Chapter 1
Danielle
“You’ve got to be crazy if you think that I’m going to that thing tonight. You wouldn’t catch me dead at one of those.”
Mariss didn’t get it and she was not going without me, so she told me that I was going to have to give her a better reason than that.
“And why is that? Isn’t there anyone there that you wonder about? I mean, gosh it’s been ten years. I would like to see how everyone is doing and I hope that Mindy and her band of rejects are all fat and divorced.”
“You don’t want to bring that karma down on you. What if they look amazing?”
Mariss agreed. Her thin face wasn’t smiling when she thought of that. I knew that she’d gotten the invitation a month ago and was just now mentioning it. She knew that I didn’t want to go, but I also knew that she’d been eating carrot sticks and celery for a month in preparation. I didn’t want to go, but I knew that I would for her. I was just going to give her a hard time about it because it was so damn fun and I was still a little reluctant to go to such an event.
“They won’t. I’ve been doing a little recon.”
I rolled my eyes at her and told her that she was taking it far too seriously. “High school only matters when you are going through it. At the end of the day, it’s just a few years before your real life begins.”
“Can you not philosophize this? I want to have fun, wear a pretty dress, drink some free booze and check out some of the guys I used to date and see how they are doing. Don’t you want to see anyone again? I know that you and Mack were hot and heavy a long time ago. Don’t you wonder what ever happened to him after graduation?”
I hadn’t thought about Mack in a long time. A very long time. He was the man I dated my senior year of high school, but as the year neared its end, it was clear that we weren’t going to make it past graduation. I’d broken up with him because it seemed like the best thing to do at the time. I wanted to leave it copasetic, but he hadn’t taken it so well when it came down to it. There had been a fight and a lot of things had been said. The last thing I’d said to him was that I hoped I never saw him again. For ten years that had been true and I hadn’t.
“Not really. Besides, I doubt he will even be there. You know that he was never one to go to those kinds of functions. He was always too cool for all of that. The way he was getting in trouble back then, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was in jail or something by now. I mean can you imagine what Mack is into now? It’d probably something illegal. I don’t think he will even be there, so that’s not even an option.”
My friend and roommate grinned and pushed her black hair back off of her face. “It’s good to know that you haven’t thought about him at all.”
I shut my mouth because I didn’t want to say anymore. It would have been a lie to say that I hadn’t thought about him through the years. I’d learned after we broke up that whatever had been between us was something special. It wasn’t like anything else that I had encountered with any other man. There had always been something about Mack and now that I was in the real world and had been dating for a decade, I knew that I was most likely never going to find a man to please me like he had again. That was a hard thing to grasp and accept, but he wouldn’t be at the reunion, so it wasn’t even worth thinking about.
“I have through the years, but it doesn’t do me any good. I wouldn’t know what to say to Mack if I saw him again. I can’t imagine that we would have anything in common and he probably got married and had kids. He was more into that sort of thing that you would have thought. He was a tough guy in front of everyone, but we used to sit up for hours talking about our life together after graduation and he’d wanted all of those things. I can’t see anything good coming from going to that reunion or seeing Mack again. What if he brought his wife?”
“If you didn’t care, it wouldn’t matter.”
Mariss had me there, but I wasn’t going to give it to her. I knew that if she was encouraged, it just made it worse. I first saw that invitation in the mail and my mind had played through all of the scenarios that I could come up with if I went and saw Mack. The one I liked least was where he was married and had a beautiful wife. Or that he wouldn’t even remember me. I hated the idea that he still occupied a place in my mind and I may not in his.
“Do you really want to go?”
Mariss nodded her head and clasped her hands together like she was begging. I made a sound of aggravation and she took it as it was my way of giving in. It really was and it was then that I realized again that Mariss knew me too damn well.
“Yes and you do too, even if you don’t know it yet. It’s going to be fun and we could both use a night out. I mean, when was the last time that we went out instead of staying in and grading papers?”
She had a point and I agreed finally. Mariss had been hinting at going for days, but now was the night and she’d been on me about it since school let out and we drove back to the house that we shared. It was my turn to drive and though we were late this morning, I should have known that there was a reason that Mariss wasn’t upset about it. I should have known that it was going to be leverage for later.
“Fine Mariss, we will go. But I think you’re expecting far more than you’re going to get. You were about the only thing I wanted to take with me out of high school. Everyone else I could give or take. I don’t know why it would change ten years later.”
“It’s a nostalgia thing I guess. I don’t know why, but I want to go. I guess I am just interested how everyone turned out. I know that it’s weird and we’ll never see them again after tonight, but I think it would be nice.”
“No more reason to explain it. I’ve already agreed. I will go get dressed. Give me five minutes.”
“Take ten and put something cute on. A little war paint wouldn’t hurt”
I didn’t comment back to her because we were in perpetual argument about clothes. She liked to wear clothes that were not very elusive to what they hid beneath them and I preferred not to dress like that. I was twenty eight years old and so was Mariss. She needed to remember that sometimes. The dress she was wearing now was too short and tight, but I wasn’t going to be the one to rain on her parade. She knew what it looked like and didn’t care. Mariss was thin and beautiful and still figured that she could wear whatever she wanted. Since everything looked good on her, I was of that ilk to think that as well.
But I was a different issue altogether and I had filled out in the last ten years. My tits got bigger, hips got wider and the dresses in those stores at the mall didn’t fit right anymore.
I sighed at the closet as I looked at all of the things that were hung up. I was in the back of it, way in the back with things that I hadn’t seen in years. There was this one little red dress that I’d bought as a fluke and now I finally had a place to wear it. If I did by chance run into Mack, I wanted to be wearing something pretty and sexy like this. Why else would I go to this thing? I wasn’t thinking about him, but just in case.