I’m sorry I never came up here to see you after what happened. I’m so sorry. I wanted to, but it was so hard to reach you. Why wouldn’t you talk to me?
Even thinking the words sends the pressure of tears to my eyes, so I blurt the plainest, dumbest thought in my mind.
‘Hey, do you know whatever happened to Damien Di Fiore from high school? He popped into my headrecently, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him on Facebook.’
Zac lets out a breath like he’s relieved I changed the subject. ‘Oh, man, must you? I’d forgotten about that poser. Do you remember when he tried to get people to call him “Gunner”, but everyone just continued to call him Damien?’
For some reason that may be wine-related, I find this comment hysterical. When I finally stop giggling, Zac’s looking at me like I need a check-up.
‘You right there?’ he asks. ‘Do I need to unglue that glass from your hand?’
I clutch the wine closely like it’s my newborn. ‘You’re not getting anywhere near my child.’
He rests back in his chair and links his fingers behind his head. ‘Do you remember Damien leaving a love note in your locker once?’
I grunt a laugh. ‘Of course. It said he wanted to “kiss and smell my beautiful hair”. It’s what triggered my crush on him. Wait—he told you about that?’
‘I wrote that note.’
I sit forward and gape at him. ‘Youwhat?’
He nods without looking at me. ‘Damien wanted to write you a love letter, and he couldn’t think of what to say, so he asked me to do it for him.’ He clasps his forehead, grimacing. ‘But it’s not like I was any better. “I want to kiss and smell your beautiful hair”? And then what—put the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again?’
I chuckle at the reference to the creepy serial killer fromThe Silence of the Lambs, but Zac just cringes into his glass. It’s not the point, though, that the note he wrote wasn’t exactly Shakespeare. It’s more that it had made me smile from the inside out and look at Damien Di Fiore in an entirely new way. Learning it was Zac who penned those words is a head-trip.
‘I can’t believe it was you!’ I reach out and give him a gentle shove.
‘You still have gorgeous hair, by the way.’ His gaze snags on the wild clump of honey-blonde strands twirling in my fingers.
I hold out a lock. ‘You want to kiss and smell it?’
He laughs, and my mind shifts to another memory from the same year as the locker note. ‘Oh my god!’ I spring to my feet. ‘I just remembered something that’s going to Freak. You. The. Hell. Out.’
‘OK?’
He blinks nervously as I duck inside and run upstairs to my bedroom, sliding open the wardrobe and digging out a shoebox stuffed with old jewellery. I untangle the silver charm bracelet and clip it to my wrist.
When I return to Zac’s curious stare, I sit back down and lift my wine glass to my lips, ensuring the bracelet falls into his view.
‘Well?’ he says, on the verge of laughing even though he has no idea what’s happening.
‘Well, what?’ I tap my fingers against my lips like I’m thinking, my wrist on display.
He catches my arm in his hand. ‘Oh my god—is that … ?’ He draws my wrist closer to the candlelight. ‘Josie!’
My smile deepens. ‘You know I never throw anything out.’
His fingertips brush the two charms dangling from the chain. One is shaped like a sun, which was the bracelet’s inaugural charm when he gave it to me for my fourteenth birthday. When we first became friends, he nicknamed me ‘sunbeam’ because he said I was always so bright and sunny. The second charm is a tiny stack of three books he gave me on my fifteenth birthday, which fell during my bookish phase.
‘There are only two charms on there,’ he says, releasing my wrist with a pout.
‘You totally let me down. You said you would give me one every year for my birthday.’ I impersonate the saddest face I can think of, even though I’ve only ever adored his attempt at a birthday tradition that lasted all of two years.
‘That’s because you started datingDamien,’ he scoffs like the name itself is gross.
‘Yeah, but the bracelet was just a friend thing.’
‘’Course it was.’ He runs his palm down his thick thigh, a trace of a frown creasing his brow.
