Page 62 of The Hometown Heartbreaker

I shrugged.

“Speaking of, how’s Nonna?” my mom asked.

“She’s feisty as ever.” Gio softened at the mention of his grandma who raised him.

“You give her my love.” She patted Gio on the arm.

“Will do,” Gio promised.

Mom gave me a knowing look, then headed back, talking baby talk to Minnie. I watched her go, thinking again how she managed to keep four, now five adult sons, a husband, four dogs, two cats, over a hundred rescue animals, and seventy-eight employees in line with nothing more than guilt trips and a deeply honed sense of expectation.

Once she disappeared into the admin offices, Gio looked at me with the kind of earnest, desperate intensity that made me want to look away. I didn’t. I braced for whatever was coming.

“Is this about Sadie?” I asked, sharper than I intended.

His eyes dropped to the ground. “You remember graduation night?”

I flinched. Of course I remembered. “Only every day of my life,” I answered. “What about it?”

“There’s something I never told you.” He took a deep breath and raked a hand through his hair. “Something I heard a couple weeks later from Jeremy Miller.”

Jeremy Miller? The little shit with the rat face and the rich dad who owned half the strip malls in three counties and whose uncle was the Sheriff, so he thought he could get away with murder. I’d hated that guy since kindergarten.

“What?”

Gio swallowed hard. “You remember how I worked construction the summer before I left for college, I was working with Miller and he talked a lot of shit. But one day at lunch he was bragging about how he drugged Donovan Valentine, or he tried to roofie him on grad night but someone else drank his beer.”

“Donovan?

He nodded. “Yeah, it was payback for Donovan breaking Jeremy’s jaw sophomore year. He dosed Donovan’s beer and was going to take compromising photos of him, but somehow the drinks got switched and you ended up drinking the dosed beer.”

The memories came at me in sharp bursts: drinking with Donovan and Gio, the way the lights swam in front of my eyes, the sense of being outside my own body, watching events unfold from underwater. There were hours I still couldn’t account for. Waking up in bed with Vicki feeling like I got ran over by a fucking truck.

“You’re saying I was drugged?”

He nodded. “That’s what I’m saying.”

I wanted to punch something, but all I could do was stare at the gravel at my feet, like if I just looked hard enough, I’d find the missing pieces of my life buried there. “And you’ve known all this time?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“At the time, I just, I don’t know, I told myself it wasn’t that big of a deal but looking back I think it was because I was always jealous of you, man.”

“Of me?” I had no clue what he was talking about. He got as many, if not more, girls than I did. We were always neck in neck in sports. He got better grades than me. He was accepted into medical school.

“Yeah, you had everything I ever wanted.”

“I did?” I had no clue what he was talking about.

“You had this.” He fanned out his arms. Gio’s voice fractured at the end, and he looked away, jaw clenched so hard a vein throbbed in his temple. “You had the ranch, brothers, a mom and dad who loved you, a family. I love Nonna and Gen but…it’s not…it wasn’t the same. Growing up, I was so jealous of you. Your life seemed perfect to me. You had the girl, the family, the ranch, and I don’t know I guess I just, I was an asshole for not saying anything and I’m sorry. I should’ve told you, D. I should’ve told you all those years ago, but, I thought telling you would somehow make you end up being the good guy again, and I was just sick of you getting everything you ever wanted.”

The world stopped spinning. All the old rage and shame and heartbreak I’d buried for years—the bloodbath in my chest—came surging up like a tide, but beneath it was a sharp, stinging clarity. There had always been holes in my memory from that night, a sense of having been played, but I’d written it off as blackout drinking and my own fucking stupidity. I’d never once considered that I’d been set up. That someone had targeted me, or not me, but the same result, and that one of my best friends had known about it and never said a word.

I wanted to punch him in his fucking face. I wanted to hit at him for being a coward, for knowing the truth and letting me rot in it. I wanted to walk away and never look back. But most of all, I wanted to know why. Why now? After all these years, after all the wreckage, why the confession? Why did he finally care?

I stared at him. “So why now? Why the fuck are you telling me now?”