by Amelia Wilde
“So you’re back in Reckless Falls,” he says, laughter in his voice. “Thought you were never going back there.”
I told Gideon as much on the very first day of college, when I burst into our shared dorm room with a kick to the door and way more swagger than I actually felt. He gave me a level look, told me it was bullshit, and then suggested we climb up the fire escape to the forbidden top floor. “To have a good view while we have some beers,” he’d said, and I went along with it. Instant best friendship, and we’ve never looked back.
“I decided to give this shithole one last kiss-off,” I tell him. “Plus, I want to sell my dad’s place.”
“That behemoth? Just renovate the shit out of it, my friend. You could put a fire pit in the living room.”
“That would be living dangerously.” Speaking of living dangerously... “I’ve already had one reunion, and I’ve only been here one night.”
“With who? Tell me it was someone hot as fuck who never gave you the time of day in high school.” Gideon sounds genuinely excited for me. “She won’t be able to resist you now.”
I open my mouth to tell him that it was, in fact, someone hot as fuck, but the words stick in my throat. I’ve said that about a lot of women over the years, and Gideon has probably heard it more often from me than anyone, but I just can’t say it about Reggie.
Not the Reggie I’ve known since I was twelve. Even if it’s true.
“No, she gave me the time of day in high school.” It’s coming back to me now, the way we were together. I haven’t thought about it in a long time. “I guess in the end I kind of...fucked her over.”
“In a good way?” Gideon laughs.
I laugh, too, but it rings a little false. “No, I—” It wasn’t a nice thing, what I did to Reggie, but it still doesn’t explain why she’s so unbelievably pissed off at me after all these years. “You know women. I don’t really know what I did, but it wasn’t good.” Then it occurs to me that Gideon might have zero clue who I’m talking about. “Do you remember Reggie? I think you must have met her once or twice in college. Or, wait—”
“I’ve never met a woman named Reggie. Especially a woman so attractive that you won’t even tell me what she looks like.”
“Irrelevant. I’ll never see her again after this. She hates me.” I hear the bewildered tone in my voice like it’s coming from another person. “But she’s cute when she’s angry.” That’s the most I can bring myself to say about her, and it feels slimy in my mouth. It’s God’s honest truth, but for some reason, it just feels wrong to say it. Even to Gideon.
“I know what you have to do,” he intones, and I hear it in his voice, what he’s about to suggest, before he says it.
“No.”
“You have to sleep with her.”
“No.”
“You must sleep with her before the clock strikes midnight on the night of your reunion.”
I laugh out loud. “For one thing, she didn’t even go to my high school, so that shoots a hole in your little plan. For another...” For another, my entire body is already on fire just thinking about stripping off Reggie’s clothes and running my hands over her hips, to her back, and lower... “For another, that ship has sailed.” I think of the boat I left abandoned in Ganagua Lake. “It was more of a rowboat, actually.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Gideon can’t contain his laughter. “I bet you, in the name of our friendship, that you can’t sleep with her by the end of—”
“It’s never going to happen. She wouldn’t go for it.”
“I bet you!” Gideon shouts out, the background noise growing louder. He must be rejoining his original party.
“I don’t accept—”
“I bet you, so you have to do it!” he shouts out one final time, and before I can argue any more, he ends the call.
I pull into the parking lot of the hotel and take the spot closest to my room. This bet with Gideon is just classic Gideon. And even if Reggie was the least bit interested, I wouldn’t want anything to do with sleeping with her. I’m only here to get one last look at my old classmates and unload my father’s house, hopefully to one of their parents.
Still, I hate to lose a bet.
4
Regina
The sound of a breaking glass in a restaurant is the loudest sound in the entire world.
I know because I just broke my second one over the course of an hour.
“Shit,” I hiss, and immediately set my tray on the tray stand and drop to my knees to mop up the spilled cocktail.
Instantly, Charlie is at my side. “You okay, Gina?” my manager murmurs, as she grabs a broom and helps me sweep up the shards of glass.
“I’m fine,” I murmur back, keeping a bright smile pasted on my face for the benefit of my customers.
She and I rise as one and make practiced apologies to those seated at the table, before Charlie hustles me off the floor and back to the narrow hallway where the servers have their lockers. “Okay,” she says, adjusting the knot of blond curls bobbing on top of her head. “For real now. What’s going on? That’s the second drink…”
“In the past hour,” I finish for her. “I know. I’m sorry, I think…” I try a bemused smile on for size. “I think gravity is just working against me more than normal today.”
Charlie cocks her head, sending her top knot bobbing again. She isn’t falling for my shit, not for a second. “Gina,” she sighs. “You’re the server I count on most.”
“Thanks…” I interrupt her, hoping to head off a lecture. “I like being the one you can count on.”
Charlie glances down for a moment, and I wait while she recalibrates her speech. It doesn’t bother me that Charlie Kendall-Tellar is younger than me but already married with two kids, and a third on the way, if the rumors are true. It doesn’t bother me that she’s younger than me but making bank as the front-end manager here at Indigo, and my boss to boot.
But getting scolded bothers me. Getting scolded for no reason bothers me even more.
“Just,” Charlie sighs tightly. “Tell me if you need any time off, okay?” She glances back up at me. “You’re working yourself to death.”
“Got bills,” I remind her. “Tuition is due soon.” It’s taking forever to earn my degree online, but I’m so close to it now that I can taste it.
“Yeah, but you really don’t need to work at the country club, too, do you?”
I shrug. “It’s only for a few events here and there. I make sure it never interferes with my shifts here.”
Charlie blinks. “Yes, I know it doesn’t physically interfere, but if you’re too tired to…”
“I’m not…”
“And training for the triathlon too, Regina?”
This time it’s my turn to blink. I think I’ve heard Charlie call me by my full name exactly twice. First when she was interviewing me and looking at my resume, and the second time was right now. “The training isn’t interfering with anything,” I protest. “In fact, I think it’s only making me a better server.” I clench my bicep in the classic bodybuilder’s pose. “Look at these guns!” I crow, making her laugh. “Did you know I can lift a tray of ten plates right over my head now?”
Her smile fades. “Yeah, and my point is you probably shouldn’t be doing that when you’re so tired from overworking yourself.” Her eyes soften a little. “Promise me you won’t overdo it.”
I take a deep breath. “I promise.”
“Promise me you’re going home tonight and getting a good night’s sleep.”
“I promise,” I say.
But it’s a lie. As soon as my shift at Indigo is over, I rush out to my car and change out of one uniform into another, shaking my head as I think back on my boss’s comments. Charlie has a big house and a rich husband. She could afford to spout niceties about resting and taking care of yourself.
I didn’t have time for luxuries like that.
I crack open an energy drink and chug it down so fast the
fizz shoots up my nose. I snort, and then sneeze, all the while driving up the winding side road toward the country club. A strip of fading turquoise hugs the western sky, outlining the blunt hump of Whaleback Mountain, but above me a few stars are starting to wink to life. Or maybe it’s my own eyes that are winking. I rub them and bite back a yawn. Then I shake my head and consciously push the exhaustion back down again. The caffeine is starting to sing through my veins.
I’ve got this.
“Quinn!” The event organizer...oh fuck, I can never remember her name, Kate or Katie or something, spots me crossing the employee lot. She just got back from Iraq and runs her catering staff much like a unit, right down to the use of last names. “You’re on tableside tonight.”
I tuck my black shirt into my slacks. “It’s a sit-down thing?” I ask, grabbing the apron she hands off to me.
“RFHS ten-year reunion,” she explains, then lowers her voice. “This was the crowd that was graduating the year I started, so thank God I don’t recognize too many of them.”
“Most everyone moves away anyway,” I agree.
Kate, or Katie, raises her unmanicured eyebrow. “What year did you graduate?”
I grin ruefully. It’s a question that I’ve been fielding for years in this small town. “I didn’t go to Reckless Falls High,” I explain for the zillionth time. “My parents sent me to Our Lady of Sorrows in Crown Creek.”
“Damn,” was all Kate, or Katie, had to say about that. She makes a tick mark on her clipboard, and then gestures in the direction of the kitchen.
I nod. This isn’t a place for small talk or making friends. That’s what I like about it. These country club events are sporadic, and the staff is a revolving door of characters. No one stays for long. They’re just like me: here to make money for one night and then get the hell out.
I shove my order pad into the apron and push open the doors to the main banquet hall. The guests are already being seated, and by the decibel level, I’d guess that the open bar has been quite popular already. I need to get my orders out before these drunk fucks forget to tip me.
I paste a smile on my face and glide on autopilot to my first table. My mouth makes the shapes of words of greeting, but bypasses my brain entirely, leaving my gaze to wander idly around the room as I mechanically take orders.
I recognize a few people. There’s the woman who jogs red-faced up Main Street no matter what the weather. Here’s the guy whose dad used to work with my dad at the mechanic’s. But there is nobody here that would recognize me as anyone more than a face in the crowd and, after a moment, even the familiar faces start blending together into an amorphous cloud as I float through it in an exhausted haze.
But when I reach my third table, there is one face staring up at me that makes the clouds part, and I am suddenly, viciously awake, every nerve ending in my body jangling.
He licks his lips and sets down his napkin, and his deep brown eyes burn into me once again. I feel like I’m drowning for real this time.
“Hi again, Reggie,” Adam says.
5
Adam
Reggie’s eyes bore into me like she just might slap me for daring to step foot in this place. The one thing that’s saving me, I know, is the fact that she’s working here tonight.
Somehow, she’s really pulling off the black slacks and black shirt waitress look. I try not to notice the curves of her body underneath the fabric, but I do.
I’m sitting on the side of the table closest to her, surrounded by what can only be described as the crème de la crème of RFHS. I’m in rarefied air tonight, and I can hardly stop myself from laughing. At least two of the women wouldn’t have given me the time of day back then–Rachael Collins’ dad was rich rich, and mine was only well-off, and Stephanie Bordeaux always hated everyone that Rachael did. Tonight they can’t get enough of me.
It was fun, for a while, but now that Reggie is standing here in front of me, it’s like nobody else exists.
“Hi,” she finally snaps back, and Greg Litchfield, who is sitting next to me, bursts out laughing. He’s already on his third beer, and we’ve been here less than an hour.
“Don’t worry, ma’am. Adam here always goes after the most attractive women around.”
I glance at Rachael and Stephanie, who are wearing identical pissed-off expressions, and when I look back at Reggie, she has the most fake smile on her face I’ve ever seen. She’s not looking at me anymore. She’s looking past me.
“I’m not worried,” she says, her voice lifting in the kind of waitress humor that’s like having ice water dumped down your back. Greg doesn’t seem to notice at all. He just pounds his hand on the table and takes another swig of his beer.
Reggie launches into this patter of what’s on the menu, some prix fixe thing with limited options, and starts scribbling down orders. My heart hammers against my chest. It was weird as hell earlier at the lake, and still I have no explanation for why she was so furious with me. Last I knew, everything was fine and we were up to our usual shenanigans. Breaking into Reggie’s school–that’s the last thing I can remember, and it went off without a hitch. Didn’t it?
“For you, sir?” Her voice is edged in acid, and I haven’t thought at all about what to order.
“Pork.” I give her a dashing grin, trying to get her to forgive me, or at least laugh.
She stands there, stone-faced, for another beat. What in the fuck is going on? Have I stumbled on some body-snatched version of Reggie? “Anything else to drink? No?” She snaps her notepad shut and turns to go.
I can’t help myself. This is nothing like the Reggie I used to know, and I have to know why. Before she can take a full step, I reach out and grab her wrist.
“Reggie—” Now I have her attention. She whirls back around, glaring at me with such a fire in her eyes that I swear I can feel my clothes bursting into flame. But she doesn’t shake my hand off. Not right away, anyway.
“What?” she says through gritted teeth, a completely unbelievable smile plastered on her face.
“When do you get off?”
She rolls her eyes, smirking, and turns to go again.
“Reggie, wait.”
I stand up from my seat and follow her. The crowd noise around us is so loud that it has to cover up everything we’re saying.
“Adam. Stop.” Her hands go tight around the notepad she’s holding in her hands, but her jaw is set and square. Damn. She hates me.
“Reg, it’s me. I’m not in town for that long. Go out with me so we can catch up.” I don’t want to look away from her dark eyes. Why the hell haven’t I made more of an effort over the years? Jesus, I’ve been stupid. “Come on. I’ll take you to Bob and Lou’s. The diner’s still open, right? Lou’s still making those pies?”
She just shakes her head, incredulous, and walks away, disappearing into the crowd.
But she didn’t say no.
Back at the table, I let Greg’s voice funnel in through one ear and out through the other. He relives his glory days on the football team, and Rachael and Stephanie are happy to chime in with stories about being on the cheerleading squad. I tune in for one minute only to hear Rachael say, “—and then my skirt went up around my waist and got stuck there, and I’d worn the wrong color underwear—” and tune right back out.
Where’s Reggie? I keep watching for her at the other tables, but every time I think I catch a glimpse of her, she’s gone.
“Adam, who are you looking for?” Greg thunders at me across the table, now on his fourth beer. “You into that waitress? She’s a hot piece of ass.”
“You’re drunk,” I snap at him over the noise. “And she’s an old friend.”
He makes a gesture that I’d have laughed at if it was about anyone other than Reggie. Just then, a totally different waitress appears at our table. She’s nothing like Reggie–stocky and redheaded–and when she hands out our plates, it’s clear that she’s doing Reg a favor by taking the table.
Oh, no. This is a slic
k move, but she’s not getting off that easy.
I turn around, blood thrumming with the thrill of the chase, and spot her. She’s three tables down, leaning over some guy from our graduating class that I don’t recognize, setting down his plate. I take in a deep breath and get ready to shout out her name over the noise, when he reaches out and grabs a handful of her ass.
I’m out of my chair before my mind can even process what I’ve seen, barreling through the crowd and shoving myself in front of her. “Hey, you piece of shit.” I put my hand on his shoulder and the asshole turns to face me, laughing. It’s Kenneth Porter, who was on the track team with me back in the day. I can’t reconcile the happy-go-lucky Kenneth who ran sprints and hurdles with the pig who just did that to Reggie in fucking public, while she was working.
Kenneth takes in my face and misreads the situation entirely. “Adam!” he cries, standing up and patting me heartily on the back like we’re fifty years old. I twist in his grip. Reggie’s lip is curled in another smirk that says of course you would hug this prick. Then she’s gone again. Ken drags me down to the table and tries to reminisce about the time we went to the state semifinals for the 400 relay.
I couldn’t give any less of a fuck about the 400 relay.
This is a situation that happens over and over again, like some high school reunion groundhog day, for the next two hours. All I want is to be with Reggie, but she’s acting like a human hall of mirrors, there one second, gone the next.
I wait her out. People get drunk. Greg Litchfield throws up in a planter off to the side of the banquet hall. Rachael Collins makes out sloppily with Peter Mitchell, who still lives in town and owns the oil change place. One by one, people trickle out. I’ve spent the entire evening watching for Reggie.
She can’t avoid me for long, especially when it’s time to start bussing the tables.
The bartender is packing up when I get to the bar. He graciously pours me a shot that’s really two shots in a whiskey glass, and then nods sagely when I press a fifty across the bar with my head cocked toward one of the six-packs behind the bar. He’s definitely not supposed to give those to me, but he does.
