He smiled. “So you do remember me.”

Of course she remembered him. It was what made being caught on Jackson Hill all the more embarrassing. Even though she’d never paid much attention to Colin in school, everyone knew who he was. He was an Osgood. But he’d always been eclipsed by his popular and headstrong twin sister. Not that he seemed to mind. He probably could have been as popular as Paxton was, but he’d never seemed as interested as his sister in running for student body president every year and joining three million different clubs. He’d mostly hung out with boys who wore pastel polo shirts and played golf on the weekends. He’d seemed destined to come back after college and take his father’s place as King of the Links, but for some reason he stayed away. She had no idea why.

Willa hadn’t intentionally tried to frame him for her pranks in high school. At the beginning of their senior year, she’d snuck out one night and put a quote by poet Ogden Nash on the school’s marquee. CANDY IS DANDY BUT LIQUOR IS QUICKER. She’d overheard Colin say it—he’d been quoting it all day—and she’d thought it was funny. What she didn’t know was that Colin had just turned in an independent-study essay on Ogden Nash the day before, so she had inadvertently pointed the finger at him. No one could ever prove it was Colin, and his parents had made absolutely certain that Colin was never held accountable, but every prank Willa had pulled up until then, and every one after, had been credited to him. He had earned the respect of being the Walls of Water High School Joker, the hero of students, the bane of the teachers’ existence. It was only when Willa had actually been caught, three weeks before graduation, that everyone had realized it was her, not Colin.

“Are you going to let me in or not? The suspense is killing me.”

She sighed as she stepped back. When he entered, she closed the door behind him, then she stepped over to her iPod speakers next to her computer and turned the volume down, before Springsteen could sound any sexier. She turned to see Colin walking around, absently running his hand over the back of her super-soft couch. It was that kind of couch. You just had to touch it. After almost seven years, it was the first new thing she’d bought for the house, and it had been delivered just days ago. It was expensive and impractical, and she felt suitably guilty, but she was ridiculously in love with it.

“No one told me you’d moved back,” Colin said.

“Why would they?”

He shook his head as if he didn’t know the answer. “How long have you been here?”

“Since my dad died.”

Colin’s shoulders dropped a little. “I was sorry to hear about what happened.” Her father had been hit and killed trying to help someone change a tire on the interstate during what would have been Willa’s senior year in college, if she hadn’t flunked out. Another thing her father hadn’t known about. “He was a great teacher. I had him for chemistry in eleventh grade. He had a dinner for his AP students here at his house once.”

“Yes, I remember.” She’d hated those dinners, actually having kids come to her house to see how she lived. She would hide in her room and pretend to be sick. There was nothing wrong with the house, it was just old and small, nothing like the mansions half the kids lived in.

“I’ve thought a lot about you over the years, what you were doing, what mischief you were getting yourself into.” He paused. “I had no idea you’d been here the whole time.”

She just stared at him, wondering why it mattered.

He circled the living room again, looking around, then didn’t seem to know what else to do, so he sat on the couch with a weary sigh. He ran his fingers through his dark hair. His hands were large. He was a big man, with a big presence. No one had seemed to notice that in high school. His time away had changed him, had given him a confidence, an air of independence, that he didn’t have before. “So what are you doing these days, Willa Jackson?”

“I own a sporting goods store on National Street.” There. That sounded responsible, didn’t it? Normal and practical.

“What do you do for fun?”

She gave him a funny look. What kind of question was that? “Laundry,” she answered, deadpan.

“Married?” he asked. “Kids?”

“No.”

“So no progeny to teach how to TP the high school lawn, or decorate the teachers’ cars with peanut butter, or put scandalous quotes on the school marquee, or switch the items in the school lockers of the entire graduating class?” He laughed. “That was a classic. It had to have taken all night.”

It was like it was a fond memory to him. But she’d purposely not revisited her pranks in years. And she hadn’t given Colin a second thought. Now, suddenly, she was remembering the look on his face when she’d been escorted out of the school by police after pulling the fire alarm. The whole school was out on the lawn. It was her, they’d whispered. Willa Jackson was the Walls of Water High School Joker! Colin Osgood had looked completely poleaxed. Though whether it was because it was her or because he couldn’t take credit for her pranks anymore, she didn’t know.

They stared at each other from across the room. She watched as his eyes traveled down her body, and she was about to call him on it when he said, “So, are you going?” He nodded to the invitation still in her hand. “To the gala?”

She looked down as if surprised to find the invitation there. She put it on the computer table, giving it a dirty look, as if this was all the invitation’s fault. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

“So you only go to parties that have something to do with you? Your birthday party, for example.” After a short silence, he frowned and said, “That sounded funnier in my head. Sorry. Everything suddenly starts to seem funny when you’ve been up for forty-eight hours. I laughed at a speed limit sign on my way over here. I have no idea why.”

He was sleep-drunk. That explained a lot of things. “Why have you been up for forty-eight hours?”

“Couldn’t sleep on the flight from Japan. And I’ve been trying to stay awake all day so I could go to bed at a regular hour and not get hopelessly lost in the time difference.”

She looked toward the window. “Did someone drive you here?”

“No.”

She met his eyes. They were dark and unnerving and very, very tired. “Are you okay to drive home?” she asked seriously.

He smiled. “That was a very responsible thing to ask.”

“Let me get you some coffee.”

“If you insist. But the old Willa would have found some way to take advantage of this situation.”

“You have no idea who the old Willa was,” she said.

“Neither do you, obviously.”

Without another word, she turned and went to the kitchen, where she managed to spill both the coffee grounds and the water. She just wanted to get her father’s old percolator going so she could give Colin a jolt of caffeine and have him be on his way.

“Do you go up to the Blue Ridge Madam often?” Colin called from the living room.

“No,” she answered. Of course he’d get around to that.

“So you weren’t planning a prank for, say, the big gala?” He actually said that hopefully.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Willa mumbled.

Leaning against the kitchen counter, she watched the percolator as it gurgled and took its time. When it had finally made enough for a single serving, she poured some into a cup and took it to the living room.

He was still sitting on her gray microsuede couch, his hands on his knees, his head resting back against the cushions.

“Oh, no,” she said, panicking as she set the cup down on the end table. “No, no, no. Colin, wake up.”

He didn’t stir.

She reached over and touched his shoulder. “Colin, I have your coffee. Wake up and drink some.” She shook his shoulder. “Colin!”