Page 61 of When We Were Young

“Yeah, and now he’s got Layla excited about them, too. You all know how wigged out I get with insects. Now my kid wants me to help her search for a new bug in the barn so she can send pictures to Lizzie for Simon. It’s fucking traumatizing.”

I glance at Lester, and he gives off the impression that he’s not paying attention, sipping his whiskey and staring off. But I know he is listening to every word.

I walk over to the only empty chair, one between Hayden and Harrison, and drop into the seat.

Once the conversation dies down, Lester clears his throat.

“So, son, you want to catch me up on this Library Girl story your brothers over here are yapping on about?”

“Give me a few minutes to finish this. I’m gonna need to be on at least glass two to tell that story.”

An hour later, I’ve told the story of Library Girl to my brothers and Lester.

Not from the viewpoint of twenty-year-old me, who was angry and hurt, but from the perspective of a man who has spent a decade knowing what we found between those stacks and having lost it.

I’ve given them enough for them to know that she is—I mean was—important to me, and that it ended, but none of the details as to how or why. Not because I want to save face or anything like that. I don’t care if they know I was shitty.

But that story doesn’t belong to anyone else. The hurt and ugliness that happened between us isn’t what I want to focus on.

Because, whether I want to admit it or not, every time I see present-day Lizette, I see at least a flicker of the girl from the library in her eyes.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Holden

Lizette has a son, a six-and-a-half-year-old.

I do the math in my head, trying to figure out how old she was and who she may have been with then. Was she married? The thought of her marrying someone sours my stomach, even though I know I have no right to feel that way.

I wonder if it was him. Landon Carter. He was an asshole when he was an upperclassman in my fraternity, and I have no doubt that he hasn’t changed. Some people are stupid in college because they’re young and immature. Maybe they’re jerks, and when you meet them later in life, they’ve grown into better men. But Landon Carter is the kind of person you know is never going to become the man he should be: honorable, respectable, protective.

All the things my dad taught me to be.

I’d bet my entire bank account that he doesn’t live up to any of them.

I get lost staring into the glass of high-end whiskey I’m holding, gently swirling it and watching the amber liquid move.

“Hey, stranger. I was hoping to see you here.”

It’s a feminine voice—one I know well from other conferences. Danielle. I glance up and offer a smile I don’t feel.

“Hi, Danielle. Good to see you.”

Even I can hear the difference in my voice: familiar but lacking the usual flirty edge that’s been there between us for a few years.

“Care to partake in some red with me?” She lifts a bottle of wine in one hand and two glasses in the other.

“I think I’m sticking to whiskey tonight. Thank you, though.”

It wasn’t clear enough that I wanted to be alone because she slid into the booth across from me, the one I had specifically chosen tucked away in the corner.

“Okay.” She shrugs. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

She sets the bottle and glasses on the table and pushes one toward me like she expects I’ll cave.

“I wasn’t sure if you were coming to this one. Normally, you text, or I do, but you didn’t respond to mine.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. Just had a lot going on. Got tied up.”