I shoved my finger in my mouth and pretended to gag, which made Tyler smile.
“She was such a brat,” I added, shaking my head at the memory of her. “Always carried that Louis Vuitton purse, even in gym class. And she was absolutely horrid to her friends. I remember overhearing her telling Olivia in the girls’ bathroom at school that if she didn’t get her acne under control, she wouldn’t be allowed to sit with Clarissa at lunch anymore.”
Tyler let out a long exhale. “Yeah, she wasn’t the best.” He paused. “But fuck did she have some nice tits.”
“Pig,” I spat, smacking his arm to the tune of his laughter.
“To be fair, you hated everyone I dated.”
“I did not,” I defended, but already felt my gut shrinking at the truth of it.
“Name one person you actually liked.”
I pulled my mouth to the side, Tyler smiling bigger and bigger the more time that passed without an answer.
“Well, our high school was full of idiots. And I didn’t think any of them were good enough for you.”
Tyler fell quiet at that, and I flushed so hard I wished my hair was still down in curls that I could cover my face with instead of tied back in a ponytail.
“I can relate,” he finally said, but it was quiet, and with that admission, the rest of the evening seemed to quiet around us, too. The birds softened their chirps, the breeze pulled back so as not to rustle the trees, and I glanced at Tyler, who was looking at me, too.
I could blame it on the endorphins I’d just released with our run. I could blame it on the way the sun hit his face as it set behind the mountains. I could blame it on the night before, on the past few days since I’d arrived, on the off chance that maybe the whiskey from last night was still hanging around in my system.
I could blame it on a lot of things, why I said what I said next, but none of it would matter.
All that mattered was that I locked eyes with Tyler Wagner, and I asked him the question that had kept me awake for seven long years.
“Why did you ignore me the day after my mom left?”
All the color drained from Tyler’s face, and for the longest time, he just stared at me, unblinking. Then, he blew out a long breath, shaking his head and tearing his gaze from me. “Don’t do this, Jaz.”
“I deserve to know.”
He sighed, his eyes falling to his sneakers, and I felt a mixture of anger and betrayal bubbling up inside me like a volcano. Suddenly, I didn’t want to be out here, laughing and reminiscing with Tyler Wagner. Suddenly, I remembered all too well the way it felt to have his hands on me, and then to have him avoid me, and finally, to have him reject me.
“Why?” I asked again, angling my body toward him. “Why did you avoid me, and then tell me that it was a mistake, that you didn’t mean to…” I couldn’t even finish the sentence, and emotion bubbled up even more. I had no control over any of it, and I hated when my eyes glossed over, though I refused to let a single tear fall. “And why did you do this? Why did you spend the day with me yesterday, and take me here today, and why are we suddenly talking after all these years? We’re all buddy-buddy, reminiscing, pretending like…” I huffed. “And last night…” I swallowed, my throat thick, tongue heavy. “Last night, you… you…”
Held me? Touched my face the way you did all those years ago? Leaned in like you wanted to kiss me, like you wanted to breathe me in?
Told me I was spectacular?
Tyler stood before I could decide what to say, letting out a frustrated sigh. “We just called a truce. We’re finally talking after all these years. Why is that not enough for you?”
I stood just as quickly. “Because I deserve to know. I deserve to know why you would bring me here, why you keep finding your way to wherever I am in that giant house where you could easily avoid me, why you—”
“Because I miss you!”
My mouth was still open, mid-argue, and it hung that way as Tyler turned on me with his chest heaving and a feral look in his eyes that I’d never seen in anyone before.
“Okay?” he added, with his arms outstretched. “Because I miss you. Because I have missed you, ever since the day you left. Because it kills me to be around you and not touch you, laugh with you, to not be engulfed with everything that you are.”
My heart tripled its pace in my chest, making me so lightheaded that I had to hold onto the branch of a nearby tree to keep from falling. But Tyler kept his gaze on me, hard and unapologetic.
“And because I’ve spent the last seven years wishing I would have done something to save our friendship, and now that you’re here, now that you’re back?” He shook his head, sniffing and looking away from me before he found my eyes once more. “I can’t not try.”
They were the last words he said before he tore his gaze away, running his hands through his hair on his way back to the car. He flung the driver side door open so wildly, I thought it’d fly off the hinges, and then he slammed it and revved the engine to life.
For a second, I thought he would leave me. I thought he’d peel out of the trailhead and down the road that led back to his house. But he just sat there in the car, his hands white-knuckling the steering wheel, eyes focused somewhere in the distance as he waited for me to get in.
I wasn’t sure how long it took me to find a breath, to find the strength to let go of that tree that was steadying me and hobble my way on shaky legs over to the car. As soon as I was inside it, Tyler threw it into reverse, backing out of where he’d parked and throwing it into drive as soon as he was righted to fly down the hill toward the house.
We didn’t say a word on the ride home.
When we pulled into the drive, Tyler mumbled something about a shower to his family, and then texted his mom an hour later saying he didn’t feel well and he’d be skipping dinner.
He stayed in his room the rest of the night.
And I stayed in my head, replaying every word, every look, every confession.
I still hadn’t made sense of a single one by the time sleep finally found me.
“RIGHT? I have been trying to explain this to her for years, Jacob. I mean, since the girl was fourteen.”
“It’s honestly monstrous,” my charming, traitorous boyfriend said, agreeing with my best friend through the screen of my phone. Morgan had her arm looped through mine as I held the screen up so Jacob could see both of us where we had pulled to the side in the local flower shop.
“No one else has had the guts to call her out on it.” Morgan grinned, pointing at the screen. “I like you even more.”
“Oh, I’ll call her out all day,” Jacob said. “Getting her to listen to reason, on the other hand…”
They both look pointedly at me then, and I rolled my eyes. “You do realize you’re both acting like I’ve committed some crime all my life, like this is a life-or-death situation.”
“It is a crime to microwave your ice cream.” Morgan shuddered. “I mean, seriously, do you hear that statement? How much of an oxymoron that is? If you microwave it, it’s not ice cream anymore. It’s just cream.”
She watched me pitifully, like I was a ten-year-old who she was trying to explain that the Easter Bunny wasn’t real to. And Jacob shook his head, like I was a lost cause, both of them exchanging a knowing look before their eyes were on me again.