Prologue
Pearl-6 years ago…
The day I met my best friend Trevor Winthrop was the day I fell in love with him. We were barely seven years old and on the playground during recess. I complimented his Empire Strikes Back T-shirt.
He threw a rock at my face.
Later, he apologized…or, rather, he showed up at my house with his mother forcing him to apologize. By then, I had developed quite a shiner, and I partially hid behind my mom so he couldn’t see it. A few years later in middle school, he confessed to me that he had a crush on me, and his friends had teased him about me. That’s why he threw the rock. I guess it was his way to prove to them that girls were nasty.
“I can’t believe you’re going all the way to Chicago for college. You totally bailed on our plan to study at UC Boulder.” I flop back on his bed, sending a pile of his neatly folded graphic T-shirts tumbling to the floor.
“Do you mind? I recall you saying you were going to help me pack, not make more of a mess,” he teases as he bends over to pick up the fallen shirts. I sit up and begin to refold the pile. I smile as I look through them. Each one tells a little story about a time and place.
“Hey, remember when we went and saw this movie?” I hold up the battered X-Files: I Want to Believe tee. “We bought fake IDs because we thought they’d toss our asses out!”
Trevor shakes his head and chuckles. “For the record, I wasn’t that worried, but you were so certain they would know we were only twelve, you had a constant line of upper lip sweat the two days leading up to the show.”
I wipe away tears of laughter at the memory. The attendant didn’t even ask for ID. He was barely sixteen, and I’m sure he couldn’t care less two twelve-year-olds were going to see a PG-13 movie.
There wasn’t a lot to do in our small town of Grand Lake, Colorado. We spent the majority of our time at the movies, one of our houses, or the local hobby shop looking for comic books we hadn’t yet read. With a population of just over 500, everybody knew everybody in this town.
Trevor and I had become inseparable after sixth grade. He had outgrown his shyness of being friends with a girl, and it certainly helped that I was just as big of a nerd as he was. We spent our summers building forts and pretending to hunt elk with our homemade bow and arrows. We’d swim in the lake and look at the stars at night as we lay out on my giant trampoline. No matter what was going on, Trevor could always make me laugh. He’d point out a cluster of stars and tell me some ridiculous story about how it was a recently discovered constellation in the shape of a donkey named asseus major. The truth is, though, he was incredibly smart. He would teach me all about space and black matter, how intricate our solar system was, and how insignificant it made him feel. I knew from a young age that Trevor was destined for great things.
“What are you thinking about?” I didn’t realize that I was lost in my memories, staring at the floor, an unfolded T-shirt wadded up in my hands. Apart from the few girlfriends he’d had in school growing up that took away his time, we’d spent almost every day together, and now, he is moving over a thousand miles away. To say I am struggling to cope would be an understatement.
“Oh, nothing. Just excited for you is all.” I try to choke back tears, but one escapes and trickles down my cheek.
“Hey, P, don’t be sad.” He wipes the tear away and pulls me in for a hug. I love that he calls me P. Nobody else does. “I know we always talked about going to college together, but the University of Chicago has one of the best mathematics and statistics programs in the country.”
I pull away from him and smile sincerely this time. “I know, Trev. I meant it when I said I’m happy for you. You’re way too damn smart to be stuck in this town. Besides, you’ll come home to visit and we can spend summers together. Hell, maybe I’ll get out to the big city and visit you.” I playfully punch his arm before making my way to his bedroom door.
“I promised my mom I’d be home to help her with canning some veggies from the garden. I’ll come to see you off tomorrow, I promise. Just promise me one thing…don’t forget about us here in the mountains when you make it big-time okay?” He laughs and shakes his head before I head out the door.
One
PEARL-PRESENT DAY
“Pearl, you’ve got a table of pissed off customers. They said they’ve been waiting twenty minutes for their beers!”
I roll my eyes at Delilah and grab a pitcher from the kitchen, walking over behind the bar to fill it from the beer tap.
“Well, maybe if someone wasn’t too busy ogling the local talent, I could get some damn help around here,” I practically shout as our bartender, Will, ignores me and tries his hardest to look down the top of a very well-endowed stranger he’s chatting with.
I drop the pitcher off at the table of pissed-off guys, apologizing and promising them it’s on the house. I make my way around to the rest of my customers and make sure everyone is happy...for the moment.
“Del, I am so sick of this shit.” I pull angrily at my apron strings before pulling it over my head and taking a dramatic seat on a few empty crates in the back. “Why did I even go to college if all I am is a beer wench?”
“The problem isn’t that you went to college, sweetie. It’s that you came back to this shit hole town,” she says, not missing a beat as she plates four orders of country-fried steak and mashed potatoes. “We both know you had no business coming back here.”
“My mo—”
“And don’t you dare say your mama needed you, because this town takes care of its own. We would see to it that her needs were taken care of, and you know that.” She gives me a stern look before loading up her tray and backing her way out of the kitchen.
She’s right. I don’t want to admit it, but at the same time, this is my home. I love my small town. I have big dreams for it. I want to see more businesses come in and be successful. Of course, I hope they’ll also hire me as their marketing manager so I can get out of this rat-hole diner.
I let my chin sink down onto my hand, daydreaming about what life in Chicago is like for Trevor. I haven’t seen or heard from him in over two years.
All those plans we had about spending summers together never happened. He met a girl his first semester and spent every free minute with her family on the East Coast. Can’t say that I blame him.
He came back to town once after graduation, and he wasn’t the skinny nerd I’d fallen in love with all those years ago. He was a man, tall and built, with a thick mop of floppy brown hair that framed his sparkling green eyes perfectly. He looked like a damn model. I could see happiness radiating from him, and I knew he’d never end up back in Grand Lake. I was silly and naive for thinking nothing would change between us. I couldn’t deny the intense physical reaction I still had when I saw him. His voice, which had become thick and rich like molasses, sounded like it had dropped about two octaves.
We had agreed to meet up for drinks, and I was going to finally tell him how I felt. When he touched the small of my back as he walked me to my mom’s doorstep that night, I felt electricity between us. That’s when he told me he had something to tell me: he was engaged and permanently settling in Chicago. I felt my heart shatter into a million little pieces that night. I’ve lived with regret since then. Well, actually, I’ve lived with regret long before then too. I didn't want to break up his relationship. I just needed to tell him how I felt.