I did the usual chitchat thing with Terrie, who thought I'd left Chad's party early because I had a headache. Then I pretended to review a few formulas, all the time keeping one eye on the door.

Terrie said, "You're looking way too cheerful for test day."

"I'm just glad this is our last week," I told her. "We can't get to summer and freedom without the finals, right?"

She warily agreed. "Still, that's no reason to look so thrilled. Someone'll think you have crib notes."

I shrugged off her irritability. Nothing was going to put me in a bad mood that day. Nothing.

Then, with a minute to spare, Sam slipped into the room.

I looked up and smiled at him. A really big and probably very geeky smile, but I was ecstatic to see him again after thirty-four eternity-long hours apart.

He met my gaze and gave me a tight smile in return. Mine dimmed a little and my heart's fluttering turned to a painful quiver.

Once he'd had a chance to sit down at his lab table, I swiveled around and said to both him and his lab partner, "So, are you guys ready?"

His partner answered in the negative with one worried shake of his head then turned his attention back to his notebook.

Sam shrugged and pulled out his pencil. "I think we'll all do all right." His voice was bland. Unemotional. Almost robotic. In the past, he'd used virtually every vocal tone on me-sarcastic, cold, infuriated, moderately friendly on rare occasion and, most recently, pa.s.sionate-but he'd never sounded like this. He'd never been so believably indifferent.

I tried to swallow back the hurt and blink away an intense sadness I felt rising behind my eyes. I stared at Sam, and waited for some clue, some indication that he was behaving this way for a logical reason. Or, at least, for a reason that wasn't going to break my heart.

"Put away your notebooks," our teacher commanded, slamming the door and waving the exam booklets in the air. "Test time."

I reluctantly turned away from Sam, my mind still racing to solve a puzzle that couldn't be unraveled with proven mathematical equations or valid scientific theory.

Somehow I muddled my way through the exam. If I hadn't crammed so much before Chad's party, I might've flunked it. As it was, it seemed I was capable of pa.s.sing every test but the one that mattered to me most: My First Real Morning After.

Sam finished his final before any of us, and he flew out of the room. Despite my difficulty concentrating, I finished third and hoped he might be in the hall waiting for me. I turned in my exam booklet, collected my things and left.

The hall was deserted.

For a full two minutes I just stood there, breathing. My body's involuntary functions were all I could handle. My heart pumped blood. My lungs took in and expelled oxygen. My stomach fought to digest the b.u.t.tered toast I'd blissfully nibbled on at breakfast, a time that now seemed like generations ago.

My world had become littered with the irreparable shards of what was left of my happiness.

I ran into the bathroom, hid in a stall and sobbed as noiselessly as I could.

After three days of numbness and misery, my path and Sam's crossed in the hallway.

"Hey," he said, by way of pathetic greeting.

I couldn't bring myself to answer. I ducked my head and bolted for my locker. But, to my astonishment, fifteen seconds later he stood half a foot away, waiting for me to acknowledge him.

"What?" I made my voice icy, forbidding. I refused to look at him and vowed to G.o.d Almighty that no matter what other things in my life I screwed up, this particular confrontation wouldn't be one of them. Sam Blaine would not see me crying over him. The f.u.c.king b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

"Look, Ellie-" He sighed. "I guess we never talked about that night at Chad's..."

I shrugged and busied myself with cleaning out the remains of my locker. I crumpled up an old calculus worksheet, ripped down a magazine photo of Bon Jovi I'd taped up back in September (yeah, Sam gave love a bad name), dumped everything else on the tile floor by my backpack and slammed the locker door shut. "What about it?"

"Uh, you know, how afterward we didn't really have a chance to discuss anything, and-"

I finally looked at him. "There's nothing to discuss, Sam. It was fun. Now it's over. We're both going off to college in a few months, and I'll probably never see you again." I paused long enough to get in a good glare. "Well, at least not until our ten-year reunion. Although I might skip that one and hold out until the twentieth. I'm sure you'll be balding and getting kind of chunky by then. The perfect 'doctor' look."

"Okay, you're mad. I get it. I'm-" He stopped talking.

"You're what?" I said, expecting at least a measly apology.

"I-I guess there's no other way to say this." His face took on the pasty cast of someone about to walk into a confessional. "I'll be working constantly this summer to make money for school, and I know you'll be busy, too. Then, like you said, we'll be going to different colleges and won't run into each other much. The timing's really bad now. Things just wouldn't work out long term...right?"

I picked up the last of my books and papers, and I removed my school lock. "Congratulations, Sam. You've officially made me regret every second of Sat.u.r.day night. You're a coward and an idiot and I'm glad to be rid of you." Then, dramatically, I slung my backpack over my shoulder and walked away. He didn't follow me this time.

I told myself I'd survive seeing him the coming weekend at our graduation, but I prayed I'd never have to lay eyes on him after that. I didn't want to put up a front like this ever again.

Jane, I whispered, I'm really sorry. Really. Sorry. You were right about him, I was wrong. I'll never ignore your advice again. I swear.

But, as had been the case all week, she didn't answer, and I realized I was truly alone.

I'd been abandoned by them both.

10.

There are very few of us who

have heart enough to be really in

love without encouragement.

-Pride and Prejudice So, nine years later, I found myself facing Sam again. This time over the grande mochaccinos he'd ordered for us along with a couple of chocolate-covered biscotti.

I couldn't believe we were sitting there.

Together.

The seventeen-year-old girl in me still cringed with pain at the memories that bubbled up just from sharing the same airs.p.a.ce with Sam Blaine. Even now. Even nearly a decade later.

I watched him try to get comfortable on the hard cafe chair. He inhaled fully (was he remembering us as teenagers, too?), tapped the handle of his coffee cup a few times and then opened the discussion on our past few years.

"When last we left things," he said in a somewhat forced, soap-opera narrator's voice, "you were walking out the door of that dive bar with your boyfriend glaring at your back. Whatever happened to that Dominic guy?" He checked out my left hand. "I don't see a ring on your finger."

Nothing like driving a stake through my heart.

"Dominic and I parted ways that night, as you probably guessed."

Sam raised a brow. "Breakup effective immediately?"

"Yep. Although I did receive a postcard from him about a year later," I confessed. "He'd just gotten engaged to a cosmetics company VP, and they were in Hawaii celebrating. I think he wanted me to know he'd made it big. And almost every Christmas he sends a holiday card to me at my parents' address, but we haven't spoken again since then."

"I see." Sam fidgeted with his biscotti before snapping off a sizable bite.

"How about you and Camryn?"

"She and I lost touch," he said, chewing.

"Breakup effective immediately?" I asked.

He grinned. "Yep. I left for New York. She headed off to Philly. I do know from some mutual friends that she finished med school, though. Went somewhere warm. San Antonio, maybe."

"Are you still in New York, then?"

He shook his head. "Boston. I start the second year of my residency in a couple of weeks, but my parents have their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary next weekend and my sister's kids wanted me to be here for the Fourth of July for once. So I came home. Didn't think I'd get to see you, too."

An unfortunate coincidence, Jane grumbled.

I knew I had to tread carefully here. Jane had eventually stopped her silent treatment after the one-night stand with Sam, but this didn't happen until after college began and I was a good five-hour-drive away from Glen Forest. When she returned, she'd said it was because she was a woman of her word. Because I'd exacted that promise from her to be there with me during college, no matter what the circ.u.mstance.

I was lucky she came back.

The summer she didn't speak to me, I'd missed her like crazy, and I sure didn't want to incur her wrath again.

So, I made a conscious but very respectful request of her. Please, Jane, can we suspend all commentary for just the next thirty minutes? I need to keep a clear head for this.

She consented, but with a resounding huff.

I inhaled and looked sharply at Sam. I'd expected his typical sarcasm, but didn't find it. Present only was that strange light of curiosity and intensity that I hadn't seen in a man's eyes in what felt like ages.

This both frightened and saddened me.

It frightened me because Sam Blaine was a man. To me he'd always seemed more mature than our peers, but a nearly five-year absence since that night at The Bitter Tap (and, cripes, nine years since we were graduating seniors) put this growth in perspective. His adulthood was undeniable now. The next time our paths crossed, if ever they crossed again, he could be married. Or even a father. He was already a doctor, not the snotty teen I always thought of when I dredged up those old high-school hurts.

And that saddened me because Sam and I had never quite been on the same page. As teens or adults. We'd been kids together, we'd shared this intimate personal history, but that was all it could be or ever would be. He was going away again, and I was still trying to reconstruct my post-Andrei broken heart.

"What is it?" he said, his voice low, concerned.

I took a sip of my coffee and forced myself to swallow. "Nothing. Just wondering if you left any broken hearts behind in New York."

A deep crease appeared on his forehead. "Ah, well, I don't know if I'd say that. Not exactly. I had a girlfriend there my last couple of years, but I had to go to Ma.s.sachusetts and she...she wasn't headed there."

"You mean she tried to get into the Boston residency program with you but didn't get a spot?"

He sighed. "You were always very sharp, Ellie. And, yeah. It was something like that." He eyed me again with that teasing inquisitiveness. "I don't think my leaving really broke her heart, though."

He said this with such male conviction I almost laughed. I'd bet, even a year later, his poor ex-girlfriend was still crying in her morning coffee over him. Men were so insensitive to women's emotions. I'd bet anything she didn't move on half as easily as he did when he'd abandoned her.

"I'm going to have to go soon, Sam," I told him, pointedly looking at my watch.

"What? Wait. It's only been ten minutes. You said you could take a half hour. What did I say wrong?"

"Nothing. You didn't say anything that wasn't true, it's just-I'm not really sure what you're trying to do here. A long-term relationship of mine ended a few weeks ago, and I can't-I just can't deal with this kind of thing right now."

"You can't deal with what thing?" he said, his face reddening a bit. "You can't sit and have a cup of coffee with an old friend?"

"Is that what this is? Is that what we are, Sam? Are we friends?" I looked him in the eye and saw that same excitement merged with that same fear I remembered from our one exquisite (and disastrous) night together. It was enough to bring me to my feet. I couldn't handle any more games. Not with anybody.

"We've never not been friends," he said quietly. "Look, about that day after we...you know, senior year...I knew I'd have to leave at the end of the summer. I knew I didn't have it in me to make things work between us then. Not long distance. I tried to tell you that part, but I was eighteen and really stupid, okay? I also neglected to tell you the rest."

He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. "I really cared about you, Ellie. But you needed time and experience. You were so young. So naive. And I needed time, too. I was looking at a decade or more of school. I didn't want to lead you on when I knew it'd be years before anything more serious could happen. Do you know what I'm saying?" He raised his gaze to meet mine.

I closed my eyes and slumped back down in my chair, tears burning behind my eyelids. "Yeah. You broke up with me for my own good."

"Yes-"

"Well, I've been hearing that a lot lately." A few hot droplets leaked out and clung to my lashes before sliding down my cheeks. "Thanks for explaining, Sam. You're exonerated." I wasn't aiming to sound caustic. I meant this. I looked into those extraordinary blue eyes again and made sure he understood my words were sincere.

"Okay," he whispered.

"Okay."

I took one last sip of my drink. Memories of Dominic and Andrei and Sam mingled in my brain, and every additional second I spent in Sam's company only made them rush through it faster. I had to clear my mind, refocus, figure out how to move on again. It'd become an odd pattern. Whenever I was around Sam I was inspired to want a fresh start. It was just something I couldn't seem to do while still in his presence.

I pushed my cup away. "It was great running into you, it really was. Thanks for the coffee and for...talking. But I should go." I smiled at him. "See you sometime?"

He nodded. "Our ten-year high school reunion is next summer. Planning to attend?"

"I don't think so. All of my predictions about people are bound to be wrong. Look at you," I said with a small grin. "You're neither balding nor chunky. Yet. Guess I'd better hold out until the twentieth."

He gave me a look too intense to ignore. "I've got good DNA on the hair, Ellie. My grandpa still has almost a full head of it. And I will never be chunky. I promise."