Losing her had felt like chopping off a limb, and I still felt the phantom pain. But it was mixed with a healthy dose of my own anger and betrayal because I hadn’t been given a choice in how our story played out. I had been relegated to the role of the insensitive asshole and Meg the heartbroken ingénue.
It wasn’t fair. I had never been given a chance to tell my side. To explain myself. She had decided that I was a jerk. That I had jilted her. I had tried to make it right on more than one occasion, but she had stubbornly refused to hear me out.
We had turned a corner, and there was no going back.
The end.
And I lost my best friend. She had made the decision that I was erased from her narrative. It made me more than a little bitter because the girl I had thought knew me better than anyone had been so quick to see the absolute worst in me.
Well, fuck Meg Galloway and her sanctimonious self-righteousness.
“There he is,” Dad exclaimed when he saw me. He waved me over to the vacant seat beside him. “I was just telling Meghan about the town’s bicentennial mural project. She seems interested in helping out.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked mildly. I would be unaffected. I wouldn’t let her know how much her presence got to me.
Or how badly I had missed her.
Fuck Meg Galloway. It didn’t matter that she was back in town. It didn’t mess with me in the slightest.
Nope. Not one bit.
If I thought it enough, maybe I’d start believing it.
Lena put the glass of red wine down in front of Meg, who had yet to look my way. Her face was angled so that I couldn’t quite see her. Not that I was trying.
Yeah right.
“Here you go, Meggie. Hope you like red.” Lena’s smile was bright if not slightly on the hysterical side. My sister understood what a minefield she was walking through even if our oblivious father had no idea.
My parents knew that Meg and I had stopped talking during our last year of high school, though they never knew the reason. I became so busy with senior year stuff and my new relationship with Chelsea that the absence of my best friend was easily explained away. They never knew how the girl they viewed as a second daughter had come to despise me. It became a classic tale of a friendship that had drifted apart, nothing more. Sure, they gave me crap over the years about being better at staying in touch with my friends, and they continued to speak about Meg with the breezy normalcy of the blissfully ignorant, but they never questioned why our paths never crossed again.
“Here you go, Dad. I picked up the Merlot you like.” I handed him the other wine glass, which my father accepted enthusiastically.
“Thanks, Son. Now have a seat. Isn’t it wonderful to have Meghan back in town?” Dad beamed in delight.
I steeled myself. I took a deep breath.
And then I looked at her.
Our eyes met, and it was as if no time had passed, and at the same time, it felt as though it had been far too long. Years fell away, and for just a moment, I was thirteen again.
I had never told anyone that my first serious crush was on Meg. That because of her, I had learned what it meant to fantasize about kissing a girl–and about doing a lot more than kissing. I was in the throes of puberty with my arms too long for my body, my voice cracking, my skin breaking out, and suddenly she was all I saw.
But she never looked at me the same way. Or so I thought. So, I packed up all those confusing, downright terrifying emotions and pushed them far, far away. We continued being best friends, and my instant of adolescent insanity was ignored—but not forgotten.
Just as quickly as our gazes met, they ricocheted off one another, skittering to something safer. “Hi, Meg. Good to see you. You look well,” I said stiffly, but oh so politely.
Meg started picking at the skin around her nails, and I knew that she was anxious. I got a sick sense of satisfaction at knowing I rattled her.
“Yeah, good to see you too,” she muttered.
Dad was chatting with Lena, who continued to watch the two of us out of the corner of her eye. Perhaps waiting to see whether we would need a referee…or a bouncer.
An awkward silence stretched taut between us. Meg pick, pick, picked at her nails. She used to tear off the skin around her cuticles before a test. I remembered swatting at her hands when I noticed her nervous tick.
“So, you’re back in Southport. Must be an adjustment after being in New York,” I said finally, rather pleased with how chill I sounded.