Page 10 of Heartache & Playdates
Before I had a chance to answer, he continued.
“I thought you two were gonna end up getting married. But then, poof, one day she was just gone. Did she go into witness protection, or something?”
She might as well have. Porter might be an annoying drunk, but he was right about Peyton. One day she was there, and the next, poof she was gone.
We’d been together for six months and everything had been going great. Then one night, she snuck into my room at the group home. The only advantage of being there as long as I had was that I knew every inch of the building. When I was fourteenAlex and Nick, who had been my roommates, both left the group home. Nick aged out of the system and Alex quit school and started working because his girlfriend got pregnant. When Nick and Alex left, I moved my mattress down to an abandoned supply closet in the basement. The room was bleak with concrete walls, a single lightbulb that hung in the center and a mattress on the floor. It was freezing in the winters and hot in the summers, but it afforded me privacy so I could study and not be interrupted.
It also meant that I could have guests that didn’t have to sign in or out. A few months after we started dating, Peyton began sneaking in my room and staying the night a few times a week. She lived with her grandmother, so she’d wait for her to go to bed and then she’d leave before she got up in the morning.
In all the months she’d been sneaking in and sleeping over, we never had sex. We did everything else, but never actual penetration. We were both virgins, but we achieved expert levels at foreplay. Then, the last night I saw her, she told me that she was ready. I must have asked forty times if she was sure, and the answer was always the same. Yes.
So, after months of foreplay we had sex, or for me, made love. I woke up the next morning and she was gone. I figured she’d just left early so she could get back home before her grandmother woke up. When she didn’t show up for school, I started to worry. So, I went to her house and that’s when her grandmother told me, she was gone. For good.
She moved out of the country with her parents. Her father was retired from the Army and worked for the government. To this day, I wasn’t exactly sure what he did. Diplomat, I think. But whatever his role, it was serious enough that there were times Peyton would have a security detail. In fact, she’d had one the week before she left.
I asked her grandmother for her address or phone number, but she said she didn’t have those. That she would get them after the family got settled. I went back every week for months and she still never had the information.
Nonna and I got close during that time. She’d invite me in, and we’d play Scrabble. Once I graduated and was emancipated, I started school at Stanford and left the city. When I came back after college, I thought about going to visit Nonna and asking about Peyton, but I never did.
I tried to close that chapter in my life. To put a period on that painful sentence. But the damn thing turned into a never-ending ellipsis.
Lizzy’s fucking idioms were rubbing off on me.
“So what’s up? Do you ever talk to her?” Porter asked.
“No, I haven’t talked to her.”
Porter stretched his neck as he scanned the room. “Well, word is, she’s supposed to be here tonight.”
Yep. That was the word. She wassupposedto be here tonight. But with every minute that passed the reality of that actually happening seemed to be slipping farther and farther away.
4
PEYTON
Deep breaths.That was what I’d been taking for the past ten minutes. Slow, steady inhales and exhales to try and calm my racing heart and shaky knees.
Spoiler alert:they were not helping!
I stared at my reflection in the mirror and knew that just like the Jack Nicholson Helen Hunt rom-com this was as good as it gets.
This morning I’d treated myself to a Brazilian blowout before leaving the city and heading up to Napa. I’d spent an hour applying a perfect smokey-eye, which I was only able to pull off because Leo had forced me to watch online beauty tutorials to “up my game.” My crimson lips were a shade deeper than my dress, which was one of the tricks I’d learned during my YouTube makeup education to compliment the color it shouldn’t match exactly. I’d poured my body into my va-va-voom dress and I was wearing the six-inch Manolo Blahnik heels Leo had gifted me for Christmas.
“There’s no one here to impress,” I whispered beneath my breath as my hands ran down my stomach.
That might technically be true, but the reason my nerves were tap dancing on my bladder was very much due to a person I wanted to impress. I had zero clue if Maddox Cruz kept in touch with any of our classmates. The only information I had on him was what I’d read in articles and the bio on his company’s website. But, if he did stay in contact with anyone here, I wanted whoever it was to tell him how amazing I looked. Or, if he happened to see any pictures of the event online, I wanted him to be…impressed.
I wanted to be the one that got away, not the bullet he dodged. Or worse, the one he’d forgotten.
Was it ridiculous? Sure.
Was it insane? Probably.
Was it honest? Absolutely.
But still, the only way word could possibly get back to him of how amazing I looked tonight was if I actually went downstairs and joined the reunion. I grabbed my purse and when I dropped my phone into the clutch, I noticed my hands were trembling.
A chuckle fell from my mouth. I was this much of a basket case to be in the same room with people who might tell Maddox that they’d seen me or could possibly post a picture there was a slight chance he’d see. And Leo wondered why there was no way I could have come to this thing if he had RSVP’d.
