Three months later

 

Madison was texting when her phone rang, and the sound and vibration surprised her so much she dropped her phone onto her lap.

Not very many people called her anymore. Most of her friends and family just sent her messages.

When she’d grabbed the phone from between her thighs, she checked the screen and saw it was Timothy calling. They usually said everything they needed to say to each other in person, so she wasn’t used to getting calls from him.

She stared at his name on the screen for several seconds before she connected the call.

“Madison,” Timothy said. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Am I interrupting anything?”

It was seven thirty on a Thursday evening. She’d just been sitting on her couch with the television on, texting a guy she’d known from school. “No, not at all. What’s up?”

“You’re going to that wedding two weeks from now, aren’t you? Your plans haven’t changed?” Timothy was never big on small talk, but this seemed more abrupt than normal.

“Yes, yes, I am. My plans haven’t changed”

“Are you going with Charlie and Hannah?”

She blinked. “No, they both have dates.”

“Oh. Do you have a date?”

“N-no.” She didn’t have a date. She didn’t think vague thoughts about seeing an old classmate at the wedding and hoping she might have a little fling with him counted as a date.

“Is that a definite no?”

“Yes, it’s a definite no.” She was getting a little annoyed by the strange interrogation, coming out of the blue like this. She’d just seen him yesterday evening when he came home from his evening class. Why hadn’t he brought this up then? “Why?”

“I’m going to the wedding too. My parents are watching Jenny that weekend. Did you want to go together?”

She stopped breathing for a moment. “Oh.”

Was this a date? Was he actually asking her on a date after all this time? She’d been doing better recently about not having hopes for him. Was this really happening now?

Several months ago, he’d asked if she wanted to go to a movie with him. It was a movie they’d both talked about seeing, and he’d seemed to make a point of the invitation.

She’d thought it was a real date.

She’d looked forward to it for a week, and she’d primped and picked out the perfect outfit (casual but still very pretty). She’d genuinely thought it was a big step. When he’d called to make plans, he’d suggested they meet at the theater, which was a little disappointing—but still…

She’d been waiting for him at the theater, breathless and jittery.

Then he’d appeared, smiling and handsome.

He’d been wearing old jeans and a sweatshirt. He hadn’t shaved. And he’d brought his parents with him.

He’d obviously never thought about it as a date.

She was still mortified by how foolish she’d been, how crushed she’d been.

She wasn’t going to do it again. But this sounded like…

Timothy cleared his throat softly. “No sense to drive all the way out there on our own if we can carpool.”

Carpool.

That answered her questions quite clearly.

He wanted to carpool.

Definitely not a date.

“Sure,” she said casually. “We might as well drive out together.”

“Good. Great. Excellent. That’s what we’ll do.”

She frowned at her phone for a moment. His words were stiff, almost forced. If he wasn’t excited about going with her, then he hadn’t had to ask. She would have been fine going on her own.

She didn’t have very many hang-ups about going places on her own. She liked her own company, and she’d learned long ago that people really didn’t pay as much attention to other people as everyone thought they did. No one cared if she was alone. She had plenty of friends to hang out with.

Plus she might hook up at the wedding with Kevin, whom she’d had a crush on through most of high school.

She had plans to have fun, look pretty, let go a little that weekend after having such a hard year with her work and family. She didn’t need a date to do that. In fact, it might be easier if she didn’t.

If Timothy was asking her without enthusiasm, then she’d rather he not even bother.

Realizing the silence had gone on too long on the phone, she made herself smile as she said, “It’s a plan then.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” She shook her head, vaguely annoyed at him for dropping the conversation like this. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow. I promised Jenny I’d take her to the zoo after school.”

“Okay. Good. Sounds good. I’ll see you then.”

Still shaking her head even as she chuckled to herself, she said goodbye and disconnected the call.

Maybe he was worried she’d think it was a date or something.

He needn’t have worried.

She wasn’t that stupid.

She’d figured out months ago that everything that felt like a date with him really wasn’t.

Pulling up her text app again, she apologized to Kevin for dropping off, explaining she’d gotten a call.

They texted for another half hour, not really talking about anything specific, just sustaining the conversation.

She hadn’t seen him in years, but he’d been cute and athletic and flirtatious. For more than a year in high school, she’d hoped he might like her, but he’d never really asked her out. She thought she was fairly attractive now with blond hair, clear skin, and a fit, compact body, but she hadn’t felt pretty in high school. She’d felt plain and boring and insecure, so she hadn’t really been surprised when Kevin hadn’t fallen for her.

She didn’t have daydreams about him falling for her now. He lived in Boston, and the distance between them would be incredibly inconvenient.

But maybe a little weekend fling wasn’t too much to ask.

He seemed interested. He’d been texting her a lot lately. He seemed excited about seeing her at the wedding.

Which was more than Timothy did.

***

Two evenings later, Madison was over at her friend Charlie’s very nice townhouse in Georgetown, and she, Charlie, and Hannah were drinking champagne.

Madison’s family had a very successful business, so she’d never been hurting for money, but she didn’t have anything close to the fortune that Charlie had inherited when her parents died. Her townhouse was gorgeous and roomy and conveniently located to shops and restaurants, so the three of them tended to hang out there the most.

Tonight they were celebrating since they’d all made the first steps toward their plans for the wedding. A few weeks ago, they’d been hanging out together like this, talking about what they wanted in life and how they could eventually get there. The conversation had turned into a pact between the three of them. By the end of the wedding weekend, they were all going to get what they really wanted.

Charlie wanted to win the heart of the man she loved. Hannah wanted to lose her virginity.

And Madison… well, all Madison wanted was to have a little fling, to let her hair down for a weekend and feel pretty and desirable again.

They were all committed to following through with the pact, and they were going to hold each other accountable.

Madison felt like she had the easiest goal of the three of them.

She wasn’t looking for love. She wasn’t hoping for her first time.

She just wanted to have a little fun—even if it was just for a weekend.

Maybe what she really wanted was more than that, but she knew she wasn’t going to get it. A pact wasn’t going to change that fact. She wasn’t the kind of person to hope for something she knew she couldn’t have.

“So does Kevin know what you’re planning?” Charlie asked after they’d talked about the steps she and Hannah had made toward their goals.

“No,” Madison said with a little eye-roll. “I didn’t ask him if he’d like to have sex at the wedding. I haven’t even seen him in years.”

“If his pictures are anything to go by, he’s still cute,” Charlie said. “I bet he wouldn’t mind if you just propositioned him.”

“I’m not going to proposition him before I even see him! I’m not even sure if I’ll be able to do it at the wedding.”

“Yes, you will,” Hannah said. “If I can ask Bruce if he’ll have sex with me for my first time, then you can ask Kevin if he wants to hook up for the night.”

“Bruce is your friend. I don’t even know Kevin anymore.”

“That makes it easier, not harder.”

Madison thought about that and then decided Hannah was right. She might be able to come on to Kevin. Since they weren’t good friends and barely knew each other anymore, the stakes were pretty low. It would have been different if she’d had to come on to Timothy. The stakes were much higher with him. Very, very high. If she messed up, she’d lose something incredibly important to her.

Better to proposition Kevin than proposition Timothy.

“So what is Timothy going to think?” Charlie asked, as if she’d read the direction of Madison’s thoughts.

“About what?”

“About you dumping him at the wedding to go screw Kevin.”

Madison sucked in an indignant breath. “I’m not going to be dumping Timothy! We’re not going together as dates. We’re just riding together.”

“You’re sure that’s all he had in mind?”

“Of course I’m sure. He used the word carpool.” There was a trace of bitterness in her voice on the last word.

Both Charlie and Hannah giggled at that.

“It’s not funny,” Madison insisted.

“Yes, it is,” Charlie said, smiling in her irrepressible way. She was pretty and curvy with reddish glints in her dark hair. Every part of her seemed to shine with a warm glow that came from within. “Just a little. If he was trying to ask you out, then he really blew it. He blew it almost as bad as bringing his parents to the movies with him. It’s kind of cute that he’s so nervous.”

“He’s not nervous. He wasn’t trying to ask me out. I don’t know why you keep hinting around about that. He’s still hung up on Emily. He’s not over her yet. And even if he were, I just don’t think he’d be interested in me. He’s the nicest guy in the world, so sometimes it seems like he might… but he’s just being nice. Really. I might as well be the nanny.”

Charlie and Hannah’s giggles sobered at that.

“It’s not that bad, is it?” Hannah asked. “Whenever I’ve seen him around you, he always seems to have a soft spot for you.”

Madison shrugged, trying to hold on to her practical demeanor. “I don’t know. I mean, of course he likes me. We’ve always been friends. But our friendship was always through Emily, and now I think it’s just through Jenny. He doesn’t want to… to be close to me—just for me.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Hannah said softly.

“I don’t either,” Charlie agreed with a definitive nod. “Maybe he just feels awkward and unsure of the situation. It’s got to be hard. To lose your wife so young the way he did and then to start falling for one of her good friends. No one can blame him for taking it slow and trying to feel you out first.”

“He’s not falling for me!” Madison’s voice was sharp, but it had to be. She couldn’t let her friends lead her thoughts in the wrong direction. She’d been trying so hard for months now to be realistic and not hope for the impossible.

“We’ll see,” Charlie murmured, her lip twitching just slightly.

Madison rolled her eyes and finished the champagne in her glass.

It wasn’t worth arguing with Charlie. Once she got something in her head, she never let it go.

Madison knew better.

She might have been foolish about him in the past, but she wasn’t anymore.

She wasn’t going to find her prince at the wedding.

She really just wanted to put on a pretty dress and go to the ball.

***

Two weeks later, Madison and Timothy were somewhere in southwest Virginia, on their way to the hotel.

They’d taken Madison’s car since hers was newer and not filled with little girl paraphernalia like his was. They were taking turns driving, and right now it was Timothy’s turn. He’d graded papers while she’d been driving earlier, but reading in the car gave her a headache, so she couldn’t get any work done while he drove. Especially since he’d gotten off the interstate and was taking back roads instead.

They’d chatted about a few casual things, but they’d been sitting in silence for about ten minutes now.

She didn’t mind silence. It didn’t feel uncomfortable, and she’d never been the kind of person who always felt obliged to fill it with words. But she kept feeling like Timothy was darting looks over at her, and she couldn’t help but wonder what he was thinking.

In an effort to make herself think about something different, her brain went off on one of those rambles through recollection and reflection until it landed on an embarrassing memory.

The memory hit her like a sledgehammer, and she gave an uncontrollable jerk in response, sitting up straighter and trying to force her mind onto anything else.

“What’s the matter?” Timothy asked, urgency evident in his voice.

“Nothing. Sorry. It was nothing.”

“Are you sick?”

“No. No, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? Because if you’re going to throw up, I’d like some warning so I can—”

“I’m not going to throw up!” she interrupted, a hot flush washing over her. “I’m not sick. I promise. I just… I just… thought about something.”

“Thought about what? It looked like something attacked you.”

She could tell from his expression and the tone of his voice that he wasn’t going to let this go. She might as well tell him now. With a reluctant sigh, she asked, “Do you ever get hit with memories out of the blue? They just sort of pop into your mind, and they’re not good memories. And you feel everything you did back then, and then you can’t get it out of your mind. It does kind of feel like the memory attacks you.”

“Yeah. I think I know what you’re talking about.”

“For me, they’re almost always embarrassing memories, remembering when I’ve made an absolute fool of myself. It’s usually in the middle of the night, and I just replay them over and over again in my mind.” She gave him a little smile. “It’s terrible.”

“What did you remember just now?”

“Oh… nothing really.”

“You’re really not going to tell me?”

“Fine. It was from back in high school. There was a guy I liked, and I was convinced he secretly liked me. So I wrote him this horrible sappy letter about all my feelings.” Her cheeks were literally burning at the memory. “I was such a complete fool. He didn’t like me at all. I’d taken all these trivial gestures and conversations and turned them into a romance. He… didn’t like me.”

“Shit,” Timothy breathed. “Was that Jax Keller?”

She licked her lips. “Yeah. I guess you know what he did with the letter?”

Jax had made a public show of the letter, reading it out loud to anyone who would listen and mocking it endlessly.

“What an asshole,” Timothy muttered. “I didn’t realize you’d written that letter.”

“I did. I was fourteen, and I should have forgiven myself by now for being young and foolish. But I still cringe at what I did, putting my heart out for the world to see that way. I can’t believe I was ever so stupid.”

“It wasn’t your fault. It was his fault. Even if he wasn’t into you, he should have treated you better.” Timothy was almost never angry, but his jaw was clenched now and resentment smoldered in his eyes.

For no good reason, his reaction made Madison feel a little better. “I know he should have. He was nothing but an asshole. But still… I was the one who was stupid enough to…”

“To what? To be honest about your feelings? What’s wrong with that?”

“I wasn’t just honest about my feelings. I’d made up a whole love story in my mind, one that didn’t exist at all. I’d convinced myself that all those little things meant something, and they didn’t. I wasn’t just honest. I was stupid. I was stupid.”

As she said the words, she realized they rang true in more than one way. It wasn’t just her fourteen-year-old self who could be so foolish. She could be just as stupid now. It wasn’t so long ago that she was hoping Timothy had feelings for her, based on little details, trivial conversations.

She’d been wrong about him too. At least this time she hadn’t humiliated herself in the process. Or not humiliated herself so the whole world could see.

She wasn’t going to be stupid like that again.

“Even so, if he’d been a decent guy,” Timothy said, that same edge of resentment in his tone, “he would have treated you better. The fault is his. Not yours.” He paused. “Is he going to be here this weekend?”

“No. I actually checked to see, but he’s not. Thank God.” She gave Timothy a tired smile. “Do you ever have memories that attack you out of the blue?” She suddenly realized that of course he did. His wife had died. Those memories had to attack him more than anything she’d ever experienced. “Embarrassing ones, I mean. Ones that make you cringe.”

“I knew what you meant,” he said softly. He paused, obviously thinking. “When I was a teenager, my mom and I got into a fight about something. It was stupid—just about how much time I was spending playing video games. But I got really mad about it, and I told her she wasn’t my real mother.”

Madison could see the tension in his fingers, in his grip on the steering wheel.

He continued, staring out at the road. “I still cringe thinking about it. How could I say something like that to her, no matter how angry I was? Later I heard her crying by herself in her room. I know she was crying because of me.”

“You were just a kid, Timothy. Everyone says things they don’t mean occasionally. I’m sure she knew that.”

“Yeah. I apologized to her, and it was all fine. She knows how much l love her. She knows how glad I am that she is my mother. But it doesn’t take away the memory. It still attacks me sometimes.”

She reached out to squeeze his arm gently. “You know, it just shows what a nice guy you really are, that the memory that most attacks you is when you were mean to someone and not just being generally humiliated.”

He shook his head, turning his head to let his dark eyes linger on her face. “A nice guy, am I?”

“Yes. Of course. You’re the nicest guy in the world.” Her eyes were wide with genuine surprise. “You know that, don’t you? There’s no one as nice as you are.”

He focused his eyes back on the road in front of him. They were going through a little town, which consisted of a home-cooking restaurant, a gas station, and three of what Madison had always thought of as “junk stores.” “I guess there are worse things than being nice,” Timothy murmured softly.

“Worse things? It’s a good thing, Timothy. It’s a good thing!”

His mouth tilted up slightly. “Okay. Thanks.” Without warning, he put on the brakes and turned the car into the parking lot of one of the junk stores.

“What are we doing?” Madison asked.

“We’re stopping to get our minds on something other than memories attacking us. Look. They have fudge here.”

The idea of fudge perked her up considerably. Plus she kind of needed to go to the bathroom anyway. So she got out of the car happily and went inside the store, where they were greeted by a friendly middle-aged woman.

When she came out of the bathroom, she heard Timothy’s voice from the hallway, before she stepped into the main room of the store. He was asking the woman about the store—how long ago she’d opened it, what kind of customers she got, how she decided what to stock. He was obviously genuinely interested. He was an anthropologist, after all. If he hung around for long, he’d be asking about the cultural history of the town and the makeup of the population.

The woman was clearly happy about the interest, and she kept chatting with him at great length as Madison came out to stand beside him.

“What about you?” the woman asked. “Where are you from?”

“We’re from DC,” Timothy said, glancing over at Madison to bring her into the conversation. “We’re just driving through on our way to West Virginia.”

“Oh, I meant you.” The woman looked briefly flustered, and Madison immediately knew why.

It wasn’t the first time someone had asked Timothy where he was from in her presence. His appearance was clearly Asian, although he spoke English exactly like Madison did herself.

It had always bothered her, this assumption that he wasn’t as American as anyone else.

Timothy smiled at the woman. “My parents were Korean, but I was adopted as a baby, and I’ve lived here all my life.”

The woman relaxed at his gentle words, and Madison could tell that she was relieved she hadn’t offended him. “And this is your wife? Your girlfriend?”

Madison was hit with a weird combination of embarrassment and pleasure. She couldn’t help but like the fact that the woman thought she and Timothy were a couple even though it made her feel awkward.

“She’s my good friend,” Timothy said softly, glancing over at Madison again.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the woman said, clearly believing she kept putting her foot in her mouth. “I just assumed…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Timothy said. He gave her a conspiratorial smile. “I’m still working on more than that.”

Madison stared at him in surprise, as the woman giggled, clearly pleased by his teasing comment.

The woman said, “Well, don’t give up. Here, let me get you some fudge.”

They left the shop a few minutes later, and Madison was still filled with confusion and pleasure and self-consciousness over the conversation.

Timothy was probably just smoothing over the woman’s little blunders. He was kind that way.

He obviously didn’t mean what he’d said.

He wasn’t working on changing their friendship into anything more.

He’d never said a word about it. He’d never made a single move.

She needed to let it go.

Just because she wanted to read meaning and feelings into every little word and gesture he made, it didn’t mean there was a reality underlying it.

She ate her piece of fudge and reminded herself that this wedding weekend wasn’t about Timothy.

He wasn’t hers to win.