What If

“I can’t do this. I’m sorry.” She shuffled away from me, no longer pressed against my truck. “You’re married.” She looked disgusted with herself and with me. Before I had a chance to respond, she took off in her tall, black heels and headed back towards Miller’s house.



I ran as fast as I could to the house, with one hand pressed against my lips, not capable of believing I just allowed that to happen. How many times had I dreamt of what Arrow’s kiss would feel like? How many times did I think it was going to happen to only have my heart broken again? Never, not once in any of those fantasies, was Arrow married when he finally kissed me. I apologized to him before I dashed away. And I was sorry. I was sorry that I didn’t push him away when I saw his face coming down to meet mine. He didn’t even realize the sort of unbearable pain he put me through for so many years. He hurt me over and over again. He killed a piece of me constantly, and I didn’t have the strength to go through it again.

Once inside, I found Darcy tongue-tied with an attractive guy from Miller’s job. Being that I was an absolute mess inside, I couldn’t stand to wait until she was finished with “no name.” I tapped on her shoulder until she freed herself from his arms.

“We need to go. Now.” My arms were shaking, partly from the cold weather but more from what had just went down with Arrow. I felt horrible for enthusiastically kissing him back and for loving every minute of it. He was married! I kissed a married man. No matter what kind of past Arrow and I had, there was no excuse for that.

Her widening eyes looked me up and down, noticing my trembling body. “Okay, let’s go.” She waved to the man she was just kissing.

I looked over my shoulder with every quick step we took out of the house and towards the car, searching for any sign of Arrow. I didn’t see him. Once we were in the car and pulling away from the house, Darcy started asking questions.

“What happened? I thought you got a ride home. I assume with Arrow.” She looked in the mirror and then switched lanes.

“You don’t get any answer yet. Why didn’t you tell me he was in Greenville?” I asked, crossing my arms under my chest.

She sighed. “I didn’t know for certain that he’d be at the party. But I hoped he would be. He’s only been back for a couple weeks, and I only know that because a couple guys from high school were talking about it. He didn’t say anything about coming back to Greenville online, and Lacey hasn’t posted anything for a long time.” She glanced at me and then back to the road. “I thought it would be best if you two just ran into each other instead of trying to force you guys to meet up.”

“I’m not sure that seeing Arrow is a good idea at all,” I whispered, my fingers tracing my lips, mimicking where his lips had been.

“What happened?”

I took my heels off and threw them down onto the floorboard and rubbed my cramped up toes. “He kissed me.” The words sounded more like air than actual speech.

I looked at Darcy out of the corner of my eye and saw a stupidly large smile. “It’s not smile worthy, Darcy; he’s married. That’s so wrong!”

The smile went away when she realized how wrong it really was. “Is there more to that frown on your face?” she asked.

“You know there is…” Today exhausted me. Seeing Arrow played with my emotions. Then that kiss… “How am I supposed to get over all the shit from our past?” I asked rhetorically.

She tried to answer anyway. “A lot of time has passed, Briar. You’re both different people. Why don’t you try to get to know one another and see where that takes you? Maybe you’ll realize that the Arrow you used to know is gone. Maybe you won’t even be attracted to this new one. Though that would be hard to do, since he somehow got even sexier,” she joked. I glared at her. “Fine. Anyway, maybe you’ll find a new friendship with him, or maybe you’ll learn that you two have absolutely nothing in common and it’s best to leave the past in the past and move on.”

“You make it sound easy. It’s not that easy. You don’t know what happened. You don’t know how messed up I was for a long time.”

“News flash, Briar. I’ve been your friend for years. You don’t think I noticed the change in you? Oh, I saw it, babe. And how messed up you were back then? Well how about how messed up you still are over whatever the hell happened?” I started to argue. “Listen,” she commanded, turning on to the street of my apartment complex. “I used to get really mad over the fact that you never confided in me. I would sit and wait for your ass to finally tell me what was happening. You never did. You probably never will. But hear me out…

“You may think you healed from this a long time ago. But you haven’t. You didn’t see how you looked when I had little tidbits of information about Arrow, or when I told you he was in critical condition. You didn’t see how your entire body seemed to implode. Then the absolute relief when you found out he was going to be okay.” I cried. I couldn’t hold it back. I knew she was right, but I tried so hard to get over him. I told myself I would never let him or anyone affect me in that way again. I thought I succeeded, but I hadn’t. I’d only hidden it from myself. “So unless whatever he did to you was some sort of bodily harm, then you need to let him in. Because Briar, maybe he’s the only one that can repair what’s broken inside of you.”

Truth rang in everything Darcy said. If I couldn’t fix myself, if Killian couldn’t be the ointment to the pain, then perhaps Arrow would have the cure.



Darcy called me a few days later. I expected to hear from her sooner. Usually we talked at least once a day, but I figured she was giving me my space to think.

“Hey, don’t be mad…” she said, drawing out the word “mad.”

“What did you do?” I said as I dabbed my eye shadow on my upper lid near the eyebrow.

“I gave Arrow your number. I might have given him your address too,” her voice wasn’t the least bit apologetic.

The tiny brush dropped and landed on the sink. “Are you kidding me, Darcy? This is crossing the line!” I screeched. “You can’t hand out my information to just anyone!”

“It wasn’t just anyone. It’s Arrow.” I heaved a sigh. “It’s not a big deal. He said he’d call before showing up at your house.”

“I’m sure he said exactly that.” The doorbell rang to my apartment. I stilled. No way. I ran from the bathroom to the front door and looked out the peephole, but the mystery visitor was covering it. “Move your hand, asshole!” I yelled to the person behind the door.

The deep chuckling was exactly who I thought it was. “Oh yeah, he sure called before showing up at my house,” I hissed into the phone.

Darcy laughed hysterically. “He’s there right now! The man is fast. I just gave it to him.”

“Go away,” I groaned to Arrow.

“Not happening. We have to talk.” Looking into the hole again, I saw he was standing there, looking down at the ground, his thumbs tucked into his front jean pockets.

“I have plans,” I stuttered out.

“No you don’t.” I continued watching him. His eyes rolled, and he glared at the door.