Though I feared the moment, I wanted to see Oliver, to ensure he was okay. It was an instinct that had laid dormant for years. He probably didn’t need someone like me to watch over him. Gone were the days when he was unsafe in his own home or whispered behind his back by the kids in school, “Oliver Twisted.” They had invented stories and excuses to stay away from him, but I knew that they had idolized him from afar, jealous of his looks, of the life he’d had in Europe, his so-called freedom of being left alone for days and weeks on end, not knowing that he secretly would have given it all up just to be like them.
Then there’d been the girls in high school. “Maddening Oliver,” they used to whisper, playing on his last name. And maddening he had been. The epitome of what they’d thought they wanted—a quiet, distant, out of reach, I-don’t-give-a-fuck-about-anything loner. Rumor had it some of them had reached him, at least physically. I couldn’t blame them. He was beautiful as beautiful as the ocean that had reflected through his dad’s house’s windows, the same that glimmered and thrashed through his own windows now. The ocean with its immeasurable depths, and storms, and the ability to devour you.
“Are these fat free?” a woman asked when I presented the tray to her. I recognized her as Marcia Beaumont, the Wayford every-imaginable-committee chairwoman and matron.
She didn’t recognize me. I had been just an out-of-town teen when she was already running half the town.
“No, but let me get you those,” I replied customer-orientedly, and searched for the waiter I saw with a tray carrying Amy’s mark for fat free. She had marks for gluten-free and dairy-free, too.
Instead of sending him to her, when I found him, we moved two pieces off his tray and onto mine.
Expertly zigzagging through the crowd, I emerged from between two groups back to where Marcia was standing.
I halted.
There he was. Eight feet from me.
Oliver. Oliforever.
This world wasn’t fair. I knew it. But when my eyes washed over this man, who had become even more beautiful with the years, while the same passing time had uglied many of us, I knew that life wasn’t fair in yet a new sense.
But never mind that. He was fine. There, I saw it with my own eyes. His father was long gone, and Oliver was smiling and looking great in his suit while a man was chatting with him. No bruises. Though none had been apparent back then, either, except for one incident.
I was relieved. This green-eyed man was no longer the broken boy I loved.
Yes, loved. Not in an easy-to-explain way.
Life had turned us both into what we were supposed to be. He was magnificent. And he deserved it. And that was why, after I confirmed that he was okay, I wanted to escape before he could see that I, too, had grown to be what this life had in store for me—a thirty-eight-year-old single mom of nineteen-year-old twins whom she had conceived with a loser she had later kicked out, who still wasn’t model thin but now haggard, too, after years of raising them alone, working more than one job to provide for them and pay for their education so they could have what I had failed to get for myself.
“Oh, thank you! You’re wonderful for getting me these.” Marcia, in her maroon cocktail dress, stepped toward me, tearing my attention from Oliver, who stood facing her and the man next to her.
Oliver was still listening politely to the man, but now I could see that the smile on his face was frozen, like a mask. He wasn’t really listening.
“You’re welcome,” I replied quietly, expanding my smile and extending my arm with the tray toward her. With an extra lean forward, I was close enough for her to reach out and take a smoked salmon bruschetta without getting closer to the others myself.
I could make my escape now.
I turned to my right, where a group of suit-clad backs looked like a promising hideout. I managed to take two steps.
“January?”
I took another step and was already half-concealed behind the group.
“January Raine?” the same deep, husky voice repeated, and a swift movement behind me stopped me.
God, I hated my full name. My mother’s schtick of naming us after the months we were born was something she thought was cute, but we thought was just lazy. And cruel, given our last name was Raine. When June and I had welcomed a third sister—poor thing—in September, she hadn’t been spared, either. September Raine—or Tammy, if you asked her—now had our mom living with her and her family and insisting on calling her by her full name.
A strong, warm palm on my shoulder had me turning around.
“Hi, Oliver.”
Thoughhecalled my name and stopped me, Oliver looked taken aback when I admitted my presence with a smile. If I were a poet, I’d say that the mask he had on had cracked.
“Surprise!” I called in a cheery tone, in an attempt to break the awkward moment when he just stood there and stared at me. But my voice kind of died down at the end.
“Itis. It is a surprise,” he said, his voice low. His eyes skimmed my face then landed on mine again, and there we were, face-to-face, green eyes to blue eyes.
“Probably more surprising that we didn’t meet until now.” Riviera View and Wayford weren’t that far from each other. I was still smiling, but my heart was pounding in my throat. My meetings with Oliver were as rare and titillating as a total eclipse, and this was no different.
