The Beginning

Tess

"Do you work today?" Lexi wondered from the doorway.

I glanced up from my textbooks.

Her thin blond hair pulled back from her face in a ponytail. The oversized grey sweatshirt, she'd nicked from one fellow or another, hung as loosely as the equally "borrowed" shorts that she dawned. One foot rested against the doorframe, the other planted firmly on the floor. Her hands stirred the innards of a plastic yogurt cup.

"I need to go into the restaurant in a bit, then the hotel tonight. I'll go straight to the school from there in the morning. I'll be home around three tomorrow." Considering it idle conversation, I turned back to the sparsely highlighted pages.

"So..." Lexi sung as stepped into my bedroom. Her bare feet clapped on the faux-wood vinyl until her weight shifted my mattress.

"So?" I glanced over my shoulder at her.

Lexi metaphorically twiddled her thumbs as she lifted scoops of yogurt then dumped them back in. "Did you do it?" A wicked smile turned her lips before she caught her bottom lip between her teeth. "In the walk in? Did you bang him?"

"Jesus." I sat up on my bottom. "No, Alexa, I did not."

I had kissed him. Riding the wave of the second worst day of my life, I'd acted on impulse and thrown myself at him. It was desperate. A feeble attempt to dismiss the fact that I had overslept, ruined my study time with a hangover, and then had my ass grabbed by the creepiest man in town. I couldn't drown myself in someone like Nicky or it'd end like it did with Nate.

The woman who'd come to collect him looked none too pleased. She seemed to have a certain control over Nicky that I didn't possess. She'd snapped her fingers after barking an order and, though it was hesitant and begrudging, he still did as he was told.

I'd probably gotten the wrong idea about a man like him. Nicky decided to come into town and forget his home life. Maybe she was his wife or his girlfriend. I tried to remember if I'd seen any jewelry on her fingers.

"You still have a nasty bruise on your neck." Lexi pointed out. Her pale blue eyes shifted to the crook of my neck.

There was no point in hiding it. I hadn't realized it was even there until one of my customers pointed it out. Sharp unyielding pain, wrapped in his arms, had become a delightful pleasure.

"I..." I had to tell her something. "I kissed him, okay?"

Lexi's squeal was expected but jarring none the less. "You kissed him? He didn't kiss you? Do you like him? Is this one?"

"Too much." I shook my head at her. "Take a breath. He is some stranger who's only going to be in town for a week or something. It's not like that."

"No, he told me that he grew up here. Nicky something." Lexi took a bite of her yogurt. "Graduated a year above me, I guess. So, your grade, but I don't remember him."

I hopped up from the bed and went to my small closet. On the floor sat three open boxes, all filled with papers and books. I dug through them until I found the heaviest of them. Inside were all four of my high school yearbooks, neatly tucked side by side. I pulled senior year out. I moved back to the bed, sat down beside Lexi and cracked the book.

"Wait stop. Look at me." She poked her junior year photo. Lexi was nothing but hairspray and eyeliner at that point. She licked her spoon as I thumbed through until we got to the upper classmen. We passed photos of all those we had forgotten. We stopped here and there to ask a question or share a memory. Through giggles to the end, we agreed that we hadn't seen anyone who looked like Nicky. We scanned the names of students who weren't pictured, but none were his.