ABBY
HE’LL SEE YOU at the reunion… he guesses?” Helen demands for the twelfth time, her crepey skin flushing pink across her heaving bosom as she whips through my admittedly limited wardrobe. “And that’s it?”
I go to the bed and gather an armful of dresses deemed “outdated,” “dowdy,” and “don’t even think about it,” and carry them back to the closet. Gently nudging Helen aside, I clarify, “He fixed my Smart Board and took my phone to fix too,” which I’m still completely embarrassed about.
He also winked. And there was that smile. Plus the eye contact, all of which I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time wondering about, trying to analyze, and then trying even harder not to analyze… because as it turns out, the only reason Hank Wagner was at the school was because he’d been taking a belated tour of the sciences wing he donated.
Running into me was incidental. Obviously.
“Not a word since he took off for that fancy college. Not a phone call or letter or Facebook poke, for that matter. And he waltzes into your class like he owns the place, steals your phone, and says see you Saturday? What is that?” Helen demands, sounding closer to nineteen than her actual sixty-two.
Honestly, it’s probably more than I deserve.
I sit on my bed, my back propped against the ruffled shams, my fingertips tracing the stitched pattern in my quilt. “I had class. What was he supposed to do, ask the kids to give us a few so we could catch up? He was only there to see what the school had done with all his money and he still stopped in to help me out. I’d say it was pretty generous.”
Helen taps a rhinestone-tipped nail against her lips. “Is he as good looking in person as he is in the magazines?”
Laughing, I nod. “Believe it or not, even better.” And now I’m thinking about the way his suit jacket stretched across his broad shoulders when he was doing whatever the heck it was he did to fix the Smart Board. How his biceps bunched into rounded mounds visible even through the coat. How I wanted to run my finger along the line of his jaw to test the texture of his stubble.
The sound of Helen clearing her throat has me looking up in a guilty rush. “What?”
“You’re going to need a new dress. Something slinky and sophisticated.”
The thought has crossed my mind. Not because of Hank, though. No way. I just need to update my wardrobe with something my mom didn’t help pick out.
Wagging a finger in my direction, she gives me a once-over I’m not entirely comfortable with.
“Um, Helen?”
“A quality push-up bra wouldn’t be amiss. Your girls are lovely, but they deserve to be showcased from time to time.” She closes in like she’s about to test what I’m working with.
“Helen!” I squawk, crossing my arms over my chest.
Eyes twinkling, she backs off. “What’s your Hank’s favorite color? No, never mind. It might have changed since you knew him. I’ll ask the Google.” Helen holds up her phone to her lips and primly clears her throat. “Okay, Google—”
“I am not buying underwear in Hank’s favorite color.” I’m not buying underwear for Hank at all.
Why I continue to confide in Helen is beyond me. In the beginning, she looked like the sweet grandmother I never had, offering a steamy mug of cocoa as she pulled back that crinkly layer of cellophane from her plate of cookies. But within five minutes, it was more than clear Helen wasn’t any kind of fairytale granny… she was the walking, talking embodiment of TMI. And I kind of fell in love with her pushy, boundary-abolishing self that very day.
A penciled scowl meets my stare. “The Google doesn’t work if you talk at the same time.”
“I know, I’m sorry. But I don’t need a new bra. Even if Hank is there. We were over ten years ago.” And despite the bout of breathless, fluttery business I suffered in my class, he seemed completely unaffected. Which made sense, considering the man dates exotic supermodels and world-class ballerinas these days, not plain Janes who never left his hometown.
“Bra-schma. You need lingerie. A matching set of as many pieces as you can get.” Helen’s eyes take on a gleam I haven’t seen before as her sparkly fingers move molasses-slow over her phone. “And you need a wax. That’s nonnegotiable. I’ll book you for the full package with my girl.”
“No!” I choke, closing my eyes against Helen’s exhaustive waxing rituals. “I swear, I’ll take care of myself. I’ll use the hot rollers and shave past my knee. Not that it matters. Hank will probably show up with a date.” He certainly has enough of them.
Helen tsks, perching carefully at the side of my bed. “Of course it matters,” she chides softly. “Especially if he brings a date. I know what that boy meant to you, and whether there’s any chemistry left between you or not, when you see him again, you need to feel beautiful and confident. For yourself.”
And now I remember why I tell Helen everything. It’s not because she reminds me of a grandmother I never had. It’s because she’s my best friend.
Throat tight, I nod. “I’ll think about the lingerie.”
Helen’s papery hand closes around mine. “And the wax, dear.”
HANK
“OH, BULLSHIT. YOU’RE totally hiding from your assistant,” Jack accuses, laughing darkly as we cut through our building’s lobby. It’s only 5:15 and I should definitely be back at work, but after the shit-storm I just dropped on Sheila, asking her to adjust my travel schedule to accommodate the reunion on Saturday, no way am I putting myself in her path.
“Please. Haven’t you heard? Everyone cowers in my shadow.”
Jack barks out another colorful expletive, and a leggy blonde decked out in couture glances back at us as she waits for security to process her. There’s a flare of recognition as her eyes land on me, a subtle straightening of her spine that’s become familiar in strangers over the years, and it tells me she knows who I am.
Probably Jack too. He doesn’t make as many headlines, but the guy’s a third-generation real estate developer and owns half of Chicago. Plus the cameras can’t get enough of his broody, hard-to-get bullshit.
We keep walking to the “Residents Only” elevator. The woman might be there for Greg or Brian, or one of Jack’s other tenants, or she might be one of the reasons this building has the best security in the city. A benefit that’s come in handy more than once in the year I’ve been back.
Inside the car, Jack waves his watch in front of the sensor and the floor panel lights up with a P. “Coming up for a beer?”
What else am I going to do until Sheila heads home for the night? “I ought to come up and kick your ass. You couldn’t just tell me she works there?”
We haven’t talked about Abby yet and I’m not sure if it’s because Jack is managing me with one of his negotiation tactics or if it’s purely force of habit.
“Ooh are we lifting the moratorium on use of the A-word?”
God, he’s an ass.
The elevator doors open into an apartment that screams old money while managing to have state-of-the-art everything. We head straight for the kitchen, the lights coming on automatically around us and that classic from Queens of the Stone Age starting to play throughout the place.
He hands me a beer from the fridge and leans into the counter. “Would you have gone if you knew she was there?”
I take a long swallow and meet his eyes.
He laughs and, shaking his head, points his bottle at me. “That’s why. But it was time, man. Past time.”
“Seeing her again wasn’t what I would have expected.” Understatement of the century.
The side of his mouth hitches up. “It isn’t like running into other people you used to know. She’s—”
“The same.”
“Yeah.” He takes a thoughtful swallow. “But you’re not.”
No. I’m not. My goals and plans have changed. My priorities. The way I interact and the attachments I allow myself. All of it’s different to the point of being nearly unrecognizable.
I’m not the same. And I don’t really want to think about what it was like for those few minutes, feeling like I was. So instead I lean on my favorite fallback. The future. What happens next.
“Saturday’s going to be a madhouse,” I warn, glad Sheila already mentioned upping security for the night. “What time do you want the car to pick you up?”
Jack shakes his head, an amused scowl on his face. “Pass. I’m totally hooking up with Natalie Anverse. Don’t need you cramping my style. Besides, I saw how you were looking at Abby. Not going to risk getting ditched back in Bearings when you whisk her off into the sunset.”
He’s nuts. Natalie was never into him. And considering Abby was essentially standing precisely where I left her ten years ago, and grinning her head off about it, it’s safe to say I won’t be whisking her anywhere. But most of all… “You can’t be serious. You want me to show up to this thing alone?”
“You’re about to make space your bitch,” Jack says dryly. “Pretty sure you can handle a couple hours with your old classmates.”
I nod, except it’s not the hours with the classmates I’m worried about. It’s the few minutes with Abby Mitchel I’m already looking forward to, to an unsettling degree. It’s that I can still smell the hint of fresh apple I caught when I leaned in close. And that I’ve already ordered her a new phone, not because I can’t fix the one she put into my hand… please. Hers is crap and I want her to have something better. I want her to have what I have, and since one of my companies had a hand in developing the operating system… I want her to like it.
It’s that I can feel that one quick snapshot I caught before Abby realized I was standing in her classroom burning a hole in my phone… even though I’ve already managed to look at it twenty-six times.
It’s that Abby is so much the same, I can’t think for even a second there’s a chance that after ten years things might be different.