Just when I thought I might have gotten something approaching a grip, Gareth swung back to me. “So, anyway,” he said, as though we had been having a mutually amiable chat before he was called away. “You in town for the weekend, or what? Don’t feel like I’ve seen you in here before.”

I stared at him, confusion warring with resentment at the fact that he’d gotten even more attractive with age. He was wearing a slightly rumpled pinstriped suit that fell elegantly across his broad shoulders, and his blond hair was expensively cut, swept away from the darker eyebrows and gas-flame blue eyes my seventeen-year-old self once found so inescapably compelling. And his face was a little leaner than I remembered, both jawline and brow heavier and more defined. Being nine years older, woe and alas, actually suited him.

His personality, on the other hand, was clearly still in dire need of an overhaul.

“Gareth Blackmoore, are you fucking with me right now?” I demanded. “You don’t feel like you’ve ‘seen me in here before’? What the hell is that, some pickup artistry bullshit? Because if so, that’s a stunning new low even for you.”

“Hey, easy now,” he drawled, eyebrows lifting as he held up both palms. “Shit, I feel like we got off on, like, a real wrong foot. I’m Gareth, and—wait, but you already knew that, right? Hey, new girl, how come you know my name?”

As a slow grin began spreading over his face, I found myself struck with one of the most tragic revelations of my life. Gareth Blackmoore—my first love, my most humiliating and heart-crushing breakup, and the reason I abandoned an entire life—genuinely did not remember me.

Forget unspeakable crimes. I clearly straight up ate kittens and babies in a previous life, until a pitchforked mob drove my monstrous self out of that town, too.

To be fair, it had been nearly nine years since we really saw each other last, not counting the glimpses I’d caught of him back when I still used to come to Thistle Grove for covenstead holidays. My style had changed quite a bit since then. Instead of a wild, sun-bleached tangle that nearly whisked my waist, my hair was dark and sleek, cut in an asymmetrical bob that whispered by my chin. Small tattoos were scattered across my forearms, and these days I wouldn’t be caught dead in one of the fluttery white-witch dresses Gareth used to like so much on me.

But this man had been inside me many, many times. Our emotional history aside, shouldn’t that alone have warranted at least a flicker of recognition? I clearly had no trouble recognizing him. Yet there was nothing in his eyes, beyond the generic glaze of a drunk and horny male who wanted into my pants.

For a moment, I found myself struck speechless, so mortified I wished I could sink into the earth while a tsunami simultaneously closed over my head. Meanwhile, Morty’s wide eyes flicked rapidly between Gareth and me, like a spectator at the world’s most miserable tennis match. He couldn’t know exactly what was going down here—the list of people privy to what had happened between us was so short and sweet it didn’t even include my parents—but he must have been able to discern the gist.