In the small town of Hillsboro, California, rumors were like honey. Sweet. Addictive. And, once stained, impossible to get out except with a good, long, painful scrubbing.
Rumors could explain a great many things in a small town. Rumors could explain how a grandfather putting presents beneath the tree became a bona fide Santa Claus sighting. Rumors could explain how Mary Blake won Homecoming Queen over Linda Ashby when everyone claimed they’d voted for Linda. The happy tale of Emmy Bowen and her courthouse marriage—six months after she met the door-to-door vacuum salesman—grew into a scandal of epic proportions, and the rumors about the possible reasons for their quick nuptials didn’t quiet down even after their marriage lasted for twenty-one years and counting. Rumors could also explain how a high school breakup forever changed the lives of the two people involved.
There were rumors about Thomas Riley, also greatly exaggerated. On his seventh birthday, he’d gotten a baseball as one of his top-tier presents, promptly and accidentally broken a window with it, and ran away before anyone could see that he was the one who’d done it. That story—small as it was—grew into a black mark of shame on him, an original sin to which everyone pointed whenever another story about his “misdeeds” sprung up. Oh, remember Tom Riley? The one who broke the mayor’s window all those years ago? Well, he’s at it again… Tom eventually found it too difficult to fight his reputation. By the time he’d reached high school, he’d surrendered to their perception of him. They’d called him a rebel, an outcast. And that’s what he became.
Inside, he was this one thing—a good, hard-working kid who’d gotten a bad rap, who let them have their rumors so he could keep his head down, study hard, and one day get out of this place—while on the outside, he gave everyone what they wanted. A quiet loner who everyone could perpetually assume was up to no good. But one person had seen through the mask. And despite the sensational rumors that he was a bad influence, luring her away from all that was good and right and honorable, Tom Riley loved her with everything that he had.
And those two teenagers had a plan.
It had been their plan for most of their life together—on the night we graduate high school, we’re packing up the truck and running away from this place forever.
Only… now that the night was here, Amelia “May” Anderson couldn’t go through with it. She was too scared, plain and simple. Scared of a future away from her home. Scared of the great, wide, open world offering out its hand to her. Scared of the warm-smiling boy with the keys in his pocket. So, she left him.
The truth was that May Anderson left Tom Riley. You’ve got to remember that, because no one else in Hillsboro did.
Standing beside his gassed-up truck, her bright eyes fading in the moonlight, she told him she wouldn’t be joining him on the adventure they’d always been planning, that she couldn’t trust him—the town’s resident reckless playboy, the renegade everyone said was no good—with her future. He tried to fight for her, tried to convince her that their fairy tale wasn’t ending; it was just beginning. That he couldn’t bear knowing that she believed the same lies and whispers everyone else did. The protests fell on deaf ears as she collected her suitcase and left him behind.
She didn’t tell anyone what happened that night. Ashamed of the truth, she only said we broke up, before locking herself in her room and refusing to talk to or see anyone.
But by the time she resurfaced weeks later, that one little sentence—we broke up—had grown into its own mythology. We’ve all been right about him, you know. He left her and broke her heart, shattered her entire life. He really was the cold, heartless troublemaker we all thought he was. Poor May. Poor thing.
May didn’t correct the rumors.
As Amelia “May” Anderson awkwardly slunk into the downward dog pose, she couldn’t help but wonder how she’d gotten here. Willingly doing yoga on the back porch of her ex-boyfriend’s ex-fiancée’s house.
Well, willingly might have been a stretch. And, to be fair, she knew exactly how she got here, at least literally. One minute, she was having a very nice, very boozy lunch with her sisters and their friend, Annie Martin—the ex-boyfriend’s ex-fiancée in question—washing down hash browns and fried, sugared dough balls with long sips of mostly-champagne mimosas, when Annie said, “Hey! We should all totally do yoga together.”
May was a nice enough person, and even though she had absolutely no intention of ever actually doing the yoga, she enthusiastically agreed that yes, at some point in the future, they should absolutely do yoga together.
But she thought it was like when you saw an old friend from high school and promised to “meet for coffee to catch up”, where both of you fully knew you’d never actually do that. After all, May wasn’t exactly the yoga type, and Annie knew it. The most exercise she liked to do was walking from her shop on The Square down to the coffee shop, then back with an iced coffee in one hand and a cinnamon bun in the other. At the very least, she hoped Annie would just forget about it.
Unfortunately, May kind of forgot that her new friend didn’t do anything by halves and she could occasionally be a bit oblivious to even the most direct of social cues. Or, maybe Annie just liked to feign obliviousness, using that ditzy, wide-eyed exterior as a way to get people to do exactly what she wanted them to.
Whatever the truth may have been, May somehow ended up here, stretching her muscles to the point of exhaustion while supposedly “soothing” instructions from a nearby laptop talked them through the paces of a sun salutation. Her sisters had somehow managed to weasel their way out of this morning’s sunrise session, leaving May and Annie totally alone out here on the fog-wrapped porch. For a few years now, May had run a small gifts and sundries shop on the main square of Hillsboro, a store she stocked with plenty of kitschy goods and even homemade treats and candles made from the products of the bees she cultivated at home. The shop wouldn’t open for another few hours yet—sunrise yoga was positively perfect for working women, according to Annie—but in this moment, she wished she’d suddenly changed her shop to a 24-hour schedule.
When she thought too hard about it, the entire thing radiated with weirdness. It didn’t feel weird, but she recognized it probably should have been. After all, her host and friend was briefly engaged to her ex-boyfriend. And Annie’s older brother was currently dating May’s older sister, Harper. Their being friends should have been fifty shades of weird, but instead… it was kind of nice.
When they’d first met, May had hated her. It had surprised her, the intensity of it. But it had felt like the pretty girl from out of town was stealing everything—the man she’d once loved and the friendship of her sister. Then, once all of that was behind them, May discovered a true friend in Annie. Despite her online performance as a shallow influencer, the woman was enduringly kind and thoughtful, smart and warm. Her bubbly effervescence brightened up May’s down-to-earth, casual vibe, and the two of them seemed to understand each other in a way no one else in town did. Their short history was complicated, sure, and maybe not one many people would have been willing to overlook, but somehow, once they started talking, they realized that they just got each other.
Truth be told, they were both a strange brand of lonely, the kind you really only found in a small town. Surrounded by people, but close to barely any of them. Known by so many folks, but understood by none of them.
May had thought that Annie understood her, anyway, before this whole yoga thing happened. Now, she wasn’t so sure. Anyone who really understood her would have known that crouching on a yoga mat before sunrise in the early summer breeze wasn’t something she was going to enjoy.
Almost half an hour into this particular brand of torture—one that left Annie with a healthy, golden glow and May with a red, puffy face from the focus and exertion—she finally found her voice to speak, whispering as though the recorded instructor on the screen at the far end of the porch could hear them.
“So… where you come from, people do this for fun?”
Annie’s smile didn’t take away from the soft focus of her eyes as she moved into a warrior pose. May tried to copy her, but couldn’t quite manage it with the same grace. “For fun and for focus, yes. It’s a good way to center yourself.”
“I think I lost my center about twenty minutes ago when I fell on my rear trying to get my leg behind my head. I don’t think twisting myself in knots all over again is going to help me find it any time soon.”
The warrior pose, with its bent legs and outstretched arms, wasn’t exactly the best example of twisting herself in knots, but May’s screaming, stretched muscles didn’t care. If this was what people in Los Angeles did for fun, she was glad to have been raised further up the California map in Hillsboro, where their idea of fun was creek splashing and bonfires.
Besides, she couldn’t imagine anywhere in Los Angeles with a view like the one Annie had here, on the deck of the home she and her brother shared. From up here, it was possible to drink in an entire valley’s worth of greenery, of towering trees and winding vines, to catch the sight of silvered dew sparkling like gemstones in the beginnings of sunshine. In the distance, May could hear the barking of Monster, Annie’s dog, just as easily as she could hear the chirping of early-rising hummingbirds and the last hiss of mist as it dissipated into the morning.
Despite the warmth of the summer sun just beginning to creep up behind the Mayacamas Mountains in the distance, a chill fluttered on the tail ends of the breeze, playing with the light hem of her overlong exercise shirt. May suppressed a shiver. Summers in Northern California were always like this, a magical mixture of warmth and cold, of light and shadow. Usually, she found it absolutely enchanting. Today, it reminded her why she didn’t usually get out of bed before sunrise unless it was strictly necessary. Somehow though, the cold didn’t bother Annie, with her perfect, strappy sports bra and biking shorts.
“You know,” Annie whispered, “yoga is supposed to be done in a meditative state.”
“Is that code for silently?”
“Yes.”
May smirked as she bent into the next pose, another relatively simple one that still managed to make her feel like a newborn deer struggling to stand for the first time.
May shook her head, as much as she could without losing her balance. “You like to talk even more than I do. How do you manage to stay quiet for this long?”
Annie’s voice floated along, like mist over a pond. May could never imagine being that serene. How a woman who’d just cancelled her big Instagram-celebrity wedding and dropped her whirlwind-romanced-fiancé could be so calm and so sure, May couldn’t even begin to guess. “Being quiet for one hour a day is the reason I’m so talkative.”
“Then this should definitely be outlawed.”
That broke through Annie’s perfect tranquility. With a gasp of mock outrage, she dropped her pose and tugged at her friend’s hoodie. “How dare you!”
Laughter tickled at May’s ribs, which would have been great if they weren’t already sore from all of the stretching. Ducking out of the way of Annie’s surprising reach, she tried to focus back on the small screen before them, with its sleek, white, recorded yoga studio and the high-ponytailed blonde who coaxed them through the end of their paces.
“… Aaand… Deep breath iiin… Deep breath ouuut…” Placing her hands in a prayer pose at the base of her torso, May tried her best to obey. “Relax. And go in peace, my friends.”
More like pieces, May thought to herself, but she didn’t dare say it out loud. Needling her friend about sunrise yoga would only get her so far. And besides, the last thing she wanted was to seem too weak to do a half-hour’s worth of core-engaging poses.
“There,” Annie said, relaxing her small, lithe body and smirking triumphantly. As always, things seemed to come as easily to her in real life as they looked in her social media feeds. “See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
May reached for the water bottle in her bag, careful to take small steps so as not to agitate the newfound tightness in her calves. “You know those videos of puppies walking around in booties? Where they suddenly don’t know how to walk?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s how I feel.”
“Very funny.” Annie shook her head and tucked her millennial pink yoga mat under her arm. “It’s not that bad. And it’s good for you. You know what else is good for you?”
The muscles in May’s stomach tightened. Any time Annie got a knowing, excitable note in her tone of voice, she knew she was in for some meddling trouble. With her older brother head-over-heels in love with May’s older sister, Harper, Annie had been itching for something to do here in Hillsboro besides her surprisingly profitable Instagram modeling… and if her current oh-so excited tone was any indication, May was about to be that next something.
No way. May wasn’t going to fall into that trap. She was happy enough without friendly meddling, thank you very much. Eager for a distraction, May ripped a freshly jarred container of honey from her bag and presented it to her friend. She didn’t know much, but she knew one thing: there wasn’t a person in the world who knew how to resist the siren’s call of the honey she cultivated on the family farm. These jars were actually meant to grace the shelves of her small shop in town—tourists to Hillsboro, California, couldn’t get enough of her honey and her honey-treats, like the sweet candies and natural beeswax soaps she made from scratch—but she’d give up the sale if it meant distracting Annie from her scheming.
“Oh!” Annie’s face brightened, and she clutched the jar to her chest. “You’re a lifesaver! I was running out! Come on inside, I’ll get us a couple of glasses of water and put this away. Sorry the house is a mess.”
With an apologetic duck of her head and without waiting for May to agree to coming inside, the perky blonde practically flounced through the back screen door, waving for May to follow her. Since arguing with Annie was always out of the question, May shouldered her bag, collected her yoga mat, and did as she was instructed.
Usually, though, when Annie said something about the messy state of her house, it was because a crumb or an Amazon shipping box hadn’t yet been tidied up, barely even visible to the naked eye or to her Instagram photo feed. Most visitors to her home learned to just roll their eyes and ignore her apologies. This time, though…
This time, when May stepped through the door, it looked like an aging copy of Tiger Beat threw up everywhere. Giant MTV and VH1 logos crammed themselves in the corner. Boxes upon boxes labeled Batman Cereal and neon glow sticks rested in towering stacks beneath the wide, open windows. An outfit that looked strikingly close to Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” outfit hung in a dry-cleaning bag over the doorway to the pantry, apparently waiting to be carried up to someone’s closet.
May’s stomach twisted again. This had all the makings of a party… or someone having a fire sale on their fallout shelter from 1984. Please, May prayed, let it be that instead of a party.
“What is all of this?” she asked, trying to keep her voice bright.
As Annie skirted around the kitchen counter and started pouring them both fruit-infused water from a pitcher in her fridge, she pointedly didn’t answer the question put to her. “What are you doing this weekend?”
“I’m never doing anything. That’s kind of my thing.”
“Right,” Annie agreed, handing over a towering glass of water, her eyes adopting that motherly, slightly holier-than-thou concern she wore so well. “And it’s bad for your health.”
“I just saw Doctor Forester. He says I’m healthy as a horse.”
“Your body might be. But your heart? What’s going on in there, hm?”
Questions like this, May always expected when she was at home. Her mother and her sisters, and even her father, were always trying to pry into her personal life, picking at the scabs of her healed-over broken heart, trying to get her to pretend as if the past never happened. She didn’t expect it from Annie, especially considering that they now both shared that same past.
She might have asked Annie how her heart was doing. After all, she was the one who ended an engagement and decided to split her life between the bustling metropolis of Hollywood and the little hamlet of Hillsboro. But May bit her tongue. Mostly.
“Is this the kind of third degree all of your guests can expect when they come over?” she snarked, helping herself to a handful of pink candies from a bowl on the kitchen counter. A perk of Annie being a wellness nut with thousands of followers hanging on her every word about which pair of yoga pants to buy, was that she did have very good taste in snacks.
“No, just the ones I like very much. Listen. I’m having a party this weekend. Food. Drinks. Friends. Music. And real, honest-to-goodness human contact. Even some of my friends from L.A. are coming. Are you in?”
“I’d love to, but I’m incredibly busy right now.”
Annie scoffed with a toss of her perfect ponytail. “You just said you never do anything.”
“Right. Like parties. I don’t do parties. I’m incredibly busy not going to parties.”
“Come on!” Annie said, her voice on that precarious, teetering edge between begging and whining that only a girl as pretty as her could pull off. “It’s eighties themed! I’ll have a replica of The Golden Girls couch in the living room and it’s the perfect excuse to dress up as Kelly Kapowski.”
May shrugged and finished off her glass of water. You can’t let Annie nicely bully you. . .
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