Page 27 of Her Alien Neighbor

“Ready?” she asks, her eyes meeting mine in the mirror.

I huff out a breath. “Guess so.”

We have a few close calls with patches of black ice on the sidewalk, but we make it to Tipsy’s in under ten minutes. Sam and I fix our windblown hair and rub our wet noses once we’re inside, and grab seats at the bar.

The bar itself is small with only ten stools, but the rest of the space is open with a few four-top tables occupying the center of the bar and a couple pool tables in the back.

“Hey, Izzy!” Sam exclaims when the bar’s owner emerges from the kitchen.

“Sam!” Izzy replies with matching enthusiasm. “And Vanessa Bradford too. Well, this is a surprise.”

“Good to see you, Izzy. Congrats on this place.” I make a sweeping gesture with my arm. “Looks fantastic in here.”

Izzy nods, proudly. “Thank you. I’m happy with it.”

“So, are you going to the reunion next weekend?” Sam asks Izzy.

My jaw drops. “Good god, reunion? Has it really been twenty years since we graduated?”

Izzy sighs while opening a fresh jar of maraschino cherries. “Well, it’s supposed to be in June, so it lines up with the actual twentieth anniversary, but with all the event cancellations during Covid, the gym got booked pretty quickly. This was as close as they could get it. That’s what Maggie said, anyway.”

“Oh, Maggie’s running it?” I ask, not surprised. She was our class president and loved planning these kinds of events. I haven’t seen her in two decades, but I doubt that’s changed.

“Yup,” Izzy replies, “She’s putting together a slideshow of ‘graduate success stories’ that, apparently, I’ll be featured in for the bar.”

“Yeah, I’m in it too,” Sam says with a shrug. “She asked permission to use one of my photos for it.”

Then Sam turns to me with a grin curling her lips. I know that look. It’s not good. “You can be my date!” She grabs my hand and squeezes when she sees my obvious reluctance. “Come on, please? Don’t make me suffer through this nightmare alone. Plus, Maggie will be so excited if you come too.”

I don’t give a fuck about Maggie’s level of happiness. Dressing up to spend an evening with several people I’d love to never see again sounds like pure torture. “I don’t know, Sam. I can’t imagine how I’d survive that.”

Sam and Izzy start chatting about who is planning to attend the reunion, and how terrible it will be, even though they both plan to attend. Then they move on to talk about the bar, how long construction took when Izzy first bought it, and how it used to be a dental office. I continue looking around, but when my eyes land on the guy lining up his shot on the pool table in the back, my heart stops. My breath freezes in my lungs. I don’t have to look down to know my knuckles are white where they grip the edge of the bar. I can’t look down, even if I tried.

It’s…him.

The figure from my nightmares.

The one whose face occasionally pops into my head, reminding me of the trauma I still have not processed.

The source of all my pain tied to this place.

The sole party responsible for The Incident.

My senior prom date.

Trevor Burton.

He’s here.

CHAPTER 9

VANESSA

Izzy slams a drink down in front of me, pulling my attention from him. I find myself grateful for the distraction.

“Um, what’s this?” I ask, staring at the tall glass of red liquid, still dazed and not sure what to do. Should I leave? I’m tempted to leap off this stool and run and run and not stop running until I get home. But isn’t that what I’ve been doing for twenty years? Running?

I figured this day would come eventually; I just didn’t expect it to be today.

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