Fun.
It had been so long since I’d had fun, I’d forgotten what it felt like. And since all my memories were deeply entwined with Nix, I wasn’t sure I wanted to remember.
But maybe I could make new memories with Celeste and Miles.
Maybe I could pretend long enough to let myself have fun again.
Maybe.
The Darling Hill end of summer fair was an annual event held on the edge of the reservoir on a small patch of land. Technically, it was beyond the reach of Darling Row and Old Darling Hill and since the fair was only temporary, it was considered to be neutral ground.
At least, that’s what Miles told Celeste and me as he drove us to the fair.
“So you’re saying anyone can come this weekend and there isn’t a thing the other side can do?” Celeste clarified.
“The fair has always been neutral. I heard the unspoken rule is there’s a truce for the duration of the weekend.”
“A truce? Sounds like a bunch of crap if you ask me.” Celeste rolled her eyes.
“You never came before?” He caught my eye in the rearview mirror and I shrugged, looking off to the distance.
“Once, with my mom.” But what a disaster that had been.
Nix, Zane, and Kye had gone in ninth grade. Nix had begged me to go but I didn’t want to go and watch him flirt his way around the place. The next day, I’d found out he’d made out on the Ferris Wheel with Hope Gryffin.
How many times had that happened?
How many times had he begged me to go along with him and the guys to something only for me to find out the next day that he was with Hope or Cherri or Sarah or Neve?
Nix had constantly acted like I was his best friend, that he couldn’t live without me… yet it was never me starring in those rumors and stories the next day. It was always him and someone else. Some other girl. A prettier, bolder, sexier girl.
I was so sure about him back then, about my feelings for him. I thought he needed to figure things out; that when the time was right we would find our way to each other. But time didn’t reward us, it ruined us.
It ripped us apart so severely that when he’d stood in front of me at the bowling alley the other night, I’d felt nothing but the bitter sting of anger and regret.
I’d waited for him for years, and the second he was able to escape from me, he had.
As I stared out of the window, watching the town roll by, my lip curled with disgust. I’d gotten it wrong; so very wrong.
But I’d been a girl then. A meek, innocent, naïve girl.
I wasn’t that girl anymore.
I wouldn’t be so easily led astray again.
“We’re here,” Miles said. He found a parking spot, the field already packed full of cars and people. Up in the distance, I could see the Ferris Wheel, and the flashing lights of the other rides.
My stomach roiled.
“Harleigh?” Celeste glanced back at me, concern creeping into her expression. “We don’t have to—”
“No, I’m fine. I’m not used to so much stimulus.”
The lights.
The noise.
The people.