what I could’ve done differently. Don’t worry. I’m asking all my old boyfriends.”
He laughed. “I don’t know. Could you have been ten years older? We were kids headed for college and it was too soon to settle down.”
“I wasn’t too overbearing?”
“No.”
“Whiny?”
“Absolutely not.”
She looked at him.
“Usually not.” He sighed. “Really, Aubrey, the timing was off. And it is again. I’m involved with someone.”
She scooted her chair away from his. “Oh, no. No. I wasn’t coming here looking to get back together.” She laughed nervously and pulled the questionnaire packet out of her purse. “I’m hoping you could fill this out to give me some insight on my strengths and weaknesses as a girlfriend.”
He reached over and took the papers from her. “You’re giving me an exit survey. Five years later.”
“I guess so. Think of it as homework.”
He shook his head laughing. “You always tried so hard at whatever you did. Even with us. You helped organize the damn senior prom just so you could make sure our song was the theme. That was crazy.”
She closed her eyes. “Rock Your Body, Justin Timberlake. Do you know how hard it was to push that through? They didn’t think it was romantic.”
“Rock Your Body is totally romantic. At least it was with you,” Lance said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
She sighed. “It seemed like love at the time.”
“I know. But we were teenagers. I see it here everyday, all these young, love-struck couples, and you just know it’s not going to work out.”
She looked at the floor and nodded. “We didn’t really have a chance, did we?”
He tipped up her chin. “We were kids. And we had fun, didn’t we?”
Closing her eyes, she nodded, remembering what it was like to kiss him. Then she saw Ian’s face again. Ugh!
Lance stood up. “I’ll try to get this back to you, soon.”
She forced her biggest smile. “Super. That’d be great, just squeeze it in while you’re grading papers on family planning or hormones or whatever.”
“We’re on the communicable diseases unit.”
“Then I better hurry out of here. Thanks!”
***
That visit required a stop at the bakery. Three chocolate chip cookies later, and Lance and his brown eyes were forgotten. Plus, she needed the sugar rush to push on to visit number four of the day. Davey McDickson was up next. He was still in town, running his family’s funeral home and there would certainly be a viewing that night. How they managed to get anyone to lay out their loved ones at a place called McDickson’s was a mystery, but they still had billboards on the highway, so business must be going strong.
She drove to the funeral parlor at seven, and Davey was standing in the back of the room as a line of people waited to pay their respects at the casket. She walked up behind him and tapped his shoulder.
Davey jumped. “Aubrey!”
A few of the mourners turned to glare.
“Hi, Davey,” she whispered
“Hi.” His expression morphed from surprise to concern. He set his arm on hers. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
She shrugged. “It was two years ago. I’ve moved on.”
“Excuse me?”
“Is my math wrong? Hasn’t it been two years since you dumped me?”
Davey took a step back. “You’re not here for the wake?”
“No. I just need a moment of your time to talk about our relationship. Why it ended.”
An old woman sitting nearby scooted over a seat closer to them.
He lowered his voice even more. “You crashed a wake to talk about why we broke up a few years ago?”
She nodded. “What went wrong?”
He pursed his lips and his eyes darted around the room. His voice came out in a hiss. “You signed us up for a weekend couple’s retreat after our first fight. About which movie to see. And we’d only been dating two months.”
She threw up her hands. “I wanted things to work out between us.”
“You were way too intense.”
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One was brilliant. I don’t know why you resisted seeing it.” She rolled her “r’s” for dramatic effect.
Davey wrinkled his nose.
“What? You thought it was funny when I did that. Then you’d say burrito and try to roll your r’s longer.”
He shook his head. “No, I didn’t.”
Wrong guy. It had been Ian who appreciated her attempts at foreign accents. She grabbed the packet of papers. “Can you fill this out and mail it back to me?”
His eyes were wide and unblinking. “This is real life, isn’t it? I’m not just having a nightmare.”
“I forgot how much