Present
“Close, motherfucker,” I chant over and over again as I repeatedly sit on my suitcase. My butt bounces off the hard shell and comes down one last time while I try to pull the suitcase zipper tight.
I’m met with the sweet, sweet victory of the zipper pulling closed. As soon as I register the sound of the final zip, I do a happy dance. My hands are spinning over my head, my hips gyrating, my hair flying every which way, when I hear a knock at my front door.
The sound stops me right in my tracks. No one ever knocks on my door, unless it’s a food delivery guy or my neighbor, Edna. But it’s already past seven at night, so there’s no way she’s awake right now.
I blow the hair out of my face as I consider my options, my feet staying planted on the hardwood floor. Maybe they have the wrong apartment and they’ll just leave.
I’m assessing my outfit when a second knock sounds through my tiny studio. Technically, I’m not wearing anything that’d be deemed inappropriate to greet an unannounced guest, but it still isn’t my best look.
I’m wearing a pair of leggings, with my skin peeking through a small hole on my knee. My hair was in a messy bun a few hours ago, but after packing for hours and hours, most of it has fallen out. The dark strands have fallen in every direction, with only a small portion still wrapped in the hair tie.
The sweatshirt covering the top half of my body has seen better days. It has the mascot of the college I graduated from on the front, but the stitching has started to fray, and tiny threads poke out from random areas. Selma has told me multiple times to get rid of it, but I can’t. It’s comfortable, and big enough that no one can tell I’m not wearing a bra when I have it on.
A third knock echoes through my apartment, and the sheer force of it causes me to jump.
I let out a huff as I walk the small distance to the door. I’m supposed to be leaving for South Carolina tomorrow morning, and I still have two more bags to pack before I can even think about sleeping.
I couldn’t find anyone else to carpool with me on the long trip, so it’ll be me, myself, and I driving the many miles. I had to take my car into the shop earlier in the week to make sure it would make the sixteen-thousand-mile drive.
The pounding on the door becomes more erratic. “I’m coming!” I shout, reaching out to grab the doorknob. I swing the door open, not bothering to hide the annoyed look on my face.
There are plenty of people I expected to see on the other side of the door. Possibly Edna, even though it’s past her bedtime. Ralph, the ten-year-old who lives below me that I sometimes sneak Snickers bars to in return for him not throwing his ball up against the side of my apartment early in the morning. A Jehovah’s Witness trying to get me to repent for my sins. A little girl selling Girl Scout cookies.
Any of the above were possibilities. However, the last person I ever expected to see standing a foot away from me on my doorstep was Aspen Bellevue in the flesh.
“What the fuck?” I whisper, my eyes roaming all over his body to see if he’s real. I haven’t seen Aspen in so long. Not since we graduated college more than two years ago.
I’ve seen the occasional post from him on social media, but other than that, we haven’t spoken.
Aspen and I didn’t end on the best terms in college. We’d made the mistake of blurring the lines of our friendship. If you could even call it that.
I was weak. He made me weak. And in one of those weak moments, I had given him all of me—not only my virginity, but also my heart—on a silver platter. I fell in love with his cocky attitude and crooked smile, with his reckless tendencies and loyal heart.
I went from hating him to loving him in a simple snap of his fingers. I became a puddle at his feet, and he walked right over me. Didn’t spare me a second thought.
Just as soon as we began…we ended. The ending of our story came abruptly in the first chapter.
After falling for Aspen Bellevue, I swore I would never fall at another man’s feet. Especially not Aspen’s.
I was perfectly content with never seeing that beautiful face again.
But here I am, face-to-face with him. Aspen, in the flesh. An older, more distinguished flesh. He was hot in college, but now…he’s something more.
“Don’t look too happy to see me, Lily Bear,” Aspen finally speaks, pulling me from my thoughts. His arm reaches up to lean against the doorframe. This new stance causes him to draw even closer to me. My hand clings to the doorknob like it’s the only thing keeping me standing. And in a sense, it is. After all this time, he still makes me weak. God damn it.
It’s not like I’ve spent the last two years of my life pining over Aspen. It was actually the opposite. It was almost as easy to go back to hating him as it had been to fall in love with him. But seeing him standing in the doorway of my apartment? I feel at odds with myself and my warring emotions.
This new life I’ve created for myself in Dallas has nothing to do with him. It hasn’t been tainted by his dirty jokes or piercing green gaze. It was perfect. But now…
I won’t be able to look at my doorframe without thinking of the way he looks right now, perched up against it.
“Well, I can’t say I’m exactly thrilled to see you,” I finally manage to get out, still observing him. He seems so eerily familiar, while also noticeably different in so many ways.
In college, he always had this boyish charm about him. He was good-looking, but it wasn’t in a mature way. Now he looks more like a man than a kid, and it makes me feel uneasy.
“Happy to see you haven’t changed one bit.” It’s his turn to evaluate me, and suddenly I’m wishing I could have dressed up a bit for this surprise occasion. It isn’t like I want to stand here and impress Aspen, but I would like to be a little vindictive and maybe have my hair not look like a bird’s nest when I finally saw him again.
Show him what he could’ve had, kind of thing.
Unluckily for me, I’m showing him exactly why he moved on from me in the blink of an eye after our short affair.
“What the hell are you doing here?” After realizing my hand has started to cramp from the tight grip it had on the doorknob, I slowly let go.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” He takes one hand off the doorframe and uses it to point behind me.
I briefly look over my shoulder at the small studio behind me before returning my gaze to him. “That’ll be a no from me, dawg,” I respond. He seems taller now than he used to be. Maybe it’s because he’s unexpectedly taking up my space. Or maybe he’s simply filled out more since college. He has on a simple black hoodie and a pair of jeans. Nothing fancy, but I can’t lie and say he doesn’t wear it well.
I’m happy to see a pair of sneakers on his feet and not his hideous boat shoes from college he’d refused to part with.
“C’mon, Lily. We need to talk.” He shoves past me after finishing his sentence, not bothering to wait for an invitation inside.
“You can’t just walk into my place uninvited!” I scramble to shut the door and chase after him. Good thing I’ve been anticipating being gone for a couple of weeks and had just deep cleaned my apartment this morning. I’d be mortified if my bras were still air-drying from the light fixture in the dining area like they were earlier. It’d be something Aspen would never let me live down. I know that much probably hasn’t changed.
“Sure I can. We’re old friends. Pals. Am I not allowed to come visit my buddy?” He stops in the middle of the space and swivels his head, taking it all in.
My eyes take in the same sight he must be seeing. The studio apartment is small—tiny, really—but it’s home. My bed is pushed into one corner of the space. I have a small kitchen across from it. A small loveseat is placed in the middle of it all, a clear acrylic coffee table placed directly in front of the couch.
“We aren’t friends,” I remind him. While he scrutinizes my living area, I take the moment to redo my bun, gathering my long dark hair at the top of my head and securing my hair tie around it.
“I’m reminded of that constantly,” he mutters. I almost don’t even catch it because his back is to me, but the space is small and my walls are concrete, so sound travels.
I’m ready to ask him what he means by that before I decide otherwise. Aspen has always spoken cryptically to me. With everyone else, he was upfront and frank. With me? He was forever speaking in riddles and contradicting his words with his actions. It’s something I’m used to. I don’t have the energy to question him further on it.
“Seriously, what are you doing here?” The words come out harsh. I’m exhausted from cleaning and packing all day. The last thing I want to do is stand here and play some game with Aspen.
I used to get high off of sparring with him in college. It was my favorite game—a thrill ride. Now I just want off the damn ride. I’m over the high and over the constant feeling of my stomach sinking.
His gaze swings to me, pinning me to my spot. “Veronica called me.”
Figures.
When she told me she was going to contact Aspen, I didn’t think she was serious. She knows exactly how Aspen and I left things. But I didn’t think there was any fucking way she could be insane enough to think I’d ever willingly get in a car with him for a road trip of this magnitude.
She’s lost her damn mind.
I want to find my phone and ask her what in the hell she was thinking—but first I need to get rid of the intruder in my living room.
“It’s not happening,” I say bluntly, looking down and picking at a thread on my top.
When I look back up, I find Aspen staring intently at me. His shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath. “Look, I’m just here to offer you a ride. Veronica told me she’d have my balls if I didn’t drive you safely to the opening—and I’m quite fond of my balls, so here I am.”
“I’m well aware,” I mumble under my breath. Judging by the way he shakes his head, I’m guessing I didn’t say it quietly enough to miss his ears. The movement causes his hair to flop around. It’s longer now. When we were in college, he never let it grow out. It was always short and buzzed. Now, only the sides of his head are buzzed with a nice fade, and the top has longer dirtier blond strands.
“There’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to ride together like adults.” He says it so matter-of-factly that it makes me mad.
When did he grow up and become the rational one? “There’s no way in hell I’m traveling halfway across the country with you, Aspen. We’d probably kill each other by the end of it.”
He takes a few hesitant steps closer to me, a small grin pulling at his lips. “We’ve both grown up since then. I think we’re more than capable of riding together. It makes sense. We both live in Dallas. We’re both driving to South Carolina. It’d be crazy for both of us to take our own cars.”
My lips purse as I think his words through. It really doesn’t make sense for the two of us to drive down there alone, and if it were any other human on this earth, I’d be happy with the suggestion. But I’m scared for my sanity—and maybe my heart—that a road trip with Aspen could have repercussions. The kind I might not be ready for. But the more I ponder it, the more I don’t want to be the one to back down to him. If I say no, will he assume it’s because I still have feelings for him? If I say no, he’ll think those feelings still exist. But if I say yes, I can prove to him—and myself—that those feelings are far in my past. Exactly where they’ll stay.
“We would split gas?” I ask tentatively, searching his face for any unease on his part.
“Sure.” His shoulders lift in a shrug.
“I get control of the music? I already made a playlist that took hours to create. I didn’t do all of that work for nothing.”
“We can share control,” he responds, taking the last step to close the distance between us, so we’re only about a foot apart from each other.
When I woke up this morning, I never thought I’d be face-to-face with my first love, let alone contemplating going on a road trip with him. But life is weird, and in truth, I wasn’t looking forward to driving all the way to South Carolina by myself.
This can strictly be a business deal. He helps me get from point A to point B—nothing else.
“Can we keep the talking to a minimum? I don’t have anything new to say to you,” I declare.
He puts his hand over his heart in mock hurt. “You wound me, Lily Bear.”
My mouth almost blurts that it can’t be more than he hurt me years ago, but I decide against it. If we’re going to spend a lot of time in a closed space together, it’s probably best not to bring up old times.
“I’m only considering this because I hate driving and I refuse to take a plane.” My finger wags in his face to help get my point across. I don’t want him to think this is anything more than a carpool.
“Understood,” he says with a curt nod. “What time should I pick you up tomorrow morning?”
“Eight,” I respond, before I even think it through.
“See you then!” he chirps, and as quickly as he barged into my space, he’s out of it. The door makes a slamming sound behind him.
Mother trucker.
It appears in the span of a single hour, my plans went from driving myself down to South Carolina, to riding down with enemy number one.
What the hell did I just agree to?