The Risk

“No, unfortunately. She’s performing her girlfriendly duty and supporting Briar at the semifinals against Yale tomorrow night. Her boyfriend is on the team.”

“Why does she miss you?”

“We haven’t hung out since last weekend. And yes, I know a week is not a long time at all, but in Summer years that’s a decade. She’s melodramatic.”

My phone chirps again.

“See what I mean?” I chuckle, tucking my mascara and lipstick into the small makeup case I brought with me. “Pass me my phone, will ya? If I don’t text her back, she’s liable to have a panic attack.”

Tansy checks the screen. Her shoulders stiffen slightly. “It’s not Summer,” she informs me.

I knit my brows. “Okay. Who is it?”

There’s a long pause. Something shifts in the air, and suddenly a cloud of tension settles between us.

Tansy studies me, wary. “Why didn’t you tell me you were still in touch with Eric?”

5

Brenna

The tension seeps into my body, turning my shoulders to stone and my spine to iron. And yet my fingers feel like jelly, and I begin to tremble. Luckily, I’m finished putting on mascara; otherwise, I would’ve poked an eyeball out.

“Eric messaged?” I’m bothered by how weak my voice sounds. “What does it say?”

Tansy tosses me the phone. My gaze instantly lowers to the message. It’s brief.

ERIC: Call me, B. Need to talk to you.

Uneasiness trickles down my spine like drops from a leaky faucet. Shit. What does he want now?

“What does he want?” Tansy speaks my thoughts, only she sounds far more distrustful than I am.

“I don’t know. And to answer your question, we’re not in touch.”

That’s not entirely true. I hear from Eric two or three times a year, usually when he’s high as a kite or drunk off his face. If I don’t pick up, he keeps calling, over and over and over, until I do. I don’t have the heart to block his number, but the heart I do possess splinters each time I answer his calls and hear how far he’s fallen.

“Did you know my mom ran into him, like, six or seven months ago? It was around Halloween.”

“Really? Why didn’t she say anything about it over the holidays?”

“She didn’t want to worry you,” Tansy confesses.

A heavy breath gets stuck in my throat. The fact that Aunt Sheryl thought I would be worried tells me the state Eric was in when she saw him. “Was he high?”

“Mom thinks so.”

I exhale slowly. “I feel so bad for him.”

“You shouldn’t,” Tansy says frankly. “He’s the one who chooses to keep indulging in that lifestyle. His mom got him a spot in that super-expensive rehab in Vermont and he refused to go, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.” I feel bad for Eric’s mother, too. It’s so frustrating trying to help someone who refuses to admit they have a problem.

“Nobody is forcibly pouring booze down his throat or making him do drugs. Nobody is holding him hostage in Westlynn. He can leave town anytime. We did.”

She’s right. Nothing is keeping Eric in Westlynn, New Hampshire, except for his own demons. I, on the other hand, fled to Boston right after high school graduation.

There’s nothing wrong with my hometown. It’s a perfectly nice place, meeting the small-town requirements of tranquil and quaint. My dad and his siblings were born and raised in Westlynn, and Aunt Sheryl and Uncle Bill still reside there with their spouses. Dad waited until I moved out before he relocated to Hastings, Massachusetts. Before that, he made the hour-long commute to Briar so that I could continue to attend school with my cousins and friends. I think he’s happier in Hastings, though. The town is five minutes from campus, and his house is a roomy old Victorian with a ton of charm.

My ex-boyfriend chose to stay in our hometown. He spiraled after graduation, falling in with all the wrong people and doing all the wrong things. Westlynn isn’t overrun with drug dealers, but that’s not to say you can’t find drugs there. You can find drugs anywhere, sadly.

Eric is stuck. Everyone else has moved on, and he’s still in the same place. No, he’s in an even worse place these days. Maybe I shouldn’t feel sorry for him, but I do. And our history makes it hard to write him off entirely.

“I don’t think you should call him.”

My cousin’s stern words jolt me back to the present. “I probably won’t.”

“Probably won’t?”

“Ninety percent won’t, ten percent might.”

“Ten percent is too high.” She shakes her head. “That guy will only drag you down if you let him back in your life.”

I blanch. “God, don’t even worry about that happening. A hundred percent chance it won’t.”

“Good. Because clearly he’s still obsessed with you.”

“He was never obsessed with me,” I say in Eric’s defense.

“Are you kidding me? Remember when you got mono junior year and couldn’t attend school for a couple of months? Eric had a total meltdown,” she reminds me. “He called you every five seconds, skipped class to go see you, freaked out when Uncle Chad told him to stop coming over. It was intense.”

I avert my eyes. “Yeah. I guess it was a tad dramatic. What do you think of this top, by the way?” I gesture to my ribbed black crop top. It ties around the neck and the back, exposing my midriff.

“Hot AF,” Tansy declares.

“You know you saved no time by saying AF instead of ‘as fuck,’ right? Same amount of syllables,” I tease, all the while battling relief that she accepted my change of subject so readily.

I don’t like dwelling on that time in my life. Truth be told, thinking about Eric is as exhausting as it was actually dealing with him back in the day. One thought of him, and I feel as if I just climbed Everest. My ex is an energy vampire.

“I speak internet lingo,” Tansy retorts. “The one true language. Anyway, you look hot, and I look hot, so let’s go out and show everyone how hot we are. You ready?”

I swipe my purse off her roommate’s bed. “Ready AF.”

We end up at an Irish pub in the Back Bay area. It’s called the Fox and Fiddle, and populated primarily by college students, judging by all the younger faces. Sadly, there’s a conspicuous lack of hockey attire. I spot one or two maroon-and-gold jerseys, the colors of the Boston College Eagles. But that’s it. It makes me long for Malone’s, the bar in Hastings where all the Briar hockey fans congregate.

Tansy checks her phone as we walk inside. We’re meeting her boyfriend here. Or maybe it’s her ex-boyfriend? Fuck buddy? I never know when it comes to her and Lamar. Their on-again/off-again relationship has the head-spinning quality of riding a Tilt-O-Whirl.

“No text from Lamar. I guess he’s not here yet.” She links her arm through mine on our way to the bar. “Let’s order shots. We haven’t done shots since Christmas.”

There’s a huge crowd waiting to be served. When I catch the eye of one of the bartenders, he signals that he’ll be a minute.

“I really wish you went to BC with me,” Tansy says glumly. “We could do this all the time.”

“I know.” I would’ve loved to attend Boston College with her, but they rejected my application. I didn’t have the grades back then; my relationship with Eric pretty much torpedoed my ability to concentrate on school. I went to community college instead, until I was able to transfer to Briar, where I don’t have to pay tuition since my father works there.

“Sweet. They’re showing the Bruins game.” I gaze up at one of the monitors mounted from the ceiling. A blur of black and yellow whizzes by as the Bruins go on an offensive attack.

“Hurray!” Tansy says with mock enthusiasm. She doesn’t give a crap about hockey. Her game of choice is basketball. As in, she only dates basketball players.

I try to flag down the bartender again, but he’s busy serving a group of chicks in teeny dresses. The pub is surprisingly packed for ten thirty at night. Normally, people are still pre-drinking somewhere else at this time.

Tansy checks her phone again, then types something. “Where the hell is he?” she mutters.

“Text him.”

“Just did. He’s not answering for some rea—oh wait, he’s typing.” She waits until the message appears. “Okay, he’s—oh my God, you have got to be kidding me.”

“What’s wrong?”

Irritation flashes in her dark eyes. “One sec. I need to call him and figure out what the hell.”

Oh boy. I pray there isn’t trouble in paradise, because I know Tansy can sometimes get fixated on her boyfriend slash ex-boyfriend slash fuck buddy. I’m still not sure.

What I do know is that I was looking forward to a fun weekend with my favorite cousin, especially after my dreadful interview this morning. Holy shit did that suck.

I watch the Bruins game as I wait for Tansy. Neither of the two bartenders comes to take my order, which is probably a good thing because my cousin stomps back in a huff.

“You won’t believe this,” she announces. “The stupid idiot got the bars mixed up. He’s at the Frog and Fox near Fenway. We’re at the Fox and Fiddle.”