“Amen, sister.” Unlike my twin, I had done my best to not attract attention. I tried to blend in, to make myself smaller, to keep myself off the radar of the asshole kids who got off on putting others down. And I’d been pretty successful at that. Right up until the point I’d started tutoring our high school’s most popular and beloved sports hero.
“Andy was basically pissed off all the time,” I told them. “He had an attitude with everyone. He got into tons of fights on and off the ice. Like I said—huge chip on his shoulder.” I grabbed a sip of water. “And then you had Liam.” I picture him the way he’d been in high school. So handsome, always smiling, friendly to even the lowest of the loser kids. “He was the total golden boy.” I snorted, seeing him clearly in my mind’s eye, his flaxen hair shining in the sunlight while he lounged on the quad, surrounded by friends and admirers. “Even his hair fit the part. And Andy was his total opposite. Slight and wiry where Liam was broad and big, even as a kid. Pissed off at the world where Liam was everyone’s best friend.”
“This is a fascinating dive into our local billionaire’s psyche,” Peyton said. “But where do you come in?”
“I started tutoring Liam my sophomore year,” I said. “At first it was just something I did through a school program. I knew I was going to need scholarships to go to college and I thought it would look good on my transcripts. Eventually myadvisor started to recommend me to parents of kids who were struggling. I started tutoring outside of school and making some money.”
“And Liam was someone whose parents wanted to pay for a tutor?”
I nodded. “He had a hard time with math. He was a smart guy but numbers really tripped him up. So I started working with him at his house after school when he didn’t have hockey practice.” I smiled sheepishly. “Unlike my brother, I had no qualms about the fact he was so perfect and popular. I thought he was just like, the most amazing thingever,” I said in a girly voice then rolled my eyes. “By the time we were seniors, we’d spent a ton of time together. We were friends.”
He was mybestfriend. My only friend, really, besides my brother. How pathetic I’d been.
“Somewhere along the way I convinced myself that maybe he liked me, too. He was really nice to me, even though I wasn’t at all popular or pretty.”
“I’m sure you were alovelyteenager,” Rosa said loyally. I blew her a kiss.
“Regardless, I built it all up in my head. Liam was nice to everyone. But you know how it is when you’re that age—you can spend hours analyzing every touch, every look.”
Peyton snorted. “Pretty sure we still do that today.”
I grinned over at her, wondering how differently my life would have been if I’d had good friends like this as a teenager. What would it have been like if I’d had girlfriends to talk all this through back then? Would they have warned me I was heading for heartbreak?
Our waitress appeared again with our meals and I was relieved. I hadn’t ever talked any of this out. Andrew knew what happened, but that was mostly because he could read me like a book even back then. In all honesty, I didn’t care aboutit anymore, not really. It wasn’t like I’d spent the past twelve years pining over Liam. I’d had several boyfriends, some of them pretty serious. I’d moved on a long time ago.
But there was something about saying it out loud that made me feel like that lonely, heartbroken girl all over again.
After Rosa had a few bites of food in her, she turned her attention back to me. “So, what happened? Did you ever tell him how you felt?”
“Kind of? Towards the end of senior year, it seemed like we were getting closer. Sometimes we would have our sessions outside of the house, like at coffee shops or this diner in town.” I smirked, twirling some of my pasta onto my fork. “In my head this was serious stuff. It was almost like we were dating. But Liam was probably just getting senioritis, antsy and ready to get out of the house.”
“Pretty sure I felt that way from sophomore year on,” Peyton said. “I couldn’t escape high school fast enough.”
I’d been the opposite. High school hadn’t been all that fun for me, but at least I knew what to expect. The thought of going away to college, meeting new people, living in a dorm with someone I’d never met, being separated from Andy—I had approached the end of my senior year with dread.
Besides, the closer I seemed to get to Liam, the more I wanted to freeze time and just exist in that perfect bubble for as long as I could.
“There was this one day when he was particularly antsy. He promised me he’d come back and get his work done if I would go ice skating with him. Said he just needed to stretch his legs. And I’m thinking, ‘you want to spend time with me out in public? Hell yeah!’”
Rosa laughed. “You had it bad.”
“Girl, you have no idea.” In all these years I’d never met a single person who could make me feel the same wild storm ofbutterflies I’d felt whenever I got close to Liam. “So anyhow, we went skating, and it wasn’t until we got to the arena that I kind of woke up and remembered that I was terrible.”
Peyton laughed. “Who amongst us hasn’t pretended to be into a sport for a guy?”
“Well in my head, my inexperience made it so much better! Because Liam had tohelpme. And that wassoooromantic.” I closed my eyes, smiling as I remembered how momentous the afternoon had felt. “God, he was probably so annoyed. He just wanted to skate around and burn off some energy and instead he had to hold his dorky tutor’s hand while she baby-stepped around the rink for an hour.”
I took another few bites of pasta, the memory as clear as watching a movie play out in my head. Us falling. Liam cushioning me with his arms. Him leaning over me. “We, uh, kissed that day.” I forced myself to roll my eyes. “And the angels sang and the birds rejoiced. I was positive it was the best kiss I would ever have.”
I was playing it off, my tone light, but the truth was, it reallyhadfelt that way to me. In hindsight, I could see that it was probably more of an accident than anything else, the way our lips came together as we struggled to sit up on the ice. Or maybe it had been idle curiosity on his part, now that we were in such close proximity. At the time, though? It had felt very, very real.
Rosa made a face at me. “I’m getting very invested in this story, Grace. I feel like I’m watching some teen romance on Netflix. But you’re about to tell me it has a sad ending, aren’t you?”
I shrugged. “It felt really sad to me at the time, but it was just a misunderstanding. Somehow, I got it in my head that he wanted to take me to prom when he was really just asking me what my plans were?—”
“Hang on a second,” Peyton said, a hand raised. “I need more detail. How does that happen?”
I shrugged. I honestly still didn’t understand it myself. I had been sosure. I could still recall every moment of that conversation with perfect clarity.
