Now I know, suddenly and completely. It’s laid out like it’s always been there.
I’m going to get my revenge. I’m going to get tough and get even. I’m going to rebuild. I’m going to give this town something to be fucking proud of.
Which means I have some sins to atone for. “Margot, I gotta go. There’s something I have to do.”
“You’regoingsomewhere?” She looks me over pointedly. “You’re disgusting.”
Shit. “Yeah. I’ll shower. Can I borrow the Miata?”
“Depends where you’re going,” she says suspiciously. “Girlfriend?”
No. Not even close.
“Yeah,” I say anyway, giving her a big smile. “Something like that.”
* * *
Afternoon has slanted hard into evening by the time I hit the highway. Town glitters in the fresh dark, watchful, reproachful. It doesn’t trust me yet, and I don’t blame it. I zip down the road, watching the houses pass in familiar, worn-down blurs.
I’ve done some digging the last few days, discreetly, while Margot’s been at work. Not much, no social media, I can’t stand or understand that shit—just enough to figure out that Lexie has a place out by the woods, and that she works for the paper.
I read a few of her articles; simple, trite little columns on cleaning rituals and housework and some real estate. She doesn’t have a lot to work with, reporting-wise, it looks like, but I like her style. There’s this pinprick to her writing, like she’s telling a mean joke with a sweet enough smile you’d never know it. I caught myself smirking as I read, a little bewitched despite myself. I could practically hear the words in her voice.
She was kind of like that, I remember—honey sweet, super sweet. But unexpectedly razor-edged, like a cat that cuddles until you piss it off, and then it’s all claws and fury and vengeance.
It’s funny, in my memory I’ve sanitized her. Made her younger, coyer than I think she ever was. Now these little moments are flying back to me, catching at my skin like shards of glass.
Like once, when she was seventeen and we ran into each other at a house party, I told her I didn’t think she couldn’t handle a beer. She gave a little titter of a laugh and downed her bottle in about five seconds flat, then polished it off with a shot of whiskey.
Everyone laughed, playful and impressed that this adorable, doe-eyed little seventeen-year-old girl could drink like that without blinking. But she gave me this look over the rim of her bottle when she was done, one brow arched and both eyes brimming with wildfire. That look said, clearly:what can’t I handle?
Another time I came home with a black eye and nosebleed. Then she had to be nineteen, started college already and getting confident, coming into her own.
It was just a fight that did it, nothing really personal, a scuffle with some guys from our rival high school back in the day, who were fucking with us in our own neighborhood. But I was pissed she was seeing me like that. We were alone in the house then, Dad was off working and Margot had started her tattoo apprenticeship in the city, which was a two hour drive away.
Lexie didn’t press me, didn’t ask what happened. She followed me into the bathroom, even when I insisted I was fine, I didn’t need her fucking help, it was just a nosebleed—pushed me gently against the counter and tipped my chin back. I remember going stone-still when she touched me like that, so precise and confident and unquestioning. She washed the blood off my face, held ice against my swelling eye.
“Thanks, nurse,” I said coldly.
“I’m not your fucking nurse,” she’d replied, in that soothing, deceptively silken voice. “I’m your friend.”
The memory takes the wind out of me. Until that day, that moment really, I’d never thought consciously about Lexie like that, like maybe I wanted her, maybe Ineededher, maybe she was meant to be mine.
I pull up the gravel drive outside her place. It’s a small ranch house, but determinedly well-taken care of, flowers spilling from the window boxes and tomatoes growing on netted stakes. Her lawn is a big deep stretch, and the front windows glow orange against a wall of towering firs and leafless oaks. They’re made black by night, a silhouette of watchful, natural protectors. There’s an Altima in the driveway—a nice one. Seems she’s done well for herself.
I climb out and head up before I lose my nerve. I’m knocking before I register the low hum that’s been catching at my ears all the way up the drive: laughter, bubbly and loud, and a stoic female voice.
It dawns on me, right there, that I should have said fuck it and done a deep dive when I searched Lexie up. Her social media, if she had it, would have told me a lot. And as I place that sound—kids, young kids, and a few of them—a lance of fear goes straight through my heart.
Because I thought she’d wait. She didn’t write, didn’t call, didn’t visit—but the way we talked to each other before I went away, the things we said and promised—that didn’t go away for me. I still want her. I still need her. I still believe she’s mine.
But she’s moved on.The breath goes out of me.I fucked up.
I’m turning, regretting everything, when the door opens and a shaft of yellow light frames me unmercifully on the doorstep. I freeze, paralyzed for a second, suddenly unable to face the girl who turned her back on me.
“Liam fucking Dunne.”
I straighten—that’s not Lexie’s voice. I turn, and my regret triples, calcifying in my veins. I narrow my eyes. “Nancy.”
