Page 3 of When We Were Younger

"Dootttttiiiie," she whines, "Come keep me company. It's got to be better than sitting all alone in Malibu."

"You mean in my beachfront home, overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the gorgeous Southern California coast?" I tease.

"Exactly. Yuck."

"Maybe I'll fly up to San Francisco for the holidays."

"You know you don't want to do that. James and Georgie are newly engaged and will be attached at the genitals. And if you have to spend more than an hour with Brian, you’re likely going to want to stick knives under your toenails just to have something better to do."

I cringe, both at the imagery and at the prospect of spending an extended period with Rachel's wet napkin of a boyfriend. We're all collectively counting down the seconds until she finally wises up and ditches him.

"See? Is avoiding Fox Hole really worth having Brian incorrectly mansplain the effects of caffeine on egg counts again?"

"Kira, I appreciate the thought you've put into this, but you know it's not the town I'm avoiding." My voice drops to something resembling a whisper as I get close to admitting the truth that everyone knows but I'm too prideful to say out loud.

"You're not gonna see him, Dot," Kira says softly, and my stomach flips as my eyes snap to meet hers through the screen.

"How do you-"

"He's a hermit. He works, he eats dinner at his parents’ house, and he sleeps. I've never seen him out. Not in nine years. Okay maybe once, I think I saw him in the yard when IronDad was having the back deck done a few summers ago, but even then, it was only for a second. He could've been a mirage, for all I know. That was the day I took mushrooms that I bought from that kid who used to do the Naruto run down the halls between classes. I don't think they settled well with my birth control or something. I was seeing things for days afterwards," she shrugs, as if to say 'eh, just another day in the life.'

Hallucinogens aside, I know Kira is a liar. Though I've avoided Fox Hole for the better part of a decade, ithasn't stopped me from attempting some light internet stalking of the boy in question.

Well, I suppose he would be a man now.

The truth is, my curiosity has creeped in several times over the years, usually after a lonely glass of white wine and a sad orgasm given by a vibrator leaving me with nothing but post-nut depression and the urge to cry.

Besides one single picture on the Hudson Family Construction website, Stephen has no internet presence.

I'll admit to spending more than my fair share of time on that website, staring at that picture. I remember the day it was taken like the back of my hand. It was a sunny day in June, the summer I turned seventeen. He was standing in front of a brand-new backhoe, his hands tucked in his pockets. He rarely smiled for the camera, but I told some stupid knock-knock joke that made him smile so hard that he claimed to pull a muscle in his cheek. After it was taken, we laid down in the grass and laughed and laughed and kissed until the sun set on the horizon behind us.

That lack of internet presence has never come as a shock to me. Stephen was always too lowkey, too cool for something like social media.

"Life is meant to be shared with the people you love, sweetheart, not the people you hate", he used to say when I'd get frowny over the lack of likes on my latest selfie.

He does, however, appear all over Fox Hole social media proper, usually in the background of somephoto. There was the one from last summer featuring the new playground at the elementary school where I eagle-eye spotted Stephen way in the back using a wrench on a swing set. Or the one where he was swigging a beer in a corner booth at the only bar in town, completely unaware of the sorority girls home for summer taking selfies on the dance floor. Just enough to feed my morbid curiosity, but not nearly enough to tell me anything about who he is, what he's doing, or what he really looks like now.

Besides, I imagine he's too busy to be posting life updates on Instagram. He's certainly got his hands full if he finally took over his father's business the way he always planned to. I know his older sister is probably still keeping him on his toes, especially since I saw that she married that boyfriend we all hated a few years ago.

Stephen could be freaking married for all I know. I could totally see him going for a slightly older divorcée, the two of them falling in love slowly and all at once while he built her a new porch or repaired her attic or some other super-homey, meet-cute shit. They probably have two kids. A boy and a girl, maybe a third on the way. I'm sure they spend holidays with his parents, building gingerbread houses and sucking on peppermint candies. I bet they're in love, they're happy, and Stephen has the small-town life he always wanted.

I swallow down the lump that forms in my throat at that thought.

I don't want to confirm or deny the life I've createdfor him in my head. And I truly don't give a crap about any of the silly Fox Hole holiday traditions showing off to any of the people I went to high school with.

But a part of me can't stop wondering what might happen if, after all this time, I were to look Stephen Hudson in the eyes again.

Does he miss me?

That thought niggles in my brain, an itch I'm desperate to scratch but can't quite reach…

Not from here in Los Angeles, anyway.

I look around my home, gazing out at the view of the ocean through my back window. My life is stagnant. The things that once brought me joy, like DJ-ing and making 'get ready with me' videos have gone stale. I'm booking less and less modeling work with each passing day. My real friends are hundreds of miles away and I'm…

Here. In Los Angeles. Alone.

My life is at a crossroads. I've known that for a while. It's time for me to figure out what's next, and something in my head is telling me that I won't be able to move on if I don't at least take a glimpse at the road not traveled.

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