In front of me now, Randall stands up straight, bearing down on me. I back up onto the sidewalk, glancing around for my best exit. Frankly, I have no idea what this man is capable of, so I assume everything.
“Look,” I say. “I own that I acted crazy by showing up at your house the way I did. But that doesn’t change the fact that you felt me up in a bar after I spent the whole night trying to get away from you. Far as I’m concerned, it’s you who needs a reminder to keep his distance. I’m not the one looking for a confrontation.”
“You better keep your head down, girl,” he warns, growling at me with a wet, phlegmy voice full of impotent anger. He’s getting off on the power trip. “None of that partying bullshit. I catch you with drugs, you’re gonna find yourself in the back of this car. So much as sniff trouble around you, you’re going to jail. Hear me?”
He’s aching for a reason, the slightest provocation to nail me. Too bad for him, I left that Genevieve behind a long time ago. From the corner of my eye, I spot Heidi and the girls standing at the entrance to the bar, waiting for me.
“We done here?” I ask, keeping my chin up. I’d walk into traffic before giving Randall the satisfaction of knowing his threats affect me. “Good.”
I walk off. When the girls ask, I just tell them to watch their backs. Wherever we are this summer, whatever we do, it’s a sure thing he’ll be watching. Biding his time.
I’m not about to play his game.
Later, at home, I lie in bed still rigid with anger. There’s tension tugging at the muscles in my neck. A throbbing pressure pushing against my eyeballs. I can’t be still. So that’s how, at nearly midnight, I find myself sitting on the floor at my closet, surrounded by boxes, yearbooks, and photo albums, taking a walk down memory lane. An ill-advised walk, because the first picture in the first album I open? One of me and Evan. We’re eighteen, maybe nineteen, standing on the beach at sunset. Evan has both arms wrapped around me from behind, one hand holding a bottle of beer. I’m in a red bikini, resting my head against his broad, shirtless chest. We’re both smiling happily.
I bite my lip, trying hard to fend off the memories attempting to bat their way into my brain. But they barrel through my mental defenses. I remember that day on the beach. We watched the sunset with our friends, then took off alone, walking in the warm sand toward Evan’s house where we locked ourselves in his bedroom and didn’t come out till the next afternoon.
Another picture, this one at some party at Steph’s house, and this time we’re sixteen years old. I know it’s sixteen because those awful blonde highlights in my hair had been a birthday present from Heidi. I look ridiculous. But you wouldn’t know it from the way Evan is staring at me. I don’t know who took the photo, but they managed to capture in his expression what I can only describe as adoration. I look equally smitten.
I find myself smiling at our young, besotted selves. It wasn’t long after that party that he told me he loved me for the first time. We were hanging out in my backyard floating on our backs in the pool, engaged in a pretty serious conversation about how much we wished our mothers gave a shit about us, when he suddenly cut me off mid-sentence and said, “Hey, Genevieve? I love you.”
And I’d been so startled to hear him utter my full name and not Fred, the dumb nickname whose origins I don’t even remember, that I sank like a stone. I didn’t even register the second part of that statement until I came up to the surface, eyes stinging, coughing up water.
His indignant expression had greeted me. “Seriously? I tell you I love you and you try to drown yourself? What the hell?”
Which made me laugh so hard I peed myself a little and then stupidly confessed to peeing a little, at which point he swam to the ladder and heaved his wet body out of the pool. He’d thrown his hands up in exasperation and growled, “Forget I said anything!”
Laughter tickles my throat. I’m half a second away from texting him to ask if he remembers that day when I realize I’m supposed to be keeping my distance.
My phone buzzes beside me.
A glance at it triggers an anguished groan. How does he do it? How does he always know when I’m thinking about him?
Evan: I’m sorry about the other night.
Evan: I was an idiot.
I sit there staring at the texts until I realize all the tension I’d been feeling over my run-in with Randall, all the anger and shame, has dissipated. My shoulders are limp, the ten-ton boulder on my chest finally removed. Even my headache has subsided. I hate that he can still do that too.
Me: Yes you were.
Evan: I think I’ve still got sand in my eye, if that makes you feel better.
Me: A little.
There’s a long delay, nearly a full minute before I see him typing again. The little gray bubbles appear, then disappear, then reappear.
Evan: Missed you.
Already I feel the tug, those old ties pulling me back to a place I swore I wouldn’t go again. Backsliding would be so easy. Making a promise to myself and actually keeping it this time is much harder.
It isn’t his fault—Evan didn’t make me this way. For once, though, I’m choosing me.
Me: Missed you too. But that doesn’t change anything. I meant what I said.
Then I shut off my phone before he can respond.
Although it brings an unbearable ache to my chest, I force myself to look through the rest of the albums and piles of loose photos. Our entire relationship plays out in scenes preserved in single perfect moments.
You tore my brother’s heart out and took off without even a goodbye. What kind of cold-ass person does that? You have any idea what that did to him?
Cooper’s words, his accusations, buzz around in my head, making my heart squeeze painfully. He’s right—I didn’t say goodbye to Evan. But that’s because I couldn’t. If I had, I know he would have succeeded in convincing me to stay. I’ve never been able to say no to Evan. So I left without alerting him. Without looking back.
It’s past one a.m. when I finally shove the photos in their boxes and slide them to the back of the closet under clothes and old shoes.
Only dead things pine for the past. Sad things. I might be sad, but I’m not dead. And I intend to live while I still can.
CHAPTER 8
EVAN
Cooper and Mac are already sitting down in the kitchen with Uncle Levi when I walk through the door on Sunday night. The plans for Mac’s hotel are spread out on the table. She has her laptop open, hunched over the keyboard while gnawing on a pen. Daisy is the only one to acknowledge me, running up to climb my leg as I kick off my shoes.
“Hey, pretty girl,” I coo at the excited puppy.
“You’re late,” Cooper informs me.
“I stopped to pick up dinner.” I drop the bags of Chinese takeout on the counter. My brother doesn’t even turn his head from the blueprints. “No, don’t sweat it. My pleasure.”
“Thank you,” Mac says over her shoulder. “No egg in the fried rice, right?”
“Yes, I remembered.” For fuck’s sake, it’s like I’m the damn help around here.
“Leave that,” Levi says. “Come here. We need to talk about next week.”
Levi is our dad’s brother. He took us in after Dad died in a drunk driving accident when we were little and raised us when our mom couldn’t be bothered to care. Our uncle’s the only real family Cooper and I have left, and although it was difficult to bond with him growing up—he’s the gruff, quiet type whose idea of spending quality time together is sitting silently in the same room—the three of us have gotten closer lately.