Chapter Forty-Three
The gym was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with people I hadn’t seen in years.
Every few seconds someone called my name, waved, pointed me toward another memory wall display.
The old basketball banners still hung from the rafters, faded now, and somebody had strung twinkle lights around the edges of the room in an attempt to make Woodland High look charming instead of desperately underfunded.
The smell was exactly the same as it had been when I graduated: floor wax, teenage sweat, and stale popcorn from the concession stand.
Lindsey was still talking animatedly to my husband. I only got snippets of it as I flicked my eyes across every face in the room, searching for his. “…Academic decathlon…full scholarship…student of the year…”
Every accomplishment I’d ever earned had been pinned to a wall somewhere behind them in glossy photographs. I hated it. Not because I wasn’t proud of those things, but because every award seemed to leave out the parts of me that had actually mattered.
Nobody put photographs of our sins on memory walls. Nobody framed the mistakes. Nobody made collages of the people we’d hurt. So I’d escaped under the excuse of needing more punch.
I was reaching for a plastic cup when I heard footsteps approaching.
“Lola.” I closed my eyes briefly.
Wyatt. Of course.
He looked older in the way good men often did.
Softer around the edges. His dark hair was flecked with gray at the temples now, and there were tired lines around his eyes that hadn’t existed when we were teenagers.
He carried himself less like an apology now, though. Straight-backed, and broad-shouldered.
“Wyatt.” I said politely, my gaze flickering to his wife who was still rambling endlessly. Lindsey would go on forever if you let her.
“Can we talk?” he asked
My stomach tightened. I looked away, focusing on the row of cups stacked beside the punch bowl. “I told you at the wedding I didn’t want to talk about it.”
His expression pinched like he’d expected that answer. “I know.”
I picked up a cup. Filled it. Set it back down untouched.
“I meant what I said then,” I said firmly.
Wyatt rubbed the back of his neck. For a second he looked oddly like the eighteen-year-old version of himself. The boy who used to sit beside me in marine biology and pretend he wasn’t paying attention to every conversation happening around him.
“I just want to say I’m sorry.” That finally made me look at him.
The words landed so unexpectedly I almost laughed. “For what?”
His jaw shifted. “I was such an ass back then.”
A humorless smile tugged at my mouth. “Back then?” I asked.
“Generally,” he corrected. I snorted despite myself. Wyatt smiled faintly. Then the smile disappeared. “Back then, specifically.”
The gym seemed louder suddenly. People laughing, and the thump of music radiating in my stiff shoulders. I folded my arms over my chest.
“You had good reason. You were just being a good friend to him.”
Wyatt immediately shook his head. “No. No, I wasn’t.”
I looked away again. Toward my husband. Toward Lindsey. Toward anything else.
He sighed. “Lola.”
I hated the gentleness in his voice.
He kept talking, “I knew how he felt about you. The guy was obsessed. You know he dug through the trash to get the wrapper to one of those cough drops you were always eating once?”
My pulse stumbled, and my thumb brushed over my right ring finger instinctively. I stared at the floating fruit slices in the punch bowl. For a moment I considered plunging my head into it, just to drown out the sound of his confession.
Wyatt continued quietly. “And if I’d known…” His eyes flickered toward my husband, briefly. “If I’d known he meant that much to you too…”
“Wyatt.” I cut him off immediately. My voice came out harder than I’d intended. A warning, a plea, a command, anything that would get him to stop talking.
He nodded, accepting the boundary. At least partially. But there was something heavier in his face now. “And as for—”
“Don’t.” My throat tightened. I could feel that awful pressure behind my eyes. “Please. I don’t want to talk about Morgan.”
“Felix,” Wyatt said softly. When my brows pinched he added, “He goes by Felix now. Not Morgan.”
It took a moment for the words to register. He stared at me as if he were waiting on me to give him some speech on how God didn’t make mistakes. But I wouldn’t.
“Okay,” I said slowly, “Well, I don’t want to talk about Felix either.”
Wyatt’s shoulders sagged. For a moment neither of us spoke, then he said quietly, “It wasn’t your fault.”
The gym seemed to disappear for a second, like I was moving in and out of reality. I stared at him, unable to get a full breath in my lungs.
Wyatt held my gaze as he said, “We all knew what was happening.” His voice became almost unbearably gentle. “August included.”
I looked down. My hands were shaking.
“It was easier to blame you,” he whispered, the words carving out a part of my chest I hadn’t dared to think of in years.
Somewhere deep down I’d always known that. Knew it wasn’t my fault. Knew it wasn’t the real reason everything between August and I ended. Knew that it was easier for him to hate me for it, than to accept that we could’ve been happy together.
Wyatt swallowed. “And I’m sorry I took part in it.”
I couldn’t trust my own features enough to look at him.
The years between then and now suddenly felt paper-thin. As though all it would take was one careless movement and I’d fall straight through them. Hadn’t I been doing just that for years, anyway?
“I carry that around every day, Lola.”
My eyes burned. I nodded once, then again—trying desperately to make my body function normally. Trying to remain twenty-eight years old instead of eighteen.
“Thank you.” The words came out small.
He offered me a sad smile. After a moment he asked softly, “Have you two talked at all?”
I shook my head. “No. He never spoke to me after that day.”
I tried. For a long time, I tried. Notes in his locker turned into sitting in his driveway, turned into hours spent crying alone in my room at the Hayward’s house.
The old man trying to convince me to just write it down.
That somehow putting it on paper would heal me from the greatest pain I’d ever felt. It hadn’t.
Wyatt nodded slowly as though he’d expected that answer too.
I hesitated, trying to sound casual, and failing spectacularly. “Do you guys still talk? I noticed he wasn’t at the wedding with the rest of the m—your friends.” The words felt embarrassing the second they left my mouth.
Wyatt’s expression changed instantly. “He wouldn’t come.”
I looked down. “Oh.”
“He knew you’d be there.”
I barked out a laugh. A genuinely ridiculous sound. “Wow.” My eyes stung as I laughed again. “Good to know he’s still mad at me, I guess.”
Wyatt immediately shook his head. “Not mad.”
Something in his voice made me look up. And that’s when I noticed he wasn’t looking at me anymore. His gaze had drifted somewhere farther down the refreshment table.
My stomach dropped. I turned, slowly.
At the opposite end of the table stood a tall man with blonde curls that glowed under the string lights like a halo. Green eyes fixed directly on mine.
The world seemed to slow around me. Not stopping, but stretching as if opening itself to this moment.
The gym dissolved into fragments—the glow of string lights reflected in polished floors, the scent of fruit punch and old varnish, the low murmur of classmates who had become strangers and strangers who had somehow become legends. Everything softened around the edges except him.
August Brooks.
Standing at the opposite end of the refreshment table. For ten years I’d imagined this moment. In grocery stores, and red lights. On my wedding day, and the first time I rocked my son to sleep.
Every Saturday morning as I folded laundry. Every time I sat in a church pew. Every school I drove past, and every time I heard music that sounded like sin.
I had imagined finding him old and bitter. I had imagined finding him happy. I had imagined him hating me. I had imagined him loving me still. But I had never imagined how ordinary it would feel to see him again. As if some buried piece of myself had simply wandered back home.
Color flooded his cheeks instantly, that coral a shade duller than it had been in my memories. The corner of his mouth twitched upward.
My heart stumbled, then sprinted. August started walking toward me, slowly. I stepped forward, neither of us rushed. There was no dramatic collision. No movie reunion. Just two people crossing a gym floor while a decade of regret sat between them like a funeral procession.
When he finally stopped in front of me, neither of us spoke.
I became aware of everything at once. The weight of my wedding ring. The ache in my chest. The pulse hammering in my throat. The tiny scar beneath his right eye I’d forgotten until that moment.
The way he still twisted rings when he was nervous.
God. He was still real. A long silence stretched between us before I laughed softly. The sound of glass trying not to crack.
“I’ve thought about this moment a thousand times,” I admitted. My voice felt strangely far away. “I kept wondering what I’d say to you. Now I’ve forgotten every line I’ve practiced.”
His smile widened slightly. “How about something honest?”
His voice had aged into something overused and the thought of anyone else hearing it sent a pang of jealousy through me.
I laughed again, this time it sounded dangerously close to relief. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
His shoulders lifted in a shrug. “It didn’t seem like I had any other choice.”
The answer made something hopeful unfurl inside me. A stupid, dangerous thing.
I bit back a smile before it could fully form. Then my gaze dropped to his hands, where a single thin silver band sat on his left ring finger, worn and smooth. My stomach tightened.
“You got married.”