Page 21 of Harper

I’m on my fourth margarita now, and I’m starting to feel the effects of the tequila. It’s making me slightly light-headed, which is good. It’s what I wanted when I came over here—a dulling effect. I didn’t want to think so much, didn’t want to feel so much.

“Anyway,” says Hunter, “you can ask her. She’s coming over here right now.”

“What?”

Looking over my shoulder, I find Harper standing behind me, staring daggers at her brother, arms crossed over her chest in annoyance.

“Hey, Harp,” I say. “Long time, no see.”

“Hi, Joe,” she says, quickly skipping her eyes away from me. “Layla. Wyatt.”

“There’s plenty of space. Come sit with us, Harper,” says Wyatt, making space between himself and Hunter, directly across from me. Wyatt, of course, is the only person at this table unaware of the history between Harper and me, so he has no idea what he’s suggesting.

“N-No,” she says. “I think Parker wanted to—”

“Parker had a migraine. She already headed home,” says Hunter, his cheeks pink from drinking.

“Come on, Harper!” Wyatt insists. “It’s a holiday! Have a margie!”

With little choice, she rounds the table and plops down. “Sure. I can stay for a drink.”

I pour her a margarita, then nudge it over to her. “Cheers.”

She looks up at me, and I scan her eyes carefully. I’m looking for something specific—I want to know if she’s still attracted to me; if there’s any chance she could still love me, even if the road back to each other is long and rough and rocky.

“Thanks.”

Taking the glass in her hands, she holds my eyes as she lifts it to her lips and sips.

The emotion I see shining back at me isn’t neutral, isn’t indifferent, isn’t even ambiguous. What I see is love. What I see is heat. What I see would melt every glacier she ever visited during her goddamned polar region travels.

Forget you, Harper?

Never, ever going to happen now.

You’re my girl, Harper Stewart. Always were. Always will be.

“To old friends,” says Hunter, raising his glass to the table.

“And new beginnings,” I murmur, staring back at Harper as I lift and finish my drink.

Twelve Years Ago

Harper

“We graduated!”

“We’re graduates!”

Hands raised above our heads, we stand side by side on a spit of sand in Lower Dewey Lake, yelling downriver, our voices tumbling down the valley and disappearing into the Alaskan wilderness.

“We did it,” Joe says, grinning at me, his dark eyes alive and sparkling.

“We did it,” I say softly, wondering how in the world I will live without him for the next four years while I attend the University of Washington in Seattle and he studies at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.

The thought of being so far away from him makes me ache, makes me sick with borrowed longing; I lose hours of my life dreading the day—the hour, the minute, the second—we have to say goodbye. It hurts so much, in fact, that lately I’ve started wondering if it would be better to make a clean break from Joe before we go our separate ways.

Logically, it doesn’t make sense—why would I want to break up with someone I love?—but somewhere inside of me where emotion overrules reason, the idea has found purchase and resonates in my heart. If Joe doesn’t belong to me anymore, and I don’t belong to him, maybe it won’t hurt so much to be apart.

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