Chapter One #2
Becca shoves the card into the envelope and looks up at me. “Why not? Look, you were hot three years ago, but you’re smoking now, and you’ve moved on, at least in ways that are visible, and—” She waves the envelope in my face. “This is at the winery we have always wanted to visit upstate!”
“Becca, no,” I give her a stern look and start walking back to the kitchen. “There’s no way. He cheated on me. I had to quit my job—which, arguably, I wouldn’t have wanted to stay at with him there, but still! I moved on, they should have never invited me. Brenda probably did it as some sick joke.”
I can hear her feet padding across the floor behind me. “Okay but hear me out. What if we found you the hottest date and you went just for the reception?”
I turn back to face her and she’s holding the card in her hands staring at me like a little kid who just wants to get their mom to say ‘yes’ to a playdate.
“Becca! No!” I cackle because it doesn’t sound half bad showing off how I have grown and succeeded in being a better person than Patrick.
With someone who would never cheat on me and has more than three colors in their wardrobe.
Even if it is pretend. I still shake my head at her and mouth ‘no’ one more time before throwing the bag full of glass in the trash can.
When I look back up, she’s not there. “Becca?” I hear the front storm door slam. “BECCA!” My voice echoes through the hallway, not unlike my suddenly pounding heart beating in my ears, and I’m running through the house out the door.
The early fall air hits me like a truck. It’s dark outside, but the streetlights cast their dim light against the orange leaves on the trees as I see my friend running down the sidewalk. “What are you doing!?” I scream as I chase after her.
She glances back at me, her eyes and hair wild, her bright pink socks hitting the cement faster.
She turns right at the corner and I’m only a few feet behind her. As I turn the corner, I see Main Street up ahead. My mind registers seeing restaurants, coffee shops, and a few bars lit up with a little bit of traffic, which is normal for a Friday night, before my eyes land on a big blue box.
My heart drops out my butt. “Don’t you fucking dare!” I scream out as my friend makes it to the mail drop box.
“Signed, sealed, and delivered, babe!” She opens the hatch, and I reach out to grab the envelope. My hand misses and shuts the hatch instead, dropping the stamped envelope into the dark abyss of the mailbox.
My eyes drift slowly from the box to meet her widening gaze that must mirror my own shocked expression. “Max! I wasn’t actually going to drop it in! You hit the hatch!” Her words are screeches, and she looks down at the box in horror.
Panic sets in and my breath hitches in my throat. I cannot even form words.
We walk in silence back to my house and quietly over to the desk where the lace invitation sits, mocking me. I pick it up and sit in the chair.
“April 13th. You’ve just committed yourself to that weekend because I’m not going alone and no-showing is absolutely not an option.” I scowl at Becca’s remorseful face.
“I’m so sorry, just don’t go, they won’t even notice.” She is clutching her hands together and looks so sad. “Really, just don’t go!”
“I can’t do that. Then it looks like I couldn’t show my face, like I’m not good enough. I’m not letting him get the upper hand again. I’m not going to let him make me feel small again.” I throw the invite down and stare at the pitiful lace papers strewn across the desk.
A blue and gold fountain pen catches my eye, gold sparkling up at me, and my head tilts, eyebrows pulling together.
“What is it now?” Becca sounds exasperated, like she can’t take any more excitement for the night, which is funny, since this is all her fault.
I pick up the pen and twirl it in my fingers. The fancy gold writing glints back at me, ‘Don’t give up your light, Sims, and don’t let it shine on anything or anyone who dims it. - CR’
Becca is over my shoulder now staring at the pen. “What does that mean?” I imagine her nose is scrunched up as she reads the engraved words.
I open my mouth to tell her, trying to place the pen, and then close it.
It takes a few beats before memories come flooding back to me.
“This guy. From college. He was in the same cohort as Patrick but we met before I met Patrick.”
My mind spins.
A rush of memories fills my head.
A Halloween party, junior year of undergraduate school.
A bonfire, a bottle of tequila, and a guy in a flannel who sat down across from me with golden-green eyes that caught the firelight and burned into me.
He shook my hand and didn’t let go right away—ran his thumb across my fingers slow enough that I felt it in places his hand wasn’t touching.
A gold ring with something carved into it I never got close enough to see.
We talked for hours, and then I went to get water and he was gone.
Just gone, like he’d never been there at all.
I continue, turning the pen over in my hand. “He helped me with my pre-law courses. He gave this to me before graduation. I guess I just never opened it.”
“Oh, the infamous replaced-me-as-your-best-friend guy. Why didn’t you open it?” Becca reaches over me and grabs the cap to the pen and flips it over in her hands.
“Because Patrick walked up right as the guy handed it to me and said some stupid shit about, ‘My girl this or that’ and physically picked me up. I said, ‘Thank you,’ but got pulled away by the devil reincarnate.” I shake my head.
“Patrick took it out of my hands and said he would hold on to it until after dinner, so I didn’t have to carry it around.
He handed it to some girl and asked her to hang on to it and take it to the office for—” My eyes snap up and I spin the chair around. “That girl was Brenda, holy shit.”
My jaw is on the ground and Becca’s is, too. I am shaking my head, flashes of that day coming to me like pictures in a slideshow.
“I didn’t even know her then; she was wearing glasses and looked totally different. He didn’t even introduce us, just gave her this box and she shuffled off to the office. He said she was briefing him on a case before going to my graduation dinner.”
“Yeah, must’ve been a brief briefing in the car where the only briefs were the ones she was taking off him.” Becca attempts a joke and a scoff follows. “So, you never saw it, the pen, I mean? What does ‘CR’ stand for?”
My mind reels. It’s been seven years since I thought about him.
“Callan Reed.”
I put the pen down and shake my head. “Just another bullshit thing Patrick took from me: a friend, God forbid I have one of those. Not unlike how he is now taking the weekend of April 13th next year.” My face slides back in her direction in a scowl as I spin the chair slowly.
“At least we have a lot of time to figure out what to wear!” She beams and poses, grabbing for the bottle of wine on the desk.
I shake my head but follow her back to the kitchen to grab another glass for myself. Great, between work and this, what could go wrong?