“I’d really rather not right now,” Alyssa admitted.
Lynn cringed visibly, but then she seemed to pull herself back together. “I figured you’d be in town soon,” she said, as she followed Alyssa to the kitchen. “I was going to come by tomorrow to offer to help with anything you might need.”
“That’s sweet of you,” Alyssa said sincerely. Sure enough, as she opened the door of the fridge, there was a half-empty pitcher of peach-and-mint iced tea on one of the shelves. Her breath caught loudly.
“Have you seen them yet?” Lynn’s voice came from behind her, quiet and respectful.
Alyssa sighed. “No,” she said, retrieving the pitcher and closing the fridge’s door with perhaps too much vehemence. “I was supposed to go in earlier, but I missed my appointment.”
“I’m sure Mr. Shanks will understand,” Lynn said. “And he won’t mind if you go in tomorrow.”
Alyssa nodded absently. She couldn’t believe she had already skipped on her first responsibility in Pinebrook.
She poured two tall glasses of ice tea and brought them to the table.
More silence hung as they sat and sipped the cool beverage, but it wasn’t a heavy silence. It was the silence of two women who met as children and re-met as adults, and who took their time to study each other and find something familiar in each other’s faces.
Alyssa looked intently at her old friend. Lynn seemed the same, and yet she didn’t. She wore the same open, honest expression on her features, but there was also a hardness at the corners of her blue eyes that spoke of adulthood. Alyssa realized that she didn’t know this young woman sitting across from her in her parents’ kitchen. She really wished that she did.
“I’m sorry,” she heard herself say.
Lynn looked up in surprise. “For what?”
“For not calling you,” Alyssa said sincerely. She never allowed herself to think about any part of her past in Pinebrook, but now that she was being forced to, she realized that if she had one regret about the whole thing it was to have let her friendship with Lynn fade away. “For cutting all ties.”
“It’s all right,” Lynn said.
Alyssa stared at her. “Is it?”
“No,” Lynn admitted after a moment. “It’s not. It wasn’t. It really hurt, at first. But eventually I grew up and realized it wasn’t personal, it was just what you needed to do.”
Alyssa nodded. She had loved Lynn dearly, but her friend had never been this mature during the time that Alyssa was in Pinebrook. It was a pleasant surprise. “It really was,” she said. “I needed to put this town behind me, all of it.”
“I understand,” Lynn reassured her. “Really, I do.”
Alyssa gave her the first smile she was able to do—ever since getting the tragic news. “Thank you,” she said sincerely.
Lynn smiled back. She sobered quickly, however, and her face darkened. “He’s still here, you know.”
Alyssa’s stomach clenched as if on cue. She knew exactly who “he” was. “I figured as much.”
“Do you…uh…do you plan on seeing him?”
“Hell, no.” Never. She would do all she could to avoid ever seeing him again.
Lynn hesitated. “He might come to the funeral. I don’t mean to stir up bad memories,” she said quickly when Alyssa opened her mouth to protest. “I just want you to be prepared. He might show up.”
Alyssa exhaled sharply, but then she nodded. She figured Lynn may have a point. After all, this was a small town.
“Maybe I’ll hire a bouncer to keep unwanted guests out of the service,” she grumbled.
Lynn stared at her, uncertain.
Alyssa rolled her eyes. “I’m kidding,” she clarified. “If only I could do that.”
“Oh.” Lynn chuckled weakly. She finished off her ice tea and stood. “Well, I’d better go now.”
Alyssa hesitated. “Do you have plans for the night?”
“Not really, no. I just figured you may want some time alone.”
“I don’t,” Alyssa said. “Why don’t you stay? We can order pizza and catch up.” Lynn’s uncertainty made Alyssa want to kick herself. Was she really thinking they could retrieve their friendship, just like that? “Sorry,” she said. “It’s probably too soon, isn’t it?”
“No,” Lynn said after a moment. “I’d actually really like that.”
“Really?”
Lynn smiled. “Really.”
“Still favoring pepperoni pizza?”
“See? You still know me so well.”
It was a small kindness, but it meant the world to Alyssa. Maybe, just maybe, Pinebrook didn’t have to be all bad after all.
CHAPTER THREE
Alyssa never knew what to expect from her first night back in Pinebrook. She had known she wouldn’t get away with a quiet evening of takeout food—provided that she could stomach anything—and bad TV that she wouldn’t be watching as she sat in the living room of her parents’ house. She had known something would happen, because something always happened to her in Pinebrook, and it was usually nothing good.
But she had not been expecting to actually have a good time—or as good a time as she could have given the circumstances.
Being comfortable around Lynn came easy, and it seemed to go both ways. Alyssa’s favorite part about it was that neither of them was trying to recreate the friendship they once had; they both knew that ship had long sailed. So, they tried to get to know each other again and attempted to rediscover each other, and it was going wonderfully.
Now that they had retired, Lynn had inherited her parents’ diner, which remained one of the town’s landmarks. She had reinvented it, adding a variety of dishes to the menu and modern services such as free Wi-Fi, and business was flourishing.
“It’s hard work,” she was saying, as she dug into a slice of pepperoni pizza. “But it’s really paying off.”
“I’m so glad,” Alyssa said sincerely. “You seem happy.”
“You know what?” Lynn said after a moment’s consideration. “I think I really am.”
“Could that rock on your finger also have something to do with it?”
Alyssa had waited the proper amount of time to ask, not wanting to intrude in the woman’s personal life when they had just said hello again after eight years of silence, but now she just had to address the matter. The ring was a modest one, a platinum band with a small diamond, but it was clearly more than an ornament.
Lynn blushed. She looked down at the ring with a fond expression on her face and then back up at Alyssa. “It might,” she admitted with a grin.
Alyssa beamed. Amongst the darkness of the past two days, it felt refreshing to get good news and witness someone’s happiness firsthand. “Who’s the lucky guy?”
“You remember Trevor Guillory?”
Alyssa’s eyes widened. “Your high school boyfriend? Are you serious?”
Lynn shrugged. “We got back in touch after he returned from college. We hit it off in a completely different way, and before we knew it, we were in love again. This time like adults.”
“And he popped the question?”
“Two months ago. We haven’t even picked a date yet.”
Alyssa stared. It was too surreal to believe, but she was thrilled that it was happening to her friend. “I’m really happy for you. What does Trevor do now?”
“He’s a project manager. He worked for the bank, but now he’s going in with me on the diner. We’d like to expand, make a restaurant out of it.”
“Wow. Big plans.”
“They are,” Lynn admitted. “But I think it’s doable.”
“I think so, too,” Alyssa hurried to reassure.
“What about you?” Lynn asked after a moment of silence.
“What do you mean?”
Lynn grinned. “Any special guy in your life?”
“What?” Alyssa laughed at the absurdity of the thought. “God, no.”
Lynn looked at her in disbelief. “Seriously? You’re hot; y
ou have a career; and you’re telling me you’re still single?”
Alyssa shrugged. “What can I say? Special guys are hard to come by.”
Lynn stared at her. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t really have to; Alyssa knew exactly what she was thinking. At the very least, she could guess the subject of her thoughts.
“Aw, shit,” she muttered. “You’re going to ask me about him, aren’t you?”
Lynn cringed. “Can you blame me?”
Alyssa sighed heavily. “I guess not.” She took a gulp of her ice-cold beer, seeking the liquid courage of alcohol. “All right,” she said. “Shoot.”
“Have you been with anyone after…?” Lynn let the question hang in the air, and Alyssa heard it loud and clear.
Have you been with anyone after Prince?
Despite asking about him, Lynn didn’t dare to say his name, and Alyssa had not dared to even say that name in her thoughts for years. Now, as she did so, it felt familiar and out of place at the same time. He had no business being in her head anymore.
“No,” Alyssa said. “Not like I was with him.”
Lynn’s blue eyes widened. “You mean to tell me you haven’t had sex in eight years?”
“What are you talking about? Of course I’ve had sex!”
“But you just said—”
“Prince and I never went all the way.” Even saying his name out loud after almost a decade felt wrong. His name no longer belonged in her mouth.
If Lynn’s eyes had gone wide before, now they threatened to pop out of her head.
“Are you shitting me?” she said, matter-of-factly.
Alyssa had to laugh at her friend’s shock. “Nope. We never had sex.”
“Why the hell not?”
Alyssa shrugged. “It just never felt right. We wanted to wait.”
“For what?” Lynn asked in disbelief.
Alyssa opened her mouth, and then she closed it again. For what? What had they been waiting for? The perfect time? The perfect place? They should have known better. Timing had never been on their side. Eventually, they had waited so long that their chance had passed them by—or rather, he had let it pass them by.
Alyssa’s jaw clenched, as anger she had kept buried for years suddenly and unexpectedly began to bubble to the surface.
“I’m sorry,” Lynn said. “I shouldn’t have brought him up.”
“No, it’s okay,” Alyssa said. And really, it was. She knew it was inevitable for Prince to come up once she was in Pinebrook, one way or the other. She would much rather he came up with Lynn than with anyone else. “It’s just…I don’t know what we were waiting for, you know? It seemed so important at the time, to wait. It made sense. In retrospect, it was stupid.”
“It wasn’t stupid,” Lynn argued gently. “If that’s how you felt at the time, you made the right choice.”
And look where that got me. Alyssa didn’t voice her bitter thoughts. Instead, she said, “I suppose. Is he…”—she stopped briefly, but then she went on—“…is he all right?”
“As far as I can tell,” Lynn said. “He seems fine. He’s alive, at least. That’s something.”
She gave her a weak smile that Alyssa returned half-heartedly.
She hated herself for asking about him, but she just couldn’t help it. She wasn’t sure whether she had asked out of courtesy, curiosity, or if she actually cared. She really hoped the latter wasn’t the case, because she had spent the last eight years learning not to care about Prince Wheeler.
“So what you meant is you haven’t been in a serious relationship in eight years,” Lynn said after a few moments of silence went by.
Alyssa nodded. “Yes, that’s what I meant.”
Lynn watched her carefully. “Maybe it’s time to let go, Alyssa.”
Maybe it was. A couple of hours later, Lynn said goodnight and left Alyssa to her thoughts.
The house was ominously silent, allowing Alyssa to hear the screaming of her own guilt. Because no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t help but think about Prince. Even taking a shower didn’t help to wash away thoughts of him.
Alyssa had not allowed herself to focus on the memory of him for so long and so absolutely in years. Now, it was as if she couldn’t do anything but think of him, and it angered and shamed her. He shouldn’t be on her mind right now. Right now, her thoughts should be all for her parents. What kind of daughter was she, thinking about some guy rather than her parents not even forty hours after she had gotten news of their deaths?
But that was exactly it; Prince had never been just “some guy.” Prince had once been her everything, and part of Alyssa suspected that he always would be, in some way. She hated that. The more she thought about it as the warm spray of the shower hit her back, the more she realized that for the past eight years she had done nothing but try to fool herself.
She couldn’t forget about Prince. She could cut him out of her life and try and build herself a new existence devoid of him, but he would always be there in some way. She would never be completely free of the ghost that was Prince Wheeler.
She wondered about what Lynn had said. Maybe it was time to let go. Maybe it was time to let another man enter her life other than just her bed. But would that help? Could that really be all that she needed in order to learn to love someone again? Could a real, committed relationship be the answer to all of her questions? Could she have a shot at love after all?
Alyssa snorted almost as soon as the thought entered her mind. Love. She may have deluded herself when it came to pushing Prince out of her heart and mind, but she wasn’t so naïve as to really think that she would ever believe in love again.
Love didn’t exist. It was flaky, temporary. It was something men and women filled their heads with until something better came along. Something more important. Something else they could obsess over.
Perhaps she could find it within herself to make an attempt at a relationship with someone else, but what was the point, really? It would only be temporary. And was it really worth it? Could she really spare the energy to go through all that trouble and hassle again?
By the time she stepped out of the shower, Alyssa had decided that no, it was not worth it. The only two people who were ever worthy of love were gone from her life now. Their absence tore at every single fiber of her being. It was an all-consuming pain, a gut-wrenching agony that paled in comparison with what she had felt years ago when she had lost the one she had thought would be the love of her life.
She didn’t have time for love, she decided, or lack thereof. She didn’t have time for nameless strangers who may or may not come to sweep her off her feet. She didn’t have time for diamond rings and shared dreams and projects. She didn’t have time for what if’s and second chances.
Alyssa had come back to Pinebrook for a reason. She would say goodbye to her parents, and she would take care of their business. She would put the house up for sale. And then she would return back up North as fast as modern transportation would allow, and she would never, ever return to Pinebrook, Louisiana, ever again.
Alyssa decided that she would forget all about Prince Wheeler once and for all. And maybe he would always be there in a corner of her mind and heart, but she would be smart enough to never acknowledge his presence again; she simply couldn’t allow him to dictate the way she lived her life.
Try as she might, every time she met a man Alyssa ended up comparing him to Prince. It infuriated her. What did he have that was so special anyway? He might have been her perfect companion once, but he had long since proven himself to be unworthy of her tears. Prince had long since proven that he didn’t care about Alyssa, so why should Alyssa care about him? Why should she still give him any consideration at all?
Never again, she decided. She would get him out of her head once and for all, one way or another. Sooner or later.
CHAPTER FOUR
If she thought thinking about her parents’ death was painful, seeing them with her own eyes was inescapably, in
describably worse. Irrationally, Alyssa had been expecting to be faced with horribly disfigured bodies from the horrific car accident that had taken her parents’ lives. Instead, the reconstruction work had been flawless and her parents looked almost peaceful.
“They look like they’re sleeping,” she said, unable to tear her gaze away from a sight she had thought she wouldn’t have to see for many years yet.
Mr. Shank, a middle-aged, African-American man whose bulky frame was at odds with the near-supernatural dexterity of his hands, gave her a proud smile. He took her words as a compliment, but Alyssa had mot meant it as such. It seemed grotesque to her that her parents would look so at peace when she knew their deaths had been so premature. It seemed strange to her that the resting expression on their faces would be so at odds with the tumult in her heart.
They looked peaceful, but it felt to Alyssa like her own peace was lost forever.
From then on, it was all downhill—or as downhill as it could be given the circumstances. She lost track of time, as she figured out all the details of the funeral with Mr. Shank and his associates. After all, she figured, it was impossible to even begin to comprehend mundane concepts such as time when planning your parents’ burial ceremony. Picking out the caskets was the hardest part, but it still wasn’t nearly as hard as actually seeing her parents’ bodies. As peaceful as they had appeared, that was still the worst, and Alyssa figured if she could survive that without having a nervous breakdown in front of near-strangers, she could survive anything.
And she really did. She didn’t know how she did it, but the day went by and at the end of it she was still standing. The funeral would be the next day in the early afternoon, and Alyssa felt anything but ready—personally and spiritually. She had taken care of all concrete details, but she had no clue where to begin to prepare herself.
She had politely declined Lynn’s offer to come stay with her for the evening. She may not know much about preparation for the funeral of one’s own parents, but she knew she had to do it alone.
Presently, she sat at the kitchen’s table eating cheerios out of the most anonymous bowl she could find in the cabinets; she didn’t want any more reminders of what life in the house had been before…well, before.
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