Elizabeth Finn: Unforgiven

“You . . . well . . . I don’t even know what to say to that.” She was stunned for a moment. “I mean, of course you would run into him at some point. His parents too, I ’spose, but what did he say? What did he . . . do? Was he . . . I don’t know. Civil?”

“He hates me. I mean . . . of course he does.” She shrugged her shoulders. “He got me fired. Not sure if it was intentional or not, but he certainly has no problem with the fact I’m jobless. Sometimes I think I was crazy to come back here. I mean, my lawyer had to actually do lawyerly stuff just to get me paroled back to Savoy from out of state. What the hell was I thinking, and what the hell did I expect? That I could avoid him forever?”

“Stop. This is your home as much as his. Your mom is here, and now that your dad’s gone, she needs you. You have as much right as anyone to be here.”

“Well, I think you and Mom are the only ones who actually believe that. Someone vandalized my bike. My bike! That’s . . . I mean . . . it’s a bike, for fuck sake!” Michelle’s expression was sad, and perhaps a bit stunned. A bike, after all . . .

When they finally made it to the parade, and she caught sight of her nemesis across the street from her almost instantly, she thought certain God was tutting at her in disappointment. Darren did not see her, and as the marching band moved between them, she took the opportunity to watch him. His hatred for her didn’t extend to the rest of the world in any way. He smiled as different people greeted him with a hand clapped on his shoulder. It was too small a community for people not to know the prodigal son who’d come home to such a noble pursuit as ER doctor in their hospital. The town loved him, and he greeted everyone with a friendly smile, but she saw that smile fade quickly when no one was looking, just to be reinvigorated when the next person called his name.

She remembered that smile, and she missed it more than she cared to admit. It was a hard thing being hated by him. She knew she was staring, but Michelle beside her was too busy watching the procession of band members, cheerleaders, firemen, and the like to notice that Bailey was off in a different world. Bailey imagined what life had been before. She let herself feel the warmth and comfort of a world where so many people didn’t hate her. She let herself feel the flutter of nerves as Darren flashed his million-dollar smile at her. None of it was real, but it had been, and she escaped to those memories as she watched him shake hands, wave at people, hug a little old woman who greeted him warmly.

He returned his attention to the procession shortly thereafter, and when his eyes moved across the street and caught on Bailey, who was still staring at him like a buffoon, his face dropped. His expression turned to a glare, and he returned her stare venomously. Bailey’s cheeks burned, but she didn’t look away. She lifted her hand tentatively before she could stop herself, and the moment he took in her gesture, he turned, pushed his way through the crowd behind him, and disappeared with one final glare over his shoulder.

“Michelle, can we go?” Michelle looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. Bailey didn’t want to get into the Darren discussion here, so she pleaded with her eyes. Michelle watched her for a moment, gauging just how much resistance she wanted to put up. With a sigh and a shrug of her shoulders, Michelle nodded, and they left.

Michelle was one of Bailey’s oldest friends. After high school, she’d ended up in Kansas City for college, and she’d returned to Savoy with her MBA a couple years ago to help her father run his furniture store. It was the only furniture store in Savoy, so being successful and profitable had never been a problem for them, but her father was nearing retirement, and he’d be handing over the reins soon enough. Bailey’s small cottage was furnished in damaged pieces from their store, and she’d spent an entire evening using furniture scratch cover-up to make it look decent. She’d been high as a kite by the time she finished thanks to the fact she forgot to open a window, but from a distance, her furnishings were quite nice for her small, moss-covered cottage in the woods.

When Michelle suggested a bar instead, Bailey inwardly groaned, but she had made Michelle miss the parade, so she ended up nodding, wondering just how much worse her afternoon of being a normal twenty-seven-year-old could get. She found out quickly it could definitely get worse.

He picked up his glare right where he’d left off at the parade the moment she and Michelle walked through the doors to the dingy old bar just on the edge of town. It was a watering hole type of joint, and Darren was playing a round of pool on the old retro seventies pool table. She watched as his lips mouthed, “What the fuck” at seeing her, and his expression was cold and pissed. Bailey recognized the two guys he was shooting pool with, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember their names. Didn’t really matter. The moment they followed Darren’s glare to Bailey, their brows arched in that “oh, shit” sorta way.

Michelle sat at the end of the bar, only just taking in Darren and the other two guys at the pool table. “Shit,” she muttered under her breath before standing and walking over to them. Bailey stayed planted on her barstool, refusing to even look up. There was just no escaping him in this town, and he seemed to be everywhere. Bailey glanced up once to see Michelle speaking with the group of three, but only the two nameless men were actually looking at her. Darren’s eyes were glued to Bailey.

“Hey, let’s get a booth in the back.” Michelle was suddenly standing by Bailey’s side, looking expectantly at her. Darren had returned to his game, though his attention seemed to be constantly pulled toward her as though he was just as powerless to look away from her as she was to look away from him.

“Or we could just leave, Michelle.” Bailey knew she’d never go for that one, but she couldn’t help but hope.

“Come on. Just pretend he doesn’t exist, okay? For one night. You won’t even have to look at him in the back room. Please?”

“You think this is about my wanting to be away from him , but it’s not. Do you think for one second he wants me here? ’Cause I’m tellin’ ya, he doesn’t.”

“He didn’t say a thing to me when I was over there—”

“That’s ’cause he was busy glaring at me! That’s what he does. He hates me; he glares at me; he destroys my job; he glares at me some more.”

“Well, he can’t glare at you if you’re sittin’ in a booth in the back room. ’Sides, this place is gonna fill up after the parade gets over. You won’t be able to find him even if you want to in a while.”

She was right. Soon there was a flood of parade goers walking through the doors, decked out in their green—their ridiculous plastic green hats, green beads, green just about anything. But even the green people of Savoy weren’t enough to save her. In fact, they ended up being the catalyst for her misery.

“Aren’t you that girl?” Bailey looked up to the woman standing beside the booth she and Michelle were hiding in.

“Umm . . . I don’t—”

“You are! You’re her!” The sneer on her face meant she wasn’t asking if she was that girl who once broke the Savoy high school record when she swam the 200 freestyle. Nor was she asking if she was the girl who won the literary award for creative writing when she was only a sophomore in high school. She was asking a far more loaded question than that. Bailey had the odd reaction of looking behind her at the back of the booth she was sitting in—as though perhaps hopping over the back and bolting might be a good option.

Instead, she turned back slowly to the woman standing with her hand on her hip and the other holding a green beer in her hand. The woman was waiting, swaying slightly in her drunken state, for a response Bailey was having a hard time coming up with.