Page 112 of People Like Us

The gym seemed to disappear for a second, like I was moving in and out of reality. I stared at him, unable to get a full breath in my lungs.

Wyatt held my gaze as he said, “We all knew what was happening.” His voice became almost unbearably gentle. “August included.”

I looked down. My hands were shaking.

“It was easier to blame you,” he whispered, the words carving out a part of my chest I hadn’t dared to think of in years.

Somewhere deep down I’d always known that. Knew it wasn’t my fault. Knew it wasn’t the real reason everything between August and I ended. Knew that it was easier for him to hate me for it, than to accept that we could’ve been happy together.

Wyatt swallowed. “And I’m sorry I took part in it.”

I couldn’t trust my own features enough to look at him.

The years between then and now suddenly felt paper-thin. As though all it would take was one careless movement and I’d fall straight through them. Hadn’t I been doing just that for years, anyway?

“I carry that around every day, Lola.”

My eyes burned. I nodded once, then again—trying desperately to make my body function normally. Trying to remain twenty-eight years old instead of eighteen.

“Thank you.” The words came out small.

He offered me a sad smile. After a moment he asked softly, “Have you two talked at all?”

I shook my head. “No. He never spoke to me after that day.”

I tried. For a long time, I tried. Notes in his locker turned into sitting in his driveway, turned into hours spent crying alone in my room at the Hayward’s house. The old man trying to convince me to just write it down. That somehow putting it on paper would heal me from the greatest pain I’d ever felt. It hadn’t.

Wyatt nodded slowly as though he’d expected that answer too.

I hesitated, trying to sound casual, and failing spectacularly. “Do you guys still talk? I noticed he wasn’t at the wedding with the rest of the m—your friends.” The words felt embarrassing the second they left my mouth.

Wyatt’s expression changed instantly. “He wouldn’t come.”

I looked down. “Oh.”

“He knew you’d be there.”

I barked out a laugh. A genuinely ridiculous sound. “Wow.” My eyes stung as I laughed again. “Good to know he’s still mad at me, I guess.”

Wyatt immediately shook his head. “Not mad.”

Something in his voice made me look up. And that’s when I noticed he wasn’t looking at me anymore. His gaze had drifted somewhere farther down the refreshment table.

My stomach dropped. I turned, slowly.

At the opposite end of the table stood a tall man with blonde curls that glowed under the string lights like a halo. Green eyes fixed directly on mine.

The world seemed to slow around me. Not stopping, but stretching as if opening itself to this moment.

The gym dissolved into fragments—the glow of string lights reflected in polished floors, the scent of fruit punch and old varnish, the low murmur of classmates who had become strangers and strangers who had somehow become legends. Everything softened around the edges except him.

August Brooks.

Standing at the opposite end of the refreshment table. For ten years I’d imagined this moment. In grocery stores, and red lights. On my wedding day, and the first time I rocked my son to sleep.

Every Saturday morning as I folded laundry. Every time I sat in a church pew. Every school I drove past, and every time I heard music that sounded like sin.

I had imagined finding him old and bitter. I had imagined finding him happy. I had imagined him hating me. I had imagined him loving me still. But I had never imagined how ordinary it would feel to see him again. As if some buried piece of myself had simply wandered back home.