A Small-Town Reunion by Terry McLaughlin Page A

pause. “If you’d like.”
    The tall case clock in the study bonged the hour, and someone in a distant room laughed. A slice of ruby-red light slid over the back of her hand like a wound, and she turned up her palm and curled her fist to capture it inside.
    They should go. She wanted to stay.
    “What were you going to tell me about Bud Soames?” she asked.
    “I’ve been remembering a day when we were both seniors. I was in my car, out in the student lot, moving toward the exit. And then I saw you.”
    He stared at the hall as if he was gazing into the past. “You were standing on that strip of grass between the lot and the street, holding a big stack of books. And you were watching me.”
    She remembered that day. It seemed she could recall any day that had included Dev. She nodded, even though she knew he couldn’t see her, and waited for him to start again.
    “I was going to stop beside you. I had my hand on the button to lower the window and ask if you wanted a ride home.” He turned to face her. “I wanted to talk with you.”
    “What would you have said?”
    One side of his mouth twisted in a half grin. “There’s another habit of yours—always cutting right to the heart of the matter. Why waste time on small talk when you can skip ahead to the tough questions?” His smile faded. “Why are you so tough on me, Addie?”

CHAPTER EIGHT

    A DDIE RESTED HER CHIN on her knees. There were so many answers she could give to Dev’s question, but it would be easier to invent one. Easier on herself, perhaps, but unfair to Dev. “Maybe I’m trying to level the playing field,” she said at last.
    He sighed and shook his head. “I wish you didn’t feel at such a disadvantage.”
    Disadvantage. Sitting here with him, like this, it seemed odd to consider the advantages she’d had over this handsome, wealthy, talented man. She’d had a mother who loved and sacrificed for her child, for one. “I’m not sure ‘disadvantage’ is the right word,” she said.
    “Maybe not.” He paused and rubbed his hand over his knee. “On that day—that day Bud climbed into my car—I wanted to talk with you like this . The way we’re talking now.”
    In her imagination, she was back on that soft, grassy strip again, watching him drive toward her. The books were heavy, the edges of the binding biting into her arms as a tickling bead of sweat moved down her spine. Panic mixed with anticipation as she realized he was looking her way, slowing his car.
    What would she have said if he’d offered her a ride? What would they have talked about if she’d accepted?“We were too young to have the kind of conversation we’re having now.”
    “Maybe.” He gave her a searing, unsettling look. A look that started the slow, heavy beat of awareness pulsing through her system. She wished she could control her reaction to him.
    She wished she could make him react the same way to her. Tempt him to lean close, to brush his lips over hers, to whisper her name, to take her in his arms…
    Someone walked by, heels clicking swiftly down the rear hallway near Geneva’s office, speaking in the halting, one-sided bursts of a cell-phone conversation.
    “I should go back to the party,” she said.
    “So should I.”
    But Dev didn’t move, and he didn’t look away.
    Addie straightened and folded her hands in her lap. “Tell me what you were going to say about Bud.”
    “Oh, yeah.” Dev frowned and glanced away. “He caught up to me, since my car was moving so slowly. And he pulled the door open and jumped into the passenger seat, just like he belonged there. Which he did, because he was my friend.”
    Dev lowered his hand to the carpet, his fingers resting a fraction of an inch from the toe of her sandal. “Then you dropped your books, and Bud laughed and pointed at you. He said, ‘What a loser.’ I laughed, too, because that’s what I did—what everyone expected of me. But inside of me, this other voice was telling me that I was the