peeling off the spandex suit until it was pooled at my knees—when I spotted the next person who had me stopping in place. I seriously had no idea why people wore rompers. I would die. Or pee all over myself. It had been enough of a close call.
I’d been holding it for at least an hour. An hour in which twenty minutes had been spent talking to the gold-medal-winning figure skating pair that I was even more in love with after meeting. They were self-deprecating and funny, and Jasmine had been even prettier in person than on TV. And I wanted to have a smug face as good as hers. Ivan Lukov was also just about the prettiest man I’d ever seen—his beauty was only surpassed by Zac’s, but in a different way. Zac had taken a picture of me with them, which made my year.
Another twenty minutes had been spent with us on the dance floor, and then the rest of the time with me standing at Zac’s side while he talked to a couple people he knew.
And when that hour of us being at the Halloween party had hit, his phone had started vibrating with an alarm I hadn’t even known he’d set, and I’d decided to make my way to the bathroom before we left.
And it was for that reason that I happened to be in there at that exact moment.
To find her at the sink, washing her hands, wearing a Little Red Riding Hood costume with a wolf mask sitting on the counter.
In the goddamn bathroom, of all places.
Ten years had passed, but I recognized that fucking face.
The face that had belonged to a Disney princess—a Disney princess I had thought originally belonged to a Disney prince.
As an adult now, maybe she still deserved a Disney prince… in a different fucking movie.
She was a bitch Cinderella… and I was Mulan. And Zac... Zac was… well, Zac looked like the prince in Sleeping Beauty, but inside, he was an Olaf.
And Olaf was my favorite.
He didn’t deserve this asshole. He never had. Part of me understood he had been thinking with his dick and not his head back when they’d dated for a few months, but it still blew my mind he’d let someone so shitty into his life. Had he not seen it? Had he not known? I wasn’t sure.
What I did know was that now she was here. In front of me. In the fucking bathroom.
I had never looked her up once in all the years since she’d crushed my pride and self-esteem into smithereens. I’d thought about it once or twice but had stopped myself in time.
But that didn’t mean I hadn’t made a promise to myself—a promise I had made the day I’d decided I was going to be more than a little kid someone hung out with out of pity. The day I decided I was going to be proud of myself first.
If I ever see that bitch again, I’m gonna tell her. I’m gonna tell her “thank you for that time you were an asshole to me and you hurt my feelings for years. Eat a dick.”
Most of the time, I thought I was mature, or at least mostly mature. But in that second, with her standing there at the sink, as pretty as ever—part of me wished she’d grown a bunch of facial hair over the years—whatever maturity I had in me, disappeared. Like that.
She looked up, her gaze catching mine through the reflection.
And maybe, maybe, if she had smiled or done anything other than look me up and down, maybe I might have let it go. But the words still rang fresh in my soul.
She didn’t do anything friendly. She seemed to size me up with her still-heartless gaze, found me lacking, then finished rinsing off in the sink. Unimportant and forgotten.
I stood there as she shook her hands off, water flying everywhere, and leaned forward to get closer to the mirror mounted on the wall.
And I knew what I was going to do.
What I had to do. For younger me. For anyone else she might have ever been ugly to that hadn’t stood up for themselves either.
Especially when Zac was standing somewhere close by outside that door, ready to hang out with me after he’d already spent hours in my company. Because he cared about me and I cared about him.
Because we had been meant to be friends. To be in each other’s lives. Over the last few weeks,