by Mia Archer
“Hooterville?”
“Shut up. You’re trying to change the subject and you’re making me feel old. Not a good place to be right now.”
I looked down and a blush came to my face. She was right, of course. If things were like that for me back home then I could only imagine what it was like for the poor kids who were still stuck there. I suppose I could provide a nice shining example of a gay person living the good life as a counterpoint to the ridiculous things that got spread around in that place.
“I have to go to my reunion, don’t I?” I said with a sigh.
“You have to go, but don’t act like you’re striking a blow for equality or something. Just go, have fun, be yourself. And if you see that girl keep an open mind.”
My eyes narrowed. “Fat chance of that.”
Felicia shrugged as other people started to move away. Seeing Felicia getting angry was usually enough to clear most crowds, though they’d stayed a little longer than usual this time around, no doubt because of the gossip I was providing. Soon enough it was just the two of us.
“I can see that look on your face. All I’m saying is people change. Keep an open mind about things. The last thing you want to do is go back home and find out you’re the close-minded one.”
“I’ll think about it.” I said.
Fat chance. Hate was probably too strong a word, but I certainly still loathed Allison for what she did to me that night five years ago. For breaking my heart. I didn’t see that loathing changing because I spent a night or two in town for a reunion.
I pulled out my phone and once more looked at the few pictures of Allison I had access to. Amazing how a girl so beautiful could be hiding such a black heart.
10: Run Down Memories
I pulled into the parking lot and just paused and sat there for a moment. A bowling alley. I couldn’t believe they were having our class reunion at a bowling alley.
Sure it was probably the only place in town that was actually equipped for holding a large group, or at least it was the only place big enough that still had reasonable rates, but still.
I’d come back home before, but now that I thought about it I couldn’t remember actually going into town on any of the occasions when I was visiting. Even over the summers my parents were always the ones who got groceries, and I spent most of my time hanging out on or around the lake when I wasn’t going to a much bigger city to enjoy shopping.
I suppose that said something about the state of affairs in this burnt out burg that this was the first time I’d actually been inside the city limits in the better part of five years. And what I was seeing wasn’t pretty.
Everything looked rundown, the bowling alley included. I couldn’t tell whether that was because things really had gone to shit in the five years since I’d been here or if it was just the sort of thing where if you were surrounded by something constantly you thought of it as normal and it took breaking free and coming back to really notice the changes.
Something told me this place hadn’t changed all that much in five years. Hell, the place hadn’t changed all that much in fifty years aside from most of the jobs in the area going away. No, I was pretty sure I was the one who’d changed.
Sometimes in ways I didn’t particularly care for. I scanned the parking lot but of course it was ridiculous to think Claire would be out here arriving at the same time I was. The reunion had supposedly been going on for about a half hour if they stuck to the schedule, but looking around it appeared I was one of the first people to get here.
Though if memory served the place would be filling up pretty soon. The bowling alley used to be one of the only entertainment venues in town for adults. I doubted that had changed much in the past five years either.
When I stepped through the front doors I was immediately assaulted by a combination of sound and smell that brought me back to when I was a kid and it was still the cool thing to occasionally have birthday parties at the bowling alley. Or back to high school when the gym classes went out to bowl for one week out of a semester.
If anything the place looked even more run down inside than it did on the outside, though again I couldn’t tell if that was because it had fallen into disrepair in recent years or because I hadn’t noticed at the time because this was normal growing up.
I was also starting to realize what a bubble I’d been living in out at the lake with my parents and everyone else who was actually well off in this town. Damn.
I glanced around the bowling alley, but again I was being silly. No one from our class was in there. No one under fifty appeared to be in there, though it was early enough that the crowds were still pretty sparse. Claire definitely wasn’t in there, and I kicked myself for looking for her in the first place. Even if I found her it’s not like she probably wanted to be found.
Not by me, at least.
A sign pointed to the new meeting hall attached to the bowling alley. Though of course when I say it was the “new” area that’s all relative. It had been built back around the same time I’d been born, but that was new compared to the rest of the alley which had been built back in the ‘50s and so the “new” name had stuck even though it was anything but these days.
When I stepped into the meeting hall, though it was really more of a small gathering room, calling it a hall was optimistic, I was assaulted with a Twenty Promises song that immediately threw me back to that night. To the bonfire. To sneaking away from the bonfire into the darkness where I could have the sort of fun with my former best friend that I’d been trying so hard to forget in the five years since.
I suppose this song throwing me back to that moment was proof that no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t run from that past. That thought terrified me because I had a pretty good notion that a simple song was just the beginning of the past coming back to haunt me tonight.
Everyone looked up as I walked in, and I felt like all of them were staring straight into my soul. I felt like all of them knew what I was thinking. That all of them knew about that night with Claire even though that was impossible unless she blabbed, but I had a feeling I would’ve heard about it.
“Oh my God! Allison!” I heard squealing from off to the side and turned just in time to see a girl with short dark hair slam into me.
For one brief shining moment I thought that was Claire slamming into me. I only got a quick look at the blur that tackled me and I didn’t really see her face. The voice sounded familiar, but not quite what I remembered Claire sounding like.
There was also something else that was off. Something I’d only know from that night we spent together in that beach chair. From that brief few minutes of making out with more intensity than I’d enjoyed before or since. The body pressing into my own felt all wrong. The breasts were a little bigger than I remembered Claire being and she didn’t seem like the kind of girl to get herself “enhanced” in the years since.
Which isn’t to say the body pressed against me didn’t feel nice. Far from it, and if anything it was more worrying to me that I was feeling all warm and slightly turned on from a girl who wasn’t Claire pressing against me. Then the girl pulled away and I looked at a face that was definitely familiar even if the hair color and length didn’t match my memories.
“Oh my God Valerie!”
I felt guilty even as I wrapped her in another hug. Here was another person from that night who I hadn’t talked to in almost as long and I felt bad about it. We’d been best friends in high school and then drifted apart when I went to state and she stayed behind to go to community college. I was starting to wonder if that was just my lot in life, to make good friends who I eventually dropped when circumstance made it too much of a hassle to stay in touch with them.
Sure we’d exchanged messages from time to time, we’d even gone out partying together on one memorable Spring Break our freshman year when it turned out we were both at the same destination during the same week, but other than that I’d been terrible about keeping in touch with her. I couldn’t
even remember seeing much about her on social media. It was like she fell into a black hole after graduation and I didn’t know anything aside from texting a little bit that freshman year and then nothing.
“It’s so good to see you,” Valerie said. “I was worried you wouldn’t come because…”
I fixed her with a sharp look, fear suddenly shooting through me. “Because of what?”
Okay, so maybe I sounded a little more defensive than I intended. Maybe I should have been better at playing it cool. I couldn’t help myself though. The paranoia that somehow other people knew about what happened with me and Claire five years ago came roaring back in full force even as I felt ashamed for feeling that way.
“Well because I haven’t heard from you in ages,” she said. I wondered if her response was a little too quick, and I was worried about the way she looked off to the side as though she was hiding something. Was I being paranoid? Maybe, but I’d spent five years trying to bury everything that happened with Claire and I really didn’t want them to surface now of all times when I was looking forward to an evening enjoying myself with friends.
“Right,” I said. I forced a smile to my face. I was supposed to be enjoying myself, after all. “So tell me about life! Are you here with anyone?”
Valerie did that thing where she looked away again, then back to me. She seemed almost hesitant, but that was nothing like the Valerie I knew in school. What the heck was going on here? Did she really know something?
“I guess you could say I’m here with someone,” she said.
“You guess?” a voice said. A voice that had me blinking in surprise. A decidedly feminine voice. “Nice way to introduce me Val!”
Okay, this was definitely weird. What was Valerie doing bringing a girl to the reunion? Then I saw their hands clasp together, saw the way they were looking at each other, and I felt like the floor had dropped out from under me. Holy shit. Valerie? Really?
“Yup, it’s true,” she said. “Surprise!”
“Well it’s nice to meet you… um… An introduction maybe, Val?”
The new girl rolled her eyes which I didn’t think was very nice. Not a particularly good start to meeting a girl who was apparently the… well I wasn’t really sure what word I should use to describe her. Partner? No, girlfriend was probably more accurate.
“I told you she was going to do this,” the girl said with just a hint of disgust that had my hackles rising. Who the hell was this girl with a chip on her shoulder to talk to me like that? I’d just met her and she was already treating me like this?
Not exactly a great start to the reunion, and that wasn’t even getting into the fact that my first interaction with a former best friend ended up being meeting that best friend’s new girlfriend which just served to open up a whole can of worms that I was hoping I wouldn’t have to think about until I saw Claire for the first time.
It was as though the universe was conspiring to make things as difficult as possible for me right out of the gate, and I didn’t particularly appreciate the universe’s meddling thank you very much.
“And I told you not to…” Valerie started, but before she could get anything else out the new girl shouldered past her and held a hand out.
“I’m Darcy,” she said. “You might remember me from, y’know, graduating with you in a class of maybe a hundred people?”
I blinked and immediately a blush came to my face. Damn it. Here I was thinking this girl was the asshole and I was the one who was acting like a first-rate jerk the entire time. Now that I looked at her a little closer she did seem familiar.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Everyone looks different at these things.”
“It’s okay,” she said with a sudden grin that I wasn’t sure looked too terribly inviting. “We ran in different crowds back then. You were busy with the popular crowd and I mostly hung out with other girls from the softball team.”
Yeah, there definitely wasn’t anything pleasant about the way she was smiling at me. It was downright unpleasant. Almost predatory. The softball team. I felt a chill run through me. Claire was on the softball team. If this girl spent most of her time hanging out with her friends on the softball team that meant she probably hung out with Claire on the regular. If she hung out with Claire on the regular there was a possibility she knew what had happened that night.
It wasn’t likely, but that paranoia was back. Damn it. Coming to this reunion was a mistake.
“Yes, well, nice to meet you again,” I said.
I almost asked her if she knew whether or not Claire was coming. If they were friends back in school then it stood to reason they’d still be friends now. I caught myself before the question could get out though. No, the last thing I wanted was to seem interested in what Claire was up to.
I was going to try and catch up with Valerie but she suddenly looked over my shoulder and her eyes went wide. I felt excitement fluttering through my stomach. It was ridiculous, but a part of me just knew Valerie was looking like that because Claire had just walked into the room behind me. I thought about turning around and seeing her standing there so close to me. Closer than we’d been since that night.
Butterflies danced in my stomach and my hair stood on end. I felt someone approaching as Valerie gave me a sympathetic grin and then she and Darcy were moving away. She looked over her shoulder at me and I wondered why she was looking at me like that. She couldn’t possibly know what had happened between me and Claire any more than Darcy could.
I turned, a smile coming to my face despite myself, despite all the reservations and worries I’d had over the years about this moment. I realized that even though I’d worried about this moment, at the same time I’d been looking forward to it. I’d desperately wanted this.
The smile froze on my face as I spun. That wasn’t Claire. In fact it was the last person I’d ever want to talk to at a reunion.
“Allison! I can’t believe you came! There’s just so much to catch up on!”
I winced as Tiffany Allred wrapped me in her substantial arms and I felt myself being led into the room. I turned and looked at Valerie in desperation as she made her way to the other side of the room. She gave me a sympathetic look, but she didn’t try to come to my rescue, damn her.
In fact just about everyone seemed to be giving us a wide berth. I got a few sympathetic looks as she started launching into all the gossip I’d missed out on over the past couple of years. I knew from social media that she’d stayed in town, but I’d never made the mistake of actually adding her to keep up on everything.
It appeared I was going to be paying for that now by getting caught up on everything that had happened in her world in the past five years. Damn it.
I kept glancing over to the door, but while people kept streaming into the reunion as Tiffany nattered on none of those people were the one person I wanted to see. The one person I wasn’t sure I wanted to see, come to think of it. I was worried about how I’d react seeing her. I was worried about how she’d react seeing me.
God, how could Tiffany just keep talking like this? It’s like she didn’t even realize I was doing my best to ignore her. I went over to a table set up with nonalcoholic drinks, I’d have to go to the bar for the real stuff which I might need if Tiffany kept up, and finger foods and the entire time she followed me, never missing a beat as she filled up her tray with what seemed like half the food that was set out in the first place.
Well, that explained how she seemed to have gained the freshman fifty and then some since graduation.
“Uh-huh, that’s real interesting,” I said when there seemed to be a pause in the conversation, but it didn’t matter. She just launched into her next boring story of small town goings on whether or not I responded.
I looked around the room but no one seemed interested in coming to my rescue. No, it seemed that since I was the poor idiot who was at the door when Tiffany walked in I’d become the designated distraction for her.
“So I was hoping I wouldn’t s
ee him at this reunion because after the creepy way he looked at me whenever he was there at the theater with his girlfriend…”
I nodded as I kept one eye on the door. Being trapped by Tiffany like this was making me seriously wish I’d brought Kyle along. The two of them could talk at each other for hours. Both of them seemed to have the whole “the world revolves around me and I have to tell everyone about it” thing down pat.
Like the fantasy she was spinning out now about Derek checking her out back when that was still an accomplishment? Not likely.
I got so bored listening to her droning that I hardly noticed movement near the door. All I could think about was getting the hell away from her. I didn’t figure that movement was Claire anyways, I figured she wasn’t coming at this point. I sighed and Tiffany didn’t even notice. It had been a long shot that Claire would even show up in the first place.
I turned to look at the entrance. My heart clenched and then started beating so damn fast that I worried I might be having a heart attack.
A girl wearing shorts and a tank top that showed off a delicious figure I remembered oh so well was standing looking around the room. I remembered that form oh so well because the last time I saw her it was pressed against me wearing practically nothing on the beach.
Damn did she look good. Even better in person than she did in her pictures online.
Claire’s gaze swept the room and fell on me for a moment before moving along. Okay, so that was a little disappointing. I was expecting something even if that something was pure abject hatred. To have her look right past me, ignore me, was somehow even more of a slap in the face than getting an evil glare.
Then her gaze shot back to me. She was staring at me with a surprising intensity that sent a shiver running down my spine. It sent a twinge running straight to my pussy as well. A twinge that brought back memories of that night even as it was a stark reminder of everything that had been lacking in my sex life for the past five years when compared to that night.
