by K. A. Linde
We beelined for the drink line and waited impatiently with what felt like the rest of my class.
“So,” Marley said next to me as she eyed the crowd, “what are you going to say if you see Ash?”
“Nothing. I don’t want to see or talk to him.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Shut up.”
Marley laughed. “I mean, of course you want to talk to him, but I don’t think that you should. Despite months of bad dates, you should probably take Josie’s advice and be single. Find yourself or whatever.”
“I know,” I growled and then released a sigh. “I know.”
“Let’s forget about it. This isn’t before. You’re young, smart, and funny. You love your job. You have an amazing life in Atlanta. We’re going to have a Romy and Michele type of night, complete with ridiculous dancing and a helicopter ride.”
I snorted. “Did you invent Post-its?”
Marley rolled her eyes. “Obviously.”
Once we reached the front of the line, we grabbed our drinks and then went to “mingle.” And by mingle, I meant, mostly stand near the empty dance floor and wonder what I was doing here.
“I don’t like any of these people,” I whispered to Marley.
She snorted. “You were here for three years. You had to have liked someone.”
“Yeah, Ash.”
“Right.” She picked at her nails. “Well, there’s Shelly Thomas. Looks like she’s coming over here.”
I swallowed. It was the reason I’d come. I wanted to face my old nemesis. The person who had made my senior year living hell. Now that I was here, it felt childish. Like, what would I get out of this confrontation with Shelly? I didn’t care about her. She couldn’t hurt me anymore.
So, I took a deep breath, and let it out. “Let’s just go.”
“What? Really?” Marley asked.
“Yeah. Come on.”
I took one step before I heard a voice behind us. “Marley Nelson.”
I didn’t know that anyone else even knew Marley here. But I did know Derek Ballentine. He’d been the star of Holy Cross’s basketball team. He’d been good enough to play at UNC on scholarship. I had no idea how he knew Marley.
Marley’s eyes widened in shock and then narrowed to pinpricks. “Derek.”
“How are you doing? I haven’t seen you since—”
“I remember,” she snapped.
I glanced at Marley. She sounded … angry. Like really angry. Who was this Marley who actually got irritated by some strange guy? A Holy Cross boy at that. Marley mostly didn’t give any fucks about anyone.
“Hey, Derek,” I said to defuse the tension.
He smiled at me. He’d always been handsome, but the years had been good to him. He was no longer just tall and gangly. He filled out his sharp suit from years of basketball. Must have been doing well enough for that suit.
“Delilah, right?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
“You dated Ash Talmadge.”
My cheeks heated. “I did.”
“He’s a cool guy.”
I nodded. “Sure.”
“Leave her alone, Derek. Can’t you see you’re making her uncomfortable?”
“Oh, calm down, minivan,” he said with a laugh. “We’re just reminiscing.”
“Minivan?” I asked.
“We should go. Good-bye, Derek.”
Marley grabbed my arm and pulled me away from Derek. But she did nothing to douse my curiosity.
“What was that?”
“What was what?” she asked.
“You freaked out on him.”
“He’s an asshole.”
I pulled her to a stop. “Okay. But I’ve never seen you act like this.”
She clenched her jaw. “He went to Harvard Law when I was there for my PhD. He’s an ass.”
“But he’s hot.”
Marley ground her teeth and looked away. “So?”
“Oh my God, are you into him?”
“No!” she gasped. “How could you even suggest that? I hate him!”
“Fine line.”
“Maybe for you!”
“All right.” I raised my arms in surrender. “If you say so.”
I glanced back at Derek, wondering what exactly he’d done to Mars to elicit such a reaction. Marley wasn’t like me or Josie. She wasn’t one for dramatics. If she said she hated him, well then, he must have earned it. I found it surprising that it had never come up. Marley always divulged everything. Why would she hide this?
But when I looked over at Derek, I noticed the person who stood next to him. My heart clenched at the sight of Ash in a suit, holding a glass of whiskey.
Pulled by an unseen magnet, his eyes found mine. So impossibly blue in this light.
He smiled. An invitation.
I wanted to go to him. I wanted to dive deep into him. It would be so easy. I could see it in the curve of his lips and the arch of his eyebrow and the twitch in his jaw. If I gave in here, I’d never look back.
But I wasn’t ready for that. I wasn’t ready to give in and never look back. It was the first real time that I’d ever tried to move on from both Ash and Cole. I needed to be alone. I needed to see if there was someone else out there worth my time.
Just because I hadn’t found anyone promising yet didn’t mean I needed to run back to Ash. Even if my heart thudded at the prospect. At a piece finally going back into place. Not quite whole. Not without them both. But fuck, close enough.
“Lila,” Marley whispered. Her eyes darted between us. “Are you going to talk to him?”
Ash raised his glass to me. And oh, how I wanted to go. It had been hard without him. Without Cole.
Ash was finishing his MBA. Cole had taken his dream job as a Falcons scout, putting him on the road most weeks out of the year.
I never saw either of them. Just like I’d wanted.
I’d wanted to move on.
And I still hadn’t.
I took a step back, away from him.
“No,” I whispered.
Marley shot me a sympathetic look. “Are you sure?”
“No,” I repeated.
I tipped my head at him. We didn’t have to speak. He knew my thoughts as if they were painted on my skin. He knew that I’d missed him and I wanted to talk to him. Knew that I’d already made my decision. That pushing me would get him nowhere with me.
Still, he took that step forward. The want, the ache, the need still there. For both of us.
“We should go,” I told Marley.
I turned my back on Ash, just as I’d done to Cole. I needed more time. If I could survive without them.
And the jury was still out.
37
Savannah
December 24, 2017
“This is the last one,” my mom said.
She dropped a box at my feet, and I stared at the half-dozen of them in dismay.
“How do I have this much stuff?”
“Beats me, but I want it out of my house.”
“Just throw it all away. I clearly haven’t missed it.”
My mom gave me the look.
“Your cheerleading jacket? Your high school yearbooks? The dance trophies?”
“Fine,” I grumbled. “I’ll go through it all.”
“Good. Now, are you sure about mass? We’re not leaving until Steph shows. You still have time to change your mind.”
I wrinkled my nose. The last thing that I wanted to do was go to Christmas Eve mass at the cathedral where Ash and Cole had fought on the church steps. No, thanks. I’d be shocked if I ever stepped foot inside that place again.
“I’m going to pass.”
My mom sighed. “All right. Well, if you change your mind, Steph and the kids are coming over in an hour. Elle and Gary are meeting us at the service.”
“Sounds good, Mom.”
Mom kissed the top of my head. “I’m glad you’re here and in such a better place. When I saw you this summer, I was
so worried.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“Can’t help it. That’s my job.”
She smiled and then headed back down the hall. I hated that I made my mom worry. Though she’d had reason to worry. I’d been a wreck for months after what had happened. I’d thought that I’d never get over it. Never feel comfortable in my own skin again. Not to mention, dating had been a catastrophe. Though most of it had gotten better. I’d dated more duds than good guys, but it had shown me more of what I actually wanted from a relationship. I knew who I was again.
It was probably easier that I hadn’t seen Cole or Ash pretty much all year. Cole’s new job had taken him out of the department. No one saw him anymore, and our mutual friends knew better than to bring him up. And Ash had been absent as well, finishing his MBA.
Everyone said that time would help me move on, but I hadn’t found that to be true. I’d gone longer time spans without them, and it hadn’t ever changed anything. I didn’t expect it to this time either. But at least, this time, it wasn’t an acute pain, but more of a dull ache. So, I kept my head down and focused on getting my life together.
I’d even asked for Christmas Eve off from work, so I could come down here to be with Mom instead of in New Orleans with the team. I’d numbly watched the loss from my mom’s TV. It was the first game I’d missed in years, and the loss made it worse.
Which was how I’d ended up cleaning out old boxes of my stuff. I felt bad about tossing the dance trophies and yearbooks. So, I made a pile to keep and a pile to discard. The discard pile growing rapidly. I didn’t have much room in my studio apartment back in Atlanta.
My hand settled on a stack of pictures under the yearbooks. My heart clenched. It was the dozens of pictures my mom had taken of me and Ash at prom. I was in my silvery blue dress and he had the matching bow tie. We looked so young. So young and so happy. So in love. I’d had no idea what would happen that night. I flipped through a bunch before putting the whole lot in the keep pile. I couldn’t look through them. It hurt too much.
I dumped out the next box onto my already-messy floor and began to sort. I swallowed as I moved from high school to college. And there, amid the chaos, was a group of photographs from my sunflower session with Cole. Our heads tilted together, love apparent on our faces. I squeezed my eyes shut. God, it all felt so long ago. Like a strange and distant past when there had been nothing between us.
The photos glared up at me, and I turned them facedown in the keep pile. Then my fingers closed over an old keychain, and I laughed through the pain. A Coke keychain. The one that Cole had given me that first birthday together.
Jesus, I hadn’t gotten rid of anything. My hand tightened around it, my heart squeezing with the motion. I could imagine us together as I managed to get two Cokes out of the vending machine. Him dancing with me as we rejoiced in my superpower.
But Cole was gone.
Ash was gone.
I pushed myself away from the pile of memories. I couldn’t keep doing this right now. I needed air.
I dropped the keychain down on the keep pile, grabbed my jacket, and headed for the front door.
“Where are you going?” my mom asked.
“Out.”
“It’s almost dark.”
“Just going for a walk in the park to clear my head.”
“Okay,” she said in that disapproving mom voice. “Be safe.”
“I will. Love you,” I called as I jogged out the front door.
I didn’t stop jogging until I reached Forsyth Park. It was farther than I normally would have walked, especially in the cold. But I wanted to get away, and the running at least helped clear my head.
I made it to the fountain and paused to catch my breath. The park was unsurprisingly deserted on Christmas Eve, and I walked around the fountain a few times before leaning back against the surrounding railing.
It was hard to believe that a year had gone by already. It simultaneously felt like no time at all had passed and it had been a lifetime ago. How had we gotten to that point?
I probably should have done something productive, like open up Tinder in Savannah and see if I matched with anyone else who hated Christmas this year, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t want to date anyone else. No matter what everyone had said, the last year of dating had shown me how good I’d had it with both Ash and Cole. Separate from the other, the relationship had been amazing, and I hadn’t been able to duplicate that. I wasn’t sure I ever would be able to.
With a sigh, I sank down to the cold ground, leaning my back against the fountain barrier. A family skipped past me. A high school couple held hands as they walked the perimeter of the fountain and then took a seat at a bench farther away.
Everything about that felt too familiar. How many days had Ash and I met up here? Too many to count. Back before everything had fallen apart. Back when it had been so easy.
“Hello, stranger.”
I whipped my head up and found the source of my thoughts walking toward me in a black peacoat and dress pants. I blinked, sure that I was imagining Ash standing before me. But he wasn’t from my imagination; he was real.
“Ash?” I asked, quickly climbing back to my feet.
“Hi, Lila. Merry Christmas.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to find you.”
I tilted my head. “How did you know that I was here?”
“Well, I didn’t. I went to your house, and your mom told me where to find you.”
“Traitor,” I muttered under my breath.
He chuckled softly. “If it’s any consolation, she threatened me with bodily harm if I hurt you.”
“That doesn’t sound like my mom.”
“She said that you’re doing a lot better and she never wants to see you hurt like you were last year. I assured her that I didn’t want to hurt you, just to talk. She said that was fine, but if you came back with another broken heart, no one would ever find the body.”
I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t stop from laughing at that. My mom, the good Christian woman, threatening Ash Talmadge. Hilarious.
“God, I love her.”
“She’s great. Raised one hell of a daughter.”
“Four,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, but her Amy bloomed.”
I flushed at the Little Women reference. Oh, how we always came back to this moment. Where I was the youngest sister coming into my own and he was the boy I’d always loved from afar.
“What are you really doing here, Ash?” I asked, crossing my arms.
“I want to talk,” he assured me.
“You never just want to talk.”
“You’re right,” he agreed. He leaned back against the railing next to me. “I couldn’t stand the thought of you being in Savannah and not seeing you.”
“We’ve both lived in Atlanta for the last year and not seen each other.”
“It’s different. You know it is,” he said, meeting my gaze. “This is home.”
And he was my hometown boy.
I sighed, releasing the tension between us. What good did it do, carrying it around? I missed him. I’d just been thinking about how I wanted things to be different. I’d had a year to get my thoughts together, and they’d told me that while I could be alone if I wanted to, I’d had it good here. Just like this.
“It is,” I agreed.
“What a year it’s been,” he mused.
I nodded. “Did you have fun at the reunion?”
“Without you? No.”
“Oh.”
“Did you?”
“I had more fun at Marley’s.”
“That makes sense. More of your friends went to public school anyway.”
“I had this absurd thought that I’d show up at our reunion and show Shelly how amazing I am now.”
“How’d that go over?”
“It didn’t happen. I don’t have to prove anything to her. It was just … petty.” I glanced up a
t him. “Even admitting that I still thought about what she had done would only prove that she won.”
“Do you still think about it?”
“I think about you,” I whispered. “I wonder where we’d be if it hadn’t happened.”
“I’ll always find a way back to you, Lila. Hasn’t the last decade proven that?”
I swallowed and nodded. It had. Ash was my one constant. He was never too far away.
Ash tentatively reached out, linking his pinkie around mine. A chill ran up my arm at the contact. This wasn’t like high school, and somehow, it felt so similar. Like a new beginning. A new first.
“Another year gone,” he said. “How many more years do we have to keep ending up here, alone?”
“I don’t know, Ash.”
“I’m still here, Lila. I still love you.” He tugged me closer. “Come back to me. Let’s start over again.”
Our bodies were only an inch apart. I stared up into that all-too-familiar face. The sharp contours of his cheeks and the bright blue of his eyes and the tilt of his head and the perfect shape of his lips. It was all so easy. As easy as breathing.
I nodded. “Yes.”
And then his mouth fitted to mine. The place it had always belonged. The moment etched in stone, here in our hometown.
38
Savannah
December 24, 2018
“Come on.” Ash opened the passenger door and held his hand out to me.
I put my hand in his and dropped my heels down onto the pavement. “What’s this? I thought you’d finally convinced me to go back to church.”
“Detour.”
“All of that needling, and you opt for a detour instead of Christmas Eve mass,” I said as he helped me to my feet.
“It’s tradition.”
We’d started a year ago at Forsyth Park. It only made sense to spend Christmas Eve here again. So, I tucked my arm into his, warming my hand inside his peacoat pocket, and followed him into the park.
“Your parents are going to be mad if we’re late,” I teased.