Free A Week of Mondays by Jessica Brody Page A

debilitating regret. The “if onlys.”
    If only I hadn’t eaten that stupid banana bread.
    If only I hadn’t made a fool of myself in front of the whole school.
    If only I had been more apologetic to Tristan.
    If only I had been less apologetic.
    If only I had worn a different outfit, styled my hair up instead of down, brought an umbrella.
    If only I knew how to fix this.
    If only I had another chance.
    These are the kinds of thoughts that lead to destruction. That do nothing but harm. Because in the end, there are no second chances. We all know that. There are no do-overs in life. You make mistakes, you live with them, you move on. I know all of this. I do.
    And yet, as I drift to sleep, through the blur of tears and heartache, under the heavy weight of remorse that’s pressing down on my chest, I find myself thinking the same thing over and over again.
    Please just let me do it over.
    Please give me another chance.
    I swear I’ll get it right.

 
    The Way We Were (Part 1)
    Five months ago …
    The very first time I ever spoke to Tristan Wheeler, he accused me of stealing.
    Before you go thinking this is another one of those kleptomaniac romances that are all the rage these days, let me set the record straight. I was completely innocent. I didn’t steal a thing.
    Tristan, on the other hand, stole everything.
    My breath, my common sense, my ability to form coherent sentences. He was the ultimate thief. A shoplifter of hearts. A pickpocket of dreams.
    He just didn’t know it. That was what made him so dang good at it. He had no idea of the things he walked away with in his pocket. The things girls were so willing to simply hand over to him at the flash of one lonely dimple. At the flick of his windswept dark blond hair. At a single chord strummed on his electric blue Fender guitar.
    War treaties have been signed for less.
    Colonies have been emancipated for much less.
    Before that fateful night of Daphne Gray’s party, Tristan Wheeler was just another high school cliché to me. The cute boy in your yearbook who you show to your future kids and say, “I wonder if he’s on Facebook.” The seventeen-year-old rock god who exists for the sole purpose of giving teenage girls someone to fight over.
    Before that fateful night, Tristan Wheeler was about as viable an option for me as a member of One Direction.
    I wasn’t even supposed to be at the party. I had gone looking for Owen. He had told me earlier in the day that he was thinking about going. I didn’t realize until much later that he was saying this facetiously. Owen likes to attend things facetiously.
    Parties had never really been our thing. Owen and I were always perfectly content spending our weekend nights watching reruns of Law and Order or trying to beat our high scores at the bowling alley (me: 145, him: 142. Ha!).
    As soon as I walked into Daphne’s house, I remembered why I didn’t go to parties. I felt like a sober zebra in a wild pack of drunk horses.
    The noise alone was enough to make me want to walk out. And I almost did. And I almost would have. Had I not bumped into him .
    I had already done a full lap of the first floor, and having decided that Owen was most definitely not among these people, I opted to exit out the back door because the thought of trudging back through that chaos was about as appetizing as walking across hot coals.
    I crept out the glass door to the backyard and slid it shut behind me. The silence was blissful. I stared at the door for a good ten seconds, wondering if it was made from the same glass they use to make the windows of the president’s car, because the way it blocked out the noise of all those rowdy teenagers and their rowdy teenage music was nothing short of a miracle.
    I didn’t expect anyone to be out here. It was a cold night for late April, and judging by the claustrophobia of the living room, every teenager within a hundred-mile radius was