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Authors: Megan Squires

The Rules of Regret

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THE RULES OF
REGRET

 

By Megan Squires

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The
Rules of Regret

 

Copyright
©
2013 by Megan Squires

First
Kindle Edition: 2013

All
rights reserved.

 

Cover
art by Regina Wamba at
Mae I Design and
Photography

 
 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and
incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or
dead, is entirely coincidental.

 
 
 
 

 

 

I keep thinking that the
more I write, the more space and pages I’ll have for all of my Thank You’s.

But that just simply isn’t
the case. With every book, my list of supporters, friends,

and readers grows, and I
just can’t find enough room to adequately articulate how much you all mean to
me.

So to all that have been
there with me on this journey,

I thank you with all I
have—a heart full of thanks.

 
 
 

PROLOGUE

 


Ma

am, can you recall what she was
wearing?

Mom

s thin hands trembled in her lap. The
remains of a used up Kleenex shredded into snow-like flakes of tissue,
fluttering to the hardwood ground near her feet. She lifted her head up and
sniffed back a tear that almost choked her.

Wearing? Oh God. I don

t even remember.


She had on my purple Adidas hoodie,

I spoke directly to the officer. He
looked to be in his mid-forties with a short, trimmed mustache that ran the
full length of his upper lip.


Do you have any recent photographs?

Dad
pressed up from the couch with his hands on his knees. He was still wearing his
suit from the day before, though the pleating was no longer perfectly creased
down the center and haphazard wrinkles crossed back and forth over his legs.

In the box down the hall. Let me go
get it.


We just moved here,

I explained, feeling like there
should be a reason as to why our home wasn

t
decorated with family portraits lining the mantle. We didn

t have much time to settle in, and
even if there were extra hours in the day, Mom and Dad were so busy with our
family of ten that homemaking wasn

t
at the top of their mountainous to-do list. They did the best they could, but
for some reason, under the scrutiny of the two men in our living room, it felt
like that might not be enough.


Understood.

The officer smiled and his partner
jotted something down on a pad of notepaper.

How would you describe her features?

Wiping
her nose with the now useless cloth between her fingers, Mom gestured toward me
with a wave of her hand.

She
looks just like Darby. Irish twins. Only a year apart. Freckles, shoulder-length
red hair.

 
People had been asking that all of our
lives, if we were twins. For my entire seventh year and her eighth, Anna and I
let everyone think that. We honestly were alike in so many ways that I often
believed we truly were interchangeable, if one person could ever actually be
replaced by another. Mom and Dad must have thought it, too, because I got
called Anna just as often, if not more, than my given name.

But
one difference was certain. Had the roles been reversed tonight, Anna would have
done everything in her power to make sure I

d made it safely home.

I
hadn

t
been able to do that, and it was a regret I was certain I

d carry for as long as I lived.

 

CHAPTER
ONE

Six Years After

 

The
floor rumbled underfoot, the familiar vibration of the engine echoing on the
ground just before takeoff. My heart adopted the same erratic tremble as the
747 outside the stretch of glass windows. I tried to harness its rhythm, but it
was no use.


It will be over before you know it.

Lance leaned forward and swept a
light kiss across my cheek, just like he did each night before bed. He was kind
of a creature of habit, and I

d
come to expect certain things from him. Cheek-sweeping kisses were one of those
things.

Think
about how fast this last quarter went. This is only six weeks

so like half that.

His grasp on my hip squeezed, and
his blue eyes softened as he hiked the strap of his duffel bag up onto his arm
and angled my direction.

We

ll be fine, babe. Always have been,
always will be.

I
probably would have believed that statement had it possessed any ounce of
truth. His delivery was convincing enough; it was the subject matter I had a
harder time believing. But even still, the hypnotizing effect Lance had on me
since the day of our first phone call hadn

t
yet worn off. If anything, it had only intensified. I wasn

t sure how he was always able to do
that, but I figured it had to be some gene passed down to him throughout the
generations of charmers that branched out of his family tree. I knew very
little about DNA but was pretty positive there was a strand specifically tied
to this Casanova gene somewhere in that twisty double helix of his.

I
stared straight over his shoulder at the wall listing departures and arrivals,
the glowing red numbers and letters obscured by the blur of passengers rushing
down the busy corridor with their rolling luggage trailing behind them like
obedient dogs. The frenzied bustle disoriented my focus and spread the words on
the screen into a fuzzy haze. I

d
never taken drugs before

I
didn

t
even know the correct terminology for saying I hadn

t

but I was fairly certain the dizzying
fog had to be similar to tripping on LSD.

Did
you
take
drugs? Or did you
do
drugs? Or was it you took drugs from
someone and then did them? All I really remembered was to

Just Say No.

And that

s what I wanted to do right now; tell
Lance that no, he couldn

t
leave me alone for the next month and a half. I was ready to put my elementary
school learned refusal skills to work.
 


We

ll be
fine
,

he assured once more, stooping down to search my eyes. I nodded quickly, trying
to believe him because he sounded so sure. If I looked long enough into those
baby blues, it would be all the assurance I

d need. He could convince me with
just one heartfelt look, that DNA-certified charmer that he was.

Lance
was convincing in all areas of his life. I

m
sure that had a little something to do with his selection for the internship in
Washington. He was politician material through-and-through, and even I wasn

t immune to his ability to reassure
and persuade even the most stubborn of individuals. Not only was I not immune,
I think I was completely infected.

And
I could be quite a stubborn and resistant individual. That might actually
explain the nickname of

mule

Lance gave me after our chemistry
class together our sophomore year of high school. I was adamant we had to note
the mass of the volumetric flask prior to filling it with our liquid sample,
and he was certain we didn

t.
We went back and forth the entire duration of the lab and never did turn in our
assignment. It seemed like a silly thing to put up a fight over, but I think
Lance saw it as an opportunity to challenge me. And when you were someone like
Lance

the
son of both an affluent lawyer and a representative in Congress

when the
opportunity for an argument arose, you jumped on it. It

s what you did; it

s what you were good at. The
challenge was the thrill, and these past six years with Lance by my side had
definitely been thrilling, to say the least.


Darby,

he whispered against my forehead,

I

ll see you in just a month and a
half. It will fly by.

I
snickered audibly under my breath.

Maybe
for you with your fancy galas and political soir
é
es,

I teased, fingering the hem of his
red Stanford t-shirt that hugged his toned upper half.

But honestly, the most important
thing I

ll
do this summer is watch paint dry.

Lance

s
shoulders lifted with laughter and he cupped my chin in his hands. I shook my
head under his grip.

I

m not joking, Lance. Sonja and I
literally have to repaint the townhouse or Gustov

s keeping our cleaning deposit. I

m not being figurative here. We

re totally gonna park our folding
chairs in front of the wall and watch paint chip number SW7036 dry. You

re completely jealous right now, don

t even try to hide it.


He

s not making
us
repaint
ours
.

Lance popped an eyebrow up that
indicated our landlord

s
favor for his apartment

s
tenants over mine.


Because you

re a
McIverson
. Seriously, have you ever once had to do anything you
didn

t
want to do?

Lance
twisted his lips and scrunched his nose as though he was really searching his
brain for an answer. I

m
sure he was.

Yes,

he said, thrusting a finger in the
air, the light bulb of recollection illuminating.

My mom once made me eat broccoli for
dinner when I was five. I didn

t
want to do that.


She made you eat it
once
?

The
last boarding call for his plane echoed over the intercom and I chose to ignore
it, hoping Lance was doing the same. If he missed his flight, maybe he

d have second thoughts on leaving
altogether. Maybe then we could watch paint dry side-by-side.


Yup, just once. Threw it up all over
the dinner table and never had to touch it again.


So you

ve been a master-manipulator from a
young age then,

I summarized, the reality of those words hitting me square in the gut. Five
more passengers rushed through the hallway, and the attendant pulled on the
door to the tunnel leading to the aircraft, about to seal it shut.


I don

t like to call it manipulative,
Darby.

He brushed my chin with the pad of his thumb and drew me into a kiss.

I like to call it resourceful.

Lance tossed a glance over his
shoulder toward the plane and folded me into his arms even tighter.

I

ll text as soon as I land, babe. And
remember, you have my heart, okay? So I

m
always sorta with you.

My
mind flitted back to that first time he

d
said that, back when we were thirteen, sitting on the front steps to my house.
My sister had only been missing three weeks.

I

ll never leave you, Darby,

he

d murmured after a quick kiss on my
nose, his fingers coiled with mine.

You
have my heart. It doesn

t
belong to me anymore.

I could see why my sister had a crush on him the moment she

d laid eyes on him. He was completely
mesmerizing, and I

d
fallen under his spell all too easily, too.

So even when I

m not with you, I still sorta am.

Only the truth of it was that even when
he was standing right in front of me, even when his mouth was pressed to mine
and our chests were pushed against one another, it honestly didn’t even feel like
he was with me. Lance was always somewhere else.

I
nodded robotically and my eyes slipped shut, trying to pull all of him into my
senses: his expensive cologne that smelled of bergamot and musk, his defined
chest that I curled up against so many nights these past years, the sound of
his strong, steady heart that pulsed familiarly against my ear. He bent down to
press his mouth to mine and I savored his recognizable minty taste. I was very
near the brink of sensory overload.


See you in six weeks,

he said as he strode toward the
almost-closed doors.


See you then,

I echoed, my voice trailing off as
he slid out of sight to get on a plane that would take him 3,000 miles away
from me.

Once
I couldn

t
see him anymore I felt like I should go, but I just stood there in the middle
of the terminal

unmoving

as the rest of the
airport

s
occupants rushed toward their gates. I contemplated getting on that plane with
him

after
all, Lance

s
family purchased a ticket for me just so I could get past the security gates to
see him off. But I wasn

t
meant to follow him. I didn

t
have a destination. There was no end goal.

So
I didn

t
move, because I didn

t
have any of those things. I didn

t
even feel like I really had me anymore.

I
might have Lance

s
heart, but he was pretty much my life

however
messed up our life together had become

and
I was fairly positive that ranked higher on the list of things you don

t want someone to take off with.
Sure, by holding his heart it meant he couldn

t fall in love with anyone because I
owned it already and it was supposed to be off the market. But Lance taking my
life with him meant I was essentially nonexistent once he slipped out of sight.
Since he
was
my life, his leaving
drove the final nail into the coffin that was my promise of an unforgettable
summer.

This
was going to be a painfully long six weeks.

 
BOOK: The Rules of Regret
13.74Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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