But in a flash, a vision of torn blond hair, sticky and red, matted against white sheets. I shook my head, pushing away the glitch.
I would show them all. And then I would finally rid myself of that dark suspicion, that insidious whisper—the one that said I’d done it all wrong, made the worst possible mistakes, ever since the day East House first loomed into view through my parents’ cracked windshield.
At long last, I was going back.
Chapter 2
Now
The night before I left for Homecoming, I met Jack for a drink. In the weeks since the invite arrived, my excitement had been tempered with guilt, knowing Jack had gotten one, too, but couldn’t go back, not in a million years. Traveling across the city to his favorite bar—a quiet, unpretentious dive—was small penance for all the things I’d never be able to atone for. Chief among them, the fact that my whole life hadn’t come crashing down around me when I was twenty-two, like his.
I slid into the booth across from him. He tipped his whiskey and smiled. “Hello, friend. I take it you’re Duquette-bound?”
We never talked about college. I took a deep breath and folded my hands on the table. “I fly out tomorrow.”
“You know…” Jack smiled down at his glass. “I really miss that place. All the gargoyles, and the stained glass, and the flying buttresses.” He lifted his eyes back to me. “So pretentious, especially for North Carolina, but so beautiful, you know?”
I studied him. Out of all of us, Jack wasn’t the most changed—that was probably Frankie, maybe Mint—but he’d certainly aged more than ten years warranted. He wore his hair long, tucked behind his ears, and he’d covered his baby face with a beard, like a mask. There were premature wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. He was still handsome, but not in the way of the past, that clean-cut handsomeness you’d expect out of a youth-group leader, the boy in the neighborhood you wouldn’t think twice about letting babysit.
“I wonder how campus has changed.” Jack wore a dreamy smile. “You think the Frothy Monkey coffee shop is still there?”
“I don’t know.” The affection in his voice slayed me. My gaze dropped to my hands.
“Hey.” Jack’s tone changed, and I looked up, catching his eyes. Brown, long-lashed, and as earnest as always. How he’d managed to preserve that, I’d never know. “I hope you’re not feeling weird on my account. I want you to have fun. I’ll be waiting to hear about it as soon as you get back. Do me a favor and check on the Monkey, okay? Heather and I used to go there every Sun—” He cut himself off, but at least his voice didn’t catch like it used to. He was getting better. It had been years since he’d called me in the middle of one of his panic attacks, his voice high as a child’s, telling me over and over,I can’t stop seeing her body.
“Of course I’ll go.” One of the bar’s two waitresses, the extra-surly one, slid a glass of wine in front of me and left without comment. “Thanks,” I called to her back, sipping and doing my best not to wince while Jack was watching. My usual order was the bar’s most expensive glass of red, but that wasn’t saying much.
I forced myself to swallow. “What else should I report back on?”
He straightened, excited, and for a second, he looked eighteen again. “Oh man, what do I want to know? Okay, first, I want all the details about Caro and Coop—how did he pop the question, when’s the date, what’s she wearing?” Jack barreled on, neatly sidestepping the fact that he wasn’t invited to the wedding. “Do you think they hooked up in college and kept it a secret from the rest of us?Askher. I want the dirt. Who would’ve pictured the two of them together? It’s so unexpected.”
I tipped my glass back and lifted my finger for another, though I knew the waitress hated when I did that. “Mm-hmm,” I said, swallowing. “Sure.”
Jack grinned. “I need thefullreport on what Coop looks like now. I need to know how many tattoos he has, if he’s still rocking thatOutsidersvibe, if he cut his hair.” He tugged a strand of his own hair. “What do you think… Did I get close to the way Coop used to wear it?”
Death by a million paper cuts. “It’s veryzero fucksmeets Ponyboy. Classic Coop. Um, what about Caro, anything?”
His gaze turned thoughtful. “I guess I just want to know she’s happy. I don’t know… Caro never really changes. You talk about her the most, anyway.”
He was right. Caro looked and acted exactly the same now as she did then. She still texted me regularly, albeit not every five minutes, like in college. In fact, the only thing that had really changed about Caro was the addition of Coop.
“You have to tell me if Mint still looks like a movie star,” Jack said, “or if his hairline is finally receding like his dad’s. God, I don’t know whether I want you to say he’s even more handsome, or his hair is falling out, ’cause that would serve him right. I can’t believe he left law school to rescue the family business. There was always something off about his family, right? His dad, or was it his mom? I remember that one time senior year, when Mint lost it—” Jack stopped midsentence, eyes widening. “Ohcrap, I’m sorry. I’m an idiot.”
And there it was. Pity, even from Jack. Because I’d lost Mint, the person who used to make me valuable just by association. And even though no one had been there to witness the breakup, to see how deep the blow had struck, it seemed everyone could sense it anyway.
“First of all,” I said, trading the waitress my empty glass for a full one, “that was a long time ago, and I literally could not care less. I’m actually looking forward to seeing Mint. And Courtney. I’m sure they’re very happy together.” I blinked away a vision of my laptop, shattered against the wall, screen still stuttering on a picture of their wedding. “Second,crap? I find it adorable you still don’t curse. Once a Boy Scout, always a Boy Scout. Hey,” I continued, “did you know Frankie just bought one of Mint’s houses?”
Knife, twist.Tit for tat.
“Really?” Jack shrugged, playing nonchalant, but his Adam’s apple rose and fell as he swallowed hard. “Good for him. I guess he’s getting everything he wanted.” He tossed his hair, another stolen Coopism. “Whatever… Everyone in the world sees Frankie every Sunday. Not hard to tell how he’s doing. What I really want is for you to come back and tell me Courtney’s into new age crystals and meditation, or she does physical therapy with retired racehorses. Something charitable and unexpected.”
I almost snorted my wine. “Courtney?If she’s even one iota less a mean girl, I will consider that immense personal growth.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “I said it was myhope, not my expectation, Miss Literally-Could-Not-Care-Less.”
“Ha.”
“You know, I always felt bad for her. Underneath the designer clothes and bitchiness, Courtney seemed like an insecure little girl, desperate to be liked.” He gasped, lifting a hand to his chest. “Will you look at that… Icursed. Soak it in, ’cause it’s not happening again. The Baptist guilt hangover is already setting in.”
