The Boys Who Loved Me - Krista Wolf

One

KAYLA

They say you can’t go home again, which I always thought was a dumb saying. Sure, the place you grew up in definitely changed while you were gone. It might even be so radically different that you barely recognize the buildings, the people, the places. But after seven long years I was coming home to North Glade anyway, whether the shrouded little town liked it or not.

And that’s only because Elizabeth was dead.

It’s a funny thing, losing the people you love. But losing a childhood friend; someone your own age, someone you laughed and played and survived your teenage years with? Well that was different. It was different in feeling, different in scope of loss. Different in that it forced you to take a hard look at your own mortality, revealing all kinds of deep-seated emotions you can never really expect.

My jaw grew tight as I turned off the highway, gliding onto the slick rural roads that dove into the big conifer forests. It was raining, of course. Hell, it was raining the day I left too. I wondered bizarrely if it ever actually stopped, or if the place had remained the mud-streaked little emerald I remembered it to be, an hour’s drive north of Seattle.

Elizabeth.

She’d been my classmate, my teammate, my friend. One of the core group of crazy teens we used to hang out with, to fend off the boredom and while away the tumultuous years between adolescence and adulthood.

Dead.

I turned again, marveling at how well the rented Jeep handled in the rain while ignoring the growing knot in my stomach. Elizabeth and I had been close. We’d shared secrets. We’d seen and experienced many sacred things together, for the very first time. I loved her as a sister once, spending countless nights sleeping over at each other’s houses when we were younger. Giggling. Laughing. Even crying sometimes.

And then little by little… I’d just lost touch with her.

It’s funny how that happens too. No one ever tells you ‘this is the last time you’ll see this person in your life.’ There’s never a warning, never a clue. You just drift slowly apart, until one day the visits become phone calls and the phone calls become text messages and then texts become so infrequent, you forget about those too.

My tires bumped gently as I passed over the Ram’s Gate bridge, letting the road wind further down through the endless sheets of rain. At least that looked the same. So did the blinking yellow light two miles later, the one that marked the beginning of town.

Here we go…

I turned left, swinging the Jeep wide to avoid a fallen branch. The wind had picked up, and so had the rain. The hotel I’d chosen was near the edge of town, looming tall in the twilight that was quickly morphing into darkness. I’d picked the place because it was new, and it was big enough to have decent amenities. And maybe even also, so when this whole thing was over, I could make a quick and easy escape.

“Miss?”

The valet took my keys the moment I rolled to a stop. Five minutes later I was efficiently checked in and dragging my bag upstairs. Another five after that, I was flopped across the giant king-sized bed I’d reserved to treat myself, in one of the hotel’s upper ‘suites’. Sadly, this trip was to serve as a vacation as well as a homecoming. The first actual vacation I’d taken for myself in years.

And whose fault is that?

I stared up at the ceiling and focused on the sound of the rain, letting myself sink further into the mattress with each heavy droplet. Folding my hands over my belly I sighed mightily, allowing every last ounce of air to hiss its way from my lungs.

North Glade. Again.

Holy shit.

BZZZZZT.

I turned and there it was — my phone’s screen glowing brightly in the dimly-lit room. A text message from a number I barely recognized. A number so new I hadn’t yet added it to my contacts, or associated it with a name.

You know his name.

I got up quickly and found myself preening in front of the mirror, straightening my shirt and smoothing my jeans. At twenty-seven I still looked pretty much the same as I did when I’d left this place at twenty. Maybe there were a few new lines on my face, here and there. A few older lines grown deeper, too. On the inside I’d changed a lot of course, but no one could see that. And that