"Oh boy! Do you remember him?" Cindy asked Libby giggly, pointing at a picture in the yearbook. Libby nodded, smiling.
"Did you know he married Kasey?"
"Kasey? She was so quiet. They got married? How did you know that?"
"Yes, they did. And had two kids. And divorced. I ran into her last week with Junior."
Cindy laughed as Libby tilted her yearbook towards Cindy tapping a section of the page. "Now him…whatever happened to him?"
Libby's husband reentered at that point. He sat on the coffee table in front of his wife and wife's best friend, both snug on the couch.
"I think he's in the Retroville Prison now," Sheen retorted. Then he leaned over his wife's book and smiled at an upside down picture. "Now would you look at that."
It was a picture of them at sixteen, during their sophomore year. Cindy was at the end with her arm rested on Libby's shoulder. Libby's arm was around Sheen's back and his around her waist. Jimmy was in front of them, kneeling before Goddard, and Carl was on the other end.
On the next page was a title at the top, Bitter Rivals and Sweethearts. There were two pictures of Jimmy and Cindy there, one with them in debate class, glaring at each other over their podiums, and one of them slow dancing together, cheek to cheek at a dance. Underneath were quotes from their classmates, so busy hating each other, they'd realize they loved each other, and "We've been waiting for seven years for them to do something about it their feelings, but they never do." Cindy smiled softly.
"Whatever happened to Jimmy anyway? I haven't seen him since you two got married."
"Oh, you know," Libby answered, shrugging off the question. Cindy shifted her gaze to Sheen, knowing he would say something, being the bit-mouth that he was. She wasn't disappointed.
"He got that Nobel Prize last year. He's still in Retroville, though."
That was different from them. Cindy had moved to Little Rock and Libby's family to a small town nearby. Cindy nodded.
"So he's still there," she mused. She tried to push the thought away but she couldn't. She still failed to do so as she drove home from Libby's and still couldn't the next morning as she dressed for work. It was still on her mind as she began to board her car after that. Finally, she gave up. She called in sick and changed into a pair of jeans. When she did start her engine, she went in the opposite direction of her normal destination.
When she pulled up to the city limits, she promptly found an out-of-order payphone, but she was uninterested in making a call. What she wanted was the attached phone book, with which she looked up an important address.
James Neutron…122 Wystery Drive… A phone number was listed also, but she ignored it. She drove to the address and passed it once, made a U-Turn, and stopped across the street, but she left the car running.
For a moment, she internally debated whether she should get out of the car or just leave. She groaned after a while. 'Suck it up, Vortex,' she scolded herself. 'It's just Neutron. You'll be fine. With another huff, she bitterly pulled herself out of the car and slammed the door behind her, grudgingly stomping across the street. She rang the bell and the door automatically opened.
Goddard tilted his metal head and whined, confused. Cindy crouched in front of him and stroked his head, quietly greeting, "Hey boy."
"Hey yourself," a soft voice came from above. She slowly turned her head heavenward and her eyes connected with a pair as blue and deep as the ocean. She gradually stood up straight. She couldn't look away, no matter how strong the desire to do so, because she needed to drown in the deep blue more than she wanted to be the strong, independent girl she once was. She felt small and weak and as if she needed some sort of cover or protection. She held up the senior yearbook that she had brought with her.
"I was at Libby's and Sheen's last night and we were talking, and…" She was suddenly aware of her very unintelligent rambling and tried to stop herself. "Can I come in?"
He nodded and stepped aside.
She entered the house, the same style and arrangement as the house he had grown up in. She followed him into the living room and stood in front of the couch as Jimmy stepped into the kitchen and called out.
"So have you grown into a beer girl or champagne? Cause I don't have either."
"You know, I've never strayed very far from the Purple Flurp roots of my childhood."
Jimmy laughed and poured two of the desired sodas. When he entered with a cup in each hand, he looked at her regretfully.
"You're uncomfortable."
She shifted her weight from foot too foot, took the glass, and sighed. "Well…it has been quite a while," she said, and he nodded in agreement.
"So why'd you come anyway?"
First she considered lying, and then thought about being vague, but she decided against it. In this case, honesty really was the best way to go.
Of course, she didn't tell him all of the truth. Not about how she was in love with him and always had been, and how that when she used to put him down it had simply been to hide her feelings and a failed attempt to keep herself from falling further.
She didn't say any of that. No, he didn't need to be aware of that, and with him, she had always kept him simply on a need to know basis.
So she kept it simple.
"I missed you."
He looked at her in that mystic way he used to and there was nothing she could do to keep her insides from writhing inside her and the blush from creeping up her neck. A chill ran up her spine as she noticed him take a step in her direction.
"I missed you, too," he said from a foot away from her. "You know…I always wondered why we didn't keep in touch."
"I think it was because of that fight we had."
"I forgot what that was about."
Cindy hadn't. She still regretted her pride and stupidity. It had started over the last day speech and moved onto more sensitive subjects, such as Betty. When Cindy brought up the subject, Jimmy had retaliated.
"I haven't like Betty since the fifth grade, Vortex!"
"Well that doesn't keep you from googling at her every five seconds!"
"I'm not googling! I'm looking. And I'm not looking at at Betty. I'm looking at somebody near her in the only class we have with her."
"Oh? Who? The blonde bimbo on her right?" she had asked angrily.
"No! The usually brilliant blonde on her left who is being a bit oblivious and stupid at the moment! You're a fool if you can't see that I love you, Vortex!"
His anger evaporated instantly and he was breathing heavily. There it was, floating in space. She was taken aback for a single moment. Then her defenses were back up.
"Too bad," she said coldly. "You're the only fool around here, Neutron. I don't feel the same." She had turned and walked away, leaving Jimmy with a hurt expression and a broken heart. She winced at the mental picture.
"You remember," Jimmy said.
"You lied," Cindy commented.
He bit his lip. "How can I not remember?" To himself, yet she could hear it, he said, "It was the day my heart was torn out of my chest."
Cindy stared at the floor. "Jimmy, I—" What could she say? That she had always loved him, but had been too afraid to say it? That she had broken his heart because of her ego?
"I'm sorry." She would worry about the perfect words to say later. Jimmy was speaking. "I shouldn't have caught you off-guard like that. First we were fighting and then I was confessing my love for you, and…yeah. It was a bit quick."
"No, Jimmy, I—" Once again she had a dilemma of what to say. "I—"
He shook his head. "Don't worry about it. I get it."
"No, you don't." She sighed. "Jimmy, things have…changed."
"Changed?" he asked, perplexed. "How so?"
She took a half-step closer and looked up into his pools of blue. Sucking in a deep breath, she spoke. "In high school, I was young, dumb, and scared. Now I'm older and, hopefully, smarter. And I'm still scared, but…not to the extent that I'm going to, once again, allow this opportunity to pass."
His head cocked, he stepped in, closing the distance to mere inches. He could sense that what she was about to say was important. She began to shake.
She stuttered, "I—I…love you," looking down at her feet. There was silence until she looked back up. Their eyes locked, Jimmy grabbed her by the shoulders and crashed his lips on hers.
When they pulled apart, Cindy smiled. "I probably seem dumb to ask, but—"
"Yes," he said, anticipating her question. "I still love you."
It was the dream, the what-if she had never been scared, what if she had told him. And with the what if answered, she rested peacefully in Jimmy's arms, just as she had done during a certain dance in the yearbook.