Page 120 of Not Over You

Not to backtrack to where it all fell apart for me the first time.

Five years ago, I left my hometown with a dusty trail in my wake, a finger in the air, and a broken heart. I swore to myself once I left Harmony Hollow, I would never return. Too many reasons not to go back. Reasons I listed and counted a hundred times as I took the trip back, my whole life packed into my jeep. Every inch closer to my past and the memories of the place I had hoped to leave behind made me sick.

Rolling into town on a sunny spring day should make me a bit nostalgic. After all, the sprawling ranch town with its small-town charm and down-home heart is my home. At least, once upon another lifetime, it was. Now as I turn down Trail Ridge towards my family home, nothing looks the same. I don’t recognize the faces walking the streets or even the streets themselves.

Taylor Swift plays on the radio as I slow down near my old high school. If I close my eyes, I can hear another song playing as I laugh with the two coolest boys in town. Keeping my eyes closed, that laughter and music shifts to another night with another song. Just one of those boys, telling me I was the cool one, the coolest girl in school, and he never wanted to let me go.

“You say that now, Bran North,” I had teased with an empty laugh that was meant to deflect how much his words meant to me, “but when you grow up and get famous playing football, I will be just a memory,” my voice could not hide how that truth had hurt me.

“Not true. How could I ever forget you, Pais?”

“Looks like we both forgot her,” I whisper to myself as I turn up the radio and speed past the high school.

Rubbing at my hand that grips the steering wheel, I shift into self-preservation mode. I try to scrub away the tattoos at my hand, knowing they won’t go away. And neither will what they mean to me. But I can pretend that they mean nothing. That they are just numbers on my hand with no significance. I can pretend they don’t break my heart every single time I see them inked into my skin.

What sort of idiot little girl tattoos her hopes and dreams on her skin before they can come true? Let me answer that for you: this idiot. I drew all over my skin, all over my Bran and Hailee too, whenever I was in a mood—sad, happy, heartbroken, and horny—and eventually I started inking those into my skin. After we graduated college, we went to a tattoo parlor in Crystal Cove to celebrate.

We were twenty-two-year-old little fools in love. Only, she would go on to marry her superstar quarterback after beating college and her battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. They are what the best chick flicks are made of. Love at first sight that stands the tests of time and anything life throws at them.

Going to get his jersey number tattooed on her hand does not seem so crazy now. The number that looks back at me is a daily reminder that I knew nothing about love but believed I did enough to stain myself forever with it. Blinking as tears fill my eyes, I curse beneath my breath. I told myself not to go there just because I wound up back here again.

But I can’t help it and before I can drown the memories out with Taylor Swift, every detail from that night comes back. Us getting a little buzzed at The Bucket, our favorite dive bar near campus. Driving through town and into Crystal Cove to the only tattoo shop in two hundred miles, the radio loud but not louder than our laughter.

Bran and I in the backseat, talking about the summer we were going to have together. Our final summer at home. We talked of days spent at his daddy’s cabin. But it was the nights we couldn’t wait for. We were starting the next chapter of our lives and we were doing it together.

“I love you,” his voice is still clear in my head as he murmured the words against my throat, “I love you more than anything, Pais.” I can almost feel the heat of his lips on my skin, the warmth of his hand beneath my shirt, over my racing heart.

I loved him more than anything too—that is why I branded his football number—and the date of our first time—into my skin.

Brandon Tucker North was not just my first love. He was my first everything. He and Connor Mitchell had been my best friends since we were in grade school. It was always the three of us through everything. I thought it would be that way forever—but I had been right that day when I told him he would forget me one day.

Both were charming and handsome but that never mattered to me. I never wanted to be around them because they had six-packs and chiseled jaws. Or because Connor could throw a perfect spiral that Bran caught every single time. It might be what got them into a D1 college and why the rest of the girls wanted to be near them, but not me.

What I remember about them is not the ball games or the bonfires after a win. Not the cheering crowds. I remember laughing with them at our favorite pizza place in high school. Sneaking out to see movies we were too young to see. Going to the corner shop and getting Slurpee's and junk food and staying up late talking about how we all could not wait to grow up together.

And Bran...he was the most beautiful boy in the world to me. He always had been, even before I really understood why I thought that. Why I felt that. His smile, with his full lips and perfect teeth, and his light blue eyes that were always laughing, always watching everyone else, it had always made me feel something.

When we were younger, it made me feel safe and protected. I knew I could be myself with him. Laugh as loud as I wanted or talk about my dreams of working at an art gallery someday. Bran was the first person I showed my art to. First person to ever tell me I was talented and had something special about me.

Somewhere along the way, it changed. Nothing about Bran made me feel safe anymore. It felt like one day we were watching Korean horror films together in my basement, and the next, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. When he laughed, my chest would get tight and if he touched me, I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. It was not the same for him. And I never thought it would be.

“Oh, no, we’re just friends. Well, we used to be best friends.” My memories shift and I am with Hailee, talking about the two boys we most wanted to talk about.

Hailee Waters raced into our lives just when I needed her most. Connor took one look at her and he was done for. Their love story may be what movies are made of, but it took them some time to get there. But we all knew they would always get there.

Hailee fit into the place beside Connor because they just made sense, they were the other half of each other. I think I envied her at first—seeing her where I used to be at their sides—but she didn’t like being there by herself. One day she just decided we were going to be friends—and that didn’t go for just the two of us. Bran and Connor had to let me back in to their world because she said so.

It was awkward at first, being close with her but still feeling like a stranger with Connor and Bran. We had not just drifted apart the way you do as you grow up. I felt as if I barely knew them anymore. What I felt for Bran had never gone away and had only gotten worse as I watched him become the campus flirt, a new girl on his arm every other week. It had killed me to watch that, but I never let him see it.

They were hotshot football players, and in Harmony Hollow and Crystal Cove, the D1 team were treated like gods. They never paid for food or drinks on a night out. Women followed them around like a fan club—hell, men did too. I realized as I witness it firsthand just why they had forgotten me. There was no room for me in their world when it was crammed with slutty cheerleaders begging to blow the star players or fan boys who couldn’t wait to tell them how good they played.

Until Hailee, I thought I would always watch them from the sidelines. But she brought me to the games, to the bonfires, and to the fields where Connor would practice for hours while we all just watched. I became part of their orbit once more and soon we were our old selves again, as if no time had passed between us.

“That man does not look at you as if he wants to be just your friend,” Hailee had countered between our giggles.

Before she mentioned it, I had stopped watching Bran the way I used to. I was hopelessly in love with him and being near him again, laughing with him the way we used to, it had almost been enough to smooth over how loving him hurt. Her speaking aloud that maybe I wasn’t all alone in what I was feeling, I couldn’t pretend anymore. I couldn’t stop looking at him, wondering if it could be true—if he could feel what I felt.

Color me surprised when every single time I looked at him, his eyes were already on me. And not just looking but watching me. Watching me when I laughed or when I was sketching him without him knowing it. His eyes were either on me or on the football and I didn’t know what to make of it. Surely someone as beautiful as Bran, someone who had his pick of women and had picked plenty before me, was not as crazy about me as I was about him.

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