“What about their son?”
The guy shakes his head.
“Sorry, I can’t help you there.” He goes back to his mowing and I walk back to the car, disappointment dragging at every step.
The only other place I can think of to try is the Bunyan, the bar closest to the high school. It’s a long shot, a last desperate hope really. I’ve never been in there as I moved away before I was legal drinking age, but I know it as the local watering hole. I didn’t think it was Holden’s type of place, though. I find a parking space and walk the half block to where it is. The name has changed to Timbers and Tallboys, judging by the sign outside. As soon as I enter I know this is a mistake. Holden’s not going to be here. It’s noisy, hot, and packed. Standing room only, and very little at that. I have a small longing for the quiet bar I go to back in England with Mac and Nolan, the Gilded Goat, a place whereyou can sit and talk without having to shout. I make a circuit of the room just to make sure—twenty years is a long time and people do change. I see a few faces that look like they could be familiar, and several that definitely are, but I don’t slow down or make eye contact. My only concern is finding Holden and he’s definitely not in here. I’m relieved to get back out onto the sidewalk, but I have nowhere else to try. There’s nothing else to do but wait a couple of hours for the reunion.
Even though I arrive early, the registration line is already long. I’m impatient and try not to show it, but I’m still fidgety and jittery. I take a few breaths to try to relax as I scan the room constantly. I can’t see any sign of Holden, and only then does it occur to me that he might not even come to the reunion, and that makes me even more jittery. I finally get to the front of the line and sign in, ignoring the look I get from the young student when I declare I have no plus one. I don’t need a date, but I kind of wish my brother was here with me. We’ve become great friends over the last few months and he’d probably have some words of wisdom, and at the very least I wouldn’t look like a spare part. The student, no doubt part of this year’s seniors, gives me a card informing me it’s part of an ice-breaker game later in the evening, that it’s part of a matching pair and I have to find its partner. As I move away from the table, I glance down at the card and chuckle. In a way I do have my brother with me. It says “mac” and shows a picture of the curved pasta. I snap a picture and send it to Mac, receiving a message almost straight back with a lame joke about it being a cheesy game. I snap my phone shut and take another look around. I notice a familiar face... Miles. He was also on the swim team. He looks away and I don’t blame him. The bullying I directed at Holden spilled over to himoccasionally as well. Oh well, I knew this was a risk coming here. I try to start off friendly.
“Miles! Hey, good to see you!” I offer my hand to him.
“Hi, Reece. Welcome back to Gomillion.” To give him his due, he doesn’t shun my hand, but he does give it the briefest of shakes before pulling his hand away. I smile, trying to convey that he has nothing to worry about with me. I turn to who I assume is his date.
“Hi. Have we met?”
They turn and look at Miles and then back to me, extending their hand.
“Unlikely. We didn’t run in the same circles in high school. I’m Atlas St. James. And you are?”
“I’m Reece Fisher,” I reply, racking my brain trying to remember who they are, and then it comes back to me. “Oh! I remember you. How have you been, Atlas?”
They give me a wide smile and we make the usual nonsense small talk that people who barely knew each other twenty years ago and still have nothing in common make. After a few minutes they head over to where Miles is waiting with a glare on his face. Maybe coming back here wasn’t such a good idea. I take a deep breath. No, I’m no longer that person and I want people to know that. One person in particular.
I still can’t see any sign of Holden, and I’m in the way of people who are clearing the registration line. Hovering here with no one to talk to is not a good look so I head over to where a bar has been set up at one end of the gym.
A young woman bustles up to me and practically thrusts an iPad into my face. She garbles something incoherently.
“Sorry, can you repeat that... Amber?” I ask, reading her name badge. She almost rolls her eyes, like it’s my fault she can’t enunciate correctly.
“Do you want to vote on the Gomillion’s mascot?”
Even though it was a question, I get the feeling that “not really” isn’t the correct answer, so I look down at the screen. Both of the images on the screen are equally as bad as each other.
“Just tap the one you want to vote for,” she says impatiently and pushes the iPad even closer toward me. I randomly choose one, just to get rid of her, and it does the trick as she peels away and scouts out her next victim.
I finally make it to the bar. There’s only a limited choice of cocktails, so I choose a mango margarita and sip it while I scan the room again. I see a few of the people I noticed in Timber and Tallboys, and they nod a greeting across the room. I hope I’ll have time to catch up with some of them over the weekend. It’s interesting to see how twenty years sits on some people. There are several who wear it well, whereas others are showing the effects of time. I think I’m somewhere in the middle and pretty much look my age.
It could be twenty years or it could be fifty, but I would never mistake the chestnut hair that I spot standing at a table twenty feet away. Holden is here. I hesitate briefly, suddenly unsure of what reception I’m going to get. He does look older of course, and yet he looks the same, almost. He now has a short neat beard, which I have to admit suits him. He’s wearing a pair of jeans—I refuse to be distracted by how they hug his slender legs—and a button down under a knitted sweater vest in green with a geometric pattern. The Holden I remember would never have dared to wear something that bright, though he’d have wanted to. It suits his chestnut hair and gray-green eyes perfectly. He’s standing on his own, and I don’t care to name the relief I feel that he is, or that he’s not wearing a wedding ring. I came thousands of miles for this and I can’t put it off any longer. I down the rest of the cocktail in one gulp and grimace at the sweet taste. Setting down the glass on a nearby table, I straighten my suit jacket and make my way across the room. I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.
CHAPTER SIX
Holden
It’s been twenty years since I walked the halls of my old high school, but the time melts away as soon as I step over the threshold. I don’t know if it’s the combined aromas of floor polish and gym uniform but it smells exactly the same as I remember it. I wonder if there’s a universal high-school smell. Clara confirms it as she turns to me, her nose wrinkled.
“That’s a smell I never thought I’d revisit. Why does it make me feel like I’m seventeen again and I’m about to be late to class?”
“You too?” I ask. “Which class were you late for?”
She turns and gives me a huge grin. “All of them.”
I chuckle as it doesn’t surprise me at all. We follow the general throng of people heading toward the small gym. I’ve no idea why it’s called the small gym because it’s exactly the same size as the other gym. They couldn’t just name it after a famous sportsperson who went to the school, could they? Probably not, because we haven’t got many famous alumni, but almostanything else would have been better than naming it the small gym. The registration line extends out into the hall and we wait patiently amid the lockers. I look around at the people standing in line. I wave and call out to a few of them. Some of them are good customers of mine, others I see occasionally around town or at the grocery store. None of them are Reece, and relief floods through me. I check it, because I hate that I was tense enough to feel relieved when I don’t spot him. I also know that he should be here somewhere, though, and I need to deal with that. We shuffle forward as the line moves and I run through some of the exercises my therapist suggested.
“Do I look alright?” I ask for the millionth time and receive the well deserved eye-roll.
“You ask me that, wearing a sweater vest? If the look you’re aiming for is middle-aged dad trying to cling to the last vestiges of youth by trying to look cool and missing the mark completely, then you’ve nailed it.” The sarcasm instead of reassurance calms me a little.
“You don’t like my sweater vest?” I hold my hand to my chest in a dramatic way. I knitted it myself, like most of my clothes.
