“You’re already in town!” Julie screamed into my ear.

“How did you know?”

“Shana told me.”

“Right.” Of course. I forgot how fast news traveled in Cold Creek.

“Oh my God, I’m so excited. This means you can make it to my bachelorette party tonight?”

“Umm…well…Actually.”

But she didn’t even hear anything I had to say. “So, we’ll see you at about eight at Tom’s Dive. All the girls will be there. It’ll be such fun.”

I crinkled my nose. “Tom’s Dive?” When did Julie ever go to a crappy bar like Tom’s Dive?

“I want to let my hair down where no one knows us.”

That made sense, but I really didn’t feel like getting drunk with a bunch of my old friends tonight. I had wounds to tend to. They were shallow, but they still needed licking. “The thing is—”

“I know,” she cut me off. “You have no car. I’ll get Ella to pick you at about quarter to eight. She can drop you off on the way home.”

“Okay, see you there,” I agreed with a sigh. She hung up and I met my mother’s eyes. “I guess I need to get ready for Julie’s bachelorette party.”

“Yes, it’s a good idea for you to go out.” Mom waved her hand at me absently. “I should go and see how your father is feeling.”

“Thanks, Mom.” I made my way out of the room and started toward the stairs.

“Oh, and Mia?” she called after me.

I closed my eyes and came to a halt. This was the bit I’d been waiting for ever since I arrived. I turned around, prepared for the worst. “Yeah?”

“You did the right thing,” she went on brusquely. “Well done for getting out of there.”

I smiled slowly. Maybe I had remembered my mother wrong. Maybe things weren’t going to be as bad as I had thought. “Thanks, Mom.” I headed up to my room and straight to the shower.

As the warm water cascaded over my body, I realized that a night out with the girls might actually do me some good. I hadn’t seen most of them in years, but perhaps going out with people who weren’t going to watch me with sad, pitying eyes all evening would be helpful.

I dressed, blew out my hair, and went full-out with my makeup. Mark always hated it when I got really dressed up like this, saying that I looked like a hooker, but right now, I wanted to do everything I could to spite him even if he wasn’t here to see it. I rolled over what my mother had said in my mind, about Stan. He had always come across to me as the kind of guy who oozed a kind of sad desperation around any woman he was remotely interested in. The way he chased me back in the day had been more than a little pathetic. He wanted to give me a ring on our second date, but maybe he had changed and turned into someone actually worthy of a catch like Julie. True, she was very competitive, always scoring points with me, but she was smart, funny and cool, so I couldn’t see her settling for anything second best.

Out of the shower, I pulled off my ring, and dumped it amongst my makeup on the dressing table. God only knew how much he dropped on it. He never told me, despite the fact that I’d told him a dozen times that I didn’t want him to spend a silly amount of cash on the ring because then I would be always terrified of losing it. Just another example of how he had never really paid a lot of attention to a word that came out of my mouth.

My parents were out in the garden when I slipped out and got into Ella’s car. Ella kept house for Julie’s family. She was a kind cheerful woman who kept up a light conversation all the way to the Tom’s Dive.

“Have a great time,” she said, before driving away.

Flicking back my hair, I opened the door to the bar. I found the girls were already in a corner booth and were waiting patiently for me to get there.

“Mia!” Julie draped in a cheap nylon veil and clearly, a drink deep already, leapt to her feet shrieking my name as soon as she spotted me.

“Julie.” I opened my arms.

She practically leapt into them, giving me a big hug. Anyone looking at us would have thought we were the greatest friends in the world.

The funny thing was, even though we had been friends all the way through high school, I didn’t know for sure how Julie really felt about me. Scratch the surface and what was underneath might have been resentment and jealously. My family was richer than hers and though she always had a better figure than me and was classically beautiful, she always seemed secretly jealous.

The familiar scent of her expensive perfume enveloped me in a cloud as she drew away and let out a tinkle of laughter. “Look at you. You look amazing. Where did you get that dress? It’s so cute.”

I shrugged. “I think I got it in a sale.”

Her eyes gleamed. “I’ll have to come up to the city and go shopping with you one day. I bet you know all the best shops.”

I grinned. “Yes, I do, and I could totally take you around.”

She flicked her long blonde hair back. “That’s decided then. We’ll talk about it later. Come and join us.” She took my hand and led me back to the table.

It was crowded with a half-dozen of the girls I’d been to high school with. All of them greeted me as I took my seat. Shana, Kayla, Nina, Mary-Jane, Michelle, and a few others.

I settled into my seat and leaned back, letting out a long sigh of relief. “Man, it feels good to be back here.” I smiled at them. “Are we ready for the next round?”

“We totally are.” Kayla tipped the rest of her drink down her throat, before getting to her feet. “Come on, I’ll help you get them back from the bar. I know what everyone’s drinking.”

“Lead the way,” I said with a laugh. I followed her up to the bar and peered at the surface to see if the sticky patch that had always been there was still sitting next to the beer taps, and sure enough, it was. Some things never changed. Maybe that was a good thing. Because everything I’d gone chasing in the city hadn’t exactly turned out too well for me.

We picked up our drinks and joined the group back at the table. Before I knew it, we were all shrieking with laughter as we recounted some over-the-top story of something that had happened in high school. I didn’t mention the break-up to them, but eventually, Julie had zeroed in on the lack of ring on my finger earlier on and could no longer hold it in.

“No ring?” She grabbed my hand tipsily and held it up. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, Mark and I are over.” I waved my hand airily and marveled at the fact that it had all happened only a few hours ago and yet he felt like the distant past. “I’ll tell you the story later.”

Julie paused, and for a second, I thought she was going to freak out about what I’d just told her, but instead, she dropped my hand and lifted her drink. “To the newly-single Mia,” she toasted, and everyone tapped their drinks together. She leaned in close to me and whispered in my ear. “I never liked that asshole anyway.”

I burst out laughing. “Trust me, you’re not going to like him any more when I tell you what happened.”

“I’ll get that story out of you before you leave,” she muttered, and squeezed my shoulder as the conversation turned back to other things.

I appreciated the fact that she wasn’t about to make me drag the sorry story out in front of everyone. I also didn’t want to draw attention away from her as the focus of the night, so I was happy to let it slide for the time being.

“Oh my God, you have to be kidding me,” Nina exclaimed suddenly, and pointed toward the door.

All of us turned. Oh! My God, indeed. I felt my stomach drop and loop when I saw that Jesse had walked into the bar. He’d cleaned himself up from when I’d seen him earlier in the day, and I had to admit that he looked – he looked pretty damn good. Button-down shirt, jeans, hair styled so it spiked over in the front. I bit my lip, took a sip of my drink and averted my eyes, hoping that he hadn’t caught me looking. He’d been such a jerk to me earlier in the day, and I had no intention of giving him the satisfaction of knowing I had been thinking about him.

“Oh, fuck.” Julie rolled her eyes and turned her back to him. “That dick. Great.”

“Hey, what’s wrong with Jesse?” Nina cocked her head at the bride-to-be. “I think he’s kind of yummy.”

I was glad that my back was to him, because I was pretty sure I could feel his presence, pulsing through the air and making my skin tingle.

“That’s because you never really knew him in high school,” Julie denounced with a shiver of disgust.

Nina frowned. “He had a nickname back then, didn’t he?”

“Cherry popper,” I blurted out, then felt my neck go hot with embarrassment.

“That’s right,” Nina said with a slow smile. “I remember now. He had that big black bike. They wanted to crown him Prom King, but they couldn’t find him, because he was doing some girl in the garden.”

“Exactly,” Julie pounced. “He’s the biggest jerk on two legs. That man has slept with so many women he’s probably crawling with STDs.”

“Well, that’s an image.” Nina raised her eyebrows grimly and took another sip of her drink, but her eyes hungrily followed his journey to the bar.

“Nah, he looks too healthy to have STDs,” Shana said with a sigh.

“Even people who are HIV positive can look normal,” Julie shot back.

“I don’t think you should say things like that about people unless you know for sure,” Michelle protested.

“STDs be damned, I’d do him,” Mary-Jane declared loudly, pushing her chest out.

Everybody hooted with laughter except Julie. “Ugh…no thanks,” she practically spat out.

“You only say that because you don’t know what I’ve heard he can do,” Mary-Jane countered, her eyes twinkling and her face full of mischief.

“What have you heard?” Shana asked.

“Well,” Mary-Jane began dramatically, and all of us leaned in to hear.