Chapter 5
Jimmy
Weights clash as Dom drops them to the floor.
He wipes the sweat from his head and takes a sip of water as he walks forward, making room for me to do my rep.
“Izzy’s going to make me go too,” he says, referring to his girlfriend and the ten-year reunion.
“I just don’t see the point,” I grunt, lifting the dumbbell. “We already know what everyone’s been up to. We scroll past it every day.”
“I said the same thing. She insists it will be so fun.”
I laugh. “Becca said that too.”
“Guess we’re going to have to suck it up and go have fun.” He makes quotations with his fingers.
“Well, maybe they’ll have fun. I’ll be waiting to head home.”
I drop the weights and grab my towel as we head to the locker room to clean up.
I’ve known Dom since high school, but we reconnected a few years ago when we ran into each other here. I didn’t stay in close contact with anyone after graduation, even the ones I expected to.
Once Becca and I got serious, everything else just fell off the priority list. I had plans, she had even more, and she is a champion at keeping things in order and goal-focused.
I’ve never met anyone who I knew would accomplish something they planned more than her.
If she wanted it to happen, it would happen.
The downfall to us becoming so immediately goal-oriented was that it wasn’t long before my only points of contact were her, my brother, and work staff or clients. I didn’t even realize how far I had fallen off the grid until I reconnected with Dom.
“So would it make you want to go more or less if you know who is going to be there?” he asks. I stop and look at him.
“You know who?”
He laughs. “Yeah. You know who I’m talking about. That one you used to never shut up about.”
Autumn.
I roll my eyes and open my locker. “Neither. She’s been gone forever. Why would she come back for that?”
“Aha, so you do know who.” He jokes. “Well, that is kind of how reunions work, people often travel back for them, but I heard she’s not coming back just for that.”
I shut the locker door and turn to face him.
“She’s moving back?”
“That’s what I heard. You know Izzy is always in everyone’s business.”
“When?”
He shrugs and laughs again. “I don’t know that much, but it sounded like soon. She heard Kory say she’s moving back in with her mom.”
I’m sure that wasn’t hard for Izzy to find out. Autumn’s mom is probably so excited that she’s been telling anyone that will listen.
She was devastated when she left. I visited her a few times in the first two years she was gone, but eventually that all stopped, like the friendship.
“I knew that would change your mind.” He jokes again. At least I hope he’s joking.
“It didn’t change my mind. I’m just surprised. I didn’t think she would ever come back.”
Dom shrugs again, and we move on to the showers.
While the water runs down my face, my mind joins the race. I still wonder what happened to us—me and Autumn. We knew each other basically our entire childhood. Then nothing.
Until the summer after my eighth-grade year, we lived three houses apart.
I remember begging my parents not to switch my schools when we moved.
It was just a city over, but they needed me to ride the bus, so I’d have to switch.
I was so upset. I just wanted to go to high school with my friends.
With Autumn. When she convinced her parents to help get me to and from school every day, mine finally agreed to let me stay.
If she’s actually coming back, I wonder if she’ll want to see me. I didn’t understand why she left like that and why she kept it a secret, at least from me. I still don’t. I thought I was her best friend. She was mine.
I was sad for a while, and then mad because once she was gone, she didn’t even talk to me anymore. Eventually, the feelings faded, and although I’d still love to know why, it’s been so long, it probably doesn’t even really matter anymore.
When we were kids, we’d spend entire summers running between our houses.
When we were around eleven or twelve, our parents finally trusted us to venture off a bit and ride our bikes to the park.
We were only supposed to go to that park, but we’d go a block further to this open field of tall grass with a little creek that ran through.
Once you were in that grass, no one could see you.
I laugh thinking about how cool we thought we were, sneaking over there when our parents thought we were somewhere else.
We would sit there by that little stream of water, and talk, and drink sweet tea, adrenaline high like we were really up to no good.
Yet the worst thing that ever happened there was our first kiss.
A quick peck that happened once. We both laughed, then just pretended like it didn’t happen.
But we loved that little secret spot of ours and even promised not to ever bring another friend there.
The more I think about it, I’m really grateful to have had a childhood with a constant person like that. Once the teen years came, we were still inseparable, but it became more complicated.
Everyone assumed we were dating. All the time. ‘Are you sure?’ they’d ask, no matter how many times we said we weren’t. I remember the first girlfriend I had was just to get people to leave me and Autumn alone. It ended like a month later when I realized that I didn’t even really like her.
But actual dating did get hard with her as a best friend. And the same for her because of me. The older we got, the less our significant others liked the idea of an opposite sex best friend. But having grown up together, neither of us was willing to leave the other behind.
I also remember the summer after I graduated, after her junior year, her parents separated.
She took it really hard, and that was the first time our parents ever let her stay the night.
She stayed with us for like a week. Despite what was going on in her life, we had so much fun while she was there.
She blended right into my family with ease. Everyone always loved her.
Shortly after that happened with her parents, my dad died.
No one saw it coming, and as soon as I called her, she came right back over and stayed for days again, maybe another week, I don’t remember.
I don’t know what we would’ve done without each other that summer.
Each time she went back home to her mom, the house felt so empty.
The same emptiness I felt ten years ago when she left and seemingly never looked back.