Pictures littered the walls, as they always had, collecting dust as much as memories. Gran was the third oldest of eight with pictures of her immense family all over the room. A scant few pictures of her own two daughters. They’d almost all been replaced by photographs of me and Maddox throughout the years.
“The kids I never had,” was what she always said.
I’d laughed then. I just found it sad now.
I pressed my fingers to a graduation photo nearest the door. Maddox and I stood in baby-blue cap and gowns at the local high school. Gran and Gramps had their arms around each of us. Lila and our other best friend, Josie, beamed. I’d never seen Gran as happy as when I got that full scholarship to Duke.
“Off to bigger and better, chickadee.
It was too much. How was I supposed to survive a wake here? How could I fill Gran’s house with strangers? How had we gotten wrangled into this in the first place? I wanted to be left alone. I didn’t want any well-meaning cakes and dinners. I didn’t want people to tell me they were sorry for my loss. I didn’t want pity at all. I wanted Gran back. I wanted the impossible.
My heart constricted. That was the last thing I needed.
I could hear Maddox stomping around upstairs. Who even know what he was doing? I wanted to tell him to keep it down, but if stomping around helped him grieve, then who was I to tell him to keep it quiet?
Then the doorbell rang, saving me from making a decision.
I checked my reflection in a giant brass mirror that Gran had always called the Lipstick Mirror. My eyes were still puffy, but they weren’t lined with tears. My curly brown hair was actually manageable since Lila had gotten to it before the funeral. My cheeks rosy from the Savannah summer humidity. My lips a perfect neutral pink, just as Gran had always preferred. I’d even picked her favorite Estée Lauder color, Pinkberry.
“I got it,” I called out to Maddox and then swung the door open.
My heart stopped as I found Derek Ballentine standing before me in a three-piece navy-blue pinstripe suit. As impossibly tall as ever with his sideswept brown hair and those too-damn-keen hazel eyes. His lips were pouty with an exaggerated Cupid’s bow and always appeared as if he’d been kissing all afternoon. He looked like he’d walked off the set of Savannah’s quintessential film, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. He’d always been gorgeous. And he was the very last person I wanted to see.
“Derek,” I growled.
“Minivan,” he said, rolling over the nickname I’d always hated.
“No.”
“Aww, Mars, you didn’t miss me?”
I glared at him, and then without a second thought, I slammed the door in his too-smug face.
2
Savannah
October 29, 2004
The first time I saw Derek Ballentine, I thought he was the most gorgeous person I’d ever met. Then he opened his mouth.
“Hey, y’all,” he drawled, low and smooth. “Any of y’all have Halloween plans other than losing to Holy Cross?”
He pulled his Holy Cross letterman jacket more firmly around his shoulders and then leaned forward against the chain-link fence. His other basketball buddies chuckled at his incredible wit.
While Danielle and Leigh stumbled over their words to see the hot private school boys talking to us, I narrowed my eyes. Yes, we were losing the football game to the all-boys private Catholic school 42 to 10. Yes, we undeniably sucked. But this guy wasn’t even playing. His letterman jacket was for basketball, which they sucked at. I’d cheered through enough basketball games to know that we destroyed them every year. They had, like, one good guy on that team, and it probably wasn’t even this guy.
“Is that supposed to be a pickup line?” I demanded, planting a hand on my hip and stretching the baby-blue miniskirt.
His eyes dropped to my long, pale legs and back up. “I don’t know. Is it working?”
“No,” I said flatly.
He shrugged, undeterred. “Well, I’m having a Halloween party tomorrow night. My parents are out of town, and y’all should swing by.”
“Oh wow, yeah!” Leigh said with wide blue eyes. “That’d be fun, right?”
Danielle bit her lip. “I’m supposed to go to Jack’s gig. So… I don’t know.”
“What about you?” he asked, nodding at me.
“I mean, the invitation just sounded so tempting, what with the insults and all, but no.”
Of course, I didn’t say it was because Gran and Gramps would never in a million years let me go to an unchaperoned Halloween party. Let alone a Holy Cross party. They’d never liked the local Catholic schools. They had vocally opposed Lila going to St. Catherine’s, the sister school to Holy Cross. But it was hard to argue when her mom got her free tuition because she working there.
“She’s got you there, Derek,” the tall Black guy next to him said with a laugh. “Why don’t you show them some manners? I’m Trask.” He held his hand across the fence, and Leigh shook it. He smacked the obnoxious one in the chest afterward. “This is Derek. And Hooper.”