by Bromberg, K
Grabbing the remaining two boxes of his order, I make my way out of the shop to where he’s placing them in the trunk of a ridiculously sexy, sleek sports car. When he stands up and meets my eyes, a lock of hair has fallen over his forehead, and I’m reminded of who we used to be together. He takes the boxes from me without a word, sets them inside, and shuts the trunk. His eyes are on the keys in his hands as he walks slowly to the driver’s side of the car.
So many things I need to say to him, about what happened minutes ago and over ten years ago, and yet I think I’ve already said enough.
He rests his forearms on the top of his car, his eyes still focused on where his fingers toy with his keys. “You always were quick with that temper, Say. Used to cause a lot of problems for you. Seems it still does.” He lifts his face to meet mine but his sunglasses hide his eyes. “Thanks for the cupcakes. I’ll see you around.”
Without another word, Hayes lowers himself into the car. The engine purrs to life, rumbles in my chest, and he pulls out of the parking lot while I stand there watching him leave.
The difference is this time I know he’s leaving.
And at least I know why.
Was it my fault he left last time too? My impatience? My assumptions? Had I not read him then as I couldn’t read him today? I hate the unanswered questions that drift through my mind and despise the doubts that weigh them down. Because regardless of how many times I’ve discredited them in the past, they still linger.
Still haunt.
I don’t know how long I stand there and stare but I’m well aware that DeeDee is waiting to pounce on me for information the minute I go inside. When I push open the door, the sight of her standing there—arms crossed, foot tapping, grin so big her cheeks might crack—confirms my suspicion.
“No. Fricking. Way.” DeeDee’s eyes bug out of her head as I walk into Sweet Cheeks. “That was . . . he was . . . oh my God, you know Hayes Whitley. Like know-know him.”
I hear what she says, her prattling, yet I walk past her and into the back kitchen area without a word. I just need a few minutes to wrap my head around exactly what happened. My assumptions. My temper.
Why, when Hayes drove off, so did a small part of my nostalgic hope that he’d come back for me. And that in itself irritates me.
Ten years have passed. I’m no longer that young girl he once knew. I’ve lived and grown and learned from my mistakes. Most notably the ones I made in loving him.
“Saylor.”
“Not now, Dee.” I hold up my hand to her, my heart racing and head reeling.
“No. You don’t get to ignore me on this one, Saylor. How did I not know that you know him? I mean I knew he grew up around here but, holy crap, I just made a complete ass out of myself in front of him.”
I snort. “You and me both.” I head straight into the back room and unlock the door that leads up to my apartment. “Give me a few.”
When I shut the door behind me, DeeDee is still talking. Still telling me she’s not going to stop asking questions until I answer. And all I can think as I enter my apartment is that the answers don’t matter. Hayes Whitley was a part of my past. Is a part of my past. And if seeing him has churned up all of these unacknowledged emotions that I swore I’d dealt with a long time ago, then he needs to stay right where he is.
In the past.
Because by never looking back, he let me know he didn’t want anything to do with my future.
Saylor
“You up there, Ships Ahoy?”
I cross my arms over my chest, roll my eyes. Sigh. Will he ever stop calling me that stupid nickname?
The sound of his feet clomping up the stairs of the old tree house greets my frustration and I know like always, he’s not going to leave me alone. He’s so annoying. And such a guy. Ugh.
Keeping my eyes fixed on the hole in the roof of my most favorite place in the world, I stare at the stars above in the night sky—visually trace the constellations—rather than look over to where the makeshift door has creaked open announcing his presence.
“Hey, kiddo.”
I grit my teeth. Hate the feeling as my stomach flip-flops at the sound of his voice. At the stupid nickname that makes me feel like he thinks of me as a little kid when I’m not. He’s only two years older than me.
Boys are so frustrating. And stupid. And gross.
But he’s Hayes Whitley. All swoony and tall with his light brown hair and dark brown eyes. He’s funny and flirty and supposedly knows how to kiss better than any of the other guys in school. At least that’s what the older girls claim when they’re giggling on the other side of the locker room before gym class.
Because I’ve never kissed a boy before.
But I don’t believe them. He’s just Hayes Whitley. My brother’s best friend. The one who, during my last slumber party, helped Ryder squirt drops of mustard on all of my sleeping friends’ faces before slowly tickling their cheeks with a feather so they’d smear it all over. The boy who takes a cookie out of my hand after school without so much as a thanks before heading to my brother’s room and slamming the door shut to do who knows what before they head out to whatever practice they have for the day. The same guy who, every time Ryder has a party when my parents go out of town to wherever they go, makes sure to climb up the ladder to my tree house to make sure I don’t want to come down and do whatever all the cool kids are doing down below.
I like it and hate it and don’t understand why I feel that way.
“I’m not a kid anymore so don’t call me kiddo. Go away.”
And of course being the stubborn teenager I know him to be, he doesn’t leave. Rather his footsteps clomping around the small area tell me he’s invading my space. My reprieve from the annoying giggles of the popular senior girls downstairs, trying to impress the jocks.
The floorboards flex beneath me from his weight. The subtle scent of his shampoo and beer fill the space around us. The sound of his body shifting—shoes scraping, jeans sliding over wood, the grunt as he lies down beside me. The heat of his upper arm pressing against mine as he scoots next to me.
“What are you looking at? Ah man, there’s tons up there tonight,” he says as he sees the bright stars spread across the darkened sky above us.
“Mm-hmm.” For some reason I can’t say anything else. Nerves rattle around inside me when it’s just Hayes.
Irritating.
Frustrating.
The boy who’s like a third child in our house most days. A second, annoying, brother.
And yet despite all of that, the nerves I don’t understand are there.
I concentrate on the sky above. Try to draw lines from star to star and make them any shape I want them to be. It’s so much easier to focus on that than the funny way my blood rushes in my ears. Or the chills that suddenly blanket my bare skin despite the warm night.
“Have you?”
His question pulls me from my thoughts. Makes me realize he asked something. I wipe my sweaty palms on my shorts. Swallow over the words tying up my throat. “Have I what?” It’s barely a whisper and I wonder if he even heard me with the party’s music and laughter carrying up here.
I turn my head and startle when I find his face turned toward mine, our noses inches apart. The heat of his breath hits my lips. My heart feels like it somersaults in my chest and lands somewhere in the pit of my belly. I meet the dark brown of his eyes and avert my gaze immediately, way too uncomfortable and at the same time wanting to look right back at them.
He waits. It feels like forever in the tiny space of the tree house, but I know it’s only seconds. Seconds where I neglect to breathe. Forget to think. And it’s only when I bring my eyes back to his, suddenly leery that I might have boogers in my nose or leaves in my hair, that he answers my question.
“Have you seen any shooting stars?”
My breath hitches as he moves his arm and the back of his hand brushes against mine.
Is this how a boy tries to hold your hand?
> I don’t want him to.
I do want him to.
This is Hayes. Just Hayes. Don’t be stupid. He’s not going to hold your hand.
The question. Answer the question.
I clear my throat, trying to make my tongue, that feels like three times its normal size, work. “Yeah.”
I can’t see his mouth but know he smiles because the corners of his eyes bunch up as his hair, wet from swimming, falls onto his forehead. “What did you wish for?”
You to kiss me.
My eyes fling open, and the familiar shadows on my bedroom ceiling do nothing to slow the rapid beat of my heart in my chest. The dream, reliving the memory, feels like just yesterday and so very long ago at the same time.
That first longing to be kissed by a boy. The smell of summer around us, and those first moments in my teenage life where Hayes Whitley became so much more than my big brother’s best friend.
He became my first crush.
Then later my first love.
And later again my first heartbreak.
I sigh, snuggle back down into the covers of my big, empty bed, and hate how seeing Hayes yesterday caused forgotten memories to resurface. Like those first flutters of how I felt that night in the tree house when something shifted between us. Such a contrast to the regret that’s been eating at me since I jumped to conclusions. My temper. The twist of my gut as he drove away without allowing me to explain my actions, even though I couldn’t really explain them anyway without feeling more pathetic.
Damn you, Hayes Whitley.
Damn him for always popping back into my life somehow: his movie trailer on constant repeat during television commercials, running into his mom in the grocery store, sitting at a Starbucks in town and seeing him from afar on the very few occasions he’s bothered to venture back home. They’ve all caused those feelings of rejection and hurt to rile back up when all I had wanted was for them to be dead and buried.
Even when I was engaged to Mitch. That spark, the one that had been missing, it was Hayes Whitley’s fault it wasn’t there in the first place. Why can’t I be free of him? It has been ten years. I was going to marry another man, for God’s sake. Shit. I don’t want this. Don’t have time for this churned-up memory. Don’t want this unsettled feeling.
But it’s not like Hayes even cares. He most likely chalked up what we had to teenage love with his best friend’s little sister. A blip on the radar before he was swallowed whole by the flashes of the cameras that constantly follow him around to document his every move. So why would I assume he’d even think twice about me, a ghost of a memory from his past?
It’s not like I thought of him much either. Once I met Mitch, he was the patient one earning my trust. The trust I never gave anyone after the job Hayes did on it. Because yes, while I can admit that what Hayes and I had was most likely puppy love, it was also the first time my heart was broken, and you don’t forget either of those occurrences very easily.
But if it was puppy love, why did seeing him yesterday affect me so strongly?
It’s ironic. I’m lying in bed thinking about Hayes all these years later and not questioning why it’s not Mitch I’m thinking of.
It’s only been eight months. Not ten years. And yet, Hayes’s pull on me dominates without question.
Mitch was gentle and patient and the man I was going to marry. Hayes was brash and assertive and left me with a battered and bruised heart.
Maybe it’s just because Hayes is the one I couldn’t have. Maybe it’s an inherent thing to feel that way even though I was young without a clue about life or love. Regardless, it doesn’t matter.
There will be no seeing Hayes again other than on his larger-than-life billboard ads. Or on one of the bazillion magazine covers that adorn the checkout stands, accusing him of cheating on Jenna Dixon: his girlfriend or ex-girlfriend or who knows what she is to him because they are tabloids after all. Or if I don’t flip the channel quick enough when he makes a promotional appearance on Ellen or Jimmy Fallon. Because I screwed up. I assumed Hayes had shown up because Ryder called him. And maybe he felt bad about what had happened a long time ago, thought I was pathetic and pitied my situation with Mitch so he came to save the day. Or laugh at me. Both would have made me feel the same way.
But he hadn’t.
Not even close. He didn’t even have a clue what I was talking about, but my temper was unleashed, my mouth in motion without thinking. All Hayes wanted to do was pick up an order for his great-uncle’s memorial. Mitch used to joke that he needed to carry duct tape for my mouth in case I lost my cool, so I wouldn’t make a scene and tarnish the pristine Layton reputation. Now I can see why.
Talk about being an idiot with a capital I.
Even worse is that, despite all of this as I lie here in bed, every part of me wants to find some way to apologize to Hayes. I need to explain but know that would only result in me feeling like more of an idiot when I tell him I was a runaway bride. That the wedding bells I thought I heard were actually alarm bells warning me to save myself and run the opposite way. How do I save face and make him see I’m not crazy when I tell him any of that? That I was in a perfectly solid relationship for six years but when it came down to brass tacks, I couldn’t do it.
I’ll just have to lie low. Keep to myself and away from any of the places I know he frequents when he’s here. Avoidance is probably best at this point.
With that decided and feeling a bit more settled, I slowly sink into the edge of sleep.
My mind drifting to that first kiss.
To our last kiss.
To how my heart jumped in my throat and every female part of me reacted to the sight of him in the bakery.
To the man I shouldn’t be thinking about but can’t seem to shake from my mind.
Saylor
I should be working.
I should be listening to the promises I made to myself.
I should be doing a lot of things and the one I shouldn’t, I’m about to do.
The bar was loud when I entered. The deep pulse of bass bumped through the speakers, and it took a second for my eyes to adjust to the darkness inside the Blue Devil.
It’s all Ryder’s fault. Him and his you need to get out and have some fun. His a bunch of us are going out tonight to just have a few drinks and relax after a long week. His you’re gonna burn yourself out because you’re working too hard. You’ve been through a lot and it’s not going to kill you if you’re not there one night.
Maybe I feel like I owe it to him to show up after turning him down week after week when he’s just trying to be a good brother by looking out for me. Then again, maybe I showed up tonight because I feel guilty for immediately assuming he had contacted Hayes and my threatening to kill him. Not that he knew, of course.
Regardless, I’m here and now suddenly feel totally out of place in this huge club packed full of bulging biceps and pushed-up boobs. I take in the short skirts riding up the thighs of women around me and the tight shirts putting the rest of their assets on display, and feel completely inadequate in my black slacks and light pink top.
It’s not like I’m a slouch in the looks department—at least I’m lacking the blue frosting that decorated my hair yesterday—but this place is so very different than the places Mitch and I used to frequent. It’s more my age than the country club scene, and yet I hate that I feel so uncomfortable when, at age twenty-seven, I should fit right in.
I think back to how I let Mitch’s influence slowly change the wild and reckless in me to sophisticated and reserved. From vibrant colors to muted beiges. How even though I understand the complexity of the concept now—that less can also be more—a part of me vows from here forward to throw a few splashes of color back in there to regain the spirit of the girl I used to be.
The one Hayes liked.
The one that made Mitch grimace.
I glance up at Ryder when he places another cocktail in front of me and shake my head—glad for the drink and the derailment o
f my thoughts. “Are you trying to get me drunk?” A giggle escapes my lips and it sounds strange because I don’t giggle. Ever.
“It’s not my fault you’re a lightweight.” He smirks and leans down closer to my ear so I can hear what he says. “You deserve a night off. I appreciate how hard you’re working so we don’t lose our asses, but you’re going to burn out if you don’t take a break. Besides, you’re young. You haven’t been out once since you’ve been single. Live a little, sis. Be everything Mitch wouldn’t let you be. I’ll make sure you don’t get into too much trouble.”
He winks at me as he steps back, a boyish grin on his face that transforms as a pretty brunette walks up to him. He slides his hand onto her lower back, his laugh becomes a little louder, his free attention taken. I watch mesmerized, wondering when the last time was I felt like he looks: carefree, young, confident. I also wonder when I last felt like a woman who holds a man’s attention. Attractive. Alluring. Someone to claim. Was I ever that girl?
Be everything Mitch wouldn’t let you be.
Ryder’s words strike a chord within me. One I’m not sure I’m ready to face yet, but can’t stop thinking about as I sit and watch the other patrons in the club from our coveted position in the rear corner. The couples who came together and are having a night out with friends after a long workweek. The pack of women standing in the opposite corner, acting as if they don’t care to be approached by any men but whose eyes are constantly roaming over the bachelors in the club and then suddenly acting coy when they finally approach. The men on the prowl: cocky in swagger and with a drink in hand, trying to find someone to hook up with. I watch them all as I sip my drink and chat idly with my brother’s friends and acquaintances. Enjoying myself but still feeling out of place in this scene I stopped being a part of six years ago.
The funny thing is most people would want to sow their wild oats. And maybe in time I will, but for now, I’m still trying to settle the ever-shifting world beneath my feet.