A few of the guys sitting at the bar turn their heads to watch her ass walk away in her short shorts. I think she does it on purpose because it's way too damn cold to be wearing the skimpy outfit she's in right now, but it’s her prerogative. And she’s got the confidence to pull it off. Kudos to her.
I pick up the damp piece of paper with the phone number scribbled on it, looking up to see the pair of greedy eyes it belongs to. He's sitting at the table Alli just dropped the drinks for and I make it a point to scrunch the paper in my fist before tossing it into the trash with a rather condescending smirk, not giving him another second of my time before I turn to continue making drinks.
A few minutes later, Alli comes back and snickers behind me.
"I see you denied the gentleman's request. Savage." She whips her copper-colored ponytail and nearlysmacks me in the face with it, but I flinch in time to avoid it.
"Thatgentlemanknows as well as anyone else in this smaller-than-my-tits-town, I'm not interested." I swipe a customer's card at the register as she works behind me to gather more drinks.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m just the messenger.” She rolls her eyes with a playful smirk. “And your tits are anything but small, Liv,” she adds but I ignore her.
Not only am I not looking for another relationship—seeing as I just got out of one—but something else tugs at my heart. Something that I haven’t really thought about over the years. The fact that my heart will never fully be available for anyone else to have. A realization that I’ve pushed deep down for so long because I worked so hard to erase any lingering thoughts ofhim,but I can’t be oblivious to the fact that with my wavering thoughts of going up to the Pines this weekend, comes the upheaval of memories I swore I’d take to my grave.
The subject of my heart’s darkest desire but the very thing I swore myself to never fall victim to again because of the damage that’s been done; it feels irreparable and I can’t fathom putting myself through that again.
Which is part of the reason I broke up with my current boyfriend a few weeks ago.
“Is Jensen in town yet?” Alli asks, referring to said ex-boyfriend.
“Probably,” I respond. “Haven’t really talked to him much.”
Jensen and I were together for the last three years, and I'll never forget how kind and understanding he’sbeen the entire time. But I’ll also never tell him that it started out as a rebound for me. A rebound that I desperately needed to pull me out of the dark place I was in and someone to help me take my mind off ofsomeone else. After a while it turned into a feeling of contentment and comfort, and then it just becameeasyand before I knew it, years were passing by.I grew to like knowing that he’d always be there for me and Jensen certainly played the part of the doting boyfriend.
Our relationship had become a simple constant that I thought I needed at the time. But then he told me he loved me and something in my brain clicked.What the hell am I doing?I was stringing him along and I knew it wasn’t right. I didn’t mean to, especially not as long as it went on. But I think I needed him to attempt the next step for me to realize it because I was hanging on to one of the many things I can remember about that night. Jensen was there for me when no one else was.
But no matter how safe I felt knowing that he’d always be there for me and regardless of the fact that he’s one of the very few things that I can recall the night of the murders, I came to the realization a few weeks ago that when I leave this town, I want to leave everything it represents behind me. And it’s not fair for me to hold on something that I don’t really feel strongly about anyway. So while our breakup was pretty civil and mutual, and we’ve still remained friends, I know that I broke his heart just a little bit.
But he's getting ready to venture off into professional football; he's going to have fame, and girls, and fans. He's going to get to see places he's never been before. As much as I want to get out of this small town andbreathe new air, I don't picture myself doing that with him.
I can't help but remember the time in my life where I might have wanted that with someone else, though.
Which causes more memories to resurface and I have to suck in a deep breath and exhale it slowly as I close my eyes to try and conjure up literally anything else.
That’s when I decide to change the subject.
“Hey, did you get an invitation?”
Alli stops to look at me. “An invite? You mean to the Pines?” Her confusion tells me all I need to know. “That hasn’t been a thing for years.” she reminds me, as if I didn’t already know that.
“I mean, I wish. I never got to experience any of this before, so that would have been fucking cool, honestly. Why? Did you?” she asks me and part of me wants to tell her the truth but, if I’m the only one who did get an invite, I wonder if I should share that information at all. So I decide to lie about it and shake my head, opting to switch gears.
"Listen, I haven’t told Jensen yet, or anyone for that matter, but I’m not doing this whole Halloween tradition thing." I lean against the bar and cross my arms over my chest.
"What? Liv, youhaveto go. You know this is my first time! I want you there with me and you know Jen and Banks put a lot of work into it this year. It's like a rite of passage and-"
I hold up my palm to stop her mid-sentence. "And I think everyone is forgetting that the last time I went, people died." She shuts her mouth, standing up straight and accepting my bluntness though a look ofshock paints her face, like she can't believe that I just said that out loud. "I'm not going, Alli." I turn away and grab the receipt that just printed from the printer, deciding to get started on the drinks listed.
But can I convince myself of that?
I don’t really know why I keep pushing this narrative onto everyone else.I’m not going.When really, I might be doing the opposite.
"Olivia, I understand that you have trauma from that weekend, and I’m sorry if you thought I was being insensitive to that. But what happened wasn't specific toyoubeing there. I hope you know that," she says as she follows behind me. And I think to myself,what a weird thing to say.
But the truth is that I don’t know that, because I can’t remember anything from that morning up until after the bodies were found.
"And you know that whoever did that is long gone, right?" she continues. "There's no need to worry about that again."
There's no saying whether or not the killer is actually long gone or if they're one of those among the crowd. How could anyone possibly be so sure to assume otherwise?
