10 Years Later

Trying for clueless, I said, “I don’t really know what you want to talk about exactly.”

“Well, for starters, what the hell are you going to do if he shows up with a date tonight?”

Die.

“Or worse,” she went on. “What if he shows up married?”

Die twice.

I silently wondered what was worth than death, because that was what I would do if Dalton Thomas showed up married tonight. But him being married was an absolute possibility, I reasoned, and I needed to mentally be prepared for it. Only I had no idea how to wrap my heart, or mind, around the prospect.

“Cammie? Did I give you a stroke in there?”

I swallowed the boulder stuck in my throat and tried to speak. “No, but you aren’t helping. I’m freaking out enough already without you adding to it, Kris. You’re supposed to talk me off the ledge, not walk me to it.”

The fact was that Dalton Thomas had always stayed firmly rooted in the back of my mind. Sometimes people did and said things that stayed with you your whole life. Their actions and words became living, breathing things that instilled themselves inside your heart and became one with it. Dalton had become so ingrained, so easily a part of me, that not even surgery could remove him.

She laughed, and I heard the ice in her drink clink around. “I’m just trying to prepare you. He could be married. He could have kids.”

Does my best friend secretly hate me? I attempted to swallow past the lump in my throat, then said, “I guess I’ll just have to deal with it and finally get past him once and for all. Ugh, I hate that the idea of him still gets to me after all this time. It’s so stupid!”

“Well, don’t beat yourself up. It’s not like you’ve spent the last ten years pining for him or anything,” she said pointedly, the sarcasm in her voice coming through loud and clear.

“I haven’t pined for him for ten years!” I exclaimed. “You make it sound like I was some pathetic loser who never got past her high school crush.”

“If the shoe fits,” she shot back.

I would go months without ever thinking about Dalton, and then out of nowhere, his memory would hit me like a freight train and I would find myself wondering where he was and what he was doing. Those were the nights I searched online, trying to find any mention of him. It made no sense for me to miss him after all this time, but I still seemed to. And secretly, a small part of me always hoped that he missed me too. I hated the idea of being alone in my feelings; it made me feel stupid and weak. If I was going to think about a boy I hadn’t seen since high school, then I wanted him to be thinking about me too. Even though I hated to admit it, sometimes I was such a girl.

Shutting off the water, I reached for two towels, wrapping my hair in one and securing the other one around my body before pulling back the curtain all the way and stepping out.

“Kristy, I’ve dated plenty of other guys. I moved on from him just fine, and you know it. Don’t act like I didn’t. It’s just that now that we’re back here, for this, I can’t help but think about him. I associate Dalton with high school the same way I associate you with it.”

“But you don’t care if I’m single or not.” When I stood up straight and stared at her reflection in the mirror, she smirked and said, “Admit it.”

I stayed silent, answering her question only in my mind.

“I said admit it!” she yelled as she reached into the ice bucket, her threat obvious.

I threw my hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay. I admit it. I want him to be single.”

“And have you asked yourself why?”

Unwrapping the towel from my hair, I reached for my comb and started working through the tangles. “I guess I’m not ready for him to be off the market?” I answered her question with a question as I fought back the emotions growing inside me. “When I think about Dalton, I think about the boy I knew senior year. I still see him as that guy. And in my mind, that guy isn’t married. I guess in my mind that guy still wants to make out with me in the darkroom. I don’t know!” Trying to sort out everything I felt for him was beyond complicated.

“I do.” She sipped her drink before waggling her eyebrows at me, and my shoulders tensed.

“You do?”

“It’s the same reason why I can’t fully get over Bobby,” she said with a sad smile.

Kristy and Bobby dated for over a year during college, and while she admitted that their relationship wasn’t perfect, she loved him with her whole heart. One day he came over to her apartment and broke up with her. No reason, no explanation, nothing. He just said it was over and he never looked back.

“And why’s that?” I asked, wondering what my not-real-or-ever-defined-relationship with Dalton possibly had in common with Kristy’s real-life relationship with Bobby.

“No closure.”

The words left her mouth and filled the air between us before burrowing into my flesh. I’d never once thought about it that way, so simply. Maybe my inability to get past Dalton had to do with the fact that we had no closure, which was thanks mostly to me.