The Boys Who Loved Me - Krista Wolf Page 0,1

part was fine by me.

The elevator took me straight back downstairs, to the hustle and bustle of the brightly-lit lobby. The place was really nice, I had to admit. Maybe the town had picked up a little. Maybe, despite all my cynicisms, there might’ve been some changes that were actually for the bett—

I saw him standing there and my heart skipped ahead two beats. Just as it had done the first time, in the halls of the junior high. So very, very long—

“Kayla?”

He looked the same, only better. Wider and more filled out. There was a mess of dark stubble around his handsome face that had been peach-fuzz the last time I’d seen him. It suited him nicely.

But there was that same lusciously thick, dark hair. Those same smoldering, whiskey-brown eyes.

“Warren…”

My mouth curled into a smile, but only halfway. And that’s because he rushed straight at me, crushing my body against his hard chest with those big, beautiful arms.

Two

KAYLA

“I can’t believe you still have it!”

The car gleamed like an electric blue jewel, especially in the rain: a 1968 Chevy Chevelle. 396 V-8 engine. 424 horsepower. I knew everything about this car, because Warren had hammered every last detail into my head. As my high school boyfriend, it was all he could talk about. Almost.

He swung open the door for me — something he hadn’t done in about a decade. Then he hopped in, revved her up, and took off, even spinning the tires on the way out of the hotel’s parking lot.

“You really thought I’d get rid of my baby?” he smiled.

“I thought I was your baby.”

“You were my other baby,” he grinned. “My best baby.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah yeah…”

We tore through the rain-slick streets, made even blacker by the reflection of night as we cruised through town. In the meantime, I took in my ex-boyfriend as he sat beside me. He wore the same ripped blue jeans and faded jacket I remembered him in, only everything was broader and more nicely filled out. His hand rested on the steering wheel with casual comfort, as if he’d been born with it in his palm.

“I can’t believe it about Elizabeth,” I said somberly.

Warren’s jaw twitched a little as he slowly nodded. “Me neither.”

“I mean, when was the last time you talked to her?”

“Had to be a year,” he sighed. “Maybe a little more. I ran into her at the pancake house where she worked sometimes, but more often than not it was at the bar.” He paused solemnly. “Or rather… bars.”

We fell silent as we passed through a main stretch of town. The buildings looked the same, the facades mostly unchanged. But the signs in the windows were different. The businesses themselves, totally alien to me.

“What happened to Rudy’s?” I asked.

“Closed.”

“And the lumber yard?” I pointed to an open stretch of darkness.

“Gone too,” Warren said simply. “Big box stores,” he shrugged, by way of explanation. “Couldn’t compete.”

“I see.”

The more I looked, the more I couldn’t recognize anything at all. One by one, the restaurants had become gas stations and banks. The florist was razed. The donut shop was now a fancy coffee house, filled with couches and furniture and strange-looking people.

“Wow, look at this place,” I breathed. “I mean… what the hell?”

Warren turned to glance at me, mildly amused. None of this seemed to phase him. The billiard hall was suddenly a laundromat. We passed the corner store that we used to hang out at as kids, stealing candy by the fistful. It had been replaced by a new pizzeria.

“This is fuckin’ depressing,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because everything’s…”

“Changed?”

“Yeah.”

He shook his head. “Well it’s been seven years, Kayla. You didn’t expect the town to sit here waiting for you to come back?”

“Actually, I guess I did.” The streets rolled by, looking strange and foreign to my tired eyes. I let out a short, acid laugh. “It would’ve been nice, anyway.”

“Yeah, well it doesn’t work like that.”

Through the rain we drove, neither of us willing to talk about Elizabeth… or about the other elephant in the room.

Luke.

When it came down to it there were a thousand questions I wanted to ask Warren, but we had plenty of time. To save on airfare, I’d arrived two whole days before the funeral.

“So whatcha been up to?” I asked casually.

“Work, mostly.”

“Still fixing cars?”

“Fixing up hot rods now,” he acknowledged, “but yeah.”

I hesitated for a moment, which created an awkward silence. “Are you still at Tommy’s?”

“Uh huh,” Warren nodded. “Only now it’s a different place, a different name.”

I