On My List: A Revenge Romance

To anyone else in that coffee establishment, I'm pretty sure I looked normal. Exceptionally, unworriedly normal. Professional, even—pinstriped skirt pulled over my crossed legs, and chin resting casually in the palm of my hand.

Under the surface, though? My insides must've resembled scrambled eggs, and I don't think there's an emotion in the English language that could've accurately portrayed just how unpleasant that resemblance felt. Still, just to give you a vague idea, the thesaurus futilely suggests: anxious, apprehensive, nervous, petrified, rattled, timorous, and scared shitless.

There was something horrifying about being back in this town. Maybe it was the fact that everyone here looked like a sewing machine had eaten a plaid factory and then thrown up on them. Or maybe it was the fact that, five years ago, this town had taken whatever was left of my self-esteem and had beaten it into submission with an iron mallet.

What's even worse, this place had barely changed, suggesting that it was more than capable of doing the same thing all over again. The faces and the street signs and the porched houses were exactly as I'd left them—like they'd all been preserved in Carbonite, Han Solo style—and this month old Starbucks was seemingly the only improvement to this middle-of-nowhere hellhole. The mixed scent of new paint, coffee beans, and fresh linoleum was making me sick to my stomach.

A lump rose up in my throat, and I was dangerously close to losing both my outward composure and the Cocoa Pebbles I'd ingested earlier this morning. Then I stopped, caught, and steadied myself. When I let my tongue run over my teeth, I didn't feel any metal or rubber. When I dragged my fingers through my hair, they didn't snag on the smooth, knotless strands, and when I blinked, my world wasn't outlined in thick paisley rims. Screw that, I thought. This town might not have changed, but I sure as hell had.

"Jordan!" I called.

The girl whipped around again, and her eyes narrowed. She pushed her glasses up so they were at the very peak of her nose. They were bright red, and matched absolutely nothing else she wore. "Charlotte?" She gaped.

I grinned at her. "Holy hell, Jordan. Don't you know people are supposed to gain weight in college? You're as skinny as you were when we were thirteen."

Jordan wasn't listening, though. She was inching towards me, her mouth still hanging open. She let her small body drop into the chair across from me, but her eyes never left my face. "Oh my God, Charlie," she murmured. "There's no way. There's absolutely no way."

ordan's eyebrow peaked over her red-rimmed glasses, and even after all this time, her bullshit-radar was still dead accurate. Or maybe it was just unbelievably obvious that I was lying.

Five whole years, and I hadn't once come back to Hills Ridge. I didn't care what was going on, and I sure as shit did not miss it. What I missed was my bedroom and the sound of city traffic and my boyfriend. Still, Jordan did me a favor and changed the subject.

"So where are you staying?" she asked.

"Over at the Roland's bed and breakfast. They gave me a room for a really good rate. Two-fifty a week, which is awesome," I said, and I was thrilled to move away from the former topic; it was way bigger than some crappy publishing company, and I definitely couldn't explain it now—not here, not with the way everyone knew everyone else, and not with the way gossip spread like the plague.

For now, I had to pretend like I was here solely to edit suicide-worthy manuscripts all goddamn summer. But the real reason I was back in East Bumblefuck, Pennsylvania? The real reason's name was Shane Griffith, and let me tell you: he was way more suicide-worthy than any manuscript, and he was dangerously close to the end of his reign because now...he was on my list.