Epilogue
ELIZABETH
Isigh as I watch Brandon and Tatum, the latest couple in our friends circle, curled up together on the leather chair in Java the Hutt, laughing and flirting as they scroll through the comments on Tate’s latest BookTok post.
“Look at them. So happy. So in love,” Samantha says as she comes up beside me, slurping on her large coffee.
“Must be nice,” I say with longing.
“What are we talking about?” Charlotte maneuvers out from under Chris’s arm to set her chai tea down on the coffee table.
“Hold that thought. I just got off shift,” Avery chimes in, hurrying toward the couch, blonde curls bouncing as she sinks down beside Damon, her Java apron balled in her fist.
She steals a tiny kiss from him before turning back to me. “You were saying?”
“Just how cute Brandon and Tatum are.”
And how completely and irrevocably jealous I am of all my friends.
“They’re probably the cutest thing I’ve ever seen,” Brynn confirms, earning her a scoff from Jace who’s holding her firmly in his lap.
“Cuter than us?” he asks in mock offense.
Brynn pats his chest with a manicured hand. “Course not, babe,” she says, then offers him the sweetest of kisses before turning back to us with a smirk and a roll of her eyes.
I sigh, resting my chin on my hand, my gaze scanning over them. “I’m now officially the only one of us without a boyfriend.”
Samantha grunts. “I may be joining you before too long.”
I glance over at her, my gaze softening at the distress in hers. “Is James still being distant?”
“I don’t even know what to think anymore. Maybe this is just what it’s like after you’ve been dating for more than two years.” She shrugs, and I feel a stab of sympathy.
God, I hope not.
“I’m sure things will get better soon,” Avery says, and the girls all agree with her, offering varying forms of reassurance while I sink deeper into my latte foam, pretending I’m not the only single one left in our formerly girl-powered group.
Where did I go wrong? Why does it feel like I’m always the last one standing?
Obviously, I’ve been looking at all the wrong guys.
Maybe I should have gone out with Steve from microbio, the guy who leaves little smiley faces in my lab notebook.
Or maybe I should have said yes to that app date with Seth, the guy with all the gray tabby pictures and the obsession with K-dramas. Maybe—
A tiny bell tings above the Java’s entrance, snapping me back to the present and drawing my eye. I blink at the figure standing just inside the café’s entrance, sure I must be imagining things. Certain this is some kind of daydream or nightmare I might wake from.
I rub my eyes but the vision remains. The air turns to ice in my lungs. My skin crawls. Everything inside of me screams to up and run because I know that girl—the one enshrined by the cascade of sunlight shining through the glass door like a spotlight.
Hope Adams.
Here.
In my campus coffee shop.
Merely feet away.
She’s taller than I remember, but that’s the only thing about her that’s changed.
Same shiny gold lioness hair, meticulously blown out.
Same mean-girl perfect body and confidence so thick it radiates off her in toxic, invisible plumes.
Same predatory eyes, scanning the café until they land, with unmistakable and terrifying precision, on me.
“Shit,” I hiss, ducking behind Samantha, like she’ll shield me from Hope’s line of sight.
Charlotte notices, eyes narrowing in the direction of the entrance. “Who is that?"
“Trust me. You don’t wanna know,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper.
If Hell has a high school, Hope is its homecoming queen.
I keep ducked down, croissant flakes snowing onto my leggings as I place my breakfast on the coffee table and pray she hasn’t seen me.
Or if she has, maybe she hasn’t recognized me.
After all, it’s been more than two years since I last saw her.
I’ve changed since then. Gained back the confidence she stole, had a serious glow-up, and reinvented myself.
“Um. Why are we hiding?” Samantha asks, sounding concerned.
With a groan I peek back toward the front of the café, relieved to see she’s at the counter, ordering. Maybe she’ll get her coffee and go.
“That’s Hope Adams,” I whisper. “She made my life hell in high school. Then senior year, she pretended to be my friend only to steal my boyfriend and prom date.”
Avery gasps. “For real?”
I nod, trying to make myself as small as possible lest she notices me before she leaves.
“Bitch,” Brynn says a little too loudly, shooting daggers in her direction.
“Don’t look!” I hiss, grabbing Brynn’s arm and tugging her forward.
“Lizzie?” The voice floats, impossibly familiar, from over my shoulder. I freeze. Even buried in the cozy buzz of Java and five hundred miles removed from my high school, I’d know that voice in my sleep.
I straighten, bracing for impact, because she’s right next to me.
She smiles, her teeth white and gleaming behind raspberry lip gloss.
Her perfume—something expensively floral—floods the table, drowning the scent of espresso.
She’s in a cream cashmere wrap dress, gold jewelry light-catching and subtle, and hair like a sheet of sun.
I feel myself shrink, fifteen again—the exact age when Hope started making my life miserable—and inferior in every way.
“Oh my god, I thought that was you!” She swats a hand at me. “Lizzie St. James, honestly, I could spot you anywhere.” She laughs, then does a double take at my friends. “Wow, you have, like, a whole girl gang now. Love this for you, babe.”
Charlotte arches a brow and mouths, Babe?, while Samantha gives her a look so flat Hope bounces right by it, undaunted.
I push my shoulders back, trying to muster my adult voice as I clear my throat and say, “Hope. Hi. Wow. It’s been so long. What are you doing in Ann Arbor?”
“I know, right?” She lifts her oat milk latte in salute, gold rings glittering. “I go to AAU now! Transferred this semester. Can you believe it? I mean, Michigan sucks, but at least the guys here are hot.”
Her catlike eyes rake across the room, landing on each one of the guys, then the girls, before returning to me with a practiced smile as she motions between us, “So, who’s who here? Aren’t you going to introduce me?”
“Um . . .” I hesitate. Introducing Hope to my friends is the equivalent of inviting a soul-sucking vampire into your home—dangerous and stupid in about a thousand ways. In the silence, I can feel Little Liz emerging again, small and inferior, and easily intimidated.
“We’re friends,” Charlotte says, her tone flat.
“Best friends,” Brynn adds, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Lovely.” Hope beams. “And are these all your boyfriends or are we still playing the field?” Her gaze slides to me, then flickers to Samantha beside me, who doesn’t bother hiding her disgust.
I try to laugh, because Hope is every bit as abrasive as I remember, and my friends are getting a full show, but it catches in the back of my throat like a dry pill because I can’t believe this is happening to me again.
I can’t believe she’s back, at the same school, at the same coffee shop, and in my presence.
“They’re, uh, my friends’ boyfriends. We’re all just hanging out.
We do that a lot,” I say, stumbling over my words. “Hang out, I mean.”
I want to close my eyes and berate myself for giving Hope the exact version of myself she expects; the insecure and bumbling one she knows so well.
Hope breaks out into a delighted cackle. “Damn, Lizzie, moving up in the world! I mean, no offense, but it’s honestly impressive. You used to be such a nerd and hated sports, but now you’re surrounded by jocks and in a whole quarterback harem.”
Avery snorts, unable to help herself as Damon squeezes her knee in solidarity while the other boys discuss plans for the weekend, blissfully oblivious to the wolf in sheep’s clothing in front of me.
“What about you? Are you here with someone?” Brynn asks, the edge in her voice sharp.
“Not yet.” Hope’s eyes glitter. “But this might be my lucky day because I’m utterly obsessed with the idea of being a WAG.” She leans in closer to me, voice dropping to a gossipy hush. “In truth, that’s why I picked AAU. I heard the team’s, like, obscenely hot this year.”
I blink. “A WAG?
Avery grunts before turning her attention to me. “It stands for Wives and Girlfriends. It’s a term used for women dating or married to high profile, professional athletes, particularly in the NFL.”
Hope points. “See! She knows,” she says in approval.
My stomach roils. Of course Hope Adams would want to snag a professional athlete.
I can practically see her now. Adorned in designer clothes and shoes, a rock the size of a golf ball on her finger, and hanging on the arm of an NFL star.
“What about Benny?” I ask, referring to our high school quarterback, the boy who won my heart in high school. The same one I dated for more than a year before she stole him right out from under my nose our senior year, leaving me dateless for prom and heartbroken.
“Benny Black?” Hope waves me off with a little scoff like she has no idea why I’d bring him up. “No one’s mentioned him in ages. He wasn’t going anywhere. Played second string for Pitt.” She scrunches her nose like she smells something bad. “Haven’t talked to him in more than two years.”
So she broke up with him shortly after the start of freshman year, likely because his superstar status on the field in high school didn’t translate to college. Brilliant.
“But lucky for me, I now have a friend with connections,” she says with a wink.
Like a moron, I point to my chest, like, Me? I’m completely shocked she considers us anything more than enemies after the shit she put me through in high school.
“Yes, you, silly.” She nudges my arm playfully like we’re long-lost friends. “I’m expecting an introduction now that I know who your friends are.”
“To who?” I choke out.