The Search for Lily Myers ✓

04 | Push and Pull

Nine Months Ago

The very first time Amelia laid eyes on Colton, she was wearing plush reindeer antlers and an ugly Christmas sweater.

She glanced down at the floor, embarrassed, as if she'd been caught staring at him. She told herself that the warmth that rose to her cheeks was a mere side effect of the mulled wine. He was across the room, conversing with another man who looked to be around his age and surely not noticing her. And yet, against her will, her eyes snuck back to him.

In her defense, he was a little impossible not to look at. She sensed that she surely wasn't the only woman looking. At least from afar, he reminded her of the photographs she'd seen of Old Hollywood stars—he was a little reminiscent of James Dean, perhaps—with seemingly perfectly styled dark blonde hair and a sharp, clean-shaven jawline. It was a particular sort of handsomeness that might have been more common in a place like Southern California or New York but was a sight for sore eyes in a smaller town like Nashville. Here they had the country singers, who were always a little rougher around the edges.

It eventually occurred to Amelia that she needed to move—she'd been standing in place like something caught in amber for an indeterminable amount of time—and yet she felt equally as though she had nowhere to go. She didn't actually know anyone here. She'd only been back in town for a month and most of her old friends from college had moved on to different locales in her absence. The whole point in coming out tonight had been to force herself to feel a bit more like a social butterfly. She knew she'd never quite get there, no matter how much wine she drank, but she could at least pretend to get close. She might not be a butterfly, but she could be a moth.

It was at no discredit to the party that she was standing here all by herself; she was actually having great fun. They were at the science center, the museum where kids came on field trips during the day to watch shows in the planetarium and do hands-on experiments, but occasionally they held after-hours parties where adults could come and play with all the cool toys without the presence of any screaming children. There was karaoke and snacks and drinks and silly crafts and Christmas-themed science demonstrations and hundreds of potential new friends around her just waiting to be met. In fact, she had already talked for a long while with a very nice girl named Natasha (they'd struck up conversation while waiting in line for the wine), and the only reason Amelia had actually walked away was that she didn't want to accidentally come across as too clingy.

She might have been desperate to meet people—both for her own sake and because she was tired of hearing her mother nag every time she came to visit that she should make friends—but she didn't want to look it. No, she wanted to be the person who was only ever alone on purpose and not because they simply had no one to be with.

It rose back to the surface of her consciousness that she was still just standing here, that she still needed to move. She hastened away to nowhere in particular, though it occurred to her now that she was walking that she might as well detour to the bathroom. If she could just make her mind up about what she wanted to do, at least she wouldn't be floating around aimlessly like a ghost.

Other groups of people chatted around her, stray sentences of their conversations drifting over to her ears. She giggled to herself when she overheard a woman, obviously a little bit drunk, rambling on to her friends about her love for Baja Blasts. But the volume of people here in the main atrium made it feel stuffy, massive as it was, and Amelia found herself uncomfortably tugging at the fabric of her sweater just to momentarily stop it from touching her skin.

She tried to slip between two groups of people, but the gap was narrower than she realized and her elbow accidentally bumped against someone's arm. The force of the impact caused a little bit of wine to dribble out of her cup and onto the carpet. When she turned around to quickly apologize, she realized with horror that she was looking at the same boy she'd been admiring mere minutes ago.