Page 6 of Heartache & Playdates
“My bag?” I questioned out loud as I walked over to the chair my bag was sitting on. Leo had packed for me because the trip had been so last minute. I hadn’t unpacked, because I never did. It was part of growing up an Army brat. I’d lived places for months and never unpacked my suitcases.
“The bottom of your bag,” he clarified.
I dug to the bottom of my bag and that’s when I saw it. I pulled out the red strapless thigh-high slit garment. “Were you in on this? Did you know about the reunion?”
“No, I did not,” he denied his involvement, but I wasn’t totally convinced. “Ialwayspack an ICE ensemble, you know that.”
I didn’t know that, but it didn’t surprise me. If anyone would think to pack an in-case-of-emergency cocktail dress, it was Leo. As much as I appreciated his effort, there was no way I was going to wear this dress.
“This was a Halloween costume. When I went as Jessica Rabbit, and you were Roger Rabbit ten years ago.”
“Oh, I know exactly what it was from. And your curves were pop, pop, poppin’! You made a gay man feel feelings.”
When Leo played the gay-man-feel-feelings card, I knew that I was screwed.
“It’s a high school reunion, not the prom or a costume party.”
I had no clue what people wore to high school reunions, but I doubted I’d be comfortable in a red strapless cocktail dress that showcased my curves in what my Nonna would consider a va-va-voom way.
Leo stopped doing his nails and stared directly into the screen. “Is The Elephant going to be there?”
“No.”
The Elephant was the nickname that Leo had given my high school boyfriend Maddox Cruz because he said he was always in the room with me and I never wanted to talk about him. He wasn’t wrong.
Maddox was not listed as one of the attendees, which was the only reason I was even entertaining the idea of going in the first place. There was no way that I could face him. Not after what I’d done.Butthere was a little voice in the back of my head that said if I did go maybe word would get back to him somehow that someone had seen me. Or maybe I’d be tagged in a picture he’d see and remember me.
I wondered, all the time, if he ever thought about me. And if he did, what he thought.
“No, The Elephant will not be going. If he was, I wouldn’t even be considering it.”
“Why not?! This is the perfect opportunity to show up and show out! It could be just likeThe Notebookwhen she drives up to the house. Maybe he wrote you a letter every day for a year and your mom has them.”
That was impossible. Maddox couldn’t have written me every day for a year, because no one knew where we were living. Not even Nonna. My father worked as a “diplomat” which I later learned was code for spy, and there were times our location had to be kept private.
Cameron, Leo’s husband, walked behind him on the screen.
“Cam! Tell Peyton shehasto wear the red dress.”
“The Jessica Rabbit dress?”
“Yep.”
Cameron had been at the Halloween party that Leo and I had attended together. That was the night the two of them met. I didn’t miss the irony that the only reason I’d suggested going as Roger and Jessica in the first place was because I’d been missing Maddox so much and it was his favorite movie.
The only keepsake I had of the time we spent together, besides photos and the best memories of my life, was the now vintage Roger Rabbit shirt that I’d ‘borrowed’ from him as I snuck out of his room the morning I left the country, never to see him again.
Cameron bent into frame, his chiseled, square jaw and blond hair that rivaled Zack Morris in the glory days ofSaved by the Belltaking up the majority of the screen. “Wear. The. Dress.”
When he stood back up, Leo’s face appeared again, wearing an I-told-you-so expression complete with perfectly plucked raised eyebrows. “You need to have some fun. Go. Have. Fun.”
I didn’t have the energy to argue with him that it wouldn’t be fun. I enjoyed being home. My going-out days were long behind me. I left them in my twenties. I was now half a decade into my thirties and my idea of a wild Friday or Saturday night was ordering from a new Sushi place.
“Farfallina!” Nonna called out the nickname meaning ‘little butterfly’ that she’d called me since I was born.
“Is that Miss Russo I hear?” Leo stretched his neck as if he’d be able to see her through the screen.
“Yes. I gotta go.”
