“Landon! Brah, I didn’t know if you’d come,” a guy said from behind him.
My eyes moved from Landon’s gorgeous face to the guy behind him. Brandon McCain. My lucky number twelve in high school. I’d been obsessed with him all four years, and I had even adopted his football number as my favorite. Emery liked to make fun of me about it. I couldn’t even remember all the times I’d mooned over him, but nothing had ever come of it. He’d had a serious girlfriend all four years of high school and never looked my way. But, as far as I knew, he was single now and lived in Los Angeles as a wannabe actor and model.
“Brandon,” Landon said. They firmly shook hands. “Good to see you, man. I didn’t know you were going to be here either.”
“Fuck, man. I wouldn’t have missed it. High school was the shit,” Brandon said. “Though who am I kidding? You killed it in high school, and look at you now! Fucking PGA Tour!”
Landon winced slightly. I narrowed my eyes at that movement.
Why would he flinch about being on the PGA Tour? That was his dream. That was his life. He loved golf with everything in him. It seemed odd that he would be uncomfortable with discussing it. I’d never seen him upset about golf.
“Thanks, man,” Landon said.
Brandon’s eyes shifted from Landon to me, and his smile grew. “Heidi Martin. Fuck me,” he said, pulling me in for a hug. “You look even hotter than you did in high school, and you were fucking gorgeous ten years ago.”
When Brandon said that, I searched Landon’s face, and he went from wincing to pissed in a second. If I wasn’t mistaken, he was remembering that crush I’d always had.
“Thanks, Brandon,” I said, stepping out of his embrace. “You look great, too.”
“We should definitely catch up later.” Brandon pointed his finger at me and winked. “Definitely. But, first, I’m going to steal Landon here,” he said, throwing an arm around Landon’s shoulder, “and get the rest of the football team together.”
Landon shot me a grieved look but disappeared with Brandon. I could already see that a huge group of football players was convened in the back. Landon was their star. Of course they had come to collect him.
I’d really wanted that interaction with Brandon to make me feel better about the whole Landon situation, but it didn’t. Brandon McCain was still really good-looking. Los Angeles ate people alive if they didn’t stay in shape. It was clear that he had been putting in a lot of time at the gym, but I didn’t feel the same spark as I once had.
Goddamn it, Landon. Even guys I could hook up with were tainted by him.
All I’d wanted for four years was this one sexy guy. Now that we were here and I definitely had not misinterpreted his catch-up-later line, I was meh about the whole thing.
“Whoa!” Emery said. “Brandon McCain is so fucking into you. Hello, dream come true!”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Dream come true.”
Emery wrapped her arm through mine. “Okay, roomie, we’re supposed to be having a good time. You know I hate reunions and basically all things high school. But I’m here for you because I love your face. Tell me what’s wrong, so I can fix it.”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“News flash, Martin! Brandon fucking McCain just hit on you, and you’re sad. You would have blown that guy behind the bleachers after a game if he’d let you. What part of him thinking you’re super hot is a bad thing?”
I cleared my mind of everything I’d been dealing with since Landon had stepped back into my life. Landon Wright was not right for me. There was no future for us. I didn’t know if he would go back to his wife tomorrow. I didn’t know if he’d ever file divorce papers. I didn’t know if that kiss was a bullshit rebound move. Stressing over it would only ruin my high school reunion. And I had put too much effort into this reunion for that to fucking happen.
I was the life of the party. I was smart, beautiful, and confident. I could rock this reunion with or without Landon Wright.
“You’re so right,” I said, bolstered by my own pep talk. “There is not a damn thing wrong with that.”
“You sure? You seemed a little out of it. Maybe you and Landon…”
“Please, do not finish that thought. Landon and I do not belong in the same sentence. You’ve bugged me about it in the past, Em, but he’s married. You know what my dad was like. You know I could never do that. And I could never do that to you.”
“But it doesn’t bother me.”
I held my hands up. “Irrelevant. It bothers me! Now, let’s talk about Brandon McCain and how he just hit on me.”
Emery gave me a look that said she didn’t believe my bullshit, but she wasn’t a pusher. She wouldn’t bother me until I gave up the info.
“Okay, are you going to hook up with him? Because he went from being like gruff hottie in high school to being an LA pretty boy,” Emery observed. “I don’t know if you could fuck a pretty boy.”
“Oh, I could. I assure you.”
“Plus, he used brah in a sentence without irony.”
I snort-laughed and signaled for another drink from Peter. “So, he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. As long as he has a big, long tool I can use, then we’re good to go.”
“Oh my God!” Emery said, busting out in laughter. “I pray that he does, for your sake, Heidi.”
We hung out at the bar as more and more people showed up. It was even more than I’d anticipated. A lot of the local crowd hadn’t RSVP’d, so I’d thought it was mostly going to be out-of-towners. A lot of people had complained about the location and lack of food and it not being kid-friendly…and on and on. So many complaints. But it looked like a ton of people had shown up anyway. Probably because of the open bar I’d finagled.
By the time it seemed like most people had finally arrived, the bar was packed. Meredith had planned to make some kind of speech, but with the crowd, that would be impossible. I wasn’t worried about it, but she was.
Eventually, she gave up and turned on the slide show she had prepared with all the pictures that everyone had turned in for the reunion. The whole thing was a walk down memory lane.
I had only turned in a couple of pictures of me and Emery together, but it was almost obnoxious, how many images there were of me. It was never clearer to me that I had been totally obsessed with popularity. I cared nothing about it now, but I had deeply stressed over it at the time.
I was sure I had my dad to blame for a lot of that. We never had much, but he’d indulged me with everything I’d wanted at the time. I’d taken every cent. Man, how that had all backfired.
The football team was hooting and hollering over all the images of them. Landon was in nearly as many as I was. Then, one stopped on him in a high school golf polo, holding his club. My eyes shifted over to where he had been sitting all night with an IV of whiskey practically hooked into his arm. When he saw the picture, he openly cringed at it.
Then, his gaze found me. I quickly looked away.