That’s where I lost the thread every time.
It was a ridiculous vision. I knew that, but it didn’t stop me from wanting it. And thirty-two-year-old Jessica Miller lived by a lesson college Jessica had only started to learn: if you wanted something bad enough, you did anything to get it. Yes, I’d go back and relive my Duquette days, like the invitation said, but this time, I’d do it better. I would be Exceptional Jessica. Show them they’d been wrong not to see it before. Homecoming would be my triumph.
I released the ball of hair into the trash. Even tangled, the highlights were pretty against the Q-tips and wads of white tissue paper.
But in a flash, a vision of torn blond hair, sticky and red, matted against white sheets. I shook my head, pushing away the glitch.
I would show them all. And then I would finally rid myself of that dark suspicion, that insidious whisper—the one that said I’d done it all wrong, made the worst possible mistakes, ever since the day East House first loomed into view through my parents’ cracked windshield.
At long last, I was going back.
Chapter 2
Now
The night before I left for Homecoming, I met Jack for a drink. In the weeks since the invite arrived, my excitement had been tempered with guilt, knowing Jack had gotten one, too, but couldn’t go back, not in a million years. Traveling across the city to his favorite bar—a quiet, unpretentious dive—was small penance for all the things I’d never be able to atone for. Chief among them, the fact that my whole life hadn’t come crashing down around me when I was twenty-two, like his.
I slid into the booth across from him. He tipped his whiskey and smiled. “Hello, friend. I take it you’re Duquette-bound?”
We never talked about college. I took a deep breath and folded my hands on the table. “I fly out tomorrow.”
“You know…” Jack smiled down at his glass. “I really miss that place. All the gargoyles, and the stained glass, and the flying buttresses.” He lifted his eyes back to me. “So pretentious, especially for North Carolina, but so beautiful, you know?”
I studied him. Out of all of us, Jack wasn’t the most changed—that was probably Frankie, maybe Mint—but he’d certainly aged more than ten years warranted. He wore his hair long, tucked behind his ears, and he’d covered his baby face with a beard, like a mask. There were premature wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. He was still handsome, but not in the way of the past, that clean-cut handsomeness you’d expect out of a youth-group leader, the boy in the neighborhood you wouldn’t think twice about letting babysit.
“I wonder how campus has changed.” Jack wore a dreamy smile. “You think the Frothy Monkey coffee shop is still there?”
“I don’t know.” The affection in his voice slayed me. My gaze dropped to my hands.
“Hey.” Jack’s tone changed, and I looked up, catching his eyes. Brown, long-lashed, and as earnest as always. How he’d managed to preserve that, I’d never know. “I hope you’re not feeling weird on my account. I want you to have fun. I’ll be waiting to hear about it as soon as you get back. Do me a favor and check on the Monkey, okay? Heather and I used to go there every Sun—” He cut himself off, but at least his voice didn’t catch like it used to. He was getting better. It had been years since he’d called me in the middle of one of his panic attacks, his voice high as a child’s, telling me over and over, I can’t stop seeing her body.
“Of course I’ll go.” One of the bar’s two waitresses, the extra-surly one, slid a glass of wine in front of me and left without comment. “Thanks,” I called to her back, sipping and doing my best not to wince while Jack was watching. My usual order was the bar’s most expensive glass of red, but that wasn’t saying much.
I forced myself to swallow. “What else should I report back on?”
He straightened, excited, and for a second, he looked eighteen again. “Oh man, what do I want to know? Okay, first, I want all the details about Caro and Coop—how did he pop the question, when’s the date, what’s she wearing?” Jack barreled on, neatly sidestepping the fact that he wasn’t invited to the wedding. “Do you think they hooked up in college and kept it a secret from the rest of us? Ask her. I want the dirt. Who would’ve pictured the two of them together? It’s so unexpected.”
I tipped my glass back and lifted my finger for another, though I knew the waitress hated when I did that. “Mm-hmm,” I said, swallowing. “Sure.”