ONE SHEP
ONE
SHEP
“Who the fuck plans a twelve-year reunion?” I growl in the empty garage.
My voice echoes slightly in the big room and drowns out the country song on the radio. Rolling my eyes, I spy the culprit at the bottom of the over-the-top invitation that showed up in my mail this morning.
Danielle Owens-Hart.
Of course. I should have known. I’d been gone for eleven years, but in the last year I had been back it was easy to figure out some things didn’t change.
Including Danielle Owens. Owens-Hart now.
She had married the captain of our wrestling team, Josh Hart, and is the same small-town busybody she was when I left.
Only now she doesn’t have the boundaries that applied to teenagers.
How the fuck she managed to marry a nice guy like Josh is a mystery of the universe.
My phone pings with a text.
Jagger
Did you get your invitation?
Yeah.
You gonna go?
The “No” in my response bar sits there mocking me until I delete it.
Maybe.
Come by after you close up. I’ll buy you a beer.
Jagger owns the local bar, although with all the changes in our small town of Aspen Falls, Colorado, it is called a microbrewery now.
The few things that haven’t changed?
The way Uncle Joe’s radio only gets reception to one station—the same country station I’ve been listening to since I was a kid.
The smells of oil and tires that filter through the room.
The way I still imagine Uncle Joe bent over a car in one of the two bays, muttering to himself about newfangled cars with their computers.
Why do cars need a mother anyway?
“A motherboard,” I say out loud.
But there’s no one there to hear me. Uncle Joe’s been gone for more than a year. His garage is now mine.
Fuel Good Repairs.
It was hard to get used to. The pace of this town was difficult to get back into.
I’d lived in Denver for so long, I’d gotten used to the choices for everything.
I’d gotten used to not running into people I knew every time I went out.
To not seeing the woman I broke up with over ten years ago frequenting the same places I did.
Twelve.
The invitation clutched in my grip is quick to remind me. I’d broken up with Jade Parker the last night of summer break after graduation. And I could still clearly remember the confusion that colored her beautiful bright-green eyes. The question I couldn’t answer.
Why?
If I’d told her, she’d have found a reason to stay. I didn’t want to hold her back. I wanted her to have experiences outside of a high school boyfriend who wasn’t going anywhere fast.
Instead, my silence meant she left for college the next day. Soon enough, I’d left town too. Now we are both back—her as the English teacher at the high school and me here in the garage. And it is like I am living the lyrics to Sam Hunt’s “Break Up in a Small Town.”
She is everywhere. At the grocery store, at Jagger’s place, at the stoplight next to me.
It doesn’t matter. She is everywhere. Tempting me to talk to her.
To apologize for breaking up with her when the plan had been for us to stay together.
To lean down and sample those pretty pink lips to see if they still taste like strawberry-flavored Lip Smacker.
No doubt she will be at the reunion.
Maybe now is my chance.
My maybe is changing to a yes faster than I can second-guess it.
The nerves don’t hit my stomach until I hit send on my reply to the reunion email address.
“Too late now,” I mutter as I flip off the lights to the garage.
I am going to that reunion. I am going to talk to Jade.
Even if it kills me.
“Fuck, I need a beer.”
Fortunately, it’s closing time, and I have a bar stool with my name on it at Jagger’s.
It’s like those reruns of Cheers that Mom and Uncle Joe used to watch.
Everyone knows my name. And while most of the locals know my reputation, there are plenty of tourists who don’t mind hooking up with a local for a weekend fling.
The parking lot is practically empty when I pull in fifteen minutes later—not surprising given it’s a weekday night at the end of summer.
The summer tourist activities are shutting down, and the ski resort hasn’t opened yet.
But I’m not here looking for someone to share the night with.
I’m here to have a beer and see if I made the right choice by agreeing to go to a reunion I would otherwise skip.
“I figured I’d see you sooner or later,” Jagger says by way of greeting when I walk through the door.
I grunt and grab the stool designated as mine from my first day in the bar.
My best friend finishes filling the pint glass and slides it perfectly in front of me.
“What if I didn’t want this?” I ask before lifting the glass to my lips for a long pull.
Jagger lifts an eyebrow in response.
“Since when do you not want a free beer?”
“I’ll pay for it,” I grumble.
He waves away my response.
“Nah, your money’s no good here.”
“How do you expect to keep this place open if you never charge me for drinks?”
“I’m not worried about it.”
It’s his standard answer, and he never elaborates.
“Are you some secret billionaire and I just don’t know?” I ask.
A corner of his lips lifts in a smirk.
“You’ll never…”
He stops mid-sentence and his attention shifts to the door. Craning my neck, I nearly choke on my beer. It’s not that I didn’t expect to see Jade—I’m always partially prepared to see her—but not looking the way she does tonight.
Her light brown hair is loose and brushes along the tops of bare, sun-kissed shoulders.
Has she been spending some time by Misty Lake?
As teenagers, we’d spent as much free time as we could there during the summers.
And that time had always turned her skin the same shade it is now, but set against the ivory color of the dress she’s wearing? She glows.
Jagger whistles under his breath and I shoot him a glare.
He lifts his hands and retreats a step with his eyebrows raised.
Like a magnet, my attention is drawn back to her. To the way the pastel floral-print dress hugs her curves in a way that I want to. My dick twitches in my jeans, and the urge to stand up, to move closer to her, is so strong that the muscles in my legs tighten to do just that.
Until a man’s arm appears and rests against her lower back followed by the rest of him. Sandy-blond hair that’s styled to perfection. Dress slacks and a button-down that look freshly ironed. I glance down at my own jeans that have several grease stains and my black T-shirt.
Who the fuck is he and why is Jade here with him?
“Who’s that?” I hiss.
“Brian Jessup. He’s the math teacher at the high school,” Jagger replies quietly.
Another teacher. He’s perfect for her. They look like they belong together. So why do the two of them together make me want to punch something?
“Hey, Jade. Two?” Jagger asks.
“Yeah.”
I try to ignore the dropkick into memory lane her voice sends me to.
The different ways I’d heard it through the years.
The laughter of friendship, the shyness of first love, and the way her voice broke over my name when we took that next step.
Then that final day when her voice had been colored with confusion and hurt.
All of that from one little word.
I am in trouble.
“How about that second booth over there?”
How can Jagger just pretend like everything is normal?
It is, dummy. You’re the only one freaking out.
Jagger hadn’t dated Jade in high school. Jagger had been here when she got back from college and started teaching at the high school—and no, it wasn’t stalking to ask my mom about her when I moved back. It isn’t weird for any of them.
Just for me.
And I need to get over myself.
We are both living in Aspen Falls now. This town is big enough for the both of us, right? Then why am I back to second-guessing my decision to attend the reunion?