Chapter Three - Brooke

Lately, I haven’t had enough to do at work to keep me busy – at least busy enough to not spend all day worrying about other things. The scheduling software has become so second nature that I can use it without really thinking. Adding in new client information or staff availability only takes me a few minutes at a time. It’s always been fairly easy work for me, but the longer I’m here, the more it barely feels like I’m putting an effort in at all.

The only complications really occur when my immediate supervisor, Anne, makes it a point to hover over me, telling me things she’s sure I’m doing wrong or she would do differently, as well as all the things I should do for her. I mostly try to tune her out. Anne is a woman her fifties with a pinched sort of look on her face all the time. She spends half her days taking calls from her kids. If I really wanted to start trouble, I would point out to her (or, better yet, her boss) that if she spent less of her day bothering me and talking to her college-aged son about what he ate for breakfast, productivity would shoot way up. I’ve been tempted, especially at times when she’s made passive-aggressive comments about my outfits or criticized how I spoke to a customer over the phone, but I probably never will. I have enough conflict in my life right now that I don’t need to make waves at work.

Anne’s on the phone right now with one of her younger kids, and I can hear concerns about summer camp and bug spray drifting into my cubicle no matter how hard I try to not listen. I check my own cell phone, frowning at the two missed calls from Jeff on it. At least he doesn’t call me at my work number. Yet, anyway. But the calls to my cell phone and his appearances at places he knows I’ll be are getting a lot more frequent.

I had honestly thought, at first, that maybe he’d get over it and give up after a few weeks. Jeff has never had much of an attention span or any real ambition. But for some reason, this seems to be the one thing he’s actually decided to follow through on. He’s certainly more dedicated to it than he ever was to our relationship.

I’m not sure how to make him stop. The fifty thousand dollars he wants to keep his mouth shut is more money than I could ever possibly get. It’s more money than I make in an entire year, and the idea of having it to just hand over to Jeff feels impossible. I have to do something, though. Keeping Jeff quiet is the only way I can ensure Autumn stays safe. There has to be an option, a way to make Jeff forget about all of this, that I just haven’t seen yet. I know I will. I have to.

I shake my head and put my phone away. I don’t want to think about Jeff right now. I can’t. I can’t spin myself in those circles. I enter some client data in a spreadsheet and try to push thoughts of Jeff out of my mind. I wonder if Anthony is back in town yet, and if he is, how long it will be before I see him. I wonder what he looks like, what he acts like, what kind of person he is now. I have a hard time believing he’s changed much, but I also have a hard time thinking of the boy I once knew as a billionaire with a kid. Maybe we wouldn’t get along at all now. Maybe he’s become a totally different person. Maybe I’ll run into him and we’ll have nothing to say to each other. Maybe seeing him again will be awkward and make me sad for what once was.

But maybe it won’t. Maybe Anthony will still be Anthony, and I’ll have the best friend I’ve ever had back in my life. I could really, really use a friend right now. I smile, thinking about all time we spent together. All the nights it felt like we were on the brink of being something more, of kissing, of saying what we felt out loud. I thought so many times that it wasn’t just me that both of us felt it, but I didn’t want to be the one to say it – to cross that line. Keeping our friendship intact had felt like the most important thing in the world at the time.

I wonder if he remembers as much as I do . . .  If he’s thought of me from time to time during his busy life in New York. I wonder if he remembers our marriage pledge . . . If he ever thinks of it and laughs at how naive and hopeful it had been . . . If he thinks of it and smiles at how important we’d once been to each other.

***

I can see that day in my head like a photograph, crystal clear and sharp. We’d gone to prom together – as friends – and had a fantastic time. We’d danced and laughed and talked all night, sipping on the warm wine we’d snuck in until we were buzzed, our heads swimming with the alcohol and the adrenaline of the evening. At a friend’s after-party bonfire, we’d stolen away, just the two of us, wine in tow.

“This was really fun,” I had said. My hair was in tight pins and curls piled on my head and my face was still heavy with makeup. My feet ached from dancing in heels all day, and I was happy. Really and honestly happy.

“I always have fun with you,” he’d said with a grin. He was still wearing his tuxedo pants, and even if his jacket and tie were long discarded, I’d thought he looked incredibly handsome.

“We’re a good team,” I’d said, drinking more wine and grinning.

“I think this is a lesson,” Anthony had said, smiling back.

“How so?” I’d asked.

“Well, we didn’t have dates for prom, so we took each other and it was a great night,” he’d said, looking thoughtful and reaching for his backpack.

“We probably had a better time than if we’d gone with dates,” I’d said truthfully. I couldn’t imagine having more fun with anyone else than I’d had with Anthony.

“So, what if . . . ”he’d said, stopping and laughing, drinking more wine. “What if agree to – if we don’t find other people to marry – what if we agreed to marry each other?”

“Marriage is more serious than prom,” I’d said, even though my heart was racing. Secretly, even then, part of me thought I could never have more fun with anyone but Anthony because he was the one for me.

“It is, so we’d need to make it official,” he’d said, pulling a notebook and a pen out of his bag. “We need a contract.”

“Seriously?” I’d said, laughing. I was nodding, though, thinking it made sense. That it was a good thing to promise.

“Seriously, if we’re not married by the time we’re, say . . . thirty? Then we’ll marry each other,” he’d said, catching my eyes and grinning broadly. I’d taken another long drink of wine, laughing.

“You’re going to go to college and meet, like, fifty hot girls a week. They’ll be lined up to marry you,” I’d said.

“And some super charming, rich, and devastatingly handsome guy, is going to sweep you off your feet, but,” he’d said, putting a hand on my arm, “just in case.”

“Just in case,” I’d echoed, turning the idea over in my mind. Maybe that was part of what having a best friend was, I’d thought. Someone to keep you from being lonely. Thirty had sounded awfully far away, and I couldn’t imagine what my life would look like then, but I liked the idea of Anthony still being in it.

“Are you in? Will you marry me?  . . . If neither of us is married by the time we’re thirty?” Anthony had asked.

“Let’s do it,” I’d said, laughing again and leaning in to kiss his cheek.

“Perfect. Okay, so we need to make it official,” he’d said. He opened his notebook and started to write out a contract, detailing the arrangement we’d just made. He signed it and then passed it to me. I’d signed it, warm wine still making me dizzy and the far-off sounds of our classmates’ conversations drifting over the night air.

“Wait, I have an idea,” I’d said. I reached into the pockets of my jeans and pulled out a safety pin, one of the ones that had been tucked into the fabric of my prom dress – the only kind of custom alteration I could afford. I’d opened the pin and smiled at him.

“What’s that for?” he’d asked.

“To make it more official, a blood contract,” I’d said, taking the tip of the needle and poking my finger, letting the blood form a drop and then sliding it over the contract where I had signed it like a double signature: a reassurance of how much this contract meant.

“I love that,” he’d said, taking the pin I offered him and smiling broadly as he pricked his own finger, following my motions and tracing his signature in blood.

“Now we have to do it,” I’d said.

“We absolutely do,” he’d said. “This is binding.”

I’d leaned into him, sitting close, so sure in that moment that we’d still be in each other’s lives twelve years later that nothing would stop us from making the contract real if we needed to.

***

Now I shake my head, a few months from turning thirty, at how wrong I’d been. This is not where I thought I’d be at thirty. Not what I wanted for myself. Maybe, with Anthony coming back, I’d be able to get some of that magic back. I could feel a little bit more like the person I used to be. Like myself.

After work, I go looking through my closet for a box. It’s one I haven’t looked at in years, but one I’d always kept with me, filled with memories and things from my friendship with Anthony. I find it and pull out the contract. I’d taken it home that night. Anthony had insisted it would be safer to me. Aside from some places where the paper has worn away a little, thinned from our blood and wrinkled from the night air, it is in perfect condition. It looks so much like it had the day we’d signed it.

I know it is probably ridiculous, but I leave it out. Just in case Anthony and I do become friends again. I think it might be funny – something we could laugh about. A sight to see after all this time.