In His Bed

Chapter 11: Old Ground

Aria

Fairview hadn't changed in twelve years, which was, I decided within the first ten minutes of arriving, worse than if it had.

The same white gazebo sat in the same town square. The same hardware store still had the same faded awning. Even my aunt Louise's house looked exactly as it had the last time I'd stood on its porch, seventeen years old and certain my whole life was still ahead of me instead of already, quietly, being decided by the people around me.

Stan parked the car and sat there for a moment before getting out, looking at the house like it belonged to a different lifetime. "I haven't been back here since graduation."

"Regretting this yet?"

"Ask me again in an hour."

We made it through the front door and roughly six minutes of small talk before my mother pulled me aside near the drinks table, voice low, urgent, unmistakably her specific brand of concern disguised as casual conversation.

"You look tired, honey."

"I'm fine, Mom."

"You're glowing, actually, now that I look at you properly." Her eyes narrowed, sharp in the way that had caught every lie I ever told her as a teenager. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

"Not tonight."

"Aria."

"Not tonight," I repeated, gently but firmly, and watched her suspicion settle into something patient instead of insistent, the specific patience of a woman who'd learned, over thirty years, exactly when to stop pushing and start waiting.

Across the room, Stan was doing considerably worse.

I watched it happen from a distance, the slow, deliberate way half the party's attention turned toward him the moment someone recognized his face, the specific ripple of a small town remembering exactly who he was and exactly what his father had cost it. Nobody said anything outright. Nobody needed to. It was there in the way conversations paused a half second too long when he passed, in the too careful politeness of people who remembered a decade old scandal and had never quite decided whether the son deserved to inherit the sins of the father.

I crossed the room and slid my hand into his before I'd fully decided to, an instinct more than a plan, and felt him exhale, slow and grateful, at the small unglamorous fact of not standing there alone.

"You didn't have to do that," he said quietly.

"I know."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. Just survive the next two hours."

"Working on it."

We made it through dinner reasonably intact, through my aunt's toast and my uncle's terrible jokes and the specific exhausting choreography of a hometown event where everyone knew everyone's business except, for now, mine. It was almost, improbably, pleasant, Stan's hand finding the small of my back at exactly the moments I needed steadying, an old rhythm resurfacing so naturally it frightened me a little, how easily my body still knew the shape of him.

It fell apart during dessert.

"Stan Montenegro." The voice came from behind us, familiar in a way that made my stomach drop before I'd even turned around. "I heard you were back in town. Didn't believe it until now."

Marcus Aldridge looked older, softer around the middle, less like the golden boy of Fairview High and more like a man who'd peaked at seventeen and never quite recovered the momentum. But his smile was exactly the same, easy and careless in a way that had once seemed charming and now, twelve years later, just looked cheap.

"Marcus." Stan's voice had gone very controlled, very flat, the boardroom version of himself sliding back into place like armor. "Didn't expect to see you here."

"My cousin married into the Aldridge side of the family, small town, remember?" Marcus's eyes drifted, deliberate and unhurried, from Stan to me and back again, cataloging something. "You two, though. That's a reunion nobody saw coming. Last I heard you two weren't exactly on speaking terms."

"Things change," I said, keeping my voice level.

"Clearly." Marcus's smile widened, and something underneath it turned sharp, the specific cruelty of someone who'd never fully outgrown the habits that made him popular at seventeen. "You know, I still think about that hallway sometimes. Junior year. Funny how some things stick with you."

The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees, though nothing about it had physically changed. I felt Stan go rigid beside me, felt his hand tighten fractionally around mine, and watched Marcus watch the reaction with obvious, deliberate satisfaction.

"I don't think we need to relitigate high school, Marcus," Stan said, low and even, every word carefully controlled.

"No, I suppose not." Marcus's gaze slid back to me, something calculating behind the casual smile. "Though I always did wonder what happened after. You disappeared pretty fast after that whole mess, Aria. Never heard the full story of where you went."

"I went to college," I said flatly. "Like most people."

"Sure." Marcus's smile didn't waver, but something underneath it sharpened further, the specific look of a man who enjoyed knowing more than he was saying. "Small world, though, isn't it. You two finding your way back to each other. Especially given everything."

"Given what, exactly?" Stan's voice had gone dangerously quiet.

Marcus just smiled wider, unhurried, clearly enjoying the discomfort he'd created. "Nothing. Just an observation." He raised his glass in a mock toast, already turning to leave. "Good to see you both. Really. It's been a long time coming."

He walked away before either of us could press further, leaving behind a silence thick with everything he hadn't quite said, and I felt Stan's hand still gripping mine, tense and unmoving, both of us staring after Marcus Aldridge with the specific dread of two people who'd just realized, at exactly the same moment, that some old ghosts hadn't stayed buried at all.

"He knows something," I said quietly.

"Yeah," Stan said, jaw tight, eyes still fixed on the door Marcus had disappeared through. "I think he does."