Page 11 of Best I Never Had

My brows rise. “Jenny, Jenny?” I insinuate, knowing the exact Jenny he’s talking about. The same Jenny that he had an on and off relationship with throughout most of our senior year, the two oftentimes blowing up in an argument in the crowded hallways.

“Yeah, yeah,” he answers with a defeated eye roll. “No need to rub it in.”

“I guess she kept it in the family,” I comment. He shakes his head as he moves closer to me and bumps his shoulder into mine.

“Oh!” I gasp, suddenly remembering my own hint of gossip as we share more news from our graduating class. “I heard Tina and Ben got married.” I grin, my smile turning sly, then amused, hoping he’ll remember what the couple was famous for in high school.

“Didn’t they hook up in the back of a car? And everyone saw?”

I nod a little too enthusiastically. “Mm-hmm.”

“Wow,” he answers softly as both of us take a small trip down memory lane to when the rumors spilled through the halls about the back seathook-up that everyone was talking about, teachers included. “Well, good for them.”

I scoff, remembering another detail about Tina that’s left a sour taste in my mouth since senior year. “Yeah,” I say bitterly.

“No? They should burn in hell?”

“Let’s just say Tina wasn’t the nicest person to be around,” I say, not wanting to go into further detail about my buried hostility toward Tina and other members of her clique.

“Ben wasn’t that great either,” he offers. “The only thing he was good for was a joint and asking random people for a ride to the shadiest parts of town.”

“Hmm,” I hum.

With Hayden talking about high school and seeing him now as an adult beside me, I can’t believe how far we’ve come since those days in biology class. I thought I would only remember him as the playful, silly seventeen-year-old who managed to make our hour spent in Mr. Khan’s class fun. But looking at him now, I can’t help but notice how much he’s grown out of the teenage skin I was so accustomed to. He towers over me by more than a foot, and his shoulders and back have spread wider, bigger. When I avert my gaze, my eyes trail over the exposed area below his elbow where his tanned skin, noticeable even in the dark, flexes with each movement, somehow further reminding me that he’s a man now.

“It feels like just yesterday, doesn’t it?” he asks a little wistfully as he stares off into the open space in front of him. “Like high school was just last Wednesday, and now we’re almost thirty.”

I gawk. “Okay, Mr. Dramatic. We’re barely twenty-six. Thirty is still light years away.”

He chuckles. “So what have you been up to since those wonderful memories at Coolidge View High?” he jokes, lightening the mood.

“Nothing really,” I answersincerely.

“Nothing?” he repeats my answer. “Nothing interesting has happened to you in the eight years since our graduation?”

My mind flashes back to Matteo, something Ireallydon’t want to talk about tonight. “I mean, there isn’t much. I’ve just been living in the city since we graduated, and I work for a tech company downtown. That’s basically my life.”

“Wow, that’s it, huh?”

I poke his side with my elbow. “You don’t have to make my life seem so boring.”

“I’m sure you’ve got something exciting going on that you’re just keeping from me.”

I frown, thinking how far from the truth his assumption is and that this party is the most exciting thing to happen to me in years. And I’m not even enjoying it that much. “There really isn’t much going on with me,” I say softly, more to myself than to Hayden.

“Okay, then,” he says, tapping my arm with the back of his hand in an encouraging, supportive sort of way. “Tell me one exciting thing that happened to you this week. You gotta give me something.”

“Hmm.” My lips purse together while I consider his answer. “My coworker brought me these amazing lemon tarts from this French bistro off Broadway in the Tribeca area. And I haven’t been able to think of anything else since.”

“Pour Toujours?”

My eyes widen as my hand grips his forearm. “Yes! You’ve been there?”

“I work there,” he confesses.

I gasp. “Hayden, if you don’t tell me that you’re lying right this second, I’m going to have to prematurely apologize for the fact that you will never get rid of me.”

He laughs, the sound echoing off the opposite walls of the apartment building facing ours.

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