her less than understandable explanation.
“He called? What’d he say? How long did you guys talk? Is he coming to the reunion?” she asks, firing off her questions in rapid succession.
“Yes, he called, and I think we were both shocked as hell. He is coming to the reunion, but you already knew that. You told me yesterday! And he even said he’d already RSVP’d, so he had no clue as to why he got another reminder. Seriously, Sierra, what do you think you’re doing?”
“Umm, yeah, I may have accidentally put your number on there. Oops. My bad,” she snickers, making my blood boil.
“It’s not funny. I was already reeling from the thought of having to see him, and then you go and do this? I thought I’d have months to prepare, but now I feel like that stupid seventeen-year-old girl again, excited and breathless just by the sound of his voice.”
“Exactly. You can thank me any time now.”
“Thank you? I’m freaking pissed. What were you thinking?”
“Did you not just hear yourself? Excited and breathless? You’d been void of any positive emotion for almost a year. And in one phone call, you felt something else. Sure, be pissed at me, but at the end of the day, you’re going to be happy about it,” she says, making entirely too much sense.
“Whatever. Stop meddling. I mean it. We haven’t spoken in almost ten years. One phone call is nothing. He’s probably forgotten all about little Alexa Sullivan,” I say, secretly hoping I’m wrong and immediately feel guilty for thinking about someone who’s not Ty.
“Oh no he hasn’t. When we went to visit before Ava was born, we met up with him. All he did was ask about you. He wanted to know all about you—what you were doing, where you were working. He even asked about Ty, and he seemed genuinely interested in knowing if you were happy.”
“You never told me that. You didn’t even tell me that you saw him,” I reply, wondering why I’m just now hearing about this.
“I didn’t think you’d be interested. And I’m sure Ty would’ve just loved knowing your high school love was asking about you six years later,” she responds.
She’s right. One drunken night while telling embarrassing childhood stories, Jeremy decided to spill the beans about Jace to Tyler. It wasn’t any big deal at first. After all, I hadn’t seen him since well before Ty and I started dating. But Jeremy would not shut up. He kept going on about his military career and his baseball stats. Jeremy and Jace were pretty tight growing up, but that night he was taking it to a whole new level. He was totally bromancing on Jace, and it made me uncomfortable to say the least. And of course, a little high school reminiscing wouldn’t have been complete without Jeremy ribbing on me about my crush. He even commented on the similarities between Jace and Ty. So I like tall, dark haired, blue eyed men. Sue me.
Needless to say, I was mortified and Jeremy was oblivious. I know he didn’t mean anything by it, and he was just teasing, but when Tyler asked me about it later, it was hard to explain. I gave him the quick rundown. Older boy, younger girl. I’d had a crush and he’d treated me like nothing more than a friend. I explained that it was a long time ago and I hadn’t seen him since he graduated. End of story. As far as he knew, at least. Kristin’s the only person who knew that something happened that night, and I didn’t even tell her the full story. She just knew that Jace left and I was heartbroken. I never regretted that night, but my heart was in two when he left for the airport the next morning. I think Tyler suspected that there was more to the story, but he didn’t push the issue. Jeremy never brought up Jace again, so I figured that Sierra had scolded him.
“He was not my high school love. We never even dated! It was just a stupid crush,” I answer, breaking out of my thoughts.
“Whatever you say, sis. All I know is that you two were as close as two friends