(Never) Again (2 page)

I had overslept too. I never overslept. Even after a night of partying. I should have known then that today was going to royally suck.

The professor couldn’t end class fast enough.

After Zach’s comment about my bathroom dash, I didn’t want to prove him right. So instead of high-tailing it out of class as I so desperately wanted to, I took my time getting ready to leave.

My entire body, mind and soul were trying to race me out the door, but I slowly put my books in my bag and when at least four people had left, I began my exit. I didn’t realize that he had started walking simultaneously until we both tried to walk through the doorway at the same time. With his much bigger build, it wasn’t happening.

“Excuse me,” I said and pushed by. In the hallway the air was lighter. I breathed again.

“Liz, wait up,” he called.

Zach didn’t get it. I wanted nothing to do with him. We were over and I had no intention of becoming friends. He had hurt me and just looking at him was a painful reminder of that.

I speed-walked towards Joe’s and my meeting spot because we always walked to my second class together before he headed home, and there was no way I was walking with my current boyfriend on one side and my ex on the other.

“Liz, come on.” Zach grabbed my arm. Warmth rushed over my skin as he pulled me into a doorway. I hated that his hand on my arm made me feel anything at all. “Can’t we just talk?”

For a second I stared into his familiar eyes, a moment from the past frozen in time. Then my glance fell, moving over the skin that was no longer baby soft, but now showed signs of dark stubble.

“What is there to talk about, Zach?” I asked, taking my eyes from the strong lines of his jaw.

He dipped his hands into his pockets and leaned against the wall. It was his signature pose. At least not everything about him changed.

“I don’t know like, how are you? How’s your family? How’s life in general?” He moved closer. My heartbeat pounded out of control and the vise grip on it tightened again. I stepped back, breathing erratically, trying to suck air into my lungs, but it only gave me a better view of his lips. I remembered those lips and how they felt pressed against mine. And even though I resisted the memory, my mind drifted back to our first kiss.

Tears pricked at my eyes as I thought of how much of a fool I had been to think Zach and I would be forever. I shook my head and swallowed down the pain.

“I’m good. Life’s great. I have a boyfriend and I couldn’t be happier. You might remember him, Joe Resnick? My family is great. That about covers it. Are we through here?”

“Lizzie,” he said, and I shot daggers at him with my eyes. “I mean Liz. Sorry. Don’t you even want to know why I’m here?” My gaze went swiftly to his. I ignored the deep, dark intensity that used to make me weak at the knees and gave him a simple answer.

“No.”

The way his body flinched away from me, you would have thought I’d spit in his face. “You’re not the same person anymore, are you?” A sadness crept into his eyes. He ran his fingers through his hair, revealing the scar above his left eyebrow. The scar he told me he’d gotten chasing his cousin around a bench at the mall. He’d tripped and smacked his head on the corner of the seat on the way down.

He might have had the same scar, but he was right, I wasn’t the same person anymore and neither was he. I needed to get out of there. I needed to just get away from him.

“No, I’m not. Now if you’ll excuse me, my boyfriend is waiting.”

I walked away, feeling his eyes on me. In a way, this was finally the closure I’d always wanted. Not that we’d talked about us and why he stopped calling, but we’d talked and that was something. More than I’d had a year ago.

Back at my apartment Joe was waiting for me as always, propped against the doorway, one foot on the floor, the other resting on the building behind him. His dark hair hung in his eyes and while most girls found a guy with long hair sexy, I honestly just wished he’d get a haircut.

“I didn’t think you were coming.” His arm hooked around my waist and pulled me into him. I nuzzled my head against his cedar-and-mint-smelling chest.

“I wouldn’t miss this,” I said, then leaned up to kiss him. His grip loosened and I pulled away to get my key. Before I could slide the key into the lock he grabbed my hand and spun me towards him. I waited for his lips to assault mine, but instead he ran his fingers through his hair.

“I was just talking to Scott and his band’s playing at Trax tonight.” A sparkle flashed in his eye, the one he got every time he was excited about something.

“And you want to go.” He nodded his head up and down with the boyish charm that always won me over. “Sure. Let me just put my bag down and run a brush through my hair.”

“Really? Because I know we had plans and all.” He linked his hands around my side and pulled me to him. He held my waist, bending his knees slightly so he could look at me eye to eye. His dark bushy eyebrows turned towards the straight bridge of his nose.

“No, really, it’s okay.” As much as I loved our Monday nights at the pizza place, I was sick of coming home smelling like garlic. Sadie always made me strip at the door and go straight down the hall to the laundry room. At least she let me grab my robe first. I couldn’t argue. If it wasn’t for her parents paying most of the rent I’d be in the dorms sharing a room with some stranger.

Then again, watching Scott’s band play was the equivalent of a slow, torturous death. If there was a plaque for girlfriend of the year, it’d be hanging over my bed.

I offered a smile with my words even though I wasn’t in a smiling type of mood.

“Awesome. Love you, babe.” He kissed my cheek and opened the door for me. He walked straight in and went right for the couch. Sadie had picked out the bright pink pillows with orange detail, a chic nod to her culture. They were perfectly placed on our brown couch until Joe pushed them aside, one falling to the floor, and flopped on the sofa.

If Sadie was home, she’d kill him. We’ve been best friends since high school and there were two things I learned about her when we started living together. First, don’t mess with her closet. To say she was anal would be putting it mildly. Secondly, decorative pillows were as important as her shoes.

I picked the pillow off the floor and placed it in its designated spot. “I’ll be right out,” I said and headed to my room, deciding to change my shirt too. I shut the door behind me. Why, I didn’t know. It’s not like Joe hadn’t seen me in my bra. We spent a lot of time on second base. Even though he kept trying to slide into third, I hadn’t waved him on yet. I didn’t even know why. I just froze every time we got there. At this rate I’d be a virgin for life.

My room was much smaller than Sadie’s, but it was big enough for my full-size bed and a desk, and I had a decent closet. Luckily my parents had let me keep most of the stuff I couldn’t throw out, but didn’t need, at home with them.

I slid out of my gray hoodie and into a low-cut green shirt. Zach had always loved me in green. He told me it brought out the color of my eyes.

Where the hell had that come from? I’d stopped thinking about all things Zach the minute I picked myself up out of my depression and realized that his leaving caused me to lose focus and cost me a ticket to my dream school.

Though I suppose it worked out for the best. I did get to spend more time with Joe and Sadie. Poor Sadie was bribed into staying close to home by her parents, though if you ask me, an hour there and an hour back is a quarter tank of gas I wouldn’t want to waste. But with our sweet-ass apartment and a brand new car, she wasn’t complaining. Besides, she didn’t mind the hike. She really loved babysitting her little bro while her parents worked crazy hours.

I picked up my makeup bag, and my black eyeliner slipped out and fell to the floor. I bent down to pick it up, my eye catching the corner of a box under my bed.

I don’t know why I didn’t leave the stupid thing at my parents’ house. For whatever reason, it had made the move with me. I’d hidden the box under my bed and forgotten about it. Of course I would notice it now. I couldn’t resist the urge to torture myself with the past.

Call it pathetic, but I still had a box full of a million different Zach memories. I hadn’t looked at it since last summer when I finally accepted he’d never come back. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out.

It amazed me how all our memories fit in an Uggs boot box. Granted it was for the tall Uggs, but still. After everything we shared, everything we went through, it seemed insufficient.

I ran my hand over the pictures taped to the top, surrounded with glitter glue. One of me and Zach at the beach. I was on his back and both our mouths were open wide from laughing. The dog I drew on his hand earlier that day still visible, even after hours in the ocean.

In the left corner, there was a picture of us watching the sunset on the docks in our hometown. And then in the middle, out of the hundreds of pictures we ever took together, was my absolute favorite.

It was a close-up of our faces, because I insisted on taking the picture even though his arms were much longer than mine. I had cake batter smeared across my cheek, and he was completely covered in flour. His eyes were crossed and my tongue was sticking out. It was the most ridiculous thing. But it captured the true essence of us.

Natural and real and never once embarrassed, we embraced our fun and quirky sides and loved each other deeper than any romance novel could portray. It was foolish. But we didn’t think. We only felt. Once we were together, I never imagined a life without him. Which was why when it ended, my world cookie crumbled around me.

With a calming breath I took the top off the box, but it didn’t help. As soon as the lid sat beside me, I was faced with every memory I’d forced into the back of my mind. Every detail about our time together. Every smile we shared. And then the reason I spent a summer crying over him smacked into my chest with enough gusto to knock the wind out of me.

I willed the tears away, but it was too late. My head fell forward, and I bawled like a baby, muffling the noise in my hands. Grateful that Joe had the volume blaring on the television, I let the sobs overtake me for a moment, before gathering the strength I had built up when Zach left and shut the waterworks off.

I reached into the box and pushed aside the tons of movie tickets, layer by layer. Beneath them lay the stuffed bear he’d won me at the carnival. He’d wanted to win me the biggest prize they had, but after thirty bucks I walked away with a bear the size of an éclair. And not a normal éclair either—one of those mini ones that wouldn’t satisfy the smallest of sweets cravings. It slept next to me on my pillow every night till I stuffed it away in the box.

A bobber from the day we went fishing and didn’t catch a single one, even though the guy next to us caught fifteen. Zach insisted the man had superpowers. I told him he played too many video games.

Notes we passed back and forth between classes. I unfolded one. An entire piece of paper. And all it said:

I love you
.

I used to write page-long notes, going on about class and whatever else I could think of. Sometimes he would write back in response, but other times he just wrote those three words. I’m sure there were twenty other folded pieces of paper in the box with the exact same three words scribbled in the middle.

And there at the bottom, the thing I knew I subconsciously looked for. I took the plastic bubble in my hand and popped off the top. Inside, it held what to anyone else would be a cheap keychain. To me, it was a declaration of love and promises.I rolled it between my fingers, the bright green gem of the frog’s eye shining up at me. It was like a mirror to our past, reflecting back the memories.