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SCARLETT

Present day, beginning of spring semester …

H ome, sweet home.

Okay, at first glance, maybe there’s not a whole lot “sweet” about this sparsely furnished basement efficiency apartment. But it’s mine.

More importantly, it’s a short walk from the campus of Brumehill College, where I start classes in two days.

After finally kicking my ass into gear, taking a heavy courseload at my community college back in Massachusetts and maintaining a 4.0 GPA for the last year and a half, and thanks to good letters of recommendation and my trusty old almost-perfect SAT score from my senior year of high school, I was accepted as a transfer student to one of the best colleges in the country.

I’m studying pre-law. Brumehill has a great program and a great track record of sending its graduates to top law schools.

Plus, they offered a great financial aid package so that I won’t even have to work a part-time job.

Choosing Brumehill out of all the places that I got accepted to was a no-brainer.

A no-brainer, but still, there was one tiny thing that had me hesitant.

Lane Larsen.

Just calling his name to mind does something to my body that’s hard to describe. A bizarre concoction of emotions swirls through my chest: nostalgia mixed with hurt mixed with warmth mixed with anger mixed with regret mixed with wistfulness. It’s a fucked-up stew.

And when that swirl settles down, it’s usually hurt that lingers the longest, like a bitter aftertaste.

And when that washes away, a tiny tinge of shame remains.

Shame, because I know just how pathetic I am for still dwelling on a summer fling from a year and a half ago that obviously couldn’t have been more meaningless to Lane.

It would be easier if I could hold a grudge against him, maybe. If we were actually dating. If we’d been together longer, to the point where the feelings I did develop for him made sense.

That’s why the tinge of shame is the last feeling to wash away whenever I think of Lane—because all it took was a couple weeks of a guy being thoughtful, considerate, and genuinely nice to me for me to fall for him like a dummy.

I wish I could just think of that summer as a fun, short-term, ultimately meaningless thing that isn’t tarnished by how it ended. But then the image of Lane walking into that bar in the Loop, soaking from head to toe and carrying an entire bag of shoes just because I told him my feet hurt flashes in my mind.

I just haven’t lived the kind of life where a gesture like that fades into the background. It meant something to me. Our time together that summer meant something to me.

I wish I could pretend it didn’t, but it did.

No, I can’t blame Lane for not being as silly and na?ve as I was.

And I can’t blame the heartbreak he caused for why I got back with Caleb when I returned home at the end of that summer. That would just be letting myself off the hook.

Instead of letting myself off the hook for my own bad judgment, I need to hold myself accountable and commit to doing better for myself.

The days of giving my heart away heedlessly are over, and so are the days of tying myself to someone who only wants to drag me down.

Caleb’s in the rearview mirror, for good this time. I’m at a great college, and my academic path is finally back on track. I’m done with settling, and I’m done with having low expectations for myself.

I just wish I could stop my eyes from searching for a glimpse of Lane every time I step outside to walk around the town of Cedar Shade—dreading seeing him, and being disappointed when I don’t.