dated in high school. The other had been a random one-night stand during my early attempts to get over Tressa.

  Tressa . . . Tressa who appears to be here in this bar tonight.

  When I see her face, I’m certain that my mind conjured it. She doesn’t disappear when I blink, though, and the hesitant, familiar smile sucks the oxygen out through my spine. Attraction and nostalgia sizzle with dread hot on their heels, a million memories rushing back in a blur.

  Dizzying heights of laughter and euphoria. Black depths of angst and anger and frustration. A humming intensity that I miss most of all.

  Nerves shoot through me, and I down the rest of my beer, my eyes fastened to hers. I have no idea how I feel or should feel, seeing her again. Or what she’s doing here.

  All I know is that Alice would freak out if she knew.

  Wade follows my gaze and clears his throat. “I told her we’d be here.”

  “What? Why would you do that? What the fuck is she doing here?”

  “I asked her the same thing. I didn’t know she was coming, I swear. No one did, I don’t think, but she’s staying with Sammie.”

  Fucking Sammie. Too sweet for her own good, and she’d always loved Tressa. Said love might come around a bunch of times, but the person who drove you crazy and still couldn’t drive you away . . . that only comes around once.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Didn’t want to ruin your night, I guess, and hoped she’d chicken out and not show up. That’s kind of her strong suit, if I recall.”

  Not lately. Deflecting and hiding, pretending life didn’t exist, had been part of the Tressa I’d fallen in love with almost four years ago, but the girl who had come to that last party had stopped running.