by Mia Archer
Some things didn’t change.
“Okay fine, you don’t have to go over there and talk to Allison,” Sam said.
I blinked. “I don’t? What happened to you? You’re going soft in your old age!”
“Oh yeah? Did I mention if you don’t go over and talk to her then you can just sit here and tell me all about what happened that night to sour you so much on Allison?”
Yeah, Sam hadn’t gone soft at all. I should’ve known there was a catch, damn her.
I had to hold one hand against the bar to steady myself as memories came flooding back from that night. Memories that I didn’t plan on telling Sam about any time soon.
I thought back to the gentle whisper of two skimpy bikinis pressing together. I thought of two of the most beautiful breasts in the world that I'd never expected to feel falling under my reverent caress as she bit her lip and looked uncertain but so fucking sexy. I'd been with plenty of girls since then, but nothing had ever matched the intensity of that moment. I thought about gentle sighs, caresses, feelings I never thought I'd ever get the chance to enjoy, and more.
All of that was nice, but overriding all those memories was another emotion that was still strong and white hot after all these years. Stronger and more white-hot even then the undeniable arousal I felt whenever I thought about that night, which I admittedly tried to avoid whenever possible considering how it had ended.
Anger. Pure anger. Every time I thought about that night it made me see red. More than anything it made me want to break something, and that wasn't a good mood to be in when I was supposed to be friendly and getting along with everyone.
Of course thinking back to that night, thinking back to that anger, thinking back to the score I felt I still had to settle after all these years, did give me a little bit of courage. Courage that may or may not have been augmented by some of the liquid courage I'd downed while sitting here with Sam. I set the glass down.
"You know, I think you're right," I said. "Maybe it is time I go and say hello to Darcy. Catch up on old times."
Sam leaned back on her barstool and let out a low whistle. "Good for you,” she said. “Be sure to send me an invite to the wedding. Congrats on that being legal now, by the way."
I rolled my eyes. “Thanks? I think?”
No, no worries about wedding bells in my future. Not with Allison, at least. Not with anyone, considering how my dating life had been going lately. No, I'd just do a quick walk by, let her have a look at me and what life could be like if you were honest and well-adjusted about who you were, and let her think back to that night and eat her heart out.
That was all I planned on doing.
Honest.
So against my better judgment and in the spirit of good old fashioned spite I headed over to the table.
Only as I approached them something felt different. This was something I'd done countless times in bars, at parties, at any number of places. I was cool and confident when it came to approaching the ladies, and yet it felt weird now. As I approached Allison’s group I started to feel like the old me again. My palms were sweaty, my breath was picking up, and I was actually nervous!
I quickly clamped down on those pesky old resurfacing emotions. I needed to get my head in the game. I could do this. It's not like I was trying to get with her or anything. No, it was just a quick drive-by and then on to talk with people who hadn't taken my heart and crushed it, completely shredding and destroying my confidence until I got away from this shithole.
I smiled down at her as I reached the group. Darcy elbowed that Vanessa girl, or whatever the hell her name was, and her eyes went wide when she saw me which made me wonder how much she knew.
I had the satisfaction of seeing Allison look at me and then look away with a nervous blush. Nice.
"Hi Darcy, Allison," I said. I wasn’t going to risk getting the other girl’s name wrong. "Long time no see."
12: Regrets
“Claire,” I said. “Nice to see you.”
Oh God was it nice to see her. It was more than nice to see her. She was every bit as captivating as I’d imagined from creeping on her pictures. She was every bit as gorgeous as I remembered from that night so long ago.
I was surprised that I was able to keep myself so calm and collected. Butterflies were dancing in my stomach making me feel downright queasy. My body was so hot from looking at her, from remembering everything that had passed between us.
And yet at the same time I was terrified. I felt like Valerie and Darcy were staring at me and knew exactly what was going on in my head. I felt like everyone in the room was looking at me and could tell my secret shame from years ago.
Of course that was a ridiculous notion. Looking around most everybody was worried about their own problems. No one was even glancing over at me.
Well, maybe Derek was looking at me a little more often than Stacy would appreciate, but other than that everyone was off in their own world. I was just being paranoid, but still. This was the moment I’d thought about and dreaded for the past five years.
Now that it was actually here I felt like I was in serious danger of being overwhelmed!
It wasn’t fair for a girl to look that good. It wasn’t fair the way she could stir fires deep inside me that I’d done my best to ignore or forget. Fires that definitely didn’t get stirred by Kyle, no matter how hard he tried. And boy did he try.
She wasn’t saying anything. Why wasn’t she saying anything? She was just standing there staring at me with that sexy smoldering look. Or was that a sexy smoldering look? I mean sure I thought it was sexy, but sexiness was in the eye of the beholder and all that even though I very much didn’t want to think of anything Claire did as sexy.
What I wanted and what I was feeling were two very different things though.
The smoldering, though, that was something completely different. What if I was misreading that emotion? What if that was something else? That almost looked angry. No, more than angry. Downright pissed off.
I squeezed my eyes shut and forced myself to catch my breath both because I felt like if I didn’t I was going to be in very real danger of hyperventilating and because it felt like the absolute worst case scenario for this meeting was playing out.
Claire was here and she wasn’t happy to see me. She was still angry about everything, and it’s not like I could blame her. I’d treated her like shit that night and I’d ignored her before and since.
Yeah, worst case all right. Well, almost the worst case scenario. I suppose Kyle could have decided he was coming no matter how much I protested and he could be here to witness this moment of awkwardness between me and my former best friend turned brief lover and onetime dalliance with the fairer sex.
It could always be worse, but not by much.
“So how have the last five years been treating you Claire?”
I asked. I figured I’d make some polite conversation then find an excuse to go hang out with people who actually wanted to talk to me. Though there was no one in the room I wanted to talk to nearly as much as I wanted to talk to Claire. There were so many things I needed to say, to clear the air with her, but if she was still pissed off then any chance at reconciliation seemed vanishingly small.
“Life has been great,” she said. “I live in the city now. It’s pretty nice out there actually. Have a good job and a bunch of friends.”
She turned to Darcy and Valerie and it was as though I wasn’t there. It was like she’d completely forgotten I was standing right there listening in on their conversation, and it quickly became apparent why.
“You two should come visit sometime,” she said. “Trust me, I know what it can be like being out and living in this town. I have some friends out there and a great little bar. I think you’d love it!”
“Actually we’re not in town anymore,” Darcy said. “We live out in Portland and we just flew in for the reunion, so we’re in a pretty friendly area ourselves.”
“Well there you have it,” Claire said
with a huge grin splitting her face. “Nothing like being out and living as who you are, right?”
“I’ll drink to that!” Darcy said. Valerie seemed to be a little less enthusiastic, but she still took a swig of her drink even as she looked around at the room and then back to me for a moment before blushing and turning back to her drink.
Weird.
I could understand how she felt. Here was my former best friend in exactly the situation that I’d avoided because I was a fucking coward. She was back here and she was out in front of everybody we went to school with and she was worried about what they might think, probably feeling some of the same worries I’d had five years ago when I decided no one could find out about what passed between me and Claire.
And yet she was here. She was with the girl she loved. She seemed happy with this girl even if she seemed a little reluctant to be advertising her life choice to the world. At least that’s what I took that look at me and that blush to mean.
It was quite literally the road not taken sitting right in front of me.
There was also no doubt in my mind that Claire was talking directly to me even if she was looking at Darcy and Valerie while she spoke. She was making sure to drive home that this was the road not taken standing before me. She wanted to make sure I knew how great she had it in the city, because after all what were reunions for if not gloating in front of people you used to know?
I could have done without the preaching though. I made my choices and I was happy with them. I wouldn’t change the past five years.
Would I?
I knew one thing for sure even if I wasn’t so sure about how happy I was with the past five years. I needed to get the hell out of here. Now.
“Well that’s nice that things are going so well for you Claire, but I think I’m going to go catch up with some other people. It was nice seeing you again Valerie.”
I barely managed to choke the words out. Hell, I was half worried I was going to have a breakdown right here. I could feel tears coming to my eyes as the emotion of the moment threatened to overwhelm me.
I didn’t know if I was more upset at Darcy and Valerie for showing up and having the courage I didn’t have, more angry at Claire for being such a bitch calling me out like that when she had to know how conflicted I was feeling, or more angry at myself for denying what I still refused to admit to myself I really wanted.
It was probably a little bit of all of the above. All I really knew was that I needed to get the hell away from the impromptu pride event that had sprang up right in front of me before I turned into a blubbering idiot and really made Claire feel good and superior.
I stood and Claire fixed me with a look that was suddenly so hostile that I felt like I needed to take a step back to get away from her. Damn was that a threatening look! It was the sort of look that raised my hackles and made me wonder what the hell I’d done to deserve it, but of course then I remembered exactly what I’d done and that I probably deserved that look and then some.
Damn.
“Go ahead and do what you need to do Allison,” Claire said. “After all, running off is what you’re good at, isn’t it?”
Her words stung like a slap to the face. Valerie and this Darcy girl had been doing their best to keep smiles on their faces as Claire and I were chatting, but they were both staring in stunned disbelief now. Good. At least I wasn’t the only one thinking Claire’s words were just a tad harsh.
Even if I did deserve them.
I was also feeling a bit of panic. She was telling me I was good at running away in front of Valerie and Darcy. That was coming dangerously close to admitting what had happened between the two of us, and I didn’t want that to happen. I could probably deal with the fallout of that finally coming out given time to prepare for it, but I didn’t feel like dealing with it this weekend.
So I decided not to engage. I’d let Claire stand here and talk with her friends. I’d back off. There were other people I could talk to at this shindig who weren’t Claire or Valerie.
“Right. Nice talking to you Claire,” I said.
I wasn’t sure what I was doing. I wasn’t sure where I was going. I stumbled away from them and I could’ve kicked myself. I probably looked like I was a drunk fool. I was certainly feeling disoriented, and admittedly it was difficult to see very well through the tears that were clouding my vision.
Eventually I wound up back at the bar. Yeah, the bar. That seemed like a nice safe place to be. After what just happened I could use a good stiff drink. Actual liquor that had more kick to it. Not beer or something wimpy like that.
“What’ll you have?” the bartender asked.
I thought I recognized the girl. She looked familiar. Maybe a couple of years younger. If she was a bartender then she couldn’t have been at it for very long. Maybe we went to school together? Then again if she was a few years younger then of course we went to school together. There was only the one school in this town and it wasn’t like people her are were likely to move here.
Most of the traffic for our demographic was out rather than in.
She was pretty. I could’ve kicked myself again when I caught myself checking the girl out and thinking about how well she filled out her tank top. Those were not the kinds of thoughts I had about other girls, damn it.
“Give me something fruity mixed with something strong,” I said. “I don’t care what it is or how much it costs.”
Not that I was worried about something costing too much. This was a bowling alley in a town where the median income was pretty damn close to the poverty line. Mostly because the area out by the lake wasn’t actually in the town despite their best efforts at annexation, but still. It wasn’t exactly the sort of place where you had to worry about the drinks being too pricey.
She came back with something that smelled nice and I dug out a ten and threw it at her and told her to keep the change. That seemed to be enough from the way she grinned. Yeah, definitely not the kind of place that served pricey drinks, but when I took a sip it had a fruity flavor that was combined with a kick that nearly knocked me on my ass so I figured it was well worth the money spent.
“Damn,” a feminine voice said from beside me.
I turned to see a girl who looked familiar, but then again just about everyone in my age range was going to look familiar because of the aforementioned one school in town. When you saw the same people in the halls day after day for the better part of four years you started to recognize faces even if you never got a name to go with those faces.
I’d been bad about getting names to go with faces. Always off in my own little world with my friends who I thought were the only thing that mattered. I felt a little guilty about that now, but who didn’t do that sort of thing in school?
“Do I know you?” I asked.
I winced. Okay, so maybe that was a little more forward than I should’ve been with a girl I didn’t recognize who I might not even know even if she did seem familiar. After all there were girlfriends and spouses here. I was already running on a short fuse after everything that happened with Claire, though, and so I was perhaps a little shorter with her than I’d intended. And from the way she smiled it seemed like she knew me at least. I wondered why she was grinning like that.
The girl was pretty enough. She looked like she stayed in shape and she had silky hair that, damn it. No. I was not going to do this. She was just a girl who looked familiar. That was all. She didn’t look pretty. She didn’t have hair that looked like it would feel nice to run my fingers through.
She was only a girl. That was it.
“I guess you probably don’t know me. At least we’ve never been properly introduced, Allison,” she said.
She held out a hand and I reluctantly took it. I definitely ignored the small spark I felt at her touch. I didn’t feel sparks from touching a pretty girl’s hand. Damn it. No, I didn’t feel a spark from touching another girl’s hand. I needed to get all that “pretty” business out of my head. I wanted to scream i
n frustration.
“I’m Samantha,” she said. “A friend of Claire’s.”
I rolled my eyes and it was infuriating when the girl kept that smarmy smile on her face. If she was a friend of Claire’s then I wanted to reach out and smack that smile off her face, but I resisted the urge. That wouldn’t be very nice, and the last thing I wanted was to cause a scene.
“So it looks like you were having some fun over there with Claire and Darcy,” Samantha said, nodding across the room.
I followed her gaze. The three of them were chatting like they were old friends. Which I suppose Claire and that Darcy girl were, but Valerie was supposed to be my friend, damn it. She wasn’t supposed to be part of the newly constituted Ancient and Most Secret Order of Formerly Closeted Lesbians Showing Off How Great Their Lives Are Now That They’re Out, Damn Them.
That would’ve been one hell of an acronym if that was a real organization.
“I’ve got nothing to say to Claire,” I said, with more heat to my voice than I’d intended.
It wasn’t fair. I tried to be nice to Claire. I tried to be polite. I tried to pretend that night never happened and she treated me like shit. I figured after five years the least she could do was get over that night and treat me like a human being too.
Then again if I wasn’t over that night after five years it seemed a little ridiculous to ask the same of her.
“Seems awfully harsh,” Samantha said. “Particularly after what happened with you two that night at the beach.”
I felt my blood run cold even as it started pumping with a vengeance. I felt short of breath. I felt like I was going to faint as I turned to stare at this girl in disbelief. This girl who wasn’t smiling now. She was just looking at me with a slow and calculating stare as she took another sip of her beer.
