Hold the Forevers

by K. A. Linde

  Josie had planned her own bachelorette party. To no one’s surprise.

  I flopped back on the cushion. “I can’t believe this is your life.”

  “I know,” she gushed. “I mean … I still can’t believe that Academy is going into its seventh season.”

  “Hottest show on television.” I waggled my eyes up and down. “Literally.”

  “When they dropped the PG rating, it increased viewership,” she agreed. “I mean, look at HBO shows. We can compete with that.”

  Marley wrinkled her nose. “You were supposed to be family fun.”

  “And it was for four straight high school seasons. We know college isn’t that way.”

  “Even in supernatural college,” I said, barely suppressing a laugh.

  “Precisely,” Josie said.

  “So, do you think season eight will be your last season?” Marley asked. Academy had already been green lighted for another season, but none of us knew if it would go beyond that. “Since you’ll finish the college years?”

  Josie shrugged. “A girl can get a PhD.”

  Marley snorted. “PhDs aren’t glamorous.”

  “I love this for you. All your dreams coming true.”

  “And what about you?” Josie asked, turning the tables. “Are all your dreams coming true?”

  “Lila has the best dating stories,” Marley said.

  “Ugh!” I covered my eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Tell me!” Josie insisted. “It’s my wedding. I want to hear the wonderful life of Lila dating.”

  “Just imagine every bad thing that could happen in dating, and that’s been my life.”

  “It can’t be that bad,” Josie said.

  “Oh, it can,” Marley said. “Probably worse.”

  Josie’s eyes widened. “Do tell. It can’t be worse than your boyfriends duking it out on the church steps on Christmas Day.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “I wasn’t dating both of them.”

  “Semantics.”

  “You’re a bitch.”

  “I love you too.” Josie blew me air kisses. “You were devastated after that. Dating can’t possibly make you think that it wasn’t that bad.”

  “I mean, it was terrible, but in a different way,” I said. “Dating is like slowly having the air sucked out of your lungs and some guy mansplaining to you about how to breathe.”

  “Now, I must know!” Josie said. “Actually, I’m offended that you haven’t already told me.”

  “You’ve been filming and wedding planning. When would I have told you?”

  “Oh shush, give me the deets.”

  “Fine. I joined Tinder and then Bumble because everyone said Bumble was better. They both didn’t work for me. The first guy I talked to catfished me. He’d claimed to be this guy, and then we met up two weeks later, and he was, like, a fifty-year-old man. Super fun. There was a promising guy. We talked for almost a month before I felt comfortable with meeting him. I’d been catfished before, and he swore he was into me. We went on three dates and then hooked up, and then I never heard from him again.”

  “Eesh,” Josie said.

  “Yeah, I mean, if he was looking for a hook-up, why spend a month talking to me about a relationship?” I shook my head. “I’ve had a few hook-ups, and those were better than the relationship bit. At least we were all honest about what we were looking for.”

  “Oh, tell her about the guy in Macon.”

  I sighed. “I met him in Atlanta, but he worked in Macon full-time. We went on a few dates when he was there on business.”

  “Oh no,” Josie whispered. “I see where this is going.”

  “I drove an hour out of town to see him in Macon, only to find out he had a wife and two kids.”

  “Fuck.”

  “So, that was super fun.”

  “You had that one nice guy,” Marley said.

  “Ah, yes, blow-job guy.”

  “What?” Josie asked.

  “Real-nice guy. Took me out for a fancy steak dinner. Second date, he tried to force me to give him head in a hot tub. I politely declined and never talked to him again.”

  “How does this happen to you? All of these guys in such a short period of time?”

  “The tip of the iceberg,” I told her, defeated. “I mean, it doesn’t include the numerous unsolicited dick pics or the random strangers who, after two texts back and forth, insist they’re going to suck my ass all night.”

  Josie burst into laughter. “Stop. It’s too much! They did not.”

  “Oh, let me pull up Tinder. I bet there’s some juicy ones in here.”

  “They cannot all be duds.”

  “They might not be,” I told her as I passed her the messenger feature of Tinder to scroll through. “But I haven’t found a good one.”

  Josie scrolled through my phone. “Oh my God, is that his real dick?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Fuck. This guy wants to eat pussy. Oh, and then two texts later, he calls you a bitch … and a cunt.”

  “I’m called a bitch or a cunt every week.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Josie passed the phone back. “Plan B: move to LA. I can hook you up with all my hot film friends.”

  “Oh God, no. One, I’m not leaving my job at the Falcons. I love my job. And two, I can’t handle the Hollywood personas.”

  “Just give it time,” Marley said. “It doesn’t have to be either terrible Tinder dates or nothing. Someone is going to come around and knock your socks off.”

  “I hope so,” I told them. “Right now, it feels hopeless.”

  “Okay, you know how I feel about those boys who hurt you,” Josie said diplomatically. “But you’re in a low place. What happens if you see one of them again?”

  I swallowed. “I really don’t know.”

  “You need to be alone longer.”

  “I know,” I whispered. “I know I do. I don’t know how it would ever work with either of them again anyway. Not after what happened.”

  Josie and Marley shared a look.

  “The right guy will come along,” Marley said.

  “You just have to be ready when he does.”

  I nodded. “I’m ready and waiting. I hope it doesn’t get much worse than this.”

  Part III

  35

  Houston

  February 5, 2017

  Kristen bounced from foot to foot on the sidelines. “I can’t believe we’re at the Super Bowl. I can’t believe we’re at the Super Bowl. I can’t believe we’re at the Super Bowl!”

  “You keep saying that.”

  But I had the same jittery energy. The Falcons hadn’t been in the Super Bowl since 1998. This was only the second time in franchise history. And we were going to be on the field for it.

  “How are you holding up?” Kristen’s boyfriend, Hong Min, asked. He was an assistant offensive line coach. He’d played ball at Oregon in college and then a year for the Seahawks before moving into coaching.

  “All nerves,” she admitted.

  “We’ve got this.”

  A small crowd formed around them on the sidelines. It wasn’t unusual, but then I saw that there were people who weren’t even normally on the sidelines here. Our friends in PR and scouting and marketing. My throat bobbed as I saw Cole among them. Our eyes met, and he winked. I quickly looked away.

  What were they all doing here? What was Cole doing here?

  One thing was certain: Kristen didn’t seem to notice. Hong Min kept her occupied, so she didn’t pay attention to anything else.

  Then, he dropped to his knee in front of her.

  She shrieked.

  My hands flew to my mouth. “Oh my God!”

  Hong Min produced a black box and opened it to reveal a giant diamond ring. “Kristen Ng, will you do the honor of marrying me?”

  “Yes!” she gasped, tears forming in her eyes. “Of course, yes!”

  Hong Min slid the ring on her finger and then picked her up, twir
ling her in place. Cameras were on them, filming the proposal for their networks. And everyone cheered and swooned over the Super Bowl engagement.

  I stepped forward to congratulate them at the same time as Cole. I flinched backward. I’d seen him around work in the six weeks since we’d broken up, but luckily, we didn’t have to run into each other if we didn’t want to. I mostly stayed in the training room, and with the Super Bowl fast approaching, I’d been too busy to do anything but work.

  It had been six weeks since we’d been this close together. The hardest and most grueling six weeks of my life.

  This wasn’t like the other times, where we had been too far apart to make this work. This was me actively avoiding him. Me saying that I couldn’t do this. Me trying to move on for the first time in my entire life.

  He’d begged me not to leave after what happened on Christmas Day. He stuck around Savannah, even after I paid for a flight home so I didn’t have to drive with him. He didn’t think I was serious until Marley and I cleared my stuff out of his house and took Sunny with me to live with her. Then, it had sank in that I was leaving. I was really walking away.

  But seeing him made it worse. Made it painfully clear that I hadn’t even come close to moving on.

  I said my congratulations to Kristen and Hong Min and then retreated, but Cole followed me.

  “Lila,” he said, stopping me in my tracks.

  “Did you help plan this?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. Me and a few of the other guys.”

  “It was romantic. She’s going to be a mess the whole game.”

  “Worth it.”

  I nodded. “I should probably get back to work.”

  “Hey.” He grasped my arm. “I’ve missed you.”

  “I can’t do this.”

  “It’s only been six weeks. We can work this out. We’ve gone longer than that before and made it work.”

  I shook my head. “What we have is fundamentally broken.”

  He winced at my words. “How can you think that?”

  “Because I watched you throw the first punch.”

  “I know, but …”

  “After I told you to let it go and not let him antagonize you.”

  “I didn’t know you’d been together at Georgia–Florida. It was a shock. I just reacted. I’m sorry.”

  “I know you are, but you apologize and you apologize, and it doesn’t make a difference. It doesn’t change your behavior.”

  We’d already had this conversation. We’d had it more times than I could count in those early days. I told him what had really happened at Frat Beach. Not that it justified it, but we’d been broken up, and I’d been wasted and mad. It hadn’t been what Ash painted it as, but it hardly mattered because it got the reaction he’d wanted from Cole. He hadn’t even stopped to think. Even after all of our fights about it.

  “Please, Lila,” he said. “I still love you, and I know that you feel the same.”

  I closed my eyes and sighed. “I do care about you, Cole. That hasn’t changed, but it doesn’t fix the problem.”

  “I’ll do anything.”

  “Now but not before.”

  “Give me one more chance.”

  My stomach knotted, and I felt sick again. One more chance was exactly what I wanted to give him. I wanted this to work. I wanted to look into his face and know that we could move on from this. But I didn’t know that. The last eight years had proven that he had consistent behavior. He wasn’t going to change. Not for me at least.

  “I can’t.”

  “Look, come celebrate with me after the game.”

  “Cole …”

  “We can leave it up to chance,” he offered desperately. “If the Falcons win, then you celebrate with me. And if we don’t then … then I’ll back off.”

  I chewed the inside of my cheek. Celebration didn’t mean a date. It was a risk, but I could see the hope in his face. And I hated dashing it, even after all this time.

  “Okay. If we win, then we’ll celebrate, but it doesn’t mean dating.”

  A smile broke across his face. The one that I remembered from college. The real smile. And I wanted to believe that this would turn the tides. That we’d come out on top of this, but I didn’t have that unshakable faith any longer.

  I’d grown up and grown out of it.

  The game went into overtime.

  “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “I know,” Kristen grumbled.

  “Twenty-eight to three, and they came back with twenty-five unanswered points,” I grumbled. “What the fuck is even happening?”

  Kristen just shook her head.

  Then we watched the Falcons lose the coin toss in overtime.

  And lose the game.

  The Patriots cheered victoriously to a game we should have had in the bag in the third quarter. I stood, stunned, on the sidelines as the players walked off the field.

  It was over.

  We’d lost the Super Bowl.

  All of that energy and our best year since the ’90s, and it had ended this poorly. I followed the rest of the training team off the field. I couldn’t stomach watching the victory celebrations.

  I’d changed, and I was about to head back to the hotel when Cole found me.

  “There you are.”

  “We lost,” I told him.

  He nodded. “I know. It was fucked.”

  “Yeah.”

  I felt defeated. I wanted to sleep for a week and not think about the crushing disappointment.

  “That doesn’t mean that we can’t go out. We can get a drink to wash away the sorrow.”

  I shook my head. “No, I’m going to go back to the hotel. I just want to sleep.”

  “Lila, please … I know I said we could leave it up to chance, but I thought …” He ran a hand back through his hair. “I thought we could work this out.”

  “Cole, I can’t. We left it up to chance … and we lost. That’s it. I need the time and space. I need to be alone. Just … alone.”

  “I fucking hate this. I hate what happened and that we can’t work it out.”

  “I hate it too.”

  And I did. So fucking much. I wanted to throw myself into his arms and say that none of it mattered. If it had been a one-time thing, that would have been different. But this was the culmination of a long line of problems. I couldn’t stay here and deal with that. I couldn’t let it keep happening.

  “Okay,” he said with a sigh. “You’ve made your choice. As much as I don’t like it, I do have to respect it. You want space. I can give you that. You want time. I can give you that too. But it’s not the end for us, Lila. It’s not the end.”

  Tears pricked at my eyes, and I hastily looked away. “I think it is the end.”

  “I told you once that I wouldn’t wait forever for you. But I will.”

  I stepped back, hating what I was about to say. “You shouldn’t wait. I’m not going to change my mind.”

  It might have been chance that the Falcons had lost today, but it felt like a nail in the coffin. We’d let fate spin us on the wheel, to pull us back together, and the universe had said no. That was enough for me.

  36

  Savannah

  July 22, 2017

  “Remind me again why I agreed to this?” I asked Marley as we parked on a garage deck next to the riverfront property.

  “Probably because you want to show Shelly Thomas how awesome you are.”

  “Yeah. Right. My vanity won out.”

  “Ego.”

  “Whatever,” I said with a laugh.

  We hopped out of the car and headed for the banquet hall overlooking the river.

  “Plus, I made you suffer through my ten-year high school reunion. I should accompany you to yours.”

  “Yeah. I just … we’re probably going to see Ash.”

  “Oh, we definitely are,” Marley said. “Didn’t you even read the invitation?”

  I pulled the invite out of my purse. “Uh, not really?”


  “His family donated the space for the reunion. There’s a thank-you to the Talmadge family in small print at the bottom.”

  I perused the invitation. And yep, there it was.

  “Oh.”

  “But!” Marley said encouragingly. “It will be fine. We don’t even have to talk to him. We can walk in, have a free drink, show those old mean girls what’s up, and then find a real bar.”

  “This sounds like a supremely bad idea.”

  “You’ve had a shitty few months. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  I clapped my hand over her mouth. “Don’t jinx us. The worst is always waiting around the corner.”

  She cackled. “Okay, fine. Chill. It’s just an excuse to be in Savannah while Gran is sick. I don’t know how much longer she has. I wanted you to be here, and I used this as an excuse.”

  “Mars,” I said, pulling her into a hug. “I’m so sorry about Gran.”

  “Me too,” she whispered. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I have teaching obligations, but …”

  “But if something happens to Gran, then take the time off that you need.”

  She nodded and looked away. “Yeah. I’ll figure it out.”

  We took the elevator up to the top and stood just outside of the melee. St Catherine’s and Holy Cross were having a joint reunion, like they’d had a joint prom. I hoped that it didn’t go as poorly for me as prom had.

  I took a deep breath and then walked up to the desk. Name tags were scattered across the table, and a chirpy girl from my class with the name tag Val checked me in. I grabbed stickers for me and Marley.

  It was exactly what I’d expected the high school reunion to look like. A little cheesy, a little Catholic. I was actually astonished they were serving alcohol. It must have been part of the deal of getting it off school property. I was thankful for whoever had made that call.