“Sorry, Mom. I was out on the course with Rob all afternoon. I was late getting home. Didn’t have time for a shower. I may have gone overboard with the body spray.” I should have known my perfectionist mother would notice my less than the pristine state of hygiene. She wasn’t a bitch about it; she simply had standards. It’s one of the things that I prided myself on inheriting from her.
“You can’t even be presentable for your loving mother who has slaved over a hot stove to provide you with a delicious dinner,” Mom intoned dramatically, but with the hint of a smile, so I knew she wasn’t entirely serious.
“If by “slaved” you mean peeled the film off a container of potato salad,” Lena snickered.
Mom playfully smacked her arm. “Don’t you start, missy.”
I hugged my mother. “You know I appreciate it, Ma. I’ll dress in a three-piece suit next time.”
She pinched my cheek. “Still handsome, though.”
“So, Lena says you invited some people over for dinner. Who is it? The Mitchells? I ran into Becky last week, and she said she was going to call you about getting together.” I heard someone laugh, and I felt tense. My guts wrenched, and my chest felt uncomfortably tight.
Mom took the bottle of wine and filled two glasses. “Take these out to our guests. I’m sure you’ll be happy to see her. It’s been a long time.”
“Her?” I looked at Lena, who wore a slightly panicked expression.
“Adam, just be cool—”
“Marion, where do you keep the Tylenol? Meghan has a horrible headache. Lack of sleep and not eating enough if you ask me...”June Galloway bustled into the kitchen full of frenetic energy and rapid-fire sentences. “Oh, hi, Adam!” She engulfed me in a rose-scented hug that was straight out of my childhood. The woman never changed except for more grey hair than the last time I had seen her.
Then I registered what she said.
Meghan.
Meg.
Well, shit.
Chapter 6
Adam
“Hi, June. It’s great to see you,” I said, with an easy smile I suddenly wasn’t feeling. I felt ambushed, and it wasn’t a pleasant sensation.
My eyes zeroed in on my sister.
“I didn’t know,” she mouthed in my direction. I believed her. She was entirely too bugged out to be anything but surprised.
I patted June’s back as she released me. “I think you grow better looking every time I see you,” Meg’s mom commented.
“Even if he smells like he took a hobo shower,” my mom criticized, and the two women tittered together. My mom and June had been thick as thieves for my entire life. Having become friends in the ninth grade after June’s family moved to Southport, they were inseparable ever since. They were maids of honor in each other’s weddings. They went on vacation together. They even attended the same Lamaze classes when Mom was pregnant with me and June with Meg. It was only natural that Meg and I had become just as close.
At one time, I couldn’t have imagined my life without Meg in it. Our friendship had always felt like something more. Like something deeper. We had finished each other’s sentences. We could practically read each other’s minds. There wasn’t a secret between us.
I should have known that it couldn’t last. Male/female friendships inevitably morphed into uncomfortable, hormone-laden travesties. I had stupidly thought Meg and I wasn’t like that. That we were made of stronger stuff.
I hadn’t anticipated how wrong I was.
“Don’t just stand there … take the wine out to Meghan and your dad. I got some of those beers you like. They’re in the fridge,” my mom instructed, shooing me out of the kitchen.
Lena, coming to my rescue, took one of the glasses from my white-knuckled hands. She walked with me out onto the deck where my dad was sitting, his face to the sun, talking to a woman whose back was to me.
I couldn’t see her face, but I’d recognize that mane of unruly red hair anywhere.
It had been over a year since I had seen her. And before that, it had been at least eight years. So many days, so many months since speaking to the woman who used to be my other half.
Losing her had felt like chopping off a limb, and I still felt the phantom pain. But it was mixed with a healthy dose of my own anger and betrayal because I hadn’t been given a choice in how our story played out. I had been relegated to the role of the insensitive asshole and Meg the heartbroken ingénue.
It wasn’t fair. I had never been given a chance to tell my side. To explain myself. She had decided that I was a jerk. That I had jilted her. I had tried to make it right on more than one occasion, but she had stubbornly refused to hear me out.
We had turned a corner, and there was no going back.
The end.
And I lost my best friend. She had made the decision that I was erased from her narrative. It made me more than a little bitter because the girl I had thought knew me better than anyone had been so quick to see the absolute worst in me.
Well, fuck Meg Galloway and her sanctimonious self-righteousness.
“There he is,” Dad exclaimed when he saw me. He waved me over to the vacant seat beside him. “I was just telling Meghan about the town’s bicentennial mural project. She seems interested in helping out.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked mildly. I would be unaffected. I wouldn’t let her know how much her presence got to me.
Or how badly I had missed her.
Fuck Meg Galloway. It didn’t matter that she was back in town. It didn’t mess with me in the slightest.
Nope. Not one bit.
If I thought it enough, maybe I’d start believing it.
Lena put the glass of red wine down in front of Meg, who had yet to look my way. Her face was angled so that I couldn’t quite see her. Not that I was trying.
Yeah right.
“Here you go, Meggie. Hope you like red.” Lena’s smile was bright if not slightly on the hysterical side. My sister understood what a minefield she was walking through even if our oblivious father had no idea.
My parents knew that Meg and I had stopped talking during our last year of high school, though they never knew the reason. I became so busy with senior year stuff and my new relationship with Chelsea that the absence of my best friend was easily explained away. They never knew how the girl they viewed as a second daughter had come to despise me. It became a classic tale of a friendship that had drifted apart, nothing more. Sure, they gave me crap over the years about being better at staying in touch with my friends, and they continued to speak about Meg with the breezy normalcy of the blissfully ignorant, but they never questioned why our paths never crossed again.
“Here you go, Dad. I picked up the Merlot you like.” I handed him the other wine glass, which my father accepted enthusiastically.
“Thanks, Son. Now have a seat. Isn’t it wonderful to have Meghan back in town?” Dad beamed in delight.
I steeled myself. I took a deep breath.
And then I looked at her.
Our eyes met, and it was as if no time had passed, and at the same time, it felt as though it had been far too long. Years fell away, and for just a moment, I was thirteen again.
I had never told anyone that my first serious crush was on Meg. That because of her, I had learned what it meant to fantasize about kissing a girl–and about doing a lot more than kissing. I was in the throes of puberty with my arms too long for my body, my voice cracking, my skin breaking out, and suddenly she was all I saw.