AudreyThe minute the words were out of my mouth, I wished that I could take them back. Was there any possibility that Jesse hadn’t heard me clearly? From the shocked look on his face, he clearly had. Oh brother.“I mean, maybe not the biggest crush,” I immediately said. “I don’t know if it really was a crush at all. It was more like, you know, we just spent a lot of time together, and everyone I knew who spent a lot of time together with a member of the opposite sex, they were basically dating, right? And everyone I guess sort of thought that you and I were, you know, an item. That’s all. I never really thought that we were. I mean, it’s not like I wanted to be with you or anything. I just thought that we’d be good together. That’s all.”I realized that I was digging the hole deeper and deeper, and I felt mortified. My cheeks were burning, and I wished that I had never brought up that day in the first place. Hell, I wasn’t drunk now. Why even start rehashing all the times that Jesse

JesseI smiled over at Audrey as we pulled out of her mom’s driveway. “It must be nice to get to spend a lot of time with your family. Even if you did have to leave Paris and come back here for six months to do it.”Audrey cocked her head to the side. “I guess,” she said slowly. “I mean, it’s great to see them. I just can’t help feeling like, I don’t know…” She trailed off, and I could tell that whatever it was that she was feeling, she was reluctant to talk to me about it.“Come on, you know that you can tell me,” I told her.She sighed. “This might sound bad, but I just can’t help feeling like there isn’t a place for me here anymore. I mean, things have changed here since I’ve been gone. That’s for sure. But I can’t help thinking that maybe I’ve changed more than everyone else.” She paused. “God, that makes me sound so full of myself, doesn’t it?”I frowned, thinking about that. “To be honest, I kind of understand that feeling,” I told her. I took a deep breath. I hadn’t really talk

AudreyI shouldn’t have been surprised with the way that the evening ended up going. It was classic Jesse, through and through. God, how many nights had we gone out bowling with our friends when we were teenagers, all because Jesse wanted to? Granted, it wasn’t like there was all that much to do around town, but he always seemed to be the one to get us off the couches and out the door.There was something to be said for that.Then the conversation? I supposed it was no surprise that I found myself talking about my feelings, my wants, my dreams, my desires, with him. He always had a way of getting me to open up to him. I felt comfortable around him in a way that I didn’t with anyone else. I felt like I could tell him how out of place I felt here, without him thinking that I was just some stuck-up dancer with her head in the clouds.And for the first time since coming back to Aberdeen, I started to wonder if maybe I had been wrong. Maybe there was someone here in North Carolina who real

JesseI woke up on Thursday when my alarm went off, and I groped on my bedside table for my phone. I yawned as I shut the thing off and then lay there for another moment, already going through my morning in my mind. First, I’d get up, have a quick shower, throw on some jeans and a T-shirt. Then, a quick breakfast of leftover egg hash that I had made the previous morning. And then into work.I quickly ran through a mental inventory of the orders that we had going out that morning. It should be a relatively easy morning, which was good. I had slept well, but it was one of those mornings where I felt like I could definitely just linger in bed for the whole day and be content.I stretched and rolled over, surprised to encounter a wave of long, blonde hair. Audrey woke up with a yelp and shoved me off of her hair, and between my surprise and the strength of her shove, I tumbled naked over the other side of the bed. I landed hard and grunted out a breath. Then, I peered up at her as she scr

AudreyIt was a relief to have the house to myself when I got home on Thursday morning. I knew that my absence couldn’t have gone unnoticed. Annabelle at least would have known that I didn’t come home since she and I shared a room. And Mom knew that I had been out after she went to bed the night before. She would put two and two together as well.I wondered what they would say. Of course, Annabelle wasn’t so young anymore. She had to have had a fling or two in her life. It wasn’t like I was a teenager anymore, either. It wasn’t like Mom could really say anything about it. If I wanted to go home with Jesse, that was my prerogative.But what I was more worried about, I realized, was the fact that either of them might be too vocal in their support of my relationship with Jesse. Not that it was a relationship. We were still just friends. I hadn’t missed that pained look that came across Jesse’s face that morning when I had kissed him goodbye. It had flickered across his face, barely notic