Fifteen Years

by Allison Rios

  Part of her relished the idea that somewhere out there, her child was seeing a piece of her in whatever ad she created for the newest toys. Though it was an odd connection, it was a connection.

  “Don’t forget you have a meeting with Rothman this afternoon.” Her slightly twitchy and always punctual administrative assistant, Becca Rogers, jostled through papers and a sizeable day-to-day calendar as she verbally bullet pointed the week’s activities.

  “I wish you’d get a smartphone,” Rae laughed. “Don’t you think that would make your life easier?”

  “Technology,” Becca responded as she pushed back a red curl that had escaped her headband, “is not my thing. I like papers. I like filing.”

  “You can still file with a smartphone.”

  “I have a computer that’s been forced upon me by the man,” Becca responded. “Sorry, the woman. What more do you want from me?” She shot her boss a grin before triumphantly finding the paper she’d been searching for. “Ah ha! Here it is! Okay, you need to RSVP to this by today. What do you want me to say?” Her voice changed as she pretended to act out her best Rae impression. “Of course, Becca, you’re a genius! Sign me up! I say yes!”

  “I already told you no! You were supposed to send that a week ago,” Rae barked back.

  Rae had idled on a decision for months. Going home was inevitable, but she wanted a little more time before she succumbed to going back and having the necessary conversations lingering on the horizon.

  “I’m sorry, what? I didn’t hear you, our connection must be bad. Did you say yes?”

  She didn’t fault Becca for trying. Her devoted assistant only knew a portion of the story because Rae had been too scared to ever tell anyone. And frankly, she felt guilty about Becca’s future in the company due to some forthcoming consequences of Rae’s upcoming career choices. She’d grown to care for Becca as more than just her right-hand-woman, and she’d been putting off making adult decisions to instead focus on getting through her own daily routine.

  “No,” Rae flatly responded. “The answer was no yesterday, still no today, and tomorrow will be the same.

  No, no, no.”

  “I thought you might say that.” Becca fumbled to turn Rae’s phone towards her. The swipe of her finger lit up the speakerphone button, and familiar voices filled the room.

  “Your turn, girls.”

  “What did you do?” Rae blurted out before her three best friends took control of the conversation. The feisty redhead folded her arms and sat back in the uncomfortable but decorative chair, smug in her accomplishment.

  “Please come home!” Ava begged. “Pretty please? We always drive up there. It’s about time you came home.” Ava, a pretty blond with a mischievous grin and a big heart, never minced her words.

  “Yes, please come home!” chimed in Nella. Rae was glad she couldn’t see Nella asking. The natural beauty of the bunch with her dark complexion and naturally curly hair, Nella espoused a charm that her friends could never say no to. Rae usually caved to whatever Nella asked of her.

  “If you don’t come, I swear, I will hide inappropriate things around your apartment next time we visit that will only be found at the most inconvenient of times by any hot men making themselves at home there.” Brooke’s voice hinted of devilishness, yet her words were sincere. She’d never made a threat she didn’t follow through on and had at least one arrest to prove it. “It’s been more than a decade since you’ve been home, Rae. We’ve all seen your fancy apartment and brand name clothes. We know you’re doing great things and about to conquer the world of advertising. It’s your turn to come home and see our lives here. It’s just one weekend.”

  “I’ve been home over the years,” Rae interjected.

  “You’ve been here like, twice, always staying at a nearby hotel, and you only stay on the outskirts of town to avoid everyone inside. You haven’t been home,” Nella stated.

  Rae sighed. Her friends were right. They’d made the trip to see her year after year since she landed the job in Chicago. In their early twenties, no one complained about making the trip or being introduced to the most intelligent and highly single bachelors of the advertising world as Rae took them around and showered them with VIP treatment at top clubs owned by her clients. The trips were a dream escape for the girls; an escape from the small town they’d been born in and would live in for the rest of their lives because they loved the place they called home. With the passing years came loves and engagements, weddings and babies, all of which she’d made trips in for, packing more excuses than clothing, and staying a few hours or a night before leaving again for the city she called home. A reunion, however, meant an inescapable foray into apologies and conversations she’d been avoiding her entire adult life.

  “Okay, how about if I come home next month for a weekend? I’ll even stay at one of your houses and let the kids paint my fingernails obnoxious colors. Plus, I’ll bring the good wine with me.”

  “No,” they all chimed in simultaneously. “We want you home in Jessup now!”

  “I’m pretty booked,” Rae replied.

  “No, she’s not,” Becca quickly added. “I’ve rescheduled your client dinner for the weekend in question. They were happy to oblige; they think you’re doing some research for their project, which technically you could be because your target audience is the people in towns like Jessup.”

  Rae shot her a glare that would have ordinarily sent Becca to her desk frightened about a pink slip.

  “See? Then it’s all settled. You’re coming home,” Ava giggled.

  “She’s not going to fire you, Becca,” Brooke added. “Not if she doesn’t want to deal with an angry mob with plenty of farmland to hide a body.”

  Becca flashed a grin at her boss but stifled it when Rae’s scowl didn’t shift.

  “I’m not coming.”

  “You are coming,” Nella said. “Just give up and get on board. It’s one weekend.”

  “With everyone from high school.”

  “And?” Ava asked. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “She just doesn’t want to see James,” Brooke said.

  “That’s not true!” A burning sensation spilled over Rae’s cheeks. She shot Becca another look when her assistant mouthed the name James with a smirk.

  “It is true! That’s the only reason you wouldn’t come.” The firmness of Nella’s voice hinted at victory. “Everyone else will love to see you! You’re like a hometown hero with your big, fancy job in the city! You just don’t want to see James.”

  “It’s not true.”

  “Prove it.”

  Rae knew her friends would not give up. The wounds from seeing ghosts in her past would be far less painful than being shunned by her oldest friends. Plus, she had things she had to take care of involving all of them that she’d been putting off long enough. She’d be returning to Jessup for a visit at some point shortly, so this was as good a time as any.

  “Fine. I will see you this weekend.” Rae silenced the phone with the swift move of a finger. “I thought you were on my side,” she grumbled at Becca.

  “I am. Usually. But frankly, I need a weekend off with a gorgeous and generous hunk of man I met last week, and sending you away with a distraction is the only way to get that. So, go and have a fun time because I know I will! James, huh?”

  Contempt filled the space between them and Becca thought better than to press her luck. She excused herself, and the door slammed with the fear of a woman about to be fired, which left Rae to her thoughts.

  The notion of returning to the town she grew up in meant facing a secret she’d written off years before. Not to mention exposing a truth that she wasn’t ready to accept. Any moment of weakness would lead to an immense sense of vulnerability and not only mar the life she’d built, but threaten to crumble the lives of people she loved with all of her heart in what felt like another lifetime altogether. An event like a high school reunion meant only closing a gap with the people who could unravel the s
afety she’d found within the lies she’d built over the past decade and would make it that much harder to walk away unscathed. Worse, it would make it difficult to walk away without permanently scarring everyone else. If she stayed put, the only suffering would be mostly on her.

  She wanted to be brave and say she only worried about those she loved. The selfishness of her secrets, though, weighed heavily on her mainly because of what it would mean for her own life if anyone knew what she was about to unleash upon the community. A community that had always welcomed her with open arms, even if they were quietly judgmental. She thought about the day that changed everything more often than she should. Every hour of every day found a way to remind her of the monster living inside her that threatened to surface at a moment’s notice; a monster that would pretend it was doing something to protect others when its actions were only to protect itself.

  Home hadn’t always been a place of fear for her though, and Brooke was right: she did worry about seeing James again. She couldn’t help but remember how she’d felt when he’d first entered her life.

  “Hi.” He approached from behind the locker amidst the slew of teenagers fleeing down the hallway to freedom after the last bell of the day. Neither of them was in a hurry, though. Practice for their respective teams would require their presence shortly, as it usually did during the week. He’d been waiting for the opportunity to talk to her all day and had been carefully choosing his words.

  “Hi.” She nervously smiled back at him and bit her bottom lip to keep her excitement to a minimum. Maybe she could keep from giving away how utterly weak in the knees she felt when he glanced her way.

  “Practice today?” He already knew the answer. His words allowed him to stall as he battled the apprehension nagging at him. A star football player, he’d never been one to let nerves get to him. Even in the final moments of a game where an entire team counted on him as captain, he never felt as scared as he did at that moment in front of her.

  “Yeah. You too, I’m sure.”

  “Yeah.”

  She finished pulling out of her locker the necessary books for the evening’s homework and methodically placed them in the tattered pink and gray backpack, just as she did each afternoon. The noise in the hallway dwindled as the students darted off to anything else but school until the couple was nearly alone in silence.

  “Can I ask you something?” He hesitated. Though not a tall or muscled kid, he was remarkably gifted in athletics and conducted himself like a leader. Somehow the girl standing in front of him immediately destroyed any mastery he’d achieved over talking to the opposite sex.

  She nodded. His dimples deepened as his grin grew, and she blushed at the smile she’d admired from afar for the past year. She noticed how the corners of his eyes wrinkled a little from the span of his smile when he was thrilled. His light brown hair seemed almost dirty blonde against his skin, which sported the first hint of tan for the year.

  “Do you think you might, you know?” His hand snuck through his hair in an attempt to distract him from the anxiety building up within him.

  “What?” She wasn’t going to let him off that easy.

  “Do you think you might want to be my girlfriend?”

  “I see,” she smirked. She knew full well her answer would be yes. She just wanted to make him sweat it out a little.

  “You didn’t take me to homecoming.”

  “I had a date by the time you asked me!”

  “Uh huh,” she said. “And you missed my sixteenth birthday party.”

  “That was out of my control! Parental obligations. You know I would have been there if I could.”

  The locker squeaked as it closed. She hoisted her backpack over her shoulder, and he took advantage of the fact that she had leaned a little bit closer to him.

  “You know you want to say yes.” Their faces were only inches apart, and she couldn’t help but notice how good he smelled. He smiled that smile she’d wished for a chance to kiss since the day she first laid eyes on him.

  “What I want to do and what I should do, well those are very different things, Mr. Preston.”

  “Just say yes. You know I like you. And I know you like me.”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “Yes,” she said. She couldn’t stop the massive grin from spreading cheek to cheek as he pulled her into a hug. There in an empty hallway just outside the cafeteria of a school she wasn’t originally supposed to go to, she found herself wrapped in the embrace of the one man who would steal her heart and never return it.

  The door opened with a spooky creak and shattered the fairy tale replaying in her mind.

  “Rae, your doctor is on line one. He says it is imperative you come in to see him today, so I’m reworking your calendar.”

  Chapter 4

  Wednesday, September 30

  “You ready for this weekend, Jimmy-boy?”

  James’ smirk relayed to Micah exactly how he felt about the underlying connotations of his friend’s statement. James had been eager for the coming weekend for what seemed like a lifetime. Each time a reunion rolled around, he waited for word on if she’d be coming only to leave after each celebration with disappointment. This year, though, Nella promised him she’d get Rae to come home.

  Micah had helped at the store for years. He oversaw his own construction company, but in a town like Jessup, work wasn’t always bustling. He spent his free time with James and the Preston family, who had unofficially adopted him when his parents died during their junior year of high school. The men were more brothers than friends.

  “Yeah,” James replied. “Looking forward to seeing everyone.”

  “Everyone?” Reed lifted another bag of potatoes from the truck and effortlessly tossed it onto the cart. Reed had been the town’s best chance at a pro player until the former high school and college football and basketball star ruined a knee and bought an early retirement from sports. He’d always put his brains before his brawn, however, and finished college early at the top of his class. A devoted worker forever looking to exercise more than his mind, Reed thoroughly enjoyed doing manual labor and welcomed the early morning phone call from James seeking help.

  “Everyone.” A laugh escaped from James’ lips. His friends had been hammering him about the same topic for years, and no amount of explaining would satisfy them enough to abandon their inquisition.

  “So, not just one particular person?” Reed pressed, wiping the sweat from his forehead.

  “You need to let it go,” James said with another laugh. “Don’t you have lives of your own to worry about? Honestly, it has been a long time, guys.”

  It had been a long time. Life had moved on. Raising a teenager and running a store had eaten all his time and left him with less and less of the freedom to reminisce about days gone by. And every time he tried to convince them that he wasn’t waiting for her reminded him that he couldn’t even convince himself of that.

  “Don’t act like you don’t think about it,” Reed said.

  Micah interrupted James’ thoughts. “At least be honest with us, man. I watched what you went through when she left. You really willing to open yourself up to that again?”

  Micah’s dislike of Rae had been decidedly evident since high school. When college came, and he watched his friend’s life virtually crumble under the weight of a broken heart, he’d resolved to help James forget about her. He hadn’t anticipated the amount of effort he’d need to expend to see that happen – because it still hadn’t.

  “You aren’t going to give this up, are you? Is this what I’m in for all weekend?” James rested against the truck and wiped the sweat dripping down his forehead despite the autumn breeze.

  “Nope. I need answers,” Micah said. “I’m busy trying to figure out if we’re going to have fun this weekend, or if I’m going to have to spend the next five years of my life scooping you up out of a sad country song.”

  “I’m with him,” Reed echoed.


  “Fine,” James replied. He wasn’t completely ready yet to admit his true wishes about seeing Rae, but he saw no way out of the discussion. “I’m looking forward to seeing everyone, and yes, especially Rae if she shows up. But you all are fools if you think it is gonna be anything more than just a friendly visit. It has been fifteen years, guys. I have a life, she has a life, and we’re gonna go back to those lives on Monday. Yeah, I wanna see how she’s doing and if she’s happy because that’s all I’ve ever wanted for her.”

  “You’re the only one of us wishing for her to be happy,” Micah laughed. “I’m hoping she grew a nose wart and gained about a thousand pounds.”

  James couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Let it go, Micah. It was my fault just as much as hers.” He knew his buddy held a lot of animosity for Rae. He just hoped it wouldn’t cause a battle this weekend.

  “I’m just saying,” Micah continued, “that maybe some people are meant to walk out of our lives and stay gone.”

  “Or,” added Reed, “maybe this is his chance to be happy.

  Let’s face it, he hasn’t been satisfied in a long time.”

  “I am satisfied!” James yelled.

  “You haven’t been happy since the summer after we graduated,” Reed added. “The happiest I’ve seen you in years is when Nella said Rae was coming. You had mini-fireworks in your eyes. You’re like a lost puppy who is this close to getting adopted.”

  “Yeah. And he’s gonna look like the dejected puppy when Rae ignores him completely,” Micah chimed in.

  “You and Rae are tied by the red thread,” Reed added.