Muffin Top

“We head back to Waterbury in the morning,” she said, keeping her voice as light as possible and leaving out what that meant to her and how much she was going to miss him when they got back to their real lives. “I’d rather squeeze in all the fun and memories I can tonight rather than get caught up in some stupid high-school level competition.”

Whether he realized what she was holding back or not didn’t matter in the next moment because that’s when he kissed her, taking away whatever worries she harbored and sweetening the bittersweet reality that all of this was ending soon. And what a kiss. Damn. The man really should teach a class, with her being his star—and only—student. By the time he pulled away, she was breathless and flushed.

“We could just spend the night doing that,” he said, his gaze dropping to the deep V-neck of her dress. “Think we can get access to the library? I’ve always had a thing about getting up a hot chick’s skirt in the stacks.”

“You’re horrible,” she said with a giggle.

He gave her another quick kiss. “And you love it.”

Damn her mutinous body, she did. It was going to be years before she worked that fantasy out of her jilling off rotation. And since going through those gym doors looking like a woman who’d just considered having a quickie in the library wasn’t on her to-do list for this week, she took a step out of kissing range. “I’ll be right back.”

Thank God the girl’s bathroom was right across the hall. Ignoring the curious looks from the people she’d graduated with—and one woman holding up a half-filled wine glass in a congratulatory toast—she hustled into the bathroom. All it took was one look in the mirror to have her reaching for her purse. Her red lipstick had definitely traveled during that knee-knocking kiss. She was just pulling out a makeup removing sheet, a must-have for anyone who, like her, was addicted to red lipstick, when she heard a noise coming from one of the stalls.

She paused and cocked her head to the side, listening closely. There it was again. It sounded like a sniffle. No, more than that. It sounded like one of those soul-wracking swallowed sobs that only followed the worst kind of trouble. There was no way she was slinking out of here without making sure the woman hiding in the stall was all right.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

There was a moment of silence, followed by the door opening and revealing a red-eyed Constance with her trembling chin held high. “I’m fine.” But her voice shook when she said it, and she was clutching tear-soaked tissue in one fisted hand as she walked out of the stall. “And if I wasn’t, you would be the last person on earth who could help.”

Something inside Lucy snapped at that snark, whatever residual fear of the high school mean girl fading away into nothingness. It was like having a titanic-sized burden she hadn’t realized she’d been carrying for years disappearing.

“What is your problem, Constance?” she asked, curious despite it all. “I mean, I understand being a bitchy girl for no reason in high school, but don’t you think it’s time to grow up? Life is too damn hard to add all of this bullshit drama to it.”

The other woman glared at her in the mirror. “Like you’d know about life being hard.”

Was she kidding? That had to be a joke. “I think I know more than most folks.”

“Really?” Constance snorted in disbelief and tore a length of brown paper towel from the dispenser and put it under the automatic water faucet. “You got to leave Antioch.” She pulled the damp paper towel from under the flow of water and wrung out the excess moisture. “You got to go have a life outside of this small town.” She patted the towel against the red puffiness under her eyes as she continued to glower at Lucy. “You got to be something other than that woman who peaked in high school.”

Of all the whiny complaints. The woman who had made Lucy’s life hell in high school was bitching about those years being the best of her life and the fact that they ended? What a crock of shit.

“You could have gone, too,” she shot back. “Nothing was stopping you.”

Constance balled up the paper towel, holding it in her white-knuckled, fisted hand. “Just a little thing called chemotherapy treatment, and when that didn’t work, a double mastectomy at nineteen. Yeah, I had nothing but choices—of course, mine were of the cancer-treatment variety.”

All the air got sucked out of the room by the mere mention of the C-word, and it made Lucy’s lungs ache. Okay, she hadn’t expected that—hadn’t even heard a whisper about it. It wasn’t an excuse for how Constance had acted in high school, but if she had the mastectomy before twenty, she must have been diagnosed when they were eighteen and still in high school. God. She must have been scared out of her mind.