"I have no idea," I reply. After I was gone, I tried not to look back, kept my eyes fixed forward. But sometimes, the memories hit me like a ton of bricks, and I knew that I couldn’t escape them so easily.
"They thought you were an FBI agent," he explains. "Or a government experiment gone wrong. Everyone’s been wondering for years what happened to you.”
"I know I have some explaining to do," I reply, and I check my watch. "But the reunion starts soon, right?”
He stares at me, and then, to my surprise, he laughs. "Shit, dude, you never did make a lot of sense to me," he remarks. "Starts in forty minutes or so. You really ready for that??”
"I am,” I reply, and I mean it. I didn’t come all this way just to drop out now. She’s here. I can feel it. Taste her in the air. I’m not getting out of here until I’ve had a chance to look her in the eye and tell her how sorry I am.
Jordan sighs, shakes his head.
"All right, you better get cleaned up. You’ll need to look good if you want to try and win Bailey back," he tells me. "But you’re not leaving town until you tell me everything that happened while you were gone, you hear me?”
"Sure," I lie at once. Anything to get me down to that reunion. Because tonight is the night that I am going to see Bailey again. And, after ten years’ wait, I am so damn ready.
3
BAILEY
As soon as I step onto campus once more, memories of my high school years come flooding back into my head.
"Hard to believe we’ve been out of here for a whole decade, huh?” Liv remarks, nudging me as she links her arm through mine.
I nod. "Yeah, hard to believe," I echo. The annual Sweetheart Dance for students was held here earlier this evening, and now it’s time for the Sweetheart Reunion.
I look around and try to remind myself that yes, I really am here, and yes, this really is happening.
Over there, by the fountain in front of the main entrance – that's where I met Baxter for the first time. Is it strange that I can remember it so vividly all these years later? Some people would probably think that it is.
The first time that I laid eyes on him, it was like a switch had flipped in my head. I knew everyone in Sweetheart back then, and yet, somehow, I had never met him before. Being the curious little thing that I was, I strode straight up to him, cocked my head to the side, and spoke.
"Who are you?”
He glanced over at me. He was leaning on the edge of the fountain, looking around, taking everyone in. He was tall, a good six feet, with bright blue eyes and messy dark hair that looked a little overgrown. He grinned at me.
"Who’s asking?”
"I am," I replied. "So? Who are you?”
"I’m Baxter," he told me. "I’m new here."
"I’m Bailey," I replied, sticking my hand out to greet him. "I’m not."
He laughed, eyed me for a moment. Even back then, I could feel something bubbling between us. I didn’t have the words for it yet, but I soon would.
The week that he got onto the football team, he asked me to come out with him after his first game. I agreed at once. I went to the stadium and cheered him on until my voice was hoarse, and he drove me in his beat-up old car out of town to a small diner where we shared milkshakes and fries like we were in the movies.
He had moved here to live with his aunt and uncle, he told me – didn't explain what had driven him here in the first place, but frankly, I was crushing way too hard to think about that. He held my hand under the table, and, when he led me back out to his car, he kissed me for the first time.
That kiss had imprinted itself on my memory like a brand, the pressure of his lips on mine, of his hands on my waist, pulling me close, making sure that I knew how much he wanted me. I had to catch my breath when he pulled back, and he leaned his forehead against mine for a moment, closed his eyes, as though he was sealing this moment in his memory for good. I knew how he felt. It was everything that I needed it to be. And way more than that, too.
From there, we’d hold hands in school and hang out together every chance that we got. And I fell in love with him. So hard and so fast that I couldn’t control it. I loved him like crazy and he made me feel so loved in return.