If my life went as planned, I'd have walked down the aisle in a white dress. Maybe I'd have even chosen this one, with its fitted satin bodice, spaghetti straps and full skirt plummeting to the ground in a sheet of feathers.

But I've never been a bride, only a lonely woman gazing at a dress she has no need for, pretending it isn't a faceless mannequin in an effortlessly elegant pose staring back at her from the store window but a reflection of herself on her wedding day.

Wisteria Boutique hasn't changed since the day it opened when I was in high school. Gold curlicue letters etch out its name on its storefront. Wisteria flowers climb the trellises on either side of the doorway. Countless seasons have gone by, but I've never seen their periwinkle petals wilt as I have from heat and age and heartbreak.

Wisteria's designs are unmatched in this town. Their seamstresses can bring any vision to reality, no matter how impossible it seems. That's why I ordered the garments for every important occasion from them—my prom dress, the gown I wore for my sister's wedding, and the one I wanted to wear at mine.

Including the maid of honour dress I found my fiancé peeling off my best friend two weeks before the wedding that never happened.

I've always seen Wisteria's designs in my dreams, but since that day, I've seen them in my nightmares too.

Nine years later, the anger and humiliation of being betrayed by the two people I trusted most still tears at my tenuous composure.

I shut my eyes and take a deep breath. Without another glance at Wisteria Boutique, I set off down the sidewalk. Grass grows in a fringe along the edges of the pavement, green like a springtime promise. The scent of a floral medley hangs sweet and heavy in the air, nature's delightful perfume.

I miss everything about my hometown: the neat little houses with their big glass doors and spacious backyards, the crooked street of small stores and restaurants I wander through, the thin cracks in the sidewalk through which dandelions have sprouted.

But I left my past behind for a reason. As much as there is beauty in it, there is also heartbreak.

I fled this town the day my life fell apart. I've been running ever since in the hopes of staying ahead of my memories. My parents and my sister visit me in my apartment out of state, the only overlap of my old life into my new one. Sure, my new place will never feel like home, but neither does my hometown. Not anymore.

Everything here reminds me of my joyful young days and, most importantly, of who I spent them with.

I pass the saloon where Lorraine and I had hot dogs every Saturday. We had carved our names onto one of the booths to claim it as ours, but we hadn't gone there in years, not since she betrayed me. I wonder if it's still there, a memorial to a friendship that has long withered.

'Ice-Cream Dreams' on the main street looks different from how I remember it. The sign outside the ice cream parlour has been reprinted in a brighter, more modern font. The windows are bigger, and old Joe from behind the counter has been replaced by a girl younger than I am. She scrolls on her phone while two teenagers sit with sundaes in front of them. Their hands rest on the table, edging towards each other, emboldened with every word they exchange.

Keanu and I were like that, once. The first time he took my hand, he led me to the park. We hiked the trail up to Starship Point, so named because of a man who claimed to have spotted a UFO from there a few years back. Keanu said he had seen it too. I called him a liar, and while I laughed at his denial, he had leaned in and kissed me.

I smile at the warm fuzziness of the memory. That hasn't changed, even though everything between me and Keanu is different now.

The shadows of our past selves run past me, and I let them take me into their world. Those were better times, peaceful without the painful knowledge of the future.

I collide with a couple as I round the corner. The woman stumbles back, and the man catches her before she loses her balance.

My shopping bags slip from my hands, interrupting my excursion into my past. I fumble for the one carrying the diapers I was requested to buy. The man picks up the heavier one, the one of groceries, and hands it to me.

When I look up to thank him, my mouth freezes.

Maybe I never left my memory after all, because this man, with his wavy, dark hair falling to either side of his crinkled eyes, with the beaded necklace at the base of his neck, is the boy from within them.

My eyes widen. "Keanu?"

I must be wrong.

He's taller than I remember, his shoulders broader, his face carrying lines that remind me of his father. Then again, we were young when we were getting married, too young. I probably look different too.

But so different that my former fiancé doesn't recognise me.

"Acacia." A smile splits Keanu's brown face, sending my heart soaring and my stomach sinking and my other organs into disarray.  "I didn't know you were back in Colorado."

"Well, family calls." I shrug, my shopping bags weighing down my hands.

Keanu's eyes fall on the diapers. "Aunt duty?"

After I promised myself I would strangle this man if I ever saw him again, I find a grin taking over my lips. "Yeah. My sister's husband is at work, and she ran out of diapers, so... Acacia to the rescue!"

I refrain from face-palming. What am I doing? This man broke me into pieces it took years to regather. I shouldn't be talking to him, let alone joking with him.

Keanu raises an eyebrow.

My heart flutters as he does that. It must be the exertion of speed-walking back to Ellery's house that is doing a number on my body. As if I need another reminder that I'm not as young as I used to be.

"It sounds like Ellery is taking advantage of you."

"Nah. I don't mind aunt duty." I push a stray lock of my chestnut hair behind my ear. "I'd also be too tired to go to the store if I had a five-day-old at home." 

Ryan isn't even my five-day-old, and I'm so tired. The little guy hasn't yet gotten the hang of sleeping in the night and waking in the day, and he's slowly converting the rest of us to his nocturnal ways.

Despite that, I adore him as much as Ellery does.

I wasn't impressed when she insisted I come back to town to visit the day he was born. She even booked my flight so that I couldn't refuse her.

That meant I had to rearrange my week and reschedule clients who had been waiting to consult with me for months, but I swallowed my reluctance.

Family comes first. They're the only people who are always there for me, and I'll always do my best for them.

Even if it means returning to a town that holds painful memories.

My nephew is the only reason I came home after all these years. The only reason I bumped into Keanu.

Ryan's birth is a blessing and a curse. I should've known fate wouldn't let me outrun this forever.

"El must've missed you all the years you've been gone." Keanu gives a tentative smile.

He never used to smile like that. He never used to be afraid to tell me anything.

That was until he had a secret he knew could ruin our relationship, and like all truths, it had surfaced eventually.

My smile is tense too. I know as well as Keanu does that we're approaching a garden filled with thorns.

"Not really. El visits me when she can."

"I'm sure California is a welcome change from here."

I frown. How does Keanu know where I live now?

He reads my face as well as he always did. "I heard it from someone who heard it from your sister."

Of course he had. This town is small enough that the smallest, most insignificant piece of news is handed around and nibbled at for days afterwards.

"Yes, it's beautiful."

My apartment overlooks the ocean. It's a far better view than any I could've dreamt of if I stayed in Colorado.

"I've always wanted to move to the beach."

Keanu's smile is warm, like spring's gentle sunlight. "I know."

We planned to buy a vacation apartment there. Because of that, California reminds me of Keanu even though we have never been there together.

I think of him whenever I look out at the sea beating its frustration out in waves that crash against the sand. I have built my dream life, but it isn't the same without Keanu.

He gazes at me. His dark eyes pull me in.

A blush takes root on my cheeks. My blood rushes in my ears, and I can't think about anything other than him.

Nine years after Keanu broke my heart, I still react to him as I did when I first met him in high school. Everyone was talking about the new kid from Hawaii, but he had only seen me.

Until he hadn't, leaving me feeling transparent like glass, freefalling until I shattered to pieces against the ground.

I must be more obvious than I realise because the woman beside Keanu twines her fingers with his in a show of possession. She's so petite that I would have forgotten she was there if she didn't do that.

It isn't because everyone is invisible next to Keanu. It can't be.

The woman reminds me of Rapunzel with her big eyes and the gleaming golden braid running down her back. Even her forget-me-not print sundress looks like something a modern princess would wear.

Keanu smiles down at her. "Renata, this is Acacia, my ex." He gestures to me then back to her the way people do when introducing others. "Acacia, my fiancée Renata."

I go numb at that.

I thought I fell out of love with Keanu the day I caught him cheating on me, but my body refuses to live the lie my mind has convinced itself of. Feelings are not so easily discarded, especially the feelings I had for him.

Something inside me still burns for Keanu. It hasn't blown out, not in all the years I prevented myself from returning home, not all the times I ignored his texts and calls and rejected his friend requests on social media.

I have resented myself in the years since our engagement fell apart, but never as much as I did in that moment.

What kind of woman am I to want a man who belongs to another? That makes me no better than Lorraine, and I swore I'd never do to anyone else what she did to me.

I plaster a smile onto my face. My words are bright, yet brittle like dry petals that would disintegrate at the slightest touch. "Congratulations to you both. I'm sure you'll be very happy together."

The smile they exchange tells me just how happy.

"Thank you." Renata speaks for the first time. Her voice is bright with hope and love, so breezy without a burden like mine to bear.

Something inside me crumbles.

Because I'm frozen in that time in my life when I lost the two people who meant the most to me, I trapped Keanu there too. I was so heartbroken and alone that I hadn't ever thought that he might've grown older, fallen in love again, committed to someone who meant more to him than I ever did.

And I hadn't ever thought it could hurt this much.

My hold on my smile quivers but doesn't give. "It was nice bumping into you guys, but I've really got to go." My fingers tight around the handles of my shopping bags, I turn to leave.

"We should make plans sometime," says Keanu.

I freeze, fists clenching.

Is this man blind? Is he trying to make this harder for me?

Before I can say that no, I don't want to third-wheel with him and his fiancée, Keanu says, "I haven't seen you in years, Acacia. It would be cool to catch up. If you agree, I mean."

Renata looks up at him. His gaze stays fixed on me until she nudges him. He meets her eyes, and a look passes between them. I don't need to understand it to resent it.

Keanu and I were like that once, communicating without exchanging a single word, but it doesn't matter now. None of it was real because he was eyeing my best friend the whole time.

Renata gives a stiff little nod. She presses herself into Keanu's side, not needing words to make her message clear.

He's mine.

I hold her gaze because I have nothing to hide. Keanu is the one who suggested we meet up. Perhaps it's him who should be reminded who he belongs to now.

Keanu turns to me with a smile, as open and bright as the sophomore who asked me out during biology. "So, what do you say?"

Renata's mouth flattens into a harsh line. I know what she wants my answer to be.

I shouldn't see Keanu. I shouldn't even want to see him, but he's getting married, and I don't know if I'll ever come back to Colorado again.

I may not have come home to dig up my past, but now was as good a time as any to bury it for good.

I hadn't let myself heal before running the last time. I would not sabotage my life by running away again.

There had to be a reason why mine and Keanu's paths have crossed all these years later. Confronting our shared past is something I have to do.

At least that's what I tell myself. It's not because the warm feeling in the pit of my stomach makes my choice for me and won't tolerate any argument.

I avoid Renata's eyes and smile at Keanu. "I'd like that."

Keanu turns to Renata. In the space of his blink, she pastes a grin on her face.

I'm not sure whose smile is more forced—mine or hers. Not that it's a competition.

"We have a wedding dance lesson at five so... I'll see you at seven? At Starship Point?" asks Keanu.

Of all the places he can choose, he has to pick the graveyard of our memories. We had all our firsts at Starship Point. Why would Keanu want to go there?

It's too late for me to back down now. The terrifying thing is I don't even want to.

"Sure. I'll meet you at the beginning of the trail."

Renata's smile tightens at that, but she says nothing.

"See you then." Keanu raises his hand in farewell, then he and Renata are on their way.

Diapers and groceries in hand, I head in the opposite direction to the man who has my heart, who always has.

My mind still reels from our conversation. Keanu wants to see me, but why? What could he possibly have to tell me nine years after I caught him cheating on me?

Dammit. I shouldn't have agreed to meet him. Even thinking about him causes my mind to spin out of control. How am I going to handle being alone with him for however long he would like to "catch up" for?

There's no way this can end well. It's as doomed as mine and Keanu's relationship was.

Blossoms bloom in the promising spring sunlight, but I only curl in on myself, a flower desperate to protect her petals from the oncoming rain.