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CHAPTER ONE

There were only two reasons to go to a high school reunion. First, you'd reinvented yourself to the point of envy through riches, love, or some other form of success. The second, and the only reason Jillian Keller was heading into her former high school gymnasium, was to rescue her best friend who went for the first reason but was now, unsurprisingly, regretting her decision.

Jillian didn't have any horrible memories of attending Ernest Simel High, but it wasn't a place she'd ever missed either. It certainly wasn't a place, or time, she wished to go back to. Especially not on a Friday night, twelve years past graduation, to hang with people she'd never really been close to. Besides, it was Smile; every Sunday at the market was a reunion with someone.

In and out, she assured herself after locking her sunshine-yellow VW bug. Hopefully she'd go unnoticed, since she'd gotten the text to rescue her best friend just as she'd started to nudge her daughter, Ollie, over to the other side of her bed—because Ollie had recently decided Jillian shouldn't sleep alone—and tuck herself in. She didn't want to be here, and she definitely didn't want to be seen in her Get Lost hoodie and baggy sweatpants, sans makeup—not that she usually wore a ton—with her auburn hair piled on top of her head.

She heard the music even before she pulled open one of the double doors. A dark blue banner welcomed everyone. Jillian knew her way to the gym even without the arrows and signs reminding former students. Unlike her brothers, she hadn't spent much time there, other than watching them play whatever sport they were into at the time. She preferred the quiet of the library or the quad with its skylights and bench seating. The bass of the song vibrated beneath her feet, and without warning or reason, nerves tiptoed in. Something about high school. Anyone who went back felt seventeen again. She laughed at her own silliness but didn't open the gym door. Instead, she grabbed her phone from her hoodie pocket to text Lainey.

Jillian

I'm here. Let's go. 

Don't make me come in there. 

Come on party girl. The night is over.

The door whooshed open, unleashing the scents of too many perfumes and sprays mixed with sweat. A bundle of sequins and color tumbled out in the form of laughing women, hanging on to each other while moving as one huge, bejeweled unit.

Jillian stepped back, letting them pass, aware that her heartbeat was picking up its pace, matching the steady thump of the music. She stared at her phone, silently cursed her best friend, and sucked in a sharp breath like she was about to dive into ice-cold water.

She crossed the gym threshold and it felt like stepping back in time. Lights flashed, music blared, and familiar faces jostled past, some dancing, some laughing, some at the round tables, others holding up a section of the wall as they stared around the room with a drink in hand.

Jillian kept her head down, weaving between groups, hoping people were having too much fun to notice her. She probably should have brushed her hair. Worn something other than sweats. She didn't mind conversation and enjoyed meeting up with people, but being a single mother had a way of changing a woman's interests, not to mention her bedtime.

There were so many streamers hanging from the walls it looked like blue-and-white webs of tissue paper interspersed with balloons. People hammed it up for photos behind a large, decorated cardboard cutout frame. Anderson Keddy, a Smile local who did a little of everything, from haircuts to taxiing—and, apparently, taking pictures—waved when they saw Jill. Their shoulder-length brown hair bounced as they directed poses and snapped pictures. A guy Jillian recognized but couldn't name danced behind the DJ table, pressing buttons on the soundboard, likely controlling the light show making Jillian squint.

It wasn't until Jillian moved out of the way of a couple forgetting they were in the middle of a crowded gym and not a hotel room that she spotted Lainey.

Her bestie since kindergarten, when Danny "once a jerk always a jerk even if he was good-looking now" Rutherford had pushed Lainey down by the swings after making fun of her lunch. Another girl their age, Kylie Williams, had raced after him when he'd run away, dragged him back by his T-shirt, and forced him to apologize. Jilly, who'd watched the whole thing unfold from the shade where she'd been reading, came over to pick up the lunch containers that had fallen. The three girls had bonded, and despite all of them moving away, two of them moving back, and life getting in the way, they were all still close.