Come As You Are Ch. 15

"You mean the night you and I had porno sex on my kitchen table? Which, by the way, you never replaced," she laughed. "Don't worry, my uncle had an old one in his garage. Wooden and a hell of a lot sturdier." Sadie shrugged. "You pretty much know my story since you follow my channel. Started a YouTube channel, played both new and retro games, wore a lot of low-cut clothes, and became a minor hit. Then I was one of the first streamers to jump onto Twitch and I became a bigger hit."

"What about dating?" Garrett folded his arms across the back of his seat and put his chin on his hands. "Has anyone managed to tame Sadie Bedford?"

Her boisterous laugh boomed throughout the cavernous auditorium. "Fuck no! I'm the biggest user of polyisoprene condoms in the state of Colorado. Between Tinder and bar hopping I'm getting laid any time I feel like it."

"Still a force of nature, huh?"

"Always," she said with a soft smile before casually flipping her hair back over her shoulder. "So what are you going to do now?"

"I'm staying in Emerald Pines. I didn't plan on coming back for good, maybe for six months or so, just until I figured out where I wanted to take my life. But the past two weeks have been eye-opening. Colette told me she'd get her therapist to recommend one of her colleagues, and... maybe I'm finally ready to talk to someone about everything. For the first time in a long time, I don't feel aimless. Give me a couple of months and I'll finally be able to tell you what I want to be when I grow up."

Sadie's fingers drummed against the edge of the metal seat. "Where does that leave you and me? I haven't forgotten the three nights we spent together."

"I haven't forgotten about you either. When I walked in tonight and saw you standing with everyone my heart leaped into my throat for a moment. Then you took my arm and... oh boy."

"Oh boy indeed. But let's be honest. How do we know this isn't just nostalgia from seeing each other after all this time? Absence makes the heart grow fonder and the loins glow randier."

"Why don't we start from a fresh slate then? Let's do lunch tomorrow. Someplace casual, like Half in the Bag?"

"You said the magic words," Sadie said with a delicious hum. "I could kill for one of their smoked sausage subs."

The pair smiled quietly at each other. The silence between them was comfortable, without the need to be filled by extra words. "Well," he said eventually, "care to head back down to the gym and close this party out?"

"Yeah, our friends might be wondering where we wandered off to." As the pair made their way up the stairs towards the exit, Sadie felt Garrett take her gently by the arm. "Any excuse to put your hands on me?" she teased lightly.

"Being a gentleman," came the reply as they reached the top of the steps. "Didn't want you to trip and fall."

"Hmm." Sadie turned to face Garrett. He stood several inches away from her, his hand still lightly resting on her arm. "And if I did fall," she asked in a quiet voice, "would you be there to catch me?"

"I'd catch you," he answered softly. "Or at the very least I'd break your fall."

"Right answer." A soft peck on the tip of Garrett's nose accompanied Sadie's words. "Now come on, let's get back to the gym."

X X X X X

As she heard the door click close above her, Amy managed to hold back her surprised laughter for several seconds to give herself a cushion. Still, she made sure to slap her hands over her mouth before exploding in a fit of giggles. "Holy fucking shit," she said, her muffled voice managing to carry across the empty auditorium. "Rosemary was right."

When the inebriated Rosemary spun her story at Pike's the night before, Amy couldn't believe her. The amusement of hearing the story was worth the price of two Long Island Iced Teas and the cost of the Lyft to take Rosemary home, but even with all the details, it sounded way too implausible. Porn videos had more believability.

Sadie stepping into the gym with Garrett on her arm, however, had piqued Amy's interest and seeing Garrett and Vienna laughing it up with the quartet of young women sharpened that interest to a keen edge. Amy was already bored with her old crew of sycophants. Having drinks at Pike's last night had been fun as they fawned over the fact that she owned and ran a successful dress shop. Tonight, however, they had simply run out of things to say to each other. In contrast, Sadie's group, now joined by Gio and Evelyn Ballion of all people, looked to be having a blast. A lot of the other tables, filled with after-school clubs and old cliques, looked to be having fun as well. Even Kim Ellis kept a bubbly smile on her face the entire time she flitted about. Meanwhile, most of Amy's table had wandered away. Some were on the dance floor while two of her old friends were slowly getting hammered, commiserating that their lives weren't turning out how they had hoped.

Amy couldn't complain. She had graduated magna cum laude from Western Colorado University with a degree in business and owned a successful custom design dress shop that attracted clients looking for clothing "outside the Aspen mainstream." Still, as she looked at Mandy Breckenridge laughing it up with her old friends from the Honors Society, there was the briefest of moments where Amy found herself reconsidering her choices in high school, wondering if she had made a wrong turn in focusing more on the "bitch" in "alpha bitch" than the other word.

Then Danny and Brenda snuck off for a sidebar, and the old Amy roared back to the surface.

She had overheard Garrett's name while casually eavesdropping, and when Sadie got up and headed for the door Amy had excused herself to quietly follow. The old halls of her high school were still familiar to her, making it a breeze to keep track of Sadie as she came across Garrett. Amy followed them to the auditorium and heard Sadie calling out the combination to the door. It turned out the same combination worked on the door for the auditorium's ground floor. Amy had snuck inside and taken a seat just in time to hear Garrett say that Danny would have broken his jaw if he knew Garrett had slept with Brenda during the blizzard.

So it was true. Garrett and Brenda had hooked up before she and Danny broke up the first day back. Which meant everything else Rosemary had told her held water. Colette was barren and crazy. Michelle was a closet freak. And Sadie...

Sadie Bedford. The fact that piece of gutter trash was their class' second most successful alumni irked Amy to no end. She had watched one of Sadie's shows on a whim and was disgusted by what she had seen. Amy had studied hard, budgeted carefully, poured over fashion magazines, and did her best to carefully build her customer base. She shook hands with the right local politicians and donated what she could to the appropriate charities so when a spot opened up on the Commerce Council in a few years, Amy could present herself as the logical choice. From there, it was a step to the Town Council. And from there...

All Sadie did was play insipid video games in a low-cut top and people not only loved her for it, but they also threw insane amounts of money at her. And now she was getting cute and flirty with the loser who had shoved Amy to the floor on prom night?

No way. Absolutely fucking not. Seeing Sadie walking the streets of Emerald Pines every day was anathema. There was nothing she could do to drive Sadie away, but Amy could definitely make Garrett realize he wasn't welcome and should run back to Florida. She only had to kick the right pebble to start the avalanche.

And as she crossed the lobby while walking back to the gym, she came across that pebble. "Hey, Danny."

Standing on the far side of the lobby in front of the trophy case, Danny Eastman took a sip from a silver flask as Amy came over to him. "Amy," he answered, extending the flask towards her. "Rum?"

The spiced rum hit her like a bullet. "Whew," she said while handing it back, "that's potent stuff." She motioned towards the trophy case. "Walk down memory lane?"

"Yeah." His eyes drifted down to the four championship trophies sitting front and center on the bottom level. "We were so damn young," he said, motioning towards the photograph that sat in front of the trophies. "It's only ten years later, and everyone looks so different. I haven't been here in years but I could have been here only yesterday. Does that make sense?"

Amy nodded, taking note of the slur in his words. "Aside from college, I've lived here my entire life. Some of the shops are different and there are more tourists than a decade ago, but otherwise, Emerald Pines feels like time in a bottle. Even the people who leave find their way back."

"Hell, I wasn't going to come tonight." Danny took another swig from his flask, as did Amy when he offered. "If I hadn't hurt my shoulder I'd be in a hotel in Philly right now. Now I'm wondering why I stayed away for so long."

"Some things never change," she offered.

"People do. I finally ran into Anne Jackson a few minutes ago. Did you know she's a freaking Game Warden out on Turquoise Lake?"

Amy hadn't thought of Anne Jackson since prom night. But she faked interest in Danny's statement. "Really? I never would have guessed."

"She always liked fishing," he responded. "Said going to Castle Creek and throwing a line in was the only way she stayed sane living with her jackhole parents." Danny glanced at Amy with slightly bloodshot eyes. "I'm glad you ran into me, Amy. I wanted to apologize to you."

Amy blinked in surprise. "Apologize? For what?"

"For making you the other woman." He rubbed his face before sighing deeply. "I didn't have enough guts to tell Anne Jackson the truth, either about Brenda or about you and I. Sneaking around and hooking up behind everyone's backs... you deserved better than that, and so did Anne. I should have told her after the storm that she and I were nothing more than a fling, but I had my cake and wanted to eat it too. I should have committed to you or committed to Anne instead of splitting the difference."

"Oh, Danny." Amy placed her hand on his firm, muscular arm. "I knew exactly what I was getting into."

"You did?"

"Of course," she said, smiling sweetly. "All those rumors about you and Anne that came out? You were just being honorable and doing the right thing by her. Besides, she followed you around like an alley cat. What else could you have done?" He took another swig of rum while she spoke. "It would have been nice to have you on my arm the back half of senior year, but everything turned out OK, right? You're in the pros, Anne's got her fishing, and I have my store. It is what it was. As far as I'm concerned, you have nothing to apologize for."

Danny dropped his head and let out a chuckle. "Here I was beating myself trying to figure out what to say to you and it turns out I didn't need to say anything. Anne just called it water under the bridge of being young and stupid."

"How about Brenda? Have you talked to her at all?"

"She didn't accept my apology at first, but she came around in the end."

Amy barely hid her devilish grin by feigning a sympathetic look. "She wouldn't accept your apology? Why not?"

"Because I wouldn't apologize to Garrett West."

"Seriously?" She threw in a short, barking laugh of disbelief for emphasis.

"He's still afraid of me. Talk about someone who never got over high school." Danny took a long pull that probably emptied the flask. "I promised I'd avoid West tonight, and I'm going to keep that promise. Believe me, I want nothing to do with him, and if he's smart he wants nothing to do with me."

"Brenda's got some balls on her," Amy proclaimed while she nonchalantly leaned against the trophy case, "asking you to apologize to Garrett when she cheated on you with him."

The instant Danny's eyes narrowed, Amy knew she had hooked him. "What did you say?" he asked in a cold voice.

"That Brenda has no right to demand an apology from you considering she slept with the guy." She waited just long enough before adding, "Wait, you didn't know they hooked up? I thought that's why you and Brenda called it quits."

"Amy." Danny took a deep breath and made a calming motion with his hands. "I need you to explain what you're talking about. Because this is the first I'm hearing of this."

"You didn't know? Oh, wow. OK. Brenda, Michelle, Colette, and Sadie got together for dinner last night at Comstock's. Rosemary... you remember Rosemary McBrennan, right? She was their server and overheard them talking about Garrett. He's slept with them. All of them."

Instead of disbelief, Danny's face showed growing anger. "Go on."

"Rosemary was drunk when she told me this, so I didn't believe her. Maybe Garrett and Sadie, but no way those other three would have even looked in his direction. I was... going to the bathroom earlier," she lied, "and heard Garrett and Sadie talking in the hallway. I swear, Danny, I heard Garrett say if you knew he had slept with Brenda during the blizzard, you probably would have broken his jaw. Those were his exact words, no joke." All it needed was one more twist of the knife. "Didn't you guys break up the first day back after the storm?"

"Yeah. In the cafeteria before classes started. Damn it. God damn it. I should have known. She let him use her parents' bathroom. I should have known right then and there."

"I'm sorry, Danny," Amy said quietly. "I honestly thought you knew. I thought maybe that's why the two of you broke up, but that you were too embarrassed to admit it."

"I didn't know, Amy. Not until now. Motherfucker." That singular word held more poison and malice than Amy had ever known. "I told him. I told him if I ever saw him again I was going to dislocate his shoulder." It turns out there was one more swig of rum left in the flask as Danny tipped his head back, draining it dry. "Where the fuck is he?"

"They were going back to the gym."

Without another word, Danny turned and began stalking his way towards the gym. With his back turned, he didn't see the ear-to-ear smirk on Amy's face as she fell in behind her perfectly kicked pebble.

X X X X X

"There you are," Michelle proclaimed as Sadie and Garrett walked towards the table. "And what were you two up to wandering the halls of our alma mater?"

"Just talking," Sadie answered. "Filling in the gaps of the past."

While Sadie sat down, Garrett headed directly for Gio. Without breaking stride he took his friend's face in both hands. The entire table watched in absolute shock as Garrett proceeded to kiss his best friend on the lips without preamble or lead up. When Garrett pulled back, his eyes bored into those of the surprised Italian's. "I know it was you and Vienna, Gio. You broke my heart." Garrett repeated the sentence, gently shaking Gio's head with every word. "You. Broke. My. Heart."

"What the hell are... oh. Oh shit. Oh shit!" Gio's eyes went over to Vienna.

Her response was a half-hearted shrug. "What's one more shocking secret?"

"Garrett, dude, I..."

Gio's words fell away as he saw his best friend, still holding his face, crack a wide smile. "Gio man, I'm just fucking with you." Garrett lightly smacked him on the cheek, laughing with intense joy as he did so. "I'm not mad. Not even close."

"Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch!" Gio slapped his hand against Garrett's chest, an action that caused Garrett to laugh harder as well as bring a smile to Vienna's face. "You do NOT get to quote The Godfather II at me! That's an Italian movie! That's our movie! You get... what are you, Irish? You get whatever the hell is considered an Irish mob movie! Colette! Help me out here!"

Colette scratched her chin for a moment. "Either Miller's Crossing or The Friends of Eddie Coyle."

"Thank you! Those two! Those are the movies you get to quote, not Al freakin' Pacino!" Gio took Garrett by the back of his head and drew him in, putting his forehead against his. "You lanky-ass son-of-a-bitch," Gio said, unable to stop the smile on his face.

"As much as I'm happy to provide random movie trivia, would someone please explain to me what the hell just happened here?" Colette asked in a slightly bewildered tone.

"Is it not obvious?" Evelyn motioned to the tall Italian and the dirty blonde with the rainbow stripe in her hair. "Anthony and Vienna had sex."

"OH MY GOD! Time out! Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime out!" Sadie punctuated the extended syllable by slamming her fist against her palm several times. "Asses in seats, now!" The curly-haired brunette motioned wildly with both hands, pointing to the empty chairs around the table.

Once everyone was situated, Sadie rubbed her face with one hand before speaking. "Before this evening goes any further, we all need to get everything out in the open," she told the seven other young men and women sitting at the table, "I for one can't take any more startling revelations or plot twists. So we're going to settle this right now. Vienna, Evelyn," she said, pointing to each of them in turn. "Have either of you slept with Garrett at any point in the past?"

"No," Vienna immediately answered. "I've never slept with him."

"I have also not partaken of his body," Evelyn added.

"Creepy, Evelyn, but good to know." The pale woman inclined her head at Sadie in acknowledgment. "Moving on," Sadie continued, "aside from Colette and Gio, has anyone else at this table slept with Vienna?" Negative looks and various shakings of heads were the totality of the response. "Again, good to know. Last one. Aside from Vienna and Evelyn, has anyone else at this table slept with Gio?" Sadie's eyes drifted over the table as her long-time friends and new colleagues looked at each other. After a few seconds, Sadie nodded. "Good! Now that we're all on... the... same... you gotta be fucking kidding."

Six pairs of eyes followed Sadie's glare. At the other end of the table, slumped in his chair next to Brenda, Garrett was meekly raising his hand.

"Dude," Gio said quietly, "we said we'd take that to our graves."

Garrett gave a barely noticeable shrug. "All cards on the table, right?"

"I can't believe it," Brenda said, "however at the same time I can believe it."

"This evening certainly has become more appealing," chimed Evelyn.

"How much whiskey would you two need to recreate that moment?" Colette asked hopefully.

"Oh. My. God," Vienna responded. "I know you've hooked up with guys before, but seriously? Garrett?"

"Wait," Michelle exclaimed, "you've slept with men?"

Garrett and Gio glanced at each other with nervous looks on both their faces. After a moment, however, Gio snorted, his mouth briefly upturning at its corner. His friend's minor reaction caused Garrett to break down and laugh. His entire body shook with merriment as he said, "We could have had them. Man, we could have had them. I was writing this big scenario in my head, but you had to go ahead and laugh."

"Sorry dude," Gio chuckled loudly, "I tried to play along, but I just couldn't... OW! Stop it!"

"Asshole!" Vienna couldn't keep the smile off her face as she rapped her fist against Gio's shoulder over and over again. "Not funny! Not funny!"

"Kind of funny," Gio smirked.

"God," Vienna groused, "I hate you both."

"You wish you hated us," teased Garrett.

"Seriously though." Michelle was leaning forward. For the first time that Sadie could recall, Michelle studied Gio with amorous interest. "You've gotten together with a guy?"

Gio chuckled with embarrassment. "Several. I prefer women, but... you grow up Catholic surrounded by athletic guys in the locker room and then go off to college? I satisfied my curiosity and it turned out it was something I liked."

"It's cool," said Brenda. "This group has girl-on-girl, so guy-on-guy's only fair. Equal rights mean equal sights."