1. Charlotte #2
I zoom in because I can’t help it. I study her perfect face, her perfect outfit, the way she looks like she's never once had to explain herself to anyone.
I compare myself to her the way I promised my therapist I would stop doing, and I fail at that promise the same way I fail at most things involving Daniel lately.
I scroll further, back through Daniel's feed until I find the photo. I've looked at it a dozen times since I found out about Ashley. It's a group shot from some work thing, six or seven people crowded around a table, Daniel in the middle with Ashley beside him.
The first time I saw it, I didn't think anything of her.
Now I notice everything. How close she's sitting. His arm stretched along the back of her chair. The way she's turned toward him instead of the camera.
Daniel ended our engagement, and now he’s Instagram official with Ashley, his coworker. People don’t move that fast. Not unless they started moving on long before you knew they were going anywhere.
The rest of the day moves slower. I catch pieces of conversation in the hallway between classes, students talking about lives that feel uncomplicated in a way mine hasn't in months.
I gather the last of my things slowly, in no hurry to be alone with myself. By the time I leave the building, most of the parking lot has emptied out. The late afternoon sun stretches long and gold across the asphalt, catching on the windows of the few cars left.
I'm so far inside my own head as I walk toward my car that I almost don't notice the pickup truck parked near the athletic fields.
There's a man unloading lumber from the back of it, and the first thing I notice is how big he is.
He has to be six-four, maybe more, with the kind of solid muscle that makes the stack of lumber braced against his shoulder look light as a feather.
His faded gray T-shirt stretches across his strong back and thick arms, one forearm dusted with sawdust as he lowers the boards to the ground.
He says something to Vice Principal Reyes, who also coaches football and is still Coach Reyes to pretty much everyone in Forge Creek, then reaches for another stack. Dark, wavy curls peek out from beneath a backward baseball cap.
Then he turns.
My heart jumps into my throat.
I know those eyes. Even from across the parking lot, there’s no mistaking them.
Ryder Kane.
He was always gorgeous. Even back in high school, with dark hair that was always falling into his eyes and a smile that made you wonder what he knew that you didn’t.
Gorgeous and dangerous.
He was sixteen, a junior when I was a freshman, and exactly the kind of boy every parent in Forge Creek warned their daughters about. Fights. Detentions that turned into suspensions. Trouble seemed to find him everywhere he went.
And for some reason, Ryder Kane had noticed me. I never understood why.
I was a freshman. Quiet. A good student.
The kind of girl who actually worried about getting caught if I was two minutes late to class.
But somehow Ryder always seemed to find me in the hallways.
He’d lean against a locker and watch me walk past with that dangerous smile.
Sometimes he’d say my name. Sometimes he didn’t have to.
I knew I should stay away from him. I also knew I liked that he noticed me far more than I ever would have admitted.
Then one day, he disappeared.
The story spread through school before lunch.
Ryder had broken into Eddie “Wrench” Morales’s house.
Eddie had apparently come home from work early and caught him inside.
The police showed up, Ryder was arrested, and when you added that to the laundry list of trouble he’d already been in, this time there was no suspension and no second chance.
He got sent to juvenile detention, or juvie as everyone around Forge Creek called it, and for a while, it was all anyone at school talked about.
I thought about him more than I should have after that. Once, I even considered writing to him. I remember sitting on my bed wondering what I would possibly say.
Hi, Ryder. Sorry you're in juvie. Remember me from the hallway?
Absolutely not. Besides, what was I doing, writing letters to a prisoner? Who was I?
So I didn’t.
There were whispers about him for years afterward. He got out of juvie. Got into more trouble. Got out of that trouble. Someone would mention seeing him around town, and I'd pretend I wasn't interested while listening to every word.
But I never saw him again.
Eventually, I left Forge Creek, and Ryder Kane faded into the background with everything else from high school. That's what happens when you leave your hometown. The people you once couldn't stop thinking about become stories you barely remember.
Until one of them is standing across a parking lot.
And staring right back at you.
Our eyes meet, and suddenly I’m fourteen again, hyperaware of every inch of myself because Ryder Kane has decided to look at me.
A nervous little flutter starts low in my stomach, embarrassingly familiar.
I break eye contact first and practically race the rest of the way to my car. I toss my bag onto the passenger seat, climb in, and pull out of the parking lot before I can talk myself into looking at him again.
I do anyway. One quick glance in the rearview mirror.
Ryder is still standing beside the truck. Still watching me.