Page 16 of When in December

“Hayes! Hayes! It’s gonna be all right, Hayes. We got help. You gotta let go.”

Or at least at the time, I’d thought it was Vassar. I’d hoped it was.

I shook myself out of it. No one had called me by my first name, other than my sister, in years. Not since high school.

Had my sister given cheery homemaker my name? Had I at some point since I’d caught her sneaking through the place?

Did I not remember?

I ran my hand through my hair, feeling how long it’d been since I’d last cut it. I shuffled back to my room. Without bothering to change, I dropped onto my mattress. It did the job well enough. Certainly weren’t the worst conditions I’d ever slept in.

I shut my eyes, squeezing them for a second as I pretended the world didn’t exist. I wished it didn’t.

Aaron. Aaron Hayes.

Funny. It hadn’t sounded so terrible when she said it.

four

. . .

Poppy

I wasn’ta prodigy when it came to home design. We all made mistakes; it was how we learned. This was especially the case when the thing you needed to learn and evolve aligned with fashion.

My first project, for instance, like most interior wannabes, had been my own bedroom. I thought I was the coolest, wanting to slather my walls in a rich golden yellow with a classic white border that made the entire room look somewhere between a sunset and a Victorian tearoom. My bedspread was offset by having the comforter in a now-cringe-worthy chevron pattern—because at that point, everything had been chevron.

I knew better than a lot of people how easy it was to get caught up in trends and what was hot right now rather than what would always be classic and homey for years to come while still making guests speechless and wondering how exactly they could live just as stylishly.

Of course now, all the things I learned and all the ways I knew I was more than sufficient to complete a job like the Hayes-Preston holiday home were thrown out the window. I felt like I reverted back to being that same girl—when I hadbeen fifteen in high school, awkward and clunky and desperately trying to pretend that she wasn’t—the moment I stood stock-still in front of Aaron Hayes.

Aaron Hayes, who had once stood in front of me similarly. Only then, we weren’t in a small cabin. We were at school, in a locker room, and I was hidden behind a wall that he didn’t see me or my so-called friends who I soon enough realized only kept me around for comic relief. Or it was more likely that they’d kept me around so that I could tell them about the parties on the college campus nearby, courtesy of Simon, and divulge to them at least one secret to trauma-bond us all together.

“What do you mean, you don’t like anyone?” Cassie, an almost-dreadfully-stereotypical cheerleader—whose mom took her to get her blonde highlights redone every month until she was no longer the brunette—gaped at me. “Come on now. You must like someone. Tell us.”

All the girls pushed in on me closer that day during school.

I bit my lip, and they all squealed, cheering me on to let the name loose.

“Well,” I finally broke, my voice nervous as I picked at my perpetually short fingernails, “Aaron Hayes.”

The next day, they pushed me into the boy’s team locker room to hear Aaron tell all his friends that I would be the last person in the entire school he would ever consider kissing on a bet, let alone asking on a date.

I wasthatrepulsive to him.

And that was how he had looked at me today the when I stepped into his house. Onto his property.

Even though he shouldn’t have. Not when that day on the edge of the locker room, where he and his friends were changing after practice, hadn’t been the final time I came into contact with Aaron Hayes.

No, that wasn’t until a few months later.

After the start of a new school year, when everyone turned a little boyfriend crazy, and after the holidays, when everyone heard about the reason the popular quarterback for the team hadn’t been in school for over a week was due to a tragic car accident involving his parents— One of his football teammate’s, Isaac, had parents were out of town and decided to throw a party.

I snuck out to attend at the behest of Cassie. She’d insisted if I didn’t come, I would be a major loser—even though she barely talked to me when I got there.

Aaron Hayes had been nearly buried alive by a pile of puffer coats in the guest room. He was also very drunk. I asked what he had to drink that night.

“Uh,” he sputtered, squinting at me as if he couldn’t quite place who I was. “I dunno. There was a beer and then some stuff out of a bottle …”