Love and Music (Small Town Secrets Book 3), page 2
“Hmm.” Serenity rolled her eyes, obviously not impressed by my quick wit.
Well, that was okay. I didn’t care if I impressed these two. I hoped maybe Dylan adored not only my snappy cleverness but also my literary prowess. That would be more than enough.
Chapter Two
Lisa French was the best friend I’d ever had—and I couldn’t imagine my life without her. The woman helped me keep my sanity on a daily basis but, like a best friend should be, she was also a shoulder to lean on, a companion to laugh with—and at times the most annoying person I knew, because her ability to talk me into shit I didn’t want to do surpassed all her other talents by far.
On this particular Tuesday, Lisa and I sat at a picnic table in the park across from the library. It was another perk of my job that made me feel blessed beyond belief—that I had this little oasis of beauty just a stone’s throw away.
My lovely friend was laughing her ass off, her blue eyes sparkling in amusement. Of course, it was at my expense. If I could get the woman to understand my point of view this afternoon, it’d be a miracle.
“Oh, my God, Megan. Would you stop worrying so much? Jesus.” Lisa stabbed a mandarin orange with the plastic fork in her hand and slid it into her mouth.
Meanwhile, I stared down at the bowl of salad she’d brought me. I hadn’t really had a chance to touch it because Lisa had practically pounced on me as soon as we met, her counselor guns blazing. No, she wasn’t an actual counselor, but she loved to play my therapist. And I knew why. She knew me too well, knew I could ruin tonight’s date before it even started if I let my brain go crazy.
“Hey, thanks for bringing lunch.” I hoped I could derail her train of thought, if even for just a moment to give me the chance to breathe. My friend, a woman who always watched what she ate, had gone to the trouble of making her specialty—mandarin orange salad. I was starting to believe Lisa ate more lettuce than rabbits, but at least that had helped her become a master creator of delicious salads.
But no such luck with deflecting her attention. Lisa was a dog with a bone—with her wavy blonde hair, almost a golden retriever. Had I not been on the defense, I might have laughed at that thought. “It was my turn, you know. But stop trying to change the subject.”
“I’m not. I just don’t want to talk about it.”
“Yes, you do.”
Yeah, I probably did. “Fine. But here’s the deal. I already know something’s gonna go wrong on this date.”
“Shitty attitude, girlfriend. And you know something will go wrong if you expect it to. It’s like you’re inviting trouble. We’ve talked about this before.” I frowned, but she kept going. “You have to have a positive attitude.”
I scooped up some food on the fork, hoping it wouldn’t slide off. “Easier said than done.” Guiding the food into my mouth, I started chewing. A little too vigorously, perhaps.
Lisa sighed. I was surprised she hadn’t given up on me by now and, deep down, I knew she was right. I’d probably sabotaged at least half the dates I’d been on in the past five years—which was weird, considering I really wanted them to work.
Didn’t I?
“It’s really not. You know that, Meg.” I gave her another grimace, wanting to change the fucking subject. I didn’t like when the spotlight was on me, because all I could see were stains. “Just promise me you’ll go into your date tonight knowing that everything will work out perfectly. Maybe this guy will be the one you’re meant to marry.”
“What the hell, Leese? Talk about going from no stress to DEFCON 1 in five seconds.”
She tittered and my mild irritation eased, because her giddiness was so damned contagious. “Okay, so let’s not look so far into the future. But maybe he’s great in bed.”
I fought to not spit the salad out of my mouth.
And Lisa tried to recover. “Um, how about this? Maybe he’s an awesome conversationalist.”
“That’s perfect, Lisa—except I can’t unhear what you already said.”
She laughed again. “Relax, Meg. It’s a date, not the end of the world.”
“Fine.” Picking up my water bottle, I took a large gulp, wishing it really could wash away the anxiety I felt.
“So, change of subject.”
“Oh, now you want to change it.”
“Well, we’ve covered all the bases with your date tonight.” I shook my head, focusing on the salad while Lisa kept talking. The cool breeze made the warm sun on my back feel delightful, and I concentrated on that sensation to kind of center myself. “So I need to know, Meg. Have you given any more thought to the high school reunion?”
Fuck. So much for chilling out. As my muscles began to tense, I tried to take a deep breath to stop myself from once more going into flight mode. “Yes.” Lisa wasn’t going to like my answer, and it sucked for me because we’d already gone through this.
“And…?”
I set down the fork, taking in a long, deep breath. “I haven’t changed my mind. I’m not going.”
“Megan Katrina Walker! You promised to think about it.”
“And I did.”
Lisa arched an eyebrow in that way she always did, reminding me that she’d be a great mother someday. In fact, the way she was starting to make me feel guilty, I figured she was getting good practice. “No, you didn’t. You just said that to shut me up. And you know I don’t want to go by myself.”
“I don’t know why you want to go at all. I can’t think of any good reasons to spoil a perfectly good weekend.”
“Are you kidding me? I can think of hundreds of great reasons to go.”
“Yeah? Then name one.”
Aha! I thought. She can’t—or, more likely, she didn’t want to admit to me why. I could tell by the way she was using her plastic fork to scoot pieces of lettuce around the paper bowl. I felt myself feeling mesmerized by the way the leaves of romaine glimmered with dressing, occasional almond slivers appearing to break up the monotony. Lisa sighed before looking up at me again. “Well…maybe it’s not a nice reason, but I’m dying to see what childbirth did to the demon twins.”
The demon twins. I had to search around my brain a bit for that one. “Summer and Brenda?”
An evil grin consumed Lisa’s face as she licked her lower lip and nodded slowly. “Mmm-hmm.”
“That’s…unoriginal.” I swallowed another bite of salad, trying to figure out how to avoid talking in a catty fashion about past classmates. The demon twins, as Lisa had always referred to them, had been co-captains of the cheerleading squad our senior year in high school—and, as daughters of privileged families in our small town, they were expected to do big things after graduation. Instead, they both married their high school sweethearts—and both wound up “having” to get married. Neither were doing poorly today, but Lisa had a fantasy about them looking like shit, hating their lives, and realizing that they’d done it all to themselves. It was their price to pay for being such snotty bitches in high school.
And I didn’t have the heart to let Lisa know I didn’t give a shit about any of it. That ship had long since sailed with me. “You know, they probably look just like we do. Or, rather, like I do. I doubt they look any worse off.” They wouldn’t look like my friend, who’d become an exercise coach and personal trainer. Five days of leading two yoga sessions a day plus a couple of Weight Training for Women classes had my friend looking better than ever.
I wasn’t going to say it out loud, but my brain finally puzzled it out, figuring out why my friend was so damned desperate to go. Of course. She wanted to show everyone how awesome she looked now.
Lisa waved her fork back and forth, pointing the tines at me. “Oh, no. I saw Summer a couple of years ago. She looked haggard as hell.”
Shrugging, I struggled to even try to care. “Okay, so what are these other hundreds of reasons?”
“Aw, come on, Meg. It can’t just be me. Aren’t there guys you’re dying to see?” I frowned, eating a stray piece of spinach. “I always imagined one of the computer nerds coming back all rich and sexy, remembering I was nice to him back in the day.”
I laughed. “Stop! That’s also ridiculously unoriginal, Leese. You gotta stop thinking we’re Romy and Michele. Our high school reunion is not going to be the fantasy you’re whipping it up to be.” Picking up the napkin, I wiped my lips and, when Lisa didn’t counter, I continued. “That’s why you’re dying to go. You want to impress the hell out of everyone while laughing your ass off at the misfortune of others.”
Lisa grinned, taking my admonition well. I had to hand it to her—it was hard to get her down. Probably why we’d been friends forever. “Well, there is that.” She winked, grabbing a handful of crackers out of a box I’d forgotten was there. “But I also just want to see people I’ve fallen out of touch with.”
“Like who?” I knew who I would want to see—except I’d moved on, and we weren’t going there. “I don’t. I’ve stayed in touch with the people I wanted to.”
“Me, Megan. That would be me. You haven’t stayed in touch with anyone else.”
“My point exactly. Do you see a problem with that?”
Lisa took her frustration out on an orange slice, stabbing it savagely, and I almost—almost—felt guilty telling her no, especially when her bottom lip pushed out in a slight pout.
But I didn’t nearly feel guilty enough to give in. I was not about to negotiate with terrorist Lisa.
My friend looked up from the poor orange slice dangling from her fork, wounded beyond repair. “Okay, fine. Then give me some good reasons not to go.”
Ha. Like I hadn’t already outlined a solid case in my head, knowing this moment in time had been coming since Lisa first introduced the topic a month earlier. “Well, I don’t want to see what ten years have done to everyone. I don’t care if Summer has big hips or stretch marks or cottage cheese thighs and doesn’t bother wearing makeup anymore. I don’t care if every last computer and gaming geek I remember comes to the reunion loaded with dough. I just don’t care, Leese. There’s nothing there for me. And, besides…”
Oh, shit. What the hell was wrong with me, engaging my mouth without keeping my brain on board?
What the fuck?
And Lisa, my longest, dearest friend knew me all too well—so, of course, she had to find my vulnerability in order to properly exploit it.
Like a cat, she pounced. “And what?”
“Nothing.” Maybe if I acted like I meant it, she’d believe it. So I absorbed myself in what was left of the salad, shoveling a forkful in my mouth.
But my friend wasn’t buying it. Lisa’s eyes narrowed down to slivers, and I suddenly became aware of the cool breeze on my arms, causing me to want to pull my sweater back on. I was a bug under a microscope, and Lisa wasn’t about to let me squirm free. Dropping her voice, she leaned over the table. “I don’t think so.”
This was not going away.
So I let the air out of my lungs and decided to just spit it out. There was a huge reason I hadn’t wanted to attend the reunion, an ugly truth that I hadn’t even wanted to admit to myself. “What if…what if Tyler’s there?”
It was almost comical the way Lisa’s chin dropped at the same time she let go of the flimsy plastic fork. But I wasn’t in a laughing mood. “Oh, my God. I should have known.”
“Oh, no, you don’t. Don’t go making a federal case out of this.”
“But it makes so much fucking sense. Why—”
“No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t make any sense at all. I have no idea why I’m so damn worried about seeing him again.”
“Yes, you do.”
She was right. Yes, I did. I really did. Tyler Green was a hot, not to mention famous, rock star now—and I hadn’t been interested in a long-distance relationship. After high school, he was in LA and I was in BF Kansas and, sure, I could have blamed him for not trying hard enough, but I knew the truth behind it. I had pushed him away, and Tyler had moved on, not that I could blame him. Nowadays, I knew women had to be falling all over him—gorgeous women with enhanced lips and breasts who’d probably do whatever a guy like him would ask. How could I, even as his ex-flame, compete with what was being thrown at him on a nightly basis?
I couldn’t—and I knew it.
“So, fine. I do. Part of me would love to see Tyler in person…but don’t you think it would be awkward? Weird?”
“Why? It’s not like you ended things on bad terms. You guys were pretty civil at the end, weren’t you? At graduation, didn’t you guys part as friends? So what’s the big deal?”
Here was my big problem at the moment: I couldn’t remember if I’d divulged my deepest, darkest secret to my dear friend. At one time, I’d thought Tyler was the one. The one and only guy for me for all time. Sure, I was young and naïve, but that feeling had penetrated every bone in my body, had dug deep into every last fiber of my being. Unlike a lot of boys at our high school, Tyler had been cute, sure, but also sweet and sensitive. I didn’t know many young men who’d been quite like the guy who’d once been my boyfriend.
Maybe what made it a slightly sore spot even now was that I knew in the furthest recesses of my mind that I wouldn’t have hesitated if Tyler had asked me to go with him to California that summer. I wouldn’t have thought twice about it, even though I would have been giving up a scholarship and a guaranteed work study job, even knowing it might keep me from family and friends for longer than a semester might have.
Worse, I knew he’d known I would have said yes—but he hadn’t asked. And that had been all I’d needed to know. It didn’t matter that I’d already pushed him away.
So, no, I didn’t want to chance running into my ex. I knew the odds were against him even considering attending, but this was a gamble I didn’t want to take. Hearing Tyler on the radio the past few years had been difficult enough. I had no idea what it would do to me to see him in person.
And I wasn’t about to tell Lisa that maybe at one time I’d thought Tyler and I were meant to be together forever. It was a silly schoolgirl dream, one best left at rest.
“It’s not a big deal. I just don’t want to see him.”
Lisa slapped her hands on the picnic table. “That’s just fucked up. You really cared about Tyler, so don’t pretend you didn’t. I can’t believe you want to miss the chance to reconnect with him. Besides, he probably won’t even show up anyway. How many famous people actually attend their high school reunions? I know I wouldn’t want to. It would be a complete and total cluster.”
“So why do you even care?”
“Because, Meg, I really want your support there. I really want to go, but I have no idea what to expect. I mean what if everyone’s a bunch of assholes now? Or what if they’re all rich and just came to rub everyone’s nose in it?” She gasped dramatically, as if she were the heroine in a melodrama. “What if no one remembers me?”
Frowning, I tried not to roll my eyes. It had been ten years, ten short years. After graduating from college, it felt like I’d barely started to live. Why did I want to go immerse myself in high school land once more? “You know that’s not going to happen, Lisa.”
Her face dropped. “I need a friend there, Meg, someone’s who’s got my back, someone who gives a shit about me, someone who cares. Come on. Please?”
Damn it. Lisa knew how to get to me. Those damned blue puppy dog eyes might not have worked on everyone, but she knew how to play me. And even though I’d long been aware of the power of her eyes and arguments, I still fell victim to them.
Truth be told, though, my friend was probably right. Of course, Tyler Green of Madversary wouldn’t come to his high school reunion. He’d been a rock god for more than five years now, and I knew it would be highly unlikely that anyone with that level of fame would stoop to mingle with commoners, even if they were former friends and acquaintances. Something like that could be unbelievably uncomfortable.
So I let out a long sigh.
“All right, Lisa. You win. I’ll go, okay?” Her eyes lit up and I knew she was getting ready to start gushing—but I had to hedge my bets. “But here’s the deal—if, for some strange reason, Tyler does show, then all bets are off.”
Her eyes scrutinized me as if testing my truthfulness. After a moment, though, she offered her hand across the table for a handshake. “Deal.”
And that’s how I was suckered into attending my ten-year high school reunion.
Chapter Three
I had discovered in my short adult life that, while first impressions were usually accurate, sometimes they were just dead wrong. Take the case of Dylan, my date for the evening. Yeah, he was gorgeous, just like his photo on the dating site had shown, and he hadn’t inflated his stats. Hell, he was even striking in his appearance, the kind of man who could have been a model, with his short blond hair, simmering brown eyes, cheekbones that made him look exotic somehow, and a muscular body.
The problem? He knew it.
Ten minutes into dinner, I knew he was egotistical and full of himself, and what I had to say didn’t seem to be too important to him. How the hell had I missed this on the phone?
Or maybe my judgment was clouded. I didn’t know that I could trust myself ever since my lunch conversation with Lisa, because I’d been thinking nonstop about Tyler Green.
Well, not completely. Especially not now while Dylan was trying to impress me with whatever the fuck he was talking about.
But no, no, no. Full stop. I was going about this all wrong. Maybe Lisa was right—that I sabotaged dates before they even had a chance. Dylan and I had had great phone conversations, hadn’t we? Hadn’t we seemed compatible enough to try a date? So I concluded that my head was definitely in the wrong space, and I needed to give the man the benefit of the doubt.
He was a sight to behold; I had to give him that. And his voice could melt butter.
I hadn’t sabotaged this date in the way I sometimes did. I’d prepared for it just like I would have any other initial meeting with a guy. Actually, that wasn’t exactly right. I’d been unusually calm. Instead of freaking out when I stood in front of my full-length mirror, I’d quietly assessed myself. I wore the same little black dress I’d reserved for all my first dates—not too modest but not too sexy, flattering but tasteful. My dark brown shoulder-length hair I’d pulled up into a messy bun that made my delicate features more noticeable, and the darker makeup I’d applied helped with that as well. I wore smoky eyeshadow that made my green eyes shine. I’d almost put on red lipstick but, at the last minute, went with the dusty rose shade—pretty but safe. I knew I looked good but the stakes felt low when I left my apartment. Tyler was on my mind, making other men far less intimidating. I just couldn’t get worked up or anxious about this date.
