We Knew All Along

WE KNEW ALL ALONG

A NOVEL

MINA HARDY

For anyone who’s never had a book dedicated to them before, this one’s for you.

CHAPTER
1

WHAT DO YOU do when you look across the room and see the one man you’ve never been able to forget? You thank whatever god is responsible for push-up bras and the stomach flu that got rid of that last four pounds. You swallow the last of your complimentary glass of cheap champagne, and you take a deep breath. You lift your chin and turn away from him.

And then you wait.

It takes Christian Campbell exactly three minutes to cross the ballroom and tap me on the shoulder. I know because I counted each second passing on the big, ornate wall clock above the double doors leading to the hotel hallway. Three minutes is not a long time, but it felt like forever … and also not nearly long enough.

I don’t turn around, not right away, not for as long as it takes me to breathe in and out and my heart to thunk a quadruple beat.

“Jewel? Jewelann Kahan?”

At the sound of my name, I turn, turn, turn. I slowly, slowly turn. A smile. A tilt of my head, brow a little furrowed, but only a little. It’s a face that says I should know him, but I don’t … quite … remember …

“It’s me,” he says with a thump of his fingers on his chest, over his heart. “Christian.”

I take a few delicate steps back, feigning shock. Of course I know him. I’d been searching for a sight of him from the first moment I stepped through the doors into the ballroom. I hadn’t even been planning to come to this stupid reunion until I saw on our high school’s Connex page that he was listed as an attendee. There had been a list of the Labor Day weekend event schedule and the confirmed RSVPs, account profiles tagged for each one. I’d thought of C.C. many times over the years since I’d last seen him, but this was the first time I’d ever looked him up online. There was nothing to see but a gray silhouette and an empty profile.

“Oh,” I reply simply. No gushing. No arms open for a hug, no turning my cheek for a fake air kiss.

He notices, all right. His crystal-blue eyes narrow for a moment, looking me over. Assessing. It’s the way he used to look at me in high school, back when I powdered my fair skin to a ghostly pallor and dyed my naturally pale hair black, when I shrouded my curves in layers of black. I’ve never had a man look at me that way since.

“You haven’t changed much.” I instantly regret allowing him to get under my skin. I’d planned this night so carefully, from top to toe. I can’t screw it up. I won’t.

A slow smile tips his lips on one side. Sly but charming, and he knows it, the same way he knows I just lied. Christian has changed a lot, in all the best ways. The youthful spray of freckles across his nose and cheeks has become the tan of a man who spends his free time with outdoor sports, probably golf or skiing. His wheat-colored hair glints with silver at the temples, but it’s still lush and thick. A few crinkles appear at the corners of his eyes when he smiles. The Christian Campbell of years ago had never been in need of a glow up, but he sure has grown up, and everything I’d swooned over when he was a teenage boy has been amplified now that he’s become a man.

“You have,” he says.

Butterflies.

Considering that it’s Christian, they’re probably moths, the kind with skulls on them. From that movie with Hannibal Lecter. Except, I guess the truth is, if Christian offers to eat me, I’m totally ready to let him.

He steps forward to press his lips to my cheek, his hands warm on my bared shoulders. His breath gusts over my skin, his voice rumbles directly into my ear, and I shudder as the fine hairs on the back of my neck rise with his words.

“You look amazing, Jewelann. Absolutely gorgeous. And still dressed all in black. You look better as a blonde, though. It suits you.”

I don’t mean to close my eyes, but I do, and I’m shot back all the way to our junior year when his words had been different but the sentiment the same. We’d been making out in my parents’ carriage house with the lights off so they wouldn’t know we were in there, his hands under my shirt but over my bra and his hard-on nudging my thigh for attention. Then I’d believed him, and a few years later he’d broken my heart. Crushed it, more than once. I have never forgiven him. I have never forgotten.

I believe him now, too, because he’s right. I have glowed up. Bigger breasts and hips, courtesy of pregnancy and time, but a flatter tummy I’ve worked hard to get and keep. Reverting to my natural color hides the incoming gray and takes much less work and money than maintaining regular visits to the salon, but the blonde does suit me. I do look amazing, at least on the outside.

Inside, I’m still the same ugly mess.

The moment between us lasts for … well, a moment, before his hand presses the small of my back. My eyes open. He brushes his lips on my cheek again, too close to my mouth. I’m the one who steps back. Not out of reach. Not that. But I do put some distance between us, and I make it obvious that it’s deliberate.

I wish the look in his eyes was regret, but Christian’s expression is too neutral to read. Pinned by his gaze, I can’t move. What does he remember about me? What does he think about who I have become?

“You look good, really good. How’ve you been?”

I believe he means what he says, but I can’t believe what he says means anything.

I don’t have the chance to answer. Tiff Reade, one of the reunion committee members, has swooped down on us. She’s hawking raffle tickets from a big roll she wears on her forearm. The prizes are gift cards for local restaurants or BOGOs for attractions you’re supposed to take your kids to, except that my kid doesn’t like loud noises or crowds, and too much fried food will make him puke. I buy an arm’s length of tickets for five dollars anyway, although I know even that small, unexpected expense is going to nibble a bigger hole in my wallet.

“Use his arm,” Tiff says with a grin and gestures at Christian. “It’s longer. More tickets.”

Gallantly, my former high school crush offers his arm. She measures off a strip of tickets and winks at me, then him, and hands them to me. She does the same for him next, but Christian takes four sets. He hands her a twenty and takes the paper anaconda of tickets from her. Quickly, carefully, precisely, he accordions them all into a thick but compact bundle and shoves them in the pocket of his suit pants.

“Who are you here with? Ken?” Christian asks.

He remembers my husband’s name.

“Ken is out of town,” I say.

My husband troubleshoots point-of-sale systems for small businesses. Mom-n-pop motels and convenience stores in the middle of nowhere. He’s on the road three weeks out of four, these days. It wasn’t always like that.

“That’s too bad. It would’ve been great to meet him. And I promise”—he holds up his hands—“I wouldn’t even tell him about what a bad girl you used to be.”

“Maybe he already knows,” I answer coolly, although of course Ken has no idea who I was before I met him. He doesn’t know who I am now.

Where is that bad girl, anyway? Worn away by the years of packing healthy lunches and laundering the stains out of her husband’s tighty-whiteys. She’s buried beneath the weight of credit card debt and a house she keeps for a spouse who’s hardly ever in it. She’s struggling to protect a weird and socially awkward son from a world that would love to knock him down again and again. That bad girl has become a caricature of wife and mother.

But not tonight.

Do I imagine the gleam in Christian’s ice-blue eyes? Wishful thinking? No. His interest is definitely there, and in that instant, I release a tension I’ve been clenching inside my chest since I first read his name as “attending.”

Christian remembers me.

“Good to see you,” I tell him, all easy-breezy. I squeeze his bicep, hard as a rock, through the sleeve of his black suit jacket. I move away from him, my eyes already seeking out someone else. Anyone else. I don’t care about a single other person here, but I want Christian to think that someone, anyone, is more important to me than he could ever be.

This is the man who broke my heart, after all, and even though he’d been a boy when he did, I’m here tonight to make sure it’s the man he’s become who will regret it.

CHAPTER
2

I HEAD FOR a cluster of my classmates grouped around the silver trays of appetizers placed on tables covered in black and red cloths. Our school colors. There’d been chatter on the reunion event page about dressing to match, and I see a lot of red or black gowns and ties. One man stands out in a bright crimson suit with a trendy cut, tight pants cropped at the ankles. I don’t recognize him, but I wave as though I do.

My simple black dress is a classic look, approved by my husband, who has opinions about things like that. He’d never come right out and use the word “whore,” but I know that’s what he thinks about too much cleavage, skirts cut too far above the knee. I’d bought the dress at an estate sale to wear to his company holiday party a few years ago. It’s one of at least two dozen black dresses I own, all in a similar style. I doubt Ken would be able to tell one from the other, which is kind of the point. He can’t complain about me having too many black dresses if he can’t tell them apart.

Christian might be watching me walk away from him, but I don’t look back to check. I wave at a few more people in the group. I live in the same town I grew up in, and yet I haven’t seen any of these people in years, some since our graduation twenty-five years ago. I know the woman in front of me, though. Lisa Weaver and I had been friends in elementary school, bonding over our love for sticker albums and hatred of white milk in cartons. We’d drifted apart in middle school, and in high school she joined the cheerleading squad in a desperate but successful bid for popularity. I’d taken the path toward a different cliché, thrift-store Goth. Looks like we both ended up in much the same place, though. Domestic “bliss.”

“Jewelann! Don’t you look great! Like something right out of an old black-and-white movie. So glam.” Lisa’s dark-eyed gaze moves up and down over my dress, takes in my upswept hair and the glint of my earrings, real diamonds that had belonged to Ken’s mother. Her eyebrows lift the tiniest bit at the sight of my black heels with the red soles. “Oh, wow, I love your shoes.”

I tilt my foot side to side. Nonchalant, although inside I’m gleeful that she noticed. “Oh, these? Thanks.”

“‘Oh,’ she says, like you picked them up at Target.” Lisa wears her hair in a natural wealth of soft curls that she’s pinned back on the sides. Her deep red lipstick is perfect against her dark skin. She wears a red dress to match.

I resist the urge to tell her I bought them at an estate sale, still in the original box with the receipt. I spent less than half of what they originally cost. Less than half was still a lot. This is the first time I’ve ever worn them. They pinch my toes.

We hug. She smells of perfume, a scent I can’t place. Her embrace shakes my arm so the cheap sparkling wine sloshes from my glass.

“Whoopsy.” Lisa’s laugh is raucous and reminds me of why we used to be such good friends when we were children. “Don’t want to waste the bubbly. Such as it is. How long has it been since I’ve seen you, anyway? Are you still living in your old house?”

When my parents decided to move to Florida and offered the house to my brother Jonathan and me, I’d been the one to accept it, while he took the cash they offered instead. At the time, I’d thought I was getting the better bargain. Real estate always goes up in value, doesn’t it? At twenty-three, I hadn’t understood what a burden owning a house can be, how refinancing to put cash in your pocket ties you financially to a bunch of brick and wood and glass, how the choices you make inside its walls can turn a home into a prison.

“Yep. Still there. How about you? Are you still over on …?” I don’t remember where she was living the last time we spoke. Honestly, I can’t recall when we last spoke.

She picks up when I trail away. “No, no. I moved over to a condo in Lincoln Park. Near the Fraze Pavilion. Loud as hell over there, between the concerts and the freaking high school football. But I’m too lazy to find another place. And since it’s just me …”

Lisa’s the one who trails away this time, but with an expectant look, as though I’m meant to fill in the blank she’s deliberately leaving. When I don’t speak up, she continues. “You know we only live a few streets away from each other. Why don’t we ever hang out?”

“Oh, you know,” I tell her with a wave of my hand. “Life stuff.”

“It shouldn’t take a class reunion to get us together,” she says.

The glint of tears in her eyes alarms me. I’m not sure what to say in response to this surge of emotion. She’s not wrong, but she’s also talking as though we’d been bosom buddies, when the reality is that by the time we graduated from high school, she was passing me in the hallway without even looking at me. Pleated skirts and pom-poms versus black lipstick and torn fishnets. We hadn’t had a falling out, but we’d done a bit more than simply drift apart.

“Let’s grab a couple of fresh glasses of that terrible champagne while we catch up. Okay?” She’s already waving toward one of the servers, and I have time to admire her perfectly polished, crimson nails. I haven’t had a manicure or gel tips in months. Too expensive, and besides, working in the garden ruins long nails.

“Oh … I really shouldn’t …”

“It’s a class reunion. If that’s not the perfect reason to get hammered, what is? I mean, c’mon. Look at this group! We all got so freaking old.” Her laughter has an edge, but it’s still contagious.