“In hindsight, that would’ve been a good move. My apologies.” He smiled. God, that smile. It used to wreck her. But she’d been sweet and innocent back then. And he’d abandoned her without a word, leaving her to wonder, day after day, if she’d done something to turn him away from her. She’d blamed herself. Punished herself for years afterward, overtraining, starving herself. Until one day the pain in her right ankle was diagnosed as a stress fracture. They’d recommended she take some time off.
She’d wept on the subway back to her apartment in New York City, but she felt a sense of relief too. She’d given up almost everything to become a professional ballerina. Trained and trained. Forced herself to comply with whatever her teachers and her father required of her. She now had permission to quit. She was ready for the next season in her life. And the only place she wanted to go? Sugarville Grove. She could claim it as her own, now that her father was dead and her mother married to Robert and living in Texas.
She’d come to the place she’d still thought of as home, opened her studio and bought a little house with a down payment from her inheritance. Soon enough, she was part of the community. Miss Reese to her students. Reese Monroe to the rest of the town. Their girl who had danced in the New York City ballet. They were proud of her but also happy she’d returned, perhaps validating their own choices. If Reese had come back, it must truly be a magical little town. Which it was.
“I have another class at noon, into the afternoon,” Reese said, keeping her tone businesslike. “Shall I expect more ruckus, or will all the hammering and shrieking be done by then?”
“I’ll make sure to take a break then,” Roan said. “What other times should I stay quiet?”
Great. He was being cooperative. As well he should be, given what he’d done to her when they were kids. “I have classes from four to eight this evening.”
“You got it.” He put his hands up, as if defending himself. “And I’m truly sorry if I ruined your class.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it.” She turned to go, heading back over through the mess.
“Hey, Reese. You free for lunch? We could go up to The Moose.”
She turned slowly, fury percolating in her stomach. “Lunch at The Moose? Are you kidding me? After fifteen years of silence you come back to town and want to go to lunch? Hollywood must have taken some of your brain cells because it’ll be the cold day this town bails on Christmas before I sit down for a meal with you. Anyone with your intelligence should know that.”
He paled, the twinkle in his eyes disappearing. “Right. Got it.”
She stormed away, mumbling to herself, as she headed back into her warm studio. How dare he be here. At Christmastime too. And right next door. What was she going to do? Just when she finally stopped dreaming about him, both awake and asleep, here he was again. Like that Dolly Parton song,Here You Come Again.As usual, Dolly nailed it perfectly.
That evening, Reese met her best friend, Mauve, for dinner at The Moose. They’d been friends since meeting in New York City at a mutual friend’s party where they’d started talking and never stopped. When Reese moved back to Sugarville Grove after retiring from the ballet, Mauve had come to visit and fell in love with the community and the town. When they first met, Mauvehad been finishing up her master’s degree in Speech Pathology and Reese was still at the dance academy. At twenty years old, they’d bonded over their shared love of Central Park and old movies. As luck would have it, they had both needed a roommate and had managed to find a place together. They’d lived together until Mauve married at twenty-five. Unfortunately, she divorced her husband four years later after discovering he’d been cheating on her. Right around that same time, Reese had decided to retire and return to Sugarville Grove. When Mauve came to visit after her divorce was final, she decided to stay and start fresh.
Three years later, they agreed their time in New York felt very far away, almost like it had been someone else’s life. In a way, it had been. They were grown up now, with successful careers, their own homes, modest may they be. The days of sharing a small apartment in Brooklyn were no more.
She spotted Mauve in a booth toward the back and made her way through twinkling lights and garland, maneuvering around several wayward children and a young man who had imbibed too much at what looked like a company dinner.
“Hey, you,” Mauve said, looking up from her phone. Mauve had serious girl next door meets Swedish model vibes, all honey-kissed blonde hair and light blue eyes. She was almost six feet tall, with legs so long it defied reason. The two of them were quite the pair. Petite and dark versus tall and fair.
“Sorry I’m late. I had a weird day.” Reese shrugged out of her jacket, hanging it on the hook next to the booth.
“What’s up?” Mauve’s forehead wrinkled with concern.
Before Reese could tell her why, a server came by to take their drink order. They each ordered a glass of red wine.
Reese drew in a deep breath, tugging at the clip that held her bun in place, so that her hair fell around her shoulders. By the end of the day, the top of her head ached. “You’re not going to believe what happened.” She pressed her fingers into her sorescalp and shook her head. “Roan Hayes is back in town. And he bought Wayne’s building. He’s turning it into a CrossFit gym.”
“No way. Are you sure?”
“Yes. Positive. I spoke to him myself. He had the nerve to ask if I wanted to have lunch.”
“You’re kidding?”
“Yeah, like it was nothing. Like I was just someone he went to high school with instead of the girl he once said he’d love forever. His soulmate.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice.
“Next door? You’re right. I can’t believe this,” Mauve said.
Reese pressed her fingers into her temples. “I know. It’s awful.”
“How did he seem?” Mauve tucked her hair behind her ears, and leaned forward slightly. “And how did it feel to see him after all this time?”
“He seemed …older. A little beat up. His hair’s longer than when we were teenagers. And he looked kind of rugged, like he’d been falling logs in Montana instead of out in Hollywood with the beautiful people. But still drop dead gorgeous.”
“Darn. I was hoping he was fat and bald.”
“No such luck.”
