Rumor Has It

The entries began with her arrival in Cedar Creek.

Well, we’re here, and all I can say is it’s hot and dusty and looks like a set out of some old Western movie. The only kids I’ve seen so far are wearing boots and jeans and cowboy hats and they all stared at me when I rode by on my bike and didn’t say anything.

Well, I didn’t say anything to them, either. Next time I will. We’re here and I have to make the best of it. Dad is always saying things like that, as if clichés are going to make everything all right.

Anyway, I do want to fit in here. I want to make friends. I’m sure things will be a lot easier when I start school next week.

She flipped over a few pages, past entries about shopping with her mother and arranging her room. Finally she found an entry written after the first week of school.

I’m really tired of everybody staring at me as if I’m from another planet. You’d think they’d never seen cool clothes before. There’s this one particular girl, Alyson. She’s a cheerleader and she and her friends think they are so “all that.” She makes a face at me every time I go by….

There is one boy, though. He’s on the staff of the literary magazine. His name is Dylan Gates and he is sooooo cute!!! And he writes the most awesome poetry.

She read on, about her growing friendship with Dylan. She and Dylan ate lunch together in the cafeteria. She and Dylan worked on a project in chemistry class. Dylan let her borrow his history notes when she was out sick.

I think Dylan must be the sweetest guy in the entire world! She smiled, the feelings rushing back as if it all happened yesterday. She would never have admitted to it then, but Dylan had been her first big crush. She’d have given anything to really be his girlfriend, but he’d never given the slightest hint that he’d wanted to be anything more than a friend.

She flipped through a few more pages of boring entries about homework, television shows and records. It might be fun to share some of this with her students sometime, to show how things had changed and how much they’d stayed the same.

I hate this place!!!! The words were bold and underlined three times. Apparently the cause of all this angst was the annual senior camping trip. Taylor hadn’t wanted to go, but Dylan had talked her into attending. If only she’d listened to her gut and stayed home, none of the rest would have happened.

Today I found out what everyone really thinks of me. Saturday night, after everyone else went to sleep, Dylan and I stayed up talking. It got colder and colder and we kept putting wood on the fire, until we ran out of wood. It was so cold, I knew I’d never sleep, so Dylan invited me into his tent with him. We were both wearing so many layers of clothes, it was completely innocent. We only wanted to get warm. But the next morning, when Mr. and Mrs. Healy got up and found us, they had a cow. You’d have thought we’d committed murder or something. We tried to tell them nothing happened, but they wouldn’t believe us.

By the time our parents came to pick us up, the Healys had calmed down some. Thank God my mom and dad believed me when I told them Dylan and I didn’t do anything in that tent—or out of it—but sleep. I figured most of the kids didn’t know what happened and by Monday everything would blow over. I should have known better.

She scanned the pages, her stomach in a knot. It was all there: the jeers from other students, the whispers, the rude propositions from some of the bolder boys. She stared at the words at the bottom of one page, the writing cramped and small. Dylan wouldn’t even look at me. I felt so awful.

She closed the diary, blinking back tears. That had been the beginning of the end. Every day a new rumor developed. She and Dylan had been caught showering together in the boys’ locker room. She and Dylan had been skinny-dipping at the old gravel pit. By unspoken agreement, they avoided each other, hoping this would scotch the rumors, but the gossip escalated. When she left school, everyone was sure it was because she was having Dylan’s baby.

What would have happened if she’d found the strength to face up to those rumors? If she’d had the courage to tell Dylan how she’d really felt about him? Would they have had a normal high school romance and its inevitable end as they each moved on to other interests? Would she have lived the rest of her life without this sense of having left something back there unresolved?

Instead she’d spent the last month of her senior year in a home schooling program, graduated, gone off to college and gotten her teaching degree. She’d vowed never to return to Cedar Creek.

But four years later, when she’d seen an opening for a teacher here, she’d felt a rush of nostalgia for all the things she had liked about the town: the slower pace of life, the lovely old courthouse square and the sense of being connected to history, the chance to really get to know your students in and out of school. Her parents had long since relocated to Arizona, so Taylor had had no reason to even visit Cedar Creek since she’d left for college.

She couldn’t explain why she’d been so drawn to a place where she’d suffered so much, but in the end she’d decided the best way to put the past behind her was to face her demons head-on.

Things hadn’t worked out quite the way she’d hoped. Sure, she loved teaching and she’d made a few friends, especially Mindy. But that sense of belonging—of home—she’d hoped to find was still missing. To the town, she would never stop being an outsider with a wild reputation—an outsider who never fit in.

So when the opportunity had come up to study for a year in England, she’d jumped at it. Maybe she’d be happier in a place where the past everyone was interested in wasn’t her own.

She looked at the diary again. Would things be any better in Oxford if she took her old problems with her? Had she really faced her demons? All of them? Mindy’s scornful words came back to her. Some people are still stuck in high school. It’s pathetic. Then how pathetic was it that Taylor had let the events of ten years before shape her life? How else to explain her inability to encourage any kind of lasting relationship with a man? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had opportunities. She’d dated quite a few perfectly nice men. But none of them had measured up to the ideal she had in her head.

An ideal that had been firmly fixed since she’d developed a crush on Dylan Gates. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, she had spent ten years comparing every romantic relationship with the one she’d imagined she and Dylan would have had.

She might not wear her hair the same way she had in high school or dress like a perpetual teenager, but, emotionally, part of her had never grown past those angst-ridden months at Cedar Creek Senior High.

She set aside the diary and folded her hands in her lap. If she attended the reunion and saw Dylan again, would that break the spell he held over her? Would she be able to see him as an ordinary man and not some unfulfilled fantasy?

Somehow she sensed it would take more than a mere meeting to get her moving forward again. She needed some way to prove to herself that the “might have been” she’d imagined could never have been at all.

Maybe you two can pick up where you left off, for old times’ sake. A shiver raced through her as she recalled Alyson’s words, followed by a rush of heat. Well, why not? Why not exorcise those old demons by making the rumors come true? Since everyone believed they’d had such a good time back then, why not enjoy themselves now?

The more she thought about the idea, the better she felt. Sure, it would be risky, but maybe she needed a little more risk in her life. She’d been playing it safe for the past ten years. Maybe it was time to take the kinds of chances she’d relished in her younger days. Turning lies into truth would be sweet revenge.

And it might be exactly what she needed to shake Dylan out of her system for good. After all, everyone knew fantasy didn’t live up to all the hype. A few days or weeks with Dylan were bound to prove they would never have made it as a couple. Puppy love like that never lasted. Once she’d confirmed her suspicions, she’d be free to go out and find the real love she deserved. She’d head to Oxford with a world of new possibilities filling her thoughts, instead of the same worn fantasies.

But would Dylan go for it? Would he be interested in a sexy fling “for old times’ sake”?

2

BY SATURDAY EVENING, the reunion committee had transformed the Cedar Creek High School gymnasium into a tropical garden with trickling fountains, Tiki torches and banks of flowers. Swags of tiny white lights wound among tall palms and glittered overhead like stars and candles flickered in the center of dozens of small white tables.

The class of ’93 and their spouses, dates and significant others moved in ever-changing groups between the buffet tables at one end of the room and the dance floor at the other, the hum of their conversation rising and falling like an idling jet engine.

Taylor paused at the entrance to the gym, heart in her throat. How would she ever find Dylan in this crowd? She craned her neck, trying to see around a group of chattering couples. Dylan could be anywhere. What if she didn’t recognize him?

No, she was sure she’d recognize him. She would never forget that smile. The memory warmed her.

But what if he didn’t smile when he saw her? What if he didn’t want to see her and turned away? She swallowed, fighting sudden nausea.

“Taylor! What are you doing standing there like a deer in the headlights?” Grady Murphy threw his arm around her shoulders and dragged her into the room. He smelled of bourbon and some overly sweet cologne.

“Um, hello, Grady,” she said, extricating herself from his grasp.

“Now that you’re here, this party can really get going.” He grinned, already glassy-eyed, though the reunion had officially started only an hour ago.

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. She’d deliberately dressed provocatively, in a black knit dress that clung to every curve and revealed a generous amount of cleavage. Tonight she intended to begin living up to her reputation as Cedar Creek High School’s most infamous girl-about-town. But that didn’t mean putting up with ogling drunks.

“Sugar, you look good enough to eat,” Grady drawled.

“Too bad, sugar. You don’t look very appetizing to me at all.” Chin up, she strode past him, toward the bar. She needed a little liquid courage for what she was about to do.

A hush didn’t exactly fall over the crowd as she passed, but she was conscious of heads turning her way and a few whistles and sly comments. Men grinned and elbowed each other, while women narrowed their eyes and shook their heads. Taylor ignored them all and asked the bartender for a glass of white wine.

She resisted the urge to drain the glass in one gulp and turned to once more survey the crowd while she sipped demurely. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she could make out familiar faces. She spotted Alyson in a belly-baring sarong skirt and crop top, her ponytail and breasts bouncing as she danced to Alan Jackson’s Chattahoochee with a tall, balding man Taylor recognized as Mark Wilson, the nasty yearbook editor.

Grady had transferred his attention to the buffet table, where he appeared to be having a cocktail-weenie eating contest with a beefy former football player whose name Taylor couldn’t recall. Milly Stefanovitch, another former cheerleader, waddled into view, looking as if she might give birth to twins at any moment.

Taylor shifted her gaze to the tables at the back of the room and her breath caught as her eyes came to rest on a pair of broad shoulders in a gray suit coat. The man turned his profile toward her and Taylor’s wine sloshed against the sides of the glass as her hand shook.

Ten years had changed Dylan Gates, transforming him from good-looking youth to heart-stoppingly handsome man. His frame had filled out, his face weathered, with a few fine lines fanning out from his eyes and a firmer jaw. The man with him said something and he laughed, his lips parting to reveal even white teeth and the smile that had won Taylor’s heart the very first time she’d seen him.

He stood hip-cocked, his tall frame relaxed, radiating strength and unmistakable sex appeal.

Taylor drained her wineglass and set it aside on an empty table, her eyes never leaving him. Her heart pounded and heat curled through her. She’d imagined all kinds of emotions upon seeing Dylan again, except the one that rocked her now: she wanted Dylan Gates. Wanted him bad.

DYLAN STOOD WITH a group of former football players, listening as Troy recounted the team’s attempt to spy on the cheerleaders in the girls’ locker room after a game. “Their coach, Georgia Hoffman, found the holes we’d drilled in the shower walls,” Troy said. “She waited until someone stuck an eye to the hole, then let loose with a blast of Right Guard.”