Free In Twenty Years: A Novel by Allison Winn Scotch

him clopping up the stairs—taking them two by two—and then the door swings open and he’s there, standing in front of her, smiling and wide-open, and oh my God, as handsome as he always was.
    “Annie!” He jumps on the bed beside her, and she falls back, and he pulls her into a tight hug before they both sit upright and assess.
    “You look like you’re twenty still,” he says.
    She feels the heat rise up to her cheeks and lets her hair tumble over them to conceal the glow. Yes, this is why she didn’t nurse a grudge, this is why he was impossibly easy to forgive.
    “No. I’m old.” She hopes he can tell that maybe she doesn’t mean it.
    “We all fucking are.” He laughs, and his deep hazel eyes linger, and her face burns hotter. He could do that: make you feel like he was lingering on you for a reason, like you were a prize he coveted, even if it was only in your imagination.
    His smile grows a little fuller, and he squeezes her hand.
    Annie is a little nauseated, clammy at his grasp.
    He takes a beat and glances around.
    “Did Bea . . . or whatever, her lawyer . . . make this look like your old room, or am I just imagining it?”
    She unbraids her fingers from his and runs hers over the floral duvet that resembles the Ralph Lauren one she’d saved up for from her waitressing job back home and then bought on sale at the outlet in Houston, and nods, partially delighted that Colin remembers her old room. Why didn’t you spend more time in my room? Why didn’t you wake up in the predawn hours tangled in my Ralph Lauren sheets, brushing your fingers down my spine, along my cheeks, down my fluttering eyelids?
    “It’s weird, right?” Colin says.
    “I think it’s great, superfun, actually!” Annie chirps in a pitch that she loathes, a tone that sometimes emerges at dinner parties with Baxter’s blue-blood associates, and Annie tries hard—too hard—to blend in. “I mean, we haven’t seen each other in years! I’m so excited!”
    He shrugs, then catches her eye in the mirror on the wall where it always was, where she’d paint on her eyeliner and flatten her bangs and think that maybe that would be enough to sway him her way. “You do look great, Annie. You really do!”
    Annie has never been good at taking compliments, so she says, “I don’t know.” Then adds, “You too,” and looks away before she can betray the true honesty of her words.
    And Colin does look great. Too great. Annie doesn’t know why she’s surprised; he lives in Los Angeles and probably dates, like, Sports Illustrated models and plays, she doesn’t know, beach volleyball for exercise. She wants to peel those leather pants off and chuck them out the window. Who does she think she is? Not a Sports Illustrated model. Not someone Colin would even consider.
    “What do you think the surprise is? That we all have to be here for?” Annie asks.
    It takes her a beat to realize that Colin looks worried. He never looks worried. “I dunno.” He peers out the window. “Have you kept up with any of them?”
    “A little. Owen and I are friends on Facebook, so there’s that. I guess . . . well, Catherine and Lindy are so important, so not as much.”
    She doesn’t add, Lindy and I stopped talking years ago. He must know this anyway. It wasn’t a secret, the way she stormed off, the way Lindy flew home and moved out, then went down to Nashville. She hopes she hasn’t offended Colin; he seems pretty important too. She’s well aware that he is the Boob King of Los Angeles, but she doesn’t dare make mention of that because that would imply she Googled him. Which she still does at least once a month when the apartment falls too quiet.
    “Yeah,” Colin says. “Owen and I text every now and then. He seems pretty happy. I guess with those two, you always knew they would be.”
    “Yeah.”
    Colin laughs. “They suck!”
    Annie says, based on nothing, “No, I think we all seem pretty happy. I mean, I am!”
    Colin is