Chapter One


Kevin - 1991


It was cold for mid-August in Kentucky. I was sitting in the old chapel on the edge of the property of my father’s camp, staring up at the silhouette of the cross that hung high in the cathedral-style window, back-lit by a starry night sky. I leaned against the pew back and stared up at the stars. I ran my hand over the cordless phone, which was only just barely in range of the base in the kitchen, and I waited for it to ring.

Behind me, the chapel doors creaked open, and I turned around.

Caroline Watson stood in the doorway, her thick, curly blonde hair pale in the moonlight that came through the window. She hugged the door, her cheek pressed against it. “Your mom said you were out here,” she said. “I just stopped by to see how you were doing. I heard about your Dad. How is he?”

“He’s…” I paused. I didn’t know what to say about my Dad. What do you say when someone you love has cancer, and they’re dying, and they didn’t tell you until the last minute and all you can do is show up in the final days to say goodbye? I felt like he’d stolen time from me. I knew he’d done it to protect me, but at the same time… I felt sort of ripped off.

Caroline walked across the chapel, her sneakers squeaked a little on the stone floor, and she set herself on the pew beside me, sitting on her hands daintily. “When did you get back in town?” she asked.

“Yesterday,” I said. I could barely believe it’d only been twenty-four hours that I’d spent back in Irvine. Somehow, hospital visits made time drag by so much slower until twenty-four hours seemed like hundreds of hours. I’d only just got home the day before, but I already felt like I’d never left.

She leaned back so her hips were just on the edge of the pew seat, her neck supported by the back of the pew, staring up at the stars, too. “You look good,” she commented. “Tan. How’s Florida?”

The life I’d started to build in Orlando was seeming more and more distant by the hour.

“Good,” I answered.

“I heard you’re working for Disney?”

I nodded, “Playing characters in the themepark. It pays pretty well.” My fingers tapped against the plastic shell of the phone. “Pays the rent while I go out on auditions, at least,” I added.

“Anything promising?” Caroline asked, glancing over.

I shrugged, “I had a couple callbacks lined up this weekend, but --” I let the sentence drop. Obviously those were going no where. I wasn’t even in Florida to go to the callbacks, much less land the spots.

“Any women?”

I actually had been seeing a girl, the girl whose call I was waiting on. I tightened my grip on the phone instinctively. Kristin Willits was a co-worker at Disney, and she’d helped me prepare for several of the auditions I’d done in the last few months. She was a great girl, funny, really pretty, and she believed in me and encouraged me in my dreams. But I felt funny telling Caroline about her. Mostly because Caroline was the girl that Kristin was replacing.

I shrugged.

“It’s okay, Kevin,” Caroline said, turning her eyes back to the stars, “I understand. You moved away and on. I didn’t expect you to hold a candle for me forever.”

But I knew somewhere, deep down, that she had - just like every other person in the town had. We’d been the “it couple” of Irvine for five years, everyone had just expected us to end up together. They’d already envisioned our future for us, and it was good. It was nice. It was predictable and comfortable and all the things that a good country boy and a good country girl should expect from a marriage. It was everything that both of us should have wanted, everything that Caroline did want.

I was the problem. I was the rebellious force that just couldn’t be happy to follow in my family’s footsteps, settled and comfortable in Irvine, Kentucky. I’d been raised a dreamer, fascinated by stories of faraway lands and foreign customs and the glamour of rock and roll. I wanted more than Irvine could give me, more than just a house and a couple kids in the yard. More than just Caroline.

But then again, it didn’t seem much like it was gonna matter in the end what I wanted out of life. Every hour, my future seemed like it became deeper engraved in stone as my father’s condition worsened.

I glanced over at Caroline and realized that I’d been sitting in silence with her for almost five minutes. She was still staring up at the stars through the window, just listening to the silence. The sound of our breathing echoed through the chapel. It was comforting. Her presence in general was comforting. Caroline had always had this sort of mystic air about her that made me feel at ease, like she just radiated hope. I missed that feeling, I realized.

Kristin actually reminded me a little bit of Caroline in a lot of ways. They both had thick, curly blonde hair and bright eyes and wide smiles. They both had contagious personalities. They both believed in me and built me up emotionally. In fact, when I’d first started seeing her, I’d thought of Kristin as “Florida-Caroline”, the replacement to something I had at home that I knew would never bridge the gap.

I took a deep breath, “You’d like Florida,” I told her.

Caroline shook her head, “It’s too humid,” she answered. “Remember when we went there in eighth grade, on that summer trip to Disney?” she shook her head again. “My hair looked like a French poodle.” She held her arms out to indicate how wide her hair had gotten. I laughed because I remembered the trip well. It was only a slight exaggeration to the truth: her hair had been a mess, but I’d thought it was beautiful.

I’d had my first kiss on that trip, in the vending machine room of the hotel. Caroline had gotten up for a midnight snack and I’d been getting ice in a bucket for a prank we were about to pull on one of the other boys in my room and we’d run into each other. Caroline had been wearing a pair of pajamas with tiny hearts on them and I’d been in sweats and an old Wildcats tee and we’d stood there, the bucket filling with ice cubes and the vending machine groaning as it produced a bag of pretzels. I was on the JV football team that year and Caroline was a cheerleader and we’d talked a couple times maybe before, but that night she was electric and there was something about those purple and pink pajamas and the smell of her Love’s Baby Soft body spray that made me want her bad and we’d made out until ice cubes ran over the edge of the bucket and clattered to the floor.

Basically, we’d been a couple ever since.

The irony of the fact that even my Kentucky dreams had been born in Florida was not lost on me. I’d long thought of Florida as the place where Dreams Came True, which was why I’d gone there instead of Nashville or New York or Los Angeles to find the roots of my career. There was just something about Florida, some feeling that permeated my soul whenever I went there. Like my Destiny there and I could feel it.

“I probably won’t be going back,” I said in a resigned tone.

Caroline looked over at me. “Why not?” she asked.

“Well, just, you know. If -- when -- my dad dies, my mother can’t run this place herself,” I said, “And it means too much to him to just let this place go.” I sighed. I looked around at the rafters, the vaulted ceiling stretching away into the dark. “This place is home.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes, neither speaking a word. I thought about the camp and the horses and the people who visited each summer, the people who rented out cabins and hiked through the trails that wound through the woods around the property, and went fishing in the river. I thought about the responsibility that I had as a son to my father to protect the home he’d built for us over the years and the ramifications of fully taking on my father’s legacy. Maybe I would end up being everything that everyone expected of me after all, I thought.

My heart felt heavy. I leaned forward, running my hands over my forehead and into my hair. “I just wish things were different,” I said thickly, and emotion built up in me faster than I expected it to. Suddenly, I was struggling to hold back tears. “I just wanted -- I wanted a chance --” I shook my head, “It’s not fair,” I said childishly, “He’s just forcing this responsibility on me. I’m still just a kid, you know? I’m still just a kid and he’s going to die. I’m not supposed to go through this yet. He’s supposed to live longer. It’s not fair.”

Caroline moved to my side, kneeling on the pew beside me. She ran her hand down my back. “I know, I’m sorry, Kevin,” she whispered. “I wish I could fix it.” Caroline’s fingers massaged my spine gently, and I leaned into her, letting my cheek press to her chest as she kissed my hair and held me close. “I’m here, Baby-K,” she said, employing the nickname she’d given me during our years of courtship. “I’m right here.”

I was overwhelmed by adoration for her, for her understanding and her gentle touch and soothing tone of voice, and I looked up and our mouths met and I wrapped my arms around her and somewhere among the tears and the stars and the rafters of the chapel, we ended up tangled on the floor in a mess of limbs and sex, the rough carpet beneath the pew leaving marks on my knees and her back. Afterwards, we lay there in a pool of moonlight and sweat, breathing heavily and holding onto one another.

I closed my eyes, trying to wrap my mind around what we’d done and what it meant.

The phone rang.

I sat up, and Caroline did, too, hugging her knees and watching as I picked up the receiver from the pew. I’d half expected it to be Kristin finally calling like we’d planned, but it was the hospital in Louisville, where my Dad was. Before I’d even pressed the button to answer the call, there was already a heavy sense of dread and loss clouding into my heart, and I answered the phone, already knowing what was coming.




At the funeral, my brothers and I each took a turn speaking. Even though I’d written the words myself and practiced them a dozen times for Caroline in the cab of my father’s pick-up truck, I still could only just barely get them out. My throat felt closed off. And when I stepped away from the podium, I felt like I hadn’t said enough about how much I appreciated my father and I thought maybe nobody understood how much it hurt me for him to be gone. The hole in my heart was the widest chasm I’d ever stared into, and I felt like at the bottom was a blackhole, sucking everything into its vortex.

Caroline took my hand and wove her fingers through mine the second I returned to her side. Her fingers squeezed my hand and she rested her cheek against my arm. I closed my eyes and just felt the weight of her against me.

After the ceremony was over, we walked through the grass, past the smattering of graves that filled the little cemetery, and we climbed into the red pick-up. I watched my brothers guide my mother into the little town car that would drive her home, my hands loose on the steering wheel. I looked down at the Chevy logo on the wheel and closed my eyes and in my memory I could see my father’s thick, calloused hands, and the hair that crept from his arm onto the backs of his hands. I could see that old watch of his, heavy on his wrist, as he drove, lazy-armed, one hand out the window, feeling the air. I could see the smile on his face, relaxed and happy, as he talked about sports on the way to the grocery store. Some of my best memories were built out of simple times like that, I realized. I opened my eyes.

“I wanna go for a drive,” I said. “Do you want me to drop you off first?”

Caroline shook her head.

I drove 52 all the way out to the 65 and went south. I didn’t know where I was going but the miles I put between myself and the camp and the grave felt good, and I wondered if there were enough miles on the earth to go to erase the hurt I was feeling. After all, there’s only so far away you can go before you start coming back.

I didn’t know where we were going until we reached Nashville. Caroline had turned on the old radio and the stations had crackled in and out of range all the way, alternating between Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood and Willie Nelson. The neon lights of Broadway stretched before us and we parked the pick-up and got out and walked, Caroline skipping along beside me. I didn’t know what I was searching for besides a peace of mind, and she didn’t seem concerned by the lack of direction. I just knew I needed something, something to get the pain out.

We ducked into a karaoke bar, and Caroline got us a seat at a table in the front, in a corner, and I ordered us a couple sodas. But once at the counter, I realized that the soda just wasn’t strong enough and I wondered if I could get away with ordering a beer. I was only nineteen, about to be twenty in just two-months, but I had a smattering of facial hair that gave me an older appearance. So I gave it a try and to my surprise, the bartender didn’t hesitate, he just popped the caps off two Buds and slid them across the counter, too busy taking requests for harder drinks to even notice me at all. I returned to the table with my contraband and Caroline’s eyebrows raised. She smirked and I handed her one of the two cold bottles. She held it daintily. Neither of us had drank before, neither of us knew what to expect, but I’d heard beer had a way of taking the edge off life, and that was what I needed, so I took a long sip.

It tasted like balls.

“Oh man,” Caroline muttered, putting her bottle down on the counter, “That’s awful, ain’t it?”

I nodded. But I could already feel the tingling of the alcohol ebbing away at the throbbing emotions that were filling me up, and I took another sip.

“I don’t know how you can drink it,” Caroline said.

I wasn’t sure myself. But I suppose I drank it the same way you drink medicine when you’re a kid, because of the promise that, once it’s in you, you’ll start to feel better.

The music blared and a parade of horrible voices blurred together as I kept on drinking that Bud. “You suck!” someone would shout from the back of the bar and everyone would boo their agreement, except Caroline, who clapped enthusiastically for every single person that went up on the stage. “They were brave for getting up there at all,” she explained once when she caught my eye.

When the mic made it’s way to our table, Caroline waved it off, but I took it and climbed onto the stage and looked down at the list of songs, and I selected one quickly, told the band behind me, and grabbed the mic, cupping my hand around it. I lowered my voice and started singing The Ring of Fire.

”Love is a burning thing
“And it makes a fiery ring
“Bound by wild desire
“I fell into a ring of fire

“I fell into a burning ring of fire
“I went down, down, down as the flames went higher
“And it burns, burns, burns,
“The ring of fire
“Oh the ring of fire…”

Caroline looked on, proud and happy, clapping her hands to the beat of the song, and I closed my eyes and let the words pour out of me, the beer in my veins letting the pain fade, and for the first time since my father had told me he was sick I felt free again. This was what music could do, I realized, it could help make the bad things okay again. Music was a greater drug than any substance - well, besides maybe beer because I’d grown an affinity to the beer by this time.

“I fell into a burning ring of fire,
“I went down, down, down as the flames went higher
“And it burns, burns, burns,
“The ring of fire, the ring of fire... “And it burns, burns, burns,
“The ring of fire, the ring of fire,
“The ring of fire, the ring of fire…”

I must’ve done okay because Caroline wasn’t the only one who clapped, nobody shouted for me to get off the stage. I was met by only cheers, and I waved the way that I did as Aladdin to the kids at Disney, and I jumped off the stage, only tripping slightly, and landed myself back in my chair beside Caroline at our table. She was still clapping, a grin on her face. I took the last swig from my bottle of Bud as the applause died down.

“That was stellar, Baby-K,” she said, leaning over to kiss my cheek.




We drove back to Irvine, but we didn’t go straight home, even though we both knew our parents were probably wondering where we were. We parked the pick-up on a deserted road on an overlook. Below, the minimal lights of downtown Irvine glowed faintly, lights from homes dotting the forest trees. Overhead, the stars were brilliant, the moon bright as day. We pulled some blankets out of the back of the cab and threw them down in the truck bed and laid there, staring up at the sky, pointing out constellations we recognized, and making some up that didn’t even exist, telling stories of Greek gods that were never told by Bullfinch. Our fingers were woven together, our legs tangled up, bodies pressing close enough to feel the heat of each other, and I could breathe her scent, all powdery soft.

In a world without my father, without my dreams, only Caroline made sense.

She ran her fingers through my hair, staring into my eyes.

“Marry me,” I whispered.

Caroline smiled, “Of course,” she whispered back.




It was September when I went back to Orlando to get my things to move them home to the camp. Caroline was preparing for the wedding, something small enough that we could have it put together in just a week’s time. There wasn’t a point in waiting, I’d reasoned, because I’d always known if I’d stayed in Irvine it would be Caroline and I together, wading through life hand in hand. And I was staying in Irvine.

Kristin wasn’t at home when I got to the apartment we shared. She was probably at work at Disney, and I was glad for it because I couldn’t imagine explaining everything that had changed in the month I’d been gone. I collected my things into boxes and piled them into the pick-up bed, strapped my mattress on top with a string of bungee cords and lengths of rope, and I’d gone back inside to leave a note and a couple months of rent money, since I knew Kris couldn’t afford the apartment on her own and I was abandoning her without warning. I scrawled an apology, a John Dear letter of sorts, and left it in an envelope on the kitchen table under the salt shaker so the air from the open window wouldn’t knock it to the floor. And then I got back in my truck and I drove away.

I drove past the signs directing tourists to the Magic Kingdom and I bade it farewell. I’d called in my resignation while I was packing, and my heart felt heavy as I turned onto the freeway that would bring me north through Georgia and Tennessee, back to Irvine, back to the life I’d tried to escape by coming to Florida in the first place. I tried not to cry, tried to focus on all the good things. I had a woman that I was in love with, who loved me and took care of me and understood me in the worst times. I had a stable home, and a built in job, where I was the boss, where I could spend long days in the outdoors, taking care of the property that my father had so deeply and passionately taken care of for all his life. I had everything that we call the American Dream.

And I was going to be happy, damn it, if it was the last thing I did.




The day of the wedding came. We were holding it in the chapel on the camp’s property, and I was in a small office room off the main hall. My brothers had been in and out of the room, carrying bottles of beer and words of encouragement, dressed to the nines in their best suits, the same as they’d worn to our father’s funeral the month before. They’d gone to get another round of beers, and I was standing, staring into a mirror that my momma had leaned against the wall for the occasion.

I tugged on the corners of the bow tie at my neck and angled my chin, trying to remember how my father had taught me to tie these things. “This is a skill every man should know,” he’d told me, “Good business happens in a good bow tie.” And I remembered thinking that his hands were more graceful than mine, that he’d had years of practice and I’d only had the night of my senior prom to practice. He should’ve been there, in the room with me on my wedding day, there to help me again, to reassure me that it wasn’t the end of the world if I couldn’t remember how to loop the ends to make the tie. It was okay because he was there to teach me how again any time I needed to.

It didn’t mean I wasn’t a man, it just meant I still needed my father.

The door creaked open and I glanced over to see my mother in the doorway, smiling. “You look so handsome,” she commented, and she closed the door behind her as she crossed the room to join my side at the mirror. “Let me,” she said, seeing my struggle with the tie. I lifted my chin and crouched ever so slightly so she could reach. She swept through the motions, experienced from years of helping my father with his ties, and soon she was done and I adjusted the tie against my neck, looking in the mirror to see it was perfect. “Your father would be so proud if he could see you right now,” she said thickly.

I wondered if he would be as proud if he knew what I was thinking, if he knew about the panic that was building in my chest and stomach, the feeling of finality. It was like willingly walking into a prison and tossing the key out of the window, I thought. There was no hope for pardon, I was the one sentencing myself. Life in Irvine.

“You’ll make a good husband,” my mother said. “Caroline is lucky.”

“I’m lucky she’ll take me,” I answered. Which was truly how I felt. I wasn’t much of anything, I was a shadow, and I was lucky that any woman could love someone like me, a spineless shell of a man whose dreams were too far to reach for. Integrity, my mind told me, What you’re doing shows integrity. Putting family first, putting legacies first. I thought of Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life, giving up his dreams of travel to take over the family business. He’d made the right choice, staying at home with the girl, having the kids and the house and the American Dream. It was a classic for a reason, I told myself.

“I’ll see you out there, sweetie,” my mother said, patting my chest with her palm gently, a smile on her face. She slipped back out the door.

I stared into my own eyes in the mirror and steeled myself. The man staring back at me was an entirely different one than I’d ever believed I’d become.

There was a knock at the door. “Yeah, c’mon in,” I called.

“Hey.”

When I turned around, I thought it was Caroline for just a moment before my brain caught up to the sensory overload. It wasn’t Caroline. It was Florida-Caroline. Kristin. Kristin Willits standing here in the grooms’ room in the chapel on my father’s camp property. I stared at her in disbelief. She pushed the door shut and leaned against it. She stared at me, her palms splayed on the wood behind her.

“Kris,” I said, “What’re you doing here?”

She reached into the pocket of the red jacket she wore and pulled out what I recognized as my John-Dear letter. She held it up. “I tried calling, but you’re impossible to get in touch with,” she said. I’d avoided all calls with Florida area codes, it was true. I adverted my eyes. “I needed to know if you were okay.” She laughed, but not in humor. “I didn’t mean to walk in on a wedding. You didn’t mention it in your letter.” She tossed the note onto the desk as she came further into the room. “I was afraid for you. Running away isn’t like you.”

“I’m doing the opposite of running away,” I said sternly.

Kristin stared up at me, her eyes wide and searching. “You’re moving back here? You’re getting married? Kevin, maybe you aren’t running away, but you’re definitely running. A hundred miles an hour. In the wrong direction,” she added. She shook her head, “This isn’t what you want. I know you better than this.”

“I don’t have a choice, Kris, this is… my destiny.” I waved my arms at the walls of the chapel, indicating the whole camp, the town.

“No,” she said sharply, “It’s not. This is you being scared of the possibility of something more.”

“What am I supposed to do, Kris?” I asked, “Abandon my family and let my home fall apart? My father didn’t want that. He worked too damn hard to let that happen. I have to carry the torch. I have to take care of my momma.”

“You have two brothers, Kevin, you have a huge extended family, let someone else carry the torch.”

“It’s not that easy,” I answered. “I have other obligations.”

“What other obligations?” Kristin demanded.

“Well you are crashing my wedding,” I said.

Kristin took a deep breath, “Well she should know that Irvine isn’t the place for you, just the way I do. If she really loves you, she wouldn’t want to limit you to this town. She’d know you belong somewhere that you can be discovered, where you can make your dreams come true. If she knows you and loves you at all, she’d know that’s never going to happen in Irvine.”

I licked my lips.

“Kevin, you told me a hundred times that your father told you to get out of Irvine and find your future. He didn’t tell you that just to reel you back in here when he died. He didn’t tell you he was sick until the end because he didn’t want you coming back here.” Kristin’s eyes were pleading. “You don’t have to come back to me in Orlando, Kevin, but you do have to come back, because that’s where your father really wanted you to be.”

My throat burned. She was right, and I knew it, and suddenly the tie around my neck felt like a noose and I grappled at it, desperate to pull it off. I tugged and it fell away and my hands shook as I let it fall to the ground at my feet. I could hear the people outside in the chapel talking, laughter that I could recognize from years of spending my time around the same townspeople. Predictable. Prison. I hadn’t thrown the key just yet, and I needed to get out before it was too late.

So I wrote a second John Dear letter, and I used a roll of scotch tape from the desk drawer to attach it to the mirror, and I pushed the window open and climbed out, pulling Kristin along with me. We ran. We ran away from the chapel like two escapees, to the red pick-up truck, and I drove down the freeway, faster than sin, through Tennessee and Georgia to Florida, leaving behind the responsibility, leaving behind the prison I’d almost locked myself in, leaving behind Caroline and everything that might’ve been.

And a year later, I became a Backstreet Boy.

I didn’t see or hear from Caroline again.

Chapter Two


Nick


Whispers were going around the room. I could feel the fellas getting anxious. Chris, AJ, and Howie were muttering to each other under their breath, stealing glances at me as I paced. I felt like my heart was doing somersaults inside me, bouncing off my ribcage, like maybe it was trying to play the bones in there like a xylophone. I pictured the plinky-plonky music it would produce. It was like one of those old Merry Melodies cartoons I used to watch on the Disney Channel back when I was a kid - that one with the skeletons dancing around in the cemetery.

“Mother of fuck I’m going to die. I’m going to die here on the floor of a church. I’m going to stop breathing and my body’s going to fall over and I’m gonna have a fucking stain on my fucking face from cheap oriental rug dye.”

I was being dramatic. I knew I was being dramatic because in the back of my head, I could hear Lauren’s voice telling me that I was being dramatic. And she’s always right.

But I couldn’t help it.

“This oriental rug is anything but cheap,” Brian commented. “And I’m pretty sure you aren’t going to die.”

“Pretty sure isn’t absolutely sure,” I argued. My hands were shaking. I paced the length of the room. I grabbed at my tie. It was too tight. “I’m being strangled by this fucking tie.” I struggled with it until it loosened enough for me to pull it over my head, but not without catching my nose. I threw it.

Kevin caught it as he came over from across the room.

“Breathe,” he commanded, voice low. He grabbed my shoulders, steadying me. He pushed me into a chair then bent so he was staring into my face. He looped my tie back around my neck and started re-tying it for me. “Breathe.”

“I don’t remember how to,” I choked.

“In and out, buddy,” Brian said from his perch on the desk in the corner of the room. He was playing with a stapler, opening it and sliding the spring mechanism back and forth.

AJ looked up. “That’s what she said.”

Brian glared at him, then turned back to me. “Like this.” He inhaled dramatically, then exhaled in an equally exaggerated way.

“He needs to breathe, not practice fuckin’ lamaze therapy,” AJ said.

Brian continued his breathing demonstration none the less.

“It’s easier for you,” I snapped, “With your big ass nose you can’t help but breathe.”

Kevin clicked his fingers in front of my face, keeping Brian from continuing the banter as AJ and Howie snickered. “Focus, Carter,” he demanded. “You can make fun of Brian’s nose later,” Kevin finished doing my tie and smoothed it against my chest.

“Hey!” Brian frowned.

Kevin ignored Brian’s protest. “You’re gonna be okay,” he said, staring me right in the eyes. “This is what you’ve been working so hard for, man, this day - this moment. You’re gonna be okay. It’s not as scary as you’ve got it built up to be in your head. It’s the same as you’ve had for the last five years, but with a piece of paper making it legal. That’s all it is. It’s a walk across the room with a make out session at the end.”

“And a marriage,” I reminded him.

“And a marriage,” he agreed. “But that’s not really all that different than you’ve had for the last five years, buddy. It’s really not.”

“It’s just for the rest of your life is all,” AJ injected.

“Mother of fuck,” I said, and I leaned back, popping the recliner on the chair with the force. I nearly toppled over. But I caught myself.

“You’re not helping AJ, thank you,” Kevin snapped.

I sat up again. “Kevin,” I said. “I can’t do this.”

Brian licked his lips and smoothed his tie. “Everyone gets nervous, Nick, it’s just a part of the package deal,” he said, smiling in a comforting manner.

I nodded. I nodded because on a brain-wave level what he said made perfect sense. Being nervous made perfect sense. Of course I would be nervous, it was a fucking wedding. My fucking wedding. A wedding that I’d spent the greater part of my life insisting wouldn’t ever happen. Ever. And now here it was. The day of. The hour of, even. Nervous was exactly what I should be.

Except this wasn’t just nervous. This was so the fuck much more.

“I was scared shitless on my wedding day,” Brian confessed. “You remember?”

I didn’t. I wasn’t a part of Brian’s wedding, so I never saw what went down behind the scenes. If Brian was scared on that day, the last person in the world he would’ve told was me. And probably for good reason. If he’d told me he was nervous I would’ve tried to talk him out of marrying Leighanne at all.

“It’s going to be okay,” Brian added.

I nodded again. I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t know how to describe to them what exactly I was feeling because I wasn’t exactly sure that I knew what I was feeling. Something akin to paralyzing fear. Something like I imagined cardiac arrest might be like.

“What’s it like to have a heart attack?” I asked.

Brian looked at Kevin.

“Nick, you are not having a heart attack,” Kevin said in a low voice.

“I feel like I might be,” I replied. “It’s all tight up in here.”

“Cold feet,” Brian said.

“Ain’t my feet that’s got the trouble,” I answered. I grabbed my arm for dramatic effect, in hopes that they’d take me more seriously.

“If you were having a heart attack, it’d be your left arm, not your right,” Kevin said.

I can’t even have a heart attack right.

Kevin looked over his shoulder as the door opened and the wedding coordinator stuck his head in the doorway, adjusting the little walkie-talkie mic he wore over his ear. “Ten minutes, guys,” he announced. My palms instantly produced about seven times as much sweat as they had been before. It was like god damn Niagara Falls in my hands. “Everything okay in here?” He’d spotted us in the corner, me in full-blown panic attack mode, mid-cardiac arrest, clutching my arm, and the other guys grouped around me.

“Everything’s perfect,” Kevin replied.

“Okay.” He looked doubtful, but thankfully he ducked back out and let us be.

I looked at Kevin. I could feel the panic in my eyes. My heart was trying to scrape it’s way out, like a guy in Alcatraz with a fucking spoon. “Get me out of here,” I said thickly, desperately.

Kevin stared into my eyes.

Brian’s voice was pleading. “Nick, it’s going to be okay, you gotta just calm down and --”

Kevin held up a hand to silence him. “Nick. If we go,” he said, his voice dropping even lower than before, “There won’t be any turning back. If you change your mind, you’re going to have one helluva time explaining to her. This is one of those point-of-no-return kinds of moments that most women don’t forgive.” He seemed to be searching my eyes for the answer, like he could see inside of me, “So be fucking damn sure of what you’re doing. You don’t get a do-over on this one. Trust me. I know.”

I thought about it. I might not ever get this chance to be loved this way again, I thought. I might not ever find a girl who can put up with me and my ways like Lauren did. But what if it didn’t work out? What if I married her and ten minutes later she decided she couldn’t put up with me and she wanted to get away? What if we grew older and bitter-er and more spiteful and hateful toward each other until we were only staying together for the dogs and they could feel the tension and it made their lives miserable and our lives miserabler and we spent every single day for the rest of our lives looking back on this day and wishing like fuck that we hadn’ta done it but it was too late, we done it, and we were stuck, stuck like flies on glue paper or roaches in a roach motel and there wasn’t nothin’ we could do about it except sleep in the same bed every single night until one day one of us died and the other was too god damn old to enjoy being free at last free at last, thank God almighty, free at last?

I could barely breathe.

Kevin stared at me through this whole thing, like he was reading my thoughts like my forehead was transparent. The longer he stared, the more my insides knotted up. I felt tears creep into my eyes. “Kevin. Get me out of here,” I repeated.

Kevin stood up and took a deep breath. He looked around the room. Brian was shaking his head, looking disappointed. I tried not to look at him, to remind myself that my choice wasn’t his choice, that I wasn’t letting Brian down, that the only people this choice effected in the end of it all was me and Lauren and one day she’d thank me.

“Kev,” I choked the words out, “I really can’t do this.”

His face twitched. “Okay.” He looked at Brian. “Go tell Lauren.”

Brian blinked in surprise. “What?”

“Go tell Lauren that he’s having a panic attack and it needs to be postponed,” Kevin said. “Then meet us out front.” He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. If this was a test, I was marvelously failing it by not shrieking no, no I’m okay.

Brian seemed to think the same thing. He glanced at me, too, then back at Kevin. “Seriously?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m goddamn serious,” Kevin answered. He looked at me as Brian got up slowly. “Hurry up, cuz,” he said, and Brian hustled out the door, pulling it closed behind him. “Chris,” Kev’s voice barked, “Go tell that advisor guy to call it off.”

“What?” Chris looked up from the whispered conversation he was holding with AJ and Howie in surprise.

“You heard me,” Kevin answered. Chris took off. Kevin looked at AJ and Howie, who were staring at us, gape-mouthed. “Stop staring and one of you go get your car ‘round front.” Kevin turned back to me as Howie and AJ jumped up and rushed out the door, too.

The knot in my throat was still tight. “You’re just… you’re cancelling it?” I asked, staring up at him. “You’re really cancelling the wedding? You didn’t give Brian some creepy voodoo Kentucky cousin sign not to really do it, did you?”

“Do you want me to stop him from cancelling it?” he asked, reaching for his cell phone.

I shook my head slowly.

“Alright. Then let’s get out of here.” He led the way to the door and down the hall. I felt like my knees were made of gelatin the whole way. We stepped out of the church, the sunlight was burning hot. I reached for my tie and pulled it off my neck again. I dropped it onto the sidewalk as I followed Kevin. It made me think of Cinderella leaving the ball and her shoe falling off, except the only reason anyone would be looking for me with that tie would be to use it like a noose.

There was a whole mess of paparazzi on the lawn that had been waiting for photos of the newlyweds. They jumped in surprise, knocking turkey sandwiches off their laps as they realized I was outside, being led down the stone walkway by Kevin, no Lauren in sight. “Where you going, Nick?” barked one that was particularly close, his flash blinding me from the side. Kevin stuck out his hand and covered the lens.

AJ pulled up as we got to the curb and Kevin opened the door and I slid into the backseat next to Howie. “Fucking photographer swine,” Kevin muttered as he swung into the passenger seat. They were at the window, pressing their lenses to the glass, shouting questions. I turned away. “Back the fuck down!” Kevin yelled.

Just then, a new flurry of energy from the photographers and they parted to turn to snap pictures as Brian came out the door and started sprinting down the sidewalk, closely followed by Lauren. There she was - all dressed in white, the veil covering her face, her nails painted turquoise to match all the flowers, standing on the stone stairway behind Brian as he threw himself into the back seat of AJ’s SUV with me and Howie. The door had no sooner closed behind Brian than AJ peeled out, his tires squealing on the pavement. He even took a curb as he turned the corner. As I looked back, Lauren stared after us as she was swarmed by paparazzi, standing in the middle of the street. She removed her veil, and even from a distance I could see that her eyes full of tears.

My stomach twisted.

I couldn’t help but feel like shit.




I went to the house only long enough to shove a couple t-shirts and a pair of jeans into my backpack and get the essentials like my phone charger and laptop. I didn’t want to be there when Lauren got home. I didn’t know what I’d say to her. I didn’t know if I could look her in the eye. So I went in and out like a ninja while Kevin stood out on the back deck while the dogs went to the bathroom on the beach below and the other fellas sat in the idling SUV in the driveway. Some of the paparazzi had followed us from the church and they stood along the edge of the property, staring across my front yard like spectators at a zoo, waiting anxiously to see what happened next, what the next steps the runaway Backstreet Boy would take.

My fingers ran over the sheets of the bed and the plane tickets to Bora Bora that we were supposed to be using that night, an adventure to an island paradise where we could be alone, just Lauren and I. I wondered if she’d use them. Maybe she could take Larry. I hoped she would, she didn’t deserve to lose the vacation just because I’d lost the nerve. I felt my throat constrict. I’d really been looking forward to Bora Bora and all the sexa-sexa that would occur there. I’d pictured holding her in my arms and whispering I love you in her ear and feeling her hair on my chest and stuff. But to have a honeymoon you must have a wedding.

When I’d collected a couple shirts and a brand new package of underwear from my closet, I grabbed my toothbrush from the bathroom and went downstairs. Kevin was standing in the foyer now, hands in his jacket pockets, waiting. Nacho and Igby were no where to be seen. “I put down a can of food and some fresh water,” he explained when he saw me looking for them.

“Thanks,” I said. I adjusted the strap on my duffel bag and took a couple steps toward the door, but Kevin blocked me.

“You okay?” he asked.

I nodded.

Kevin reached out and squeezed my shoulder. This was a strangely supportive version of Kevin, a version of him that I hadn’t seen in some time. This was the Kevin I remembered from when I was like fourteen; this was the Kevin that I’d run to the first time I’d had a wet dream and he’d patiently explained what hitting puberty would mean for me and how to deal with it in the atmosphere I was now growing up in. This was the acting-father Kevin.

I would’ve expected him to be disappointed in me, like the way I knew Brian was. I knew Brian had been hoping to see me finally settle down, and I thought Kevin would’ve felt the same way. But he seemed to understand what I was going through more than Brian did. And I appreciated the empathy.

We stepped outside to a wall of cameras and shouts, the photographers having gotten brave enough to cross the lawn to the door. They clustered around Kevin and I as we made our way back to the car, a slow procession now. I tried not to hear their sharp-edged questions, tried to ignore the flashing lights from their camera bulbs, but it was really hard.

“How do you think Lauren will react to this heartbreak?”

“Is there another woman?”

“Is this a publicity stunt?”

“Where are you going to go now?”

Kevin pushed me into the backseat of the SUV and slammed the door and I heard him shouting for everyone to please give me some time to process, then he climbed into the front seat and AJ began the tedious process of backing down the driveway. I hugged my duffel bag to my chest and watched the photographers clamber against the outside of the vehicle, anxious for something, anything, that they could send to print.

“What a mess,” Howie muttered as the SUV finally cleared the cluster of reporters and AJ sped down the street, away from the house.




They were everywhere. It was like an infestation. I’d been even moderately interesting to photographers before because of the wedding, so we’d started out with a couple tailing us to the church in the morning, and a couple more as the time for the ceremony had drawn closer, but it was nothing compared to the explosion of interest that occurred once the word got out that I’d left Lauren at the altar. It was like I’d suddenly obtained a level of interest that rivaled my life in 1999. I couldn’t move without a camera being shoved into my face.

They followed us from the house to a hotel where Kevin said he was staying. The paparazzi had completely filled the lobby before I’d even been able to call Mike to set up some security measures. Kevin stayed with me in the room, even after the other guys left, and he stared down at the street from the window, holding the curtain in one hand. “They’re out in the street even,” he muttered, shaking his head, and he pulled the curtain closed. “This is insane.”

I was laying on my back on the bed, staring up at the stucco ceiling and taking deep, but wobbly, breaths. Everything felt surreal, like I was looking in on somebody else’s life.

Kevin crossed the room and sat down on the second bed. His things had already been in the room when we got there. I looked around. “How come you’re stayin’ in a hotel?” I asked. His house wasn’t that far out of LA that he should’ve needed to stay at a hotel to come to the wedding. Besides that, I only saw Kevin’s bags, not Kristin’s.

“We were having the carpets cleaned this weekend,” Kevin responded. “Kris was going to fly out to see her mother after the wedding.”

“Oh,” I said. I gripped the pillow beneath my head. It seemed like the only solid thing in the room. I felt sick.

“We’ll have to order delivery food,” Kevin muttered. He stood up and picked up a binder of menus from the desk, flipping through them.

I couldn’t even think about food.

All I wanted in the entire world was a good strong hug and a long nap with Lauren wrapped around me. It sounded silly, even in my own mind, that what I wanted to get over running away from Lauren was Lauren herself. But she was always so good at making me feel better when I did stupid things and I had a building sense that maybe this was one of those stupid things. I pictured the feeling of her hands massaging my spine and I breathed a little gentler.

Kevin looked over. “Are you hungry?”

I shook my head.

“I’ll order you something,” he replied, and he dialed his phone and ordered food. I tuned him out. Even food words were going to turn my stomach.

I grabbed a pillow and pulled it against my chest, curling myself around it. It smelled like some sort of strange mixture of Other People and bleach.

Kevin was staring back out the window again by the time he hung up the phone, looking down at the mass of photographers outside. “We can’t stay here,” he muttered.

“Any where I go, they’re just gonna follow me,” I said into the pillow. I pictured myself running down an unending sidewalk being chased by these rabid dog reporters, all shouting my name and clicking their camera shutters.

Kevin was quiet a moment. “Well. Not any where,” he said.

Chapter Three


Kevin

Kentucky.

That was the one place they would never find Nick. He could stay there as long as he needed to decompress, and nobody would ever be any the wiser. As far as I knew, there wasn’t a soul in the fandom or the press that knew about my father’s camp. The camp was a place free of the world that we inhabited as Backstreet Boys. It was just as untouched and comfortable and safe as it had been all those years ago, when I’d dreamed of getting away.

Funny how, after you’ve gotten away from a place, all you can dream of is getting back to it.

So I packed up my duffel bag and Nick’s duffel bag while he slept on the other hotel room bed, and I ate my burger and fries when the restaurant delivered it to the door. I booked a flight, called my momma and I told her we’d be coming. “You’re going to go to the camp?” she sounded surprised. And who could blame her. In all the years I’d been gone I hadn’t set foot on the camp property since I’d run away from it with Kristin twenty-two years ago. I’d bought my momma a ranch house downtown, and I’d paid for her to hire caregivers so the camp didn’t shut down, but I didn’t have to stay there. And I didn’t bother visiting either. There were too many memories in those hills. Whether the emotions they evoked were sadness or guilt, I didn’t dare face the demons.

Until now.

Because I knew it was exactly the sort of place Nick needed.

And no, the irony of my last experience at the camp, running away from Caroline, was not lost on me.

It was the first time I’d allowed myself to think much of Caroline, and as I sat watching TV, waiting for Nick to wake up so I could tell him the plans I’d made, I wondered what had become of her, if she’d gotten married to someone more deserving than I’d been. But thinking of her too much hurt, I realized, and I pushed the image of her out of my mind almost as quick as it had come.

“You’re bringin’ me -- where?” Nick asked, incredulous, when I told him my plan when he woke up an hour later.

“To Irvine, Kentucky,” I answered. “It’s where I grew up. Nobody would ever look for you there. It’ll give you some time to recover from all this without the paparazzi being all up your ass.”

“Yeah, but it’s Kentucky,” Nick said, a puzzled look on his face, “What do you do in Kentucky?”

“You heal,” I answered.




Nick’s main defense against stress is to sleep. And sleep he did. I mean it was like three in the morning by the time we landed in Kentucky, but I’m pretty sure it was stress making him sleep just the same. Especially since he’d slept for probably seven or eight hours already at the hotel, plus he’d slept on the flight from Los Angeles to Louisville. Though he tried to stay awake on the drive, the highway was too much for him and he was asleep before we’d reached the road that would take us most of the way southeast into Irvine. Nick’s head rested against the window, his eyes moving in REM patterns as I drove.

It was just as well, I had concerns of my own to think on.

I’d texted Kristin the night before to tell her the change of plans, that I’d left the hotel in LA I’d been staying at and gone home to Kentucky with Nick to hide from the press. She hadn’t answered. Now if she really had gone to her mother’s place, like I’d told everyone, I’d have assumed she was just busy with her mother or the boys, but she wasn’t really gone to visit her mother. She’d kicked me out of the house after an especially colossal argument the week before and it had been only our southern roots in manners that had brought us to Nick’s wedding together.

“We’ll call a truce,” she’d suggested, “In the name of Nick’s wedding.”

“Truce,” I’d agreed.

But the truce had ended and I hadn’t heard from her since we’d split up at the wedding. She hadn’t even texted to ask what happened when Nick went AWOL. She’d probably gotten all the information she needed from one of the other Backstreet Wives or, hell, maybe even TMZ.

So I guess the trip to Irvine wasn’t entirely for Nick’s benefit; if I’m being honest it was a little bit for me, too. After all, I couldn’t stay sleeping in a hotel room forever and I couldn’t just apologize for all the things Kristin and I had been fighting about (most of them, I still felt, weren’t my fault) and I was too proud to tell any of the other guys what was going on to ask for help. Going to Irvine gave me an excuse to leave, too, and a place to stay until I could decide what to do about the differences that had recently arisen between Kristin and I.

“Selfish bastard,” I could almost hear Kristin saying in her condescending tone, “Can’t even help your friends without helping yourself.”

But it is helping him, I argued back with the Kristin in my mind. Whether it’s helping me, too, or not is irrelevant, as long as it is helping him.

I took a deep breath, pushing Kristin’s voice out of my head. To be fair, she probably wouldn’t really have said those things. Only the Kristin of my mind, who was a terribly warped version of the woman I’d married, would ever say that stuff to be. I was angry at her, that’s why my mind twisted Kristin’s good heart into a nasty thing of spiteful responses.

Besides, the Kentucky roads were far too beautiful to dwell too long on bad memories, so I turned the radio on low and unrolled the windows and stuck my arm out the window, feeling the wind and watching the sight of the headlights of the rental piercing the night. The road paint illuminated into the miles ahead, dots of stars along pitch black ribbons of fresh pavement.

I’d done a lot of driving listening to old country music when I was a teen back in the day. There wasn’t a problem in the world you couldn’t think out to it’s very ends out here. Two headlights and a Garth Brooks cassette and you were ready to take on anything on the miles that wove through the bluegrass hills. And if a few miles didn’t do it, there was always more to go; there was an unending resource of miles in them backroads. Eventually, the miles would win and the thoughts you had in your head would fade away like the sunlight.

This was one of the many healing properties of Kentucky.

Nick slept beside me as I drove the therapeutic miles. He slept nearly all the way to Irvine, only stirring when we finally got close enough there were street lamps to light his eyes through the windshield. His eyelids fluttered open and he stirred slowly, stretching as he sat up and looked around groggily, “Where we at?” he asked.

“Almost there,” I replied. We were passing my old high school, which sat a few miles out of the town.

Nick watched it go by, blinking at the trees and open fields and farm land that surrounded us sleepily. “What are you listening to?” he asked, his eyes landing on the stereo face, and then his nose scrunched up, “And what the hell is that smell?”

“Local radio,” I replied as Luke Bryan’s latest started playing, “And that smell is farm.”

“It smells like shit,” Nick replied.

“Basically,” I replied, “It’s manure.”

“Cow shit,” Nick translated. He grabbed the neckline of his t-shirt and pulled it up over his nose. “Jesus, does all of Kentucky smell like that?” he asked through the shirt.

“Not all of it,” I answered, “Only the finer parts.”

Nick was squeezing his shirt over his nose like it was an oxygen mask. I was willing to bet that the air smelled worse under his shirt than it did out of the shirt. “Does da camb sbell lide dis?” Nick asked. He sounded funny because he wasn’t breathing through his nose.

“No, the camp smells like pine trees,” I answered.

“Dank gob,” Nick mumbled.

He kept his shirt over his face like that long after we were out of the farm country. We rolled into town in the early morning hours, not too long before the sun would rise and awaken everybody in Irvine on a new day. We passed the greasy spoons and the strip mall and I put my blinker on to turn away from downtown to my momma’s house so we could get the key to the camp, which was still a couple miles out of town. Nick watched all the businesses go by.

“There’s more here than I expected,” he admitted.

“Well, that’s all of it basically,” I replied.

“Oh,” he said.

I had a feeling maybe there was exactly what he expected after all.

The headlights lit up the mailbox and I turned up momma’s driveway. Nick leaned forward to look at the house over the dashboard. The lights were dark from the bottom to the top of the place. “What if she’s asleep?” he asked.

“She knows we’re coming,” I answered.

The tires crunched on the gravel as I rolled to a stop right behind my momma’s car and cut the engine. Nick looked over at me as I undid my seat buckle, then undid his own. “We’ll get the keys and head over to the camp,” I said.

Nick nodded.

The light in the foyer lit up and momma pulled the door open as our sneakers hit the top step of the porch. Nick looked impressed that I’d known she’d been waiting for us. “Kevy-Kev!” momma shouted and she pushed her way out onto the porch and wrapped her arms tight around me, giving me a good squeeze. I hugged her back, but more gentle than she’d done me. An alarming phenomenon had begun happening: every time that I saw my mother she looked older than she had the last time I’d seen her. It scared me, and somehow I had it in my mind that she was fragile and I could break her and I felt like maybe I’d broken her enough all those years ago when I didn’t stay.

“I saw those vultures on the TV,” she said to Nick as she released me. “Like you ain’t going through enough without them crawling all over your lawn like that.” Her tone was disapproving. “I don’t know how you all can stand it, I wouldn’t be able to stand that. I’d be out there with a shotgun gettin’ them off the property if I had to.”

Nick shrugged.

“We wouldn’t ever trust Nick with no shotgun, momma,” I said, playfully punching Nick on the shoulder, “He’d probably shoot himself in the damn foot by accident.”

Nick turned red. “I ain’t a bad shot,” he argued, “I went to a clay target range with Lauren once and --” he stopped mid-sentence. “I just ain’t a bad shot is all,” he finished. He stared down at his feet.

“I can’t believe what that hussy’s done to you,” Momma injected roughly.

Nick looked up in surprise, “She didn’t do nothin’,” he said defensively, “I’m the one that ran away, not her.”

My mother’s face registered surprise. She looked at me, then back to Nick. “Oh,” she said. She looked confused. “Oh. Well then.” She didn’t quite know what to do with that, though she probably should’ve. She’d had plenty of practice, after all. “Well. Why don’t you come inside, it’s chilly out here.” She turned and led the way into the house.

Nick looked at me like he was wondering if it was still safe to go inside. I waved him in, but he looked nervous as he ducked through the doorway.

It was obvious my mother had spent the greater part of the last twelve hours preparing for us to arrive. She’d cleaned and baked cookies, making the whole house smell like a combination of Febreeze, Pinesol and chocolate chips. She waved us to the dining room table while she went into the kitchen, “Do you all want some sweet tea?” she called out, “Cookies and milk?”

Nick looked interested in the offer of cookies. “Sounds good, ma,” I called back as we settled into the chairs. Nick sat carefully, back straight and hands in his lap, like he was afraid to slouch. I raised an eyebrow at him, “Relax, buddy.”

“She looked pissed that I was the one that left,” he hissed.

“You’re fine,” I answered.

“Your mom doesn’t hate me, right?” he asked.

“She doesn’t hate you.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive.”

Nick didn’t look like he believed me. My mother came back out a moment later with a plate of cookies, three mugs hooked onto her fingers and a half gallon of milk. Nick sat up straight again. “Thank you ma’am,” he said when my mother put a mug down in front of him. She gave him a funny look, but put the other two mugs and the plate down, then filled all the mugs with the milk and took a seat next to me.

“So how long are you staying at the camp?” my mother asked.

I shrugged, “I’m not sure just yet. However long it takes.” I pulled one of the cookies from the plate and tore it in two, dunking one side and putting the other on the table beside my cup.

My mother thoughtfully ripped her own cookie, studying the pattern of the chips for a moment, then she said, slowly, “The caretaker will be staying on the property, too, just so you know in case y’all run into each other.”

“That’s fine,” I replied. “I’m sure it won’t be a big deal.” I picked up my cookie and dunked it. Nick had reached up gingerly for a cookie and nibbled at it like he was a rabbit or something. It was kind of amusing how nervous he was acting. Normally Nick would’ve Cookie-Monstered about ten of those things by now, especially since Lauren wasn’t there to keep him in check. Now he was going out of his way to make sure he didn’t get any crumbs on his t-shirt. This from the guy who I’d seen go a week without taking a shower on tour. I smirked.

My mother made small talk - mostly about the trip and if we had any plans to start recording any new music soon and how Mason and Max were - then she got up to go get the keys to the camp while Nick finished the second half of his cookie (and two more) in a couple of quick, more Nick-like chomps. When she came back, she handed me the key reverently. It was still on my father’s old keyring, a god-awful thing made of old fishing lures that I’d made for him when I was twelve. He’d been so damn proud of that stupid thing, and he’d always kept it on the loop with all the keys for the camp. I ran it between my fingers, the rubber lure wiggling in my palm. “Thanks,” I said, and I slid the keys into my pocket, my throat tight at the thought of my father.

“You boys stay safe up there,” my momma said. She followed Nick and I toward the front door, “And give me a call if you need anything at all.” She paused at the door as Nick stepped onto the porch. “There’s no food up there to speak of, make sure you get some food. You could use some fattening up. Especially you,” she said, pointing at Nick.

“I ate cookies,” Nick said quickly.

“Good,” she replied. She moved fast, wrapping her arms around me. “I’ll come visit you later,” she added.

“Okay. Thanks ma.”

The sun was coming up over the trees as Nick and I got in the rental and I backed down the driveway. The green digital clock built into the dash glowed out that it was after six in the morning. I was feeling a bit like a zombie. I couldn’t wait to get to the cabin so I could collapse on the bed and fall asleep at last.

Nick glanced over at me, “Your mom’s nice,” he said.

“Maybe next time you can act like a human being around her,” I chided him.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

I drove through the downtown again and Nick looked around, seemingly less impressed with the business district now that the sun was illuminating it a bit better. Then I pulled off the main road and the car began the ascent up a long, winding backroad that curled around the mountain that Irvine sat at the base of. Round and round the mountain we went, slowly climbing ‘til our ears popped a little and Nick muttered, “Shit how far up is this place?” Then the car broke through the trees and there was the weathered wood sign, welcoming us to the camp, the paint fresh on each of the letters.

“Looks like momma’s caregiver’s really taking care of the place,” I commented. “Even my father hadn’t painted that sign in years.”

“So like is it weird to you that some dude you dunno is livin’ here?” Nick asked, “Like what if he’s some kinda like Dexter type person, tries to take us out while we’re sleepin’?”

I laughed. Only Nick would think Dexter was the caretaker of my momma’s property in the mountains of Kentucky. “I’m sure we’ll be just fine,” I said. “Probably we won’t hardly even see the caretaker,” I added. “He’ll be out, you know, caretaking.”

Nick didn’t look so sure.

I had a feeling he’d read a few too many Stephen King novels.

I pulled up the last stretch of the driveway and the house came into view, the barn off to the left and away in the distance, over the first line of trees, I could see the steeple of the chapel peeking at us. Cabins loomed off to the right, tucked into the woods a little ways. The sun was just coming over the crest of the mountain behind us, giving the property a soft glow as the fog that was settled in the field behind the barn slowly lifted in the sun.

There was an orange Kia Soul parked by the front of the main house and I pulled up beside it and turned off the car. “Here we are,” I announced, kicking the door open. Nick followed suit and we pulled our duffel bags out of the backseat, foisting them over our shoulders.

Nick was staring off toward the barn. “What lives in there?”

“Couple horses,” I answered.

Nick made a face. He wasn’t a huge fan of horses.

We climbed the steps to the main house and I pulled the keys out of my pocket and Nick waited behind me, looking around as I unlocked the door. Inside, it was dark, but I could tell without even turning on the light that not a whole lot had changed since the last time I’d been in the house. It smelled a little different - a scent that was familiar, but not quite the same as it’d been, a change in the air I couldn’t quite put my finger on. “You coming in?” I asked Nick from just inside.

“Dude,” Nick said, “I thought your mom said the caretaker was a guy?”

“Huh?” I asked, turning around. Nick was staring off at the barn still. He pointed. I leaned out the door and looked over.

My stomach did several somersaults.

She was back-to, standing in the yardway, leading a mare the color of chocolate around the loop of the fence. Her hair was still curly, still thick, pulled back into a ponytail on her mid-back. She wore jeans and an old flannel shirt and western-style boots.

There was no way I could question who it was.

She turned around.

It was Caroline.

“Oh shit.”

Quickly, I ducked into the house.

“Kev?” Nick looked at me as I threw myself through the door, “Kev… you a’ight?”

“Did she see me?” I hissed. As though she could hear me from there.

“I dunno,” Nick replied. “Maybe. I think she’s coming over.”

Chapter Four


Nick

She walked like she was in slow motion. I stared at her. I’m not gonna lie, my heart kinda stopped a little and I could feel my jaw hanging open, but I couldn’t remember how to close it. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was like someone had duplicated Kristin, poured her into a pair of tight jeans and put a flannel shirt on her, tied at the waist just high enough her belly button showed but not so high as to look dirty, but actually retain the girl-next-door look. My mouth ran dry and my heart beat sped up once it recovered from it’s initial shock and awe.

Kevin was just inside the house. “Shit. Is she really coming over?”

“Uh huh,” I said.

It was like Ann Richardson had known I’d be sad when I arrived, after having spent several travelling hours dreaming about Lauren, so she’d hired this goddess of farming for me to recover with. I bit my lip. No man was immune to hair and legs and an ass like that. The only thing missing from her walk across the property was bow-chicka-wow-wow music.

“Hey,” she called once she got into hearing range of me.

“Hey,” I called back.

Kevin was leaning against the wall inside, his eyes closed. “I can’t believe she didn’t tell me,” he was muttering, “She knew this was gonna happen, I can’t believe she didn’t tell me.”

“Who didn’t tell you what?” I asked.

“My mother,” Kevin hissed.

“What?”

But the girl had reached the steps and climbed up them, her boots heavy on the wood. She crossed the porch, hand outstretched to me as she walked, “Hi, I’m Caroline,” she said, and her hand slipped into mine and I swear it was the softest hand there ever was, but with the firmest handshake I ever got from a girl. “Were you lookin’ to rent a cabin, Mister….?”

“Nick,” I stammered. I almost forgot my god damn name.

Caroline smiled. Her teeth were all straight and perfect and stuff except for this little chip on the front left tooth. Just this itty-bitty chip. “Well Mr. Nick, you’re in luck, we have a couple cabins still available, if you’ll come inside the office here I can give you a price range…” She dropped the words mid-sentence, though, as she took a step forward, saw the front door wide open and Kevin just inside, leaning against the wall. She came to a dead stop, eyes wide, staring at Kevin like she’d just seen a ghost.

“Hey,” Kevin said.

Caroline stared at him. “Hey,” she said.

“We, uh, we won’t be needing a cabin, but thank you,” he said.

“No problem,” she said.

The air was thick. I mean real thick. I mean you’d need a fuckin’ jack hammer to get through it, it was that thick. I stared between the two of them, feeling like I’d somehow intruded on something insanely private. And the longer this awkward moment of thick silence stretched on, the weirder I felt about standing there. I adverted my eyes and cleared my throat because I almost felt like I had to remind them I was there.

“I better get back to the horses,” Caroline said, pointing back to the field she’d just come from.

Kevin nodded. “And we’ve been travelling all night. Think we’re both ready for some shut-eye.”

“Okay. Cool. Sleep well.” Caroline was backing away down the porch awkwardly. She backed into the railing. “If you need anything. I’ll be… somewhere…” With that, she turned and scurried away across the grass. I’m not gonna lie, as awkward as that all had been, I couldn’t help but watch as she hurried away, the way the jeans hugged her ass…

I bit my lower lip firmly, then turned to look at Kevin, but he’d disappeared into the house almost as fast as Caroline had disappeared across the yard. I ducked through the door to follow after him. “Who in hell was that?” I asked when I found Kev a moment later just around the corner in a little living room area to the right of the doorway.

“That was Caroline,” he answered.

“Yeah, I gathered that when she said ’Hi, I’m Caroline’,” I said.

Kevin dropped his duffel bag on the carpet and rubbed his face.
I looked around the living room. It was a warm, country motif sort of room. Big comfy couches and chairs with those thick wool blankets like you see in the western movies with the Native American patterns on them and stuff. The walls were exposed wood, like the inside of a log cabin, with thick patches of tree bark still on parts of ‘em, especially up in the high raftered ceiling. A big brick fireplace covered one wall, and a shelf lined with family photos in thick frames underlined a huge portrait of the Richardson family, taken years ago, when Kevin was probably fourteen or so, judging by the looks of him in it.

I’d never seen Kevin’s dad before, really, so seeing him up on the wall in the picture was surprising for a moment because I recognized him only by the fact that he looked like a heavier, salt and peppered version of Kevin. I could definitely see where Kevin got his eyebrows, at least.

“I just can’t believe she didn’t tell me that by caretaker she meant Caroline,” Kevin murmured. I looked over at him, he was staring at his mother’s face in the portrait, shaking his head.

“She seems capable enough,” I answered. If anything, she seemed overqualified. She could be a damn super model in those jeans. A centerfold in like cowgirls weekly or something.

“It’s not that, I’m sure she’s got it under control,” Kevin replied.

“Then what is it?” I asked.

“She and I used to go out, that’s all,” he answered, “Not a big deal.”

“You used to go out with her?” I asked. I glanced over my shoulder, like I expected her to be standing there or something, then turned back to Kev, “How? No way is she your age.”

Kevin nodded. “We went to high school together.”

“Daaamn,” I said, “She fine for an older woman.”

Kevin raised his eyebrow. “Down boy.”

“What? She is.”

He grunted in disapproval at my approval.

I settled myself onto the couch, looking up at him as he stood there, still glowering at the photograph of his mother on the wall. “How long were y’all together for?”

“From eighth grade ‘til I moved to Orlando,” Kevin answered. “I dunno, like five or six years I guess.”

“I didn’t know you had another girl you were that serious about before you were with Kristin,” I said.

Kevin nodded, turning away from the portrait to face me. “Yeah,” he said simply. “Caroline.” He bent down and grabbed his duffel bag. “C’mon, let’s go upstairs. I’m exhausted.”

“Alright,” I agreed, although I’d have much rathered to stay where we were while he told me all the dirty details of his relationship with the flannel-and-jeans bombshell. I got up and grabbed the handle of my duffel, too, and Kevin led the way up these narrow, steep stairs.

“Careful on this one,” Kev said, “My dad built this place and it’s home and all but there’s a few imperfections. One of the steps is slightly taller than the others. Everybody trips on it.”

Despite the warning, I still almost tripped on it.

At the top, Kevin flicked on a hall light. The upstairs was shaped like a circle with an open center that looked down into the living room. I could see the fireplace and the couch and stuff below us. Around the loop were five doors. Kevin pointed to the furthest one, “Bathroom over there,” he said, “This one’s the master room, this was my parents’ room…” Then he led me to the left, where three of the doors were. “These were our rooms,” he said. “The furthest was Jerald’s, then Tim’s and mine’s this one here.” He paused at his door, “You can take either Jerald’s or Tim’s.”

I stepped around him and pushed the first one open. It was smallish, decorated in Navy blue and grey. A small desk sat in the corner and the shelving units were covered with dusty baseball trophies and science fair medals hung from tacks on the walls. There was a poster boasting the Army Strong slogan and another of Cyndi Lauper on the closet door. “Tim was a sucker for Cyndi,” Kevin said, seeing my eyes linger on the poster.

I wasn’t sure I could handle her staring at me, so I backed out and opened the third door. But I had a feeling the second I’d pushed it open that that one had been redecorated since Kevin had last been there. The bed was covered with a thick floral quilt and an old stuffed bear leaned against plush pillows. There were plants on the window sill and a big wood doll house on a squat table across the room. The desk was covered with scattered papers and a copy of a Jodi Picoult book lay open, the spine cracked, on a chair with a fluffy afghan blanket flung over the arm. It smelled like air freshener in there.

Kevin stared at the room for a long moment. His eyes lingered on the bear on the bed. “I guess you’re taking Tim’s room,” he said. “You can take the poster down.” He turned away from the girly room quickly and went back down the hall.

I followed, pulling the door to the room shut behind me, trying not to think about the fact that the flannel-and-jeans goddess would be a mere wall away from me. I put my duffel bag down on the bed in the middle room and looked around again. Despite the fact that nothing in the room was mine, it wasn’t uncomfortable. I moved the duffel bag to the floor and climbed onto the bed. The mattress was soft. I grabbed the pillows and folded one of them under my head, staring up at the ceiling, and I took a deep breath.

It was so quiet, I marvelled. There were no sounds of traffic, no roaring ocean, no children yelling as they played, or paparazzi calling for a photo op. Just peace and quiet.

It took like three seconds to fall asleep.




I had a dream, and I woke up and rolled over to tell Lauren about it, but she wasn’t there. I’d moved the pillow in my sleep so I was holding it in my arms like it was her. I let it go and it flopped off the bed and onto the floor. I lay there, a strange feeling coming over me, the bed feeling empty and kinda cold, and before long I’d completely forgotten what happened in the dream altogether and I was just left with this feeling like there was something I wanted to tell Lauren.

I pulled my phone out of my jeans pocket and stared at it. I could text her or call her, I thought, but then again if I did she’d want to know what she’d done wrong to make me run away. It wasn’t her fault, though, and I didn’t know how to tell her that. I didn’t know how to tell her that I wanted to be with her, but I didn’t know how to be a husband, and it scared the hell out of me to think of it. I didn’t know how to tell her that it hurt when I woke up and found she wasn’t there. I should’ve been waking up next to her today for the first time of all the rest of the times in my life, and instead I was in Kentucky, over a thousand miles away, in an empty bed. Somewhere else, she was waking up in an empty bed, too.

Putting the phone down on the nightstand, I crawled to sit on the edge of the bed. I’d fallen asleep with all my clothes still on, including my sneakers. It was almost noon according to the clock on my phone’s lock screen, but that made sense since we’d got here after six in the morning. The window of the room obviously faced southwest because I could see the sun glaring harshly on the trees outside the window, but none of the beams were coming in the room. It was nice and cool and darkish in there. I looked up at Cyndi Lauper. “Hey,” I said to the poster. She stared benignly back at me from the Time After Time poster.

I looked down at my lap as a great big rumble erupted from my stomach. “Well shit,” I muttered. And I realized the only thing I’d eaten in the last two days was three cookies at Ann’s house. I’d been too nervous at the church in California to eat anything. The last thing I’d had before that had been a plate of barbeque chicken wings at the bachelor party.

I pushed myself up off the bed and grabbed my phone. “You’re coming down later, Lauper,” I said, pointing at the poster, and I pulled open the door, sticking my head into the hallway. Nothing had changed out there. The light was still on. I peeked over the railing into the living room, and it seemed deserted. I looked to the left and the right, all the doors were closed to all the bedrooms. I wondered if Kevin was asleep or not, and I paused by his bedroom door and listened, trying to hear if he was like on the phone or something, but there wasn’t any noise at all.

I decided to head downstairs and see if I could figure out where things were myself. After all, Kev’s casa es mi casa, I thought. I almost tripped on that trick step again, and I cursed under my breath as I clung to the banister the rest of the way down the stairs.

In the foyer, I turned right since I knew the living room was to the left, and I wandered into a dining room with what appeared to be home made furniture and a big in-wall cabinet with fancy china on display and a bunch of knick-knacky things on all the shelves. More family pictures hung on the walls, framed graduation and school photos of all three boys, and a couple pictures from proms. I paused and stared at Kevin’s. He was wearing a cheesy 80’s suit and next to him, sure enough, was the flannel-and-jeans goddess, her hair teased to high heaven in true 80’s fashion, wearing a fluffy pink nightmare of a dress, a big flower on her wrist, Doc Martin boots on her feet, and two different earrings in her ears. “Jesus, she was like frickin’ Madonna,” I muttered. I still couldn’t believe she was old enough to be Kevin’s age.

I wandered on from there and was relieved to see I’d gone the right way as I stepped into a huge kitchen, whose windows faced the east. Sunlight poured through them, leaving funny shadow patterns on the floor. The counters were spotless. On one sat a bowl of fruit. I walked over and picked up an apple and rubbed it on my shirt as I glanced around. Pots and pans hung from big hooks on the walls and a stove with old gas burners stood in the corner.

I took a bite of the apple.

“Frick,” I said, pulling it away from my mouth quickly. It was fake. My teeth had left big dents in the painted coating, little creases revealing the styrofoam beneath. It tasted like soap. I scraped my tongue on my teeth and put the plastic apple back on the pile in the bowl. “Why the fuck does fake fruit exist,” I complained.

“Sorry,” came a voice from behind me, “I should make a sign for that. Please don’t eat the fake fruit.”

I turned around and there was Caroline. She had a sheen of sweat on her face and the top of her chest. The flannel shirt was tied around her waist now and she stood there in the tight jeans and an olive green tank top, her bra straps showing at the shoulders. Her hair was messier than it’d been the first time I’d seen her. She swept the back of her hand over her forehead, and stepped around me, pulling a glass from the cupboard and opening the fridge to pour a drink into the glass. “You want some sweet tea?” she asked. I nodded. I probably would’ve nodded even if she asked if I wanted arsenic, though, to be honest. She took another glass down and poured a second serving of the tea, then held one out to me. “Here you go, I brewed it yesterday.”

“Thanks,” I said. I held the cup stupidly, staring at her as she replaced the gallon jug back into the fridge.

“Lemon?” she asked. She held up a little bowl of lemon slices.

“Are they real?” I joked. I felt so cool ‘cos I’d thought of something funny to say to the pretty girl. It was like I’d been reverted back to age 14 the minute she’d walked into the room. I felt so stupid.

She laughed. Her laugh was kinda musical. I liked it. “I promise, the apples are the only fake fruit in here.” She dropped a lemon slice into my cup. No tongs or forks or anything. Just her fingers. It seemed somehow almost sexual though I didn’t know why. Probably anything would’ve at that point. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She dropped a lemon in her own glass, then put the bowl back in the fridge and turned to face me as she took a sip of the tea. Tea sipping had never seemed so sexy.

Bow-chicka-bow-bow.

God damn it.

The last time I’d felt like this I really had been about thirteen or fourteen and Brian had invited us all over to the apartment him, Howie and Kev shared for Kevin’s birthday and I’d been sitting on the couch when there was a knock on the door and Howie opened it to reveal Kristin. It was the first time I’d met her, and I’d only vaguely noticed pictures or anything before but the second she walked in the room it’d been like I’d heard a Barry White ohhh yeaaah voice over and my eyes had widened and my heart quickened and my mouth had gone dry and my pants got tight… I’d never told Kevin but my first wet dream had involved Kristin shaking her hair out of a bun in slow motion.

Yes, Kristin had been my first huge, mind-numbing, tent-popping, jaw-dropping, make-Nick-act-like-a-stupid-14-year-old-with-no-brain-in-his-head-just-the-one-in-his-pants, crush.

She’d always kind of remained my secretly harbored crush, too. In fact, a couple years before, Lauren and I made Lists - you know, the list of people who, given the chance, we were allowed to sleep with and not get in trouble for cheating? - and I’d actually put Kristin on mine. Granted, her name was sandwiched between Hugh Jackman as Wolverine and Sigourney Weaver. Lauren had stared at the list, and rather than comment that I’d put two guys on there (Johnny Depp was the second one ‘cos c’mon, everyone wants to bone that guy), she’d looked up and raised an eyebrow, “You can’t put one of your friend’s wives on the list,” she’d said.

“Why not?” I’d asked.

“Because, it’s not fair, you actually know that person,” Lauren answered.

“So? It’s not like it’d ever happen. It’s Kevin and Kristin,” I’d argued, “I’m more likely to get Maggie from the Walking Dead.” I reached over and tapped her name on the list.

“Because it’s creepy. This is like if I put - I dunno, Brian on my list,” Lauren said.

“Ew, you wouldn’t fuck Brian, would you?” I asked, flabbergasted at the suggestion.

“No,” Lauren said, “That’s not the point. The point is it’s creepy. You can’t put your friend’s wife on the list!”

Now, I thought, I could put Caroline on the list and be less creepy. She was just as hot as Kristin without the being Kevin’s wife creepy factor that had Lauren all worked up. She was having the same effect on me that Kristin had had on 14 year old me.

“Nick?” Caroline, I realized, was leaning forward a little, a concerned look on her face. “You okay?”

I realized I’d been just standing there, awkwardly holding my glass and staring at her boobs for the last several minutes while my mind went over all that. I snapped out of my reverie, quickly averting my eyes away from her chest. “Yeah. Yes. Sorry. Yes, I’m good,” I stammered. And I quickly took a huge gulp of sweet tea to compensate for the weirdness. But the thing was the tea was sweeter than I’d expected - I was used to Lauren using way less sugar in things, and also she used Stevia which was like fake sugar, and this was like a lot of real sugar in the tea - and I felt like it was stuck to the inside of my throat and I promptly choked on it.

“Oh my God, are you okay?” Caroline asked, looking like she wasn’t sure if she needed to perform the heimlich maneuver. She put down her glass on the counter in a panic, like she was preparing to save my life from certain death by sweet tea.

“Uuuhh huh,” I choked out the words and I slammed my fist against my chest, trying to stop choking. I could feel a little air bubble stuck in my throat, one of those damn ones you just can’t shake, and I couldn’t stop hacking. Jesus. I was so suave. How the fuck was there thousands of girls all around the world with pictures of me up on their walls? I wondered. I could feel my face reddening more and more from pure embarrassment.

“You sure?” Caroline asked, looking unconvinced.

“Yeah,” I wheezed.

She frowned, but she accepted it, thank God, and she leaned back and picked her tea up again and went back to sipping it. I decided I was going to politely not sip mine again, as I didn’t want a repeat of what all had just gone down. Although, I thought, I wouldn’t mind a little CPR action from her, and I pictured faking a complete blockage of the throat and laying on the floor as she performed mouth-to-mouth.

I bet those lips tasted like vanilla and honey.

“I was just about to make some lunch, are you hungry?” Caroline asked.

I nodded stupidly.

Again, I probably would’ve nodded to arsenic.

Which, kinda, the sweet tea had had the same effect as arsenic. But I’d take it all over again, I thought.

“So what brings you to Kentucky?” Caroline asked as she put her glass back down on the counter and she started collecting ingredients from the cupboards and fridge. She glanced at me as she piled them up on the center island counter.

“Kevin drove,” I said. I blinked at my stupidity the moment the words were fully out of my mouth.

Caroline laughed. At least she thought it was funny, I thought. “I meant more, you know, why you came than what physically brought you to Kentucky,” she clarified.

My cheeks felt hot.

The word physically had sounded so… hot…

I was staring again, I realized, and I opened my jaw like I was gonna say something, but nothing came out. Say words, Carter, I told myself, Any words.

“Girl trouble,” I said.

“Girl trouble?” Caroline repeated.

I’d seen in a chick magazine Lauren had left laying around on the tour bus once that repeating things guys say make our brains think the girl’s like extra, extra interested in us because they paid attention enough to be able to say back words we’d said. Like we could all be emotionally fulfilled by a parrot according to that article. I remember thinking the article had been full of shit, then I noticed that day that Lauren does a lot of repeating of things I say, and I remember arguing with her whether she did that to give my subconscious an ego boost or not and she’d said, “This is why you shouldn’t read girly magazines, Nick!” and that had led into like a two hour discussion about what else she’d learned from magazines that she did to me (there was a lot of great sex stuff she’d learned in there - thank you Cosmopolitan!). But the parroting thing had still bugged me. Was I really so shallow subconsciously that something as simple as repeating my words back to me was an ego boost?

Caroline repeating them confirmed that yes, yes I was that shallow.

I nodded, dry mouthed.

“What kind of girl trouble?” she asked. Caroline frowned. She was mixing a can of chicken with some other ingredients for chicken salad.

“Well, I was gonna get married, but ---”

And suddenly Kevin came up behind me, slapping me good on the back with his splayed palm, almost knockin’ the wind out of me, stopping me mid-sentence. “Morning!” Kevin practically shouted. “Or should I say afternoon?” He chuckled, and his hand ran up my back to my shoulder, which he squeezed tight.

Chapter Five


Kevin

I’d heard Nick get up and followed him down the stairs, but halfway down the steps, Caroline had come in and I’d stopped, not wanting to face her, my heart racing as I stood midway down. She hadn’t seen me and I’d eventually sat down and given myself a pep talk. I had to face her, if not now then later, and at least now, I told myself, I’d have the buffer of Nick sitting there to keep things from going to awkward places I wasn’t ready to go to just yet. So I’d walked out in the direction of the kitchen just in time to hear Nick just about to go into those awkward places himself. So I’d hurried up behind him and smacked his back just a little too hard to be a legitimate greeting and cut him off before he could say that he’d run away from his wedding.

That was a can of worms that didn’t need spilling just yet.

Caroline was staring at me, her hands frozen in the middle of the process of chopping celery for chicken salad. Her eyes were strangely wide, like an animal caught in the headlights of a moving vehicle. I kind of wished she wasn’t holding a knife, though. I mean, sure it’d been twenty-somethin’ years but Lord knows how angry she still was about my escape? Them Kentucky girls are spitfires. She could probably gut me faster than I could say I’m sorry.

We were all still in the silence for a couple beats longer than was naturally comfortable.

It was Caroline and her knife that made the first move. She brought her wrist down through the rest of the chop she was midway through when I’d walked in, and she wiped the edges of the knife on the cutting board to get stray celery bits off it, then laid it on the counter.

“Do you want a sandwich?” she asked me. “I’m making Nick and myself one.”

“Sure,” I answered.

Caroline lifted the little board and pushed the celery into the bowl with the chicken, mayo, chopped almonds, and dried cranberries she’d already assembled. She started mixing them all up, staring down into the bowl like she had to concentrate really hard. I felt like she was avoiding meeting my eyes, which was basically what I was doing, too. Which is how I noticed Nick was sitting there watching her breasts sway as she stirred.

I kicked his leg, making him lose his balance and look up at me sheepishly because he knew he’d gotten caught staring at her chest.

The awkwardness continued. She smeared the salad between slices of bread and put the sandwiches on paper plates with a handful of onion and sour cream Pringles. We all stayed there around the counter with glasses of sweet tea and the sandwiches and chips, actively trying to not look at each other for various reasons, eating.

I was starting to feel like maybe coming back to the camp was a bad idea. So far, not much had gone right, and I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe I had acted more selfishly than I’d meant to. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea for Nick, and it’d really been for me with Nick as an excuse, and maybe it wasn’t even the best idea for me and all this coincidental running into Caroline stuff had been like punishment from the cosmic overlord for my selfishness.

Selfish bastard, the Kristin of my mind accused me again.

Again, I pushed her out of my head.

“So.” Caroline’s voice cut through the smog in my head, “How long are y’all planning to stay at the camp?” She studied her sandwich as she spoke, careful not to even accidentally catch my eyes.

“We aren’t really sure,” I replied, “Just until things calm down.”

Caroline pulled the crusts off her sandwich. “What’s going on exactly?”

Nick suddenly spoke up, his voice nervously spilling over itself, “Paparazzi are assholes. They won’t leave us alone. You shouldda saw in the hotel, like I was tryin’a sleep, and Kevin’s like lookin’ out the window, y’know, and he’s like ‘they’re all out in the street’, like ‘cos they wouldn’t all fit in the lobby of the hotel we was at after we left the weddin’, and it wasn’t even a little lobby, it was a big lobby, y’know? It was like a good sized lobby and --”

“Wait,” Caroline injected, her eyebrows raising together sharply. She looked up at me, then pointed between Nick and I, “Are you two… together?” she sounded shocked.

I promptly choked on the mouthful of sandwich I was swallowing.

“Fuck no!” Nick practically shouted, his face contorted into a look of pure disgust. Like literally the guy probably couldn’t have looked more disgusted by the idea of him being together with a damn octopus the way he looked.

Caroline, however, looked both relieved and disappointed at the same time.

“Dude you oughtta know this guy’s straight, y’all dated, didn’t you?” Nick asked, “Kev said y’all dated in high school.”

Caroline nodded, her eye still on me, like she hadn’t torn them away from the moment of surprise and now she didn’t know how not to look at me. I kept my eyes averted still. “A lot can change in twenty-two years,” she said. “And it would’ve explained some things,” she added pointedly.

I felt my face grow hot.

Nick’s eyebrows shot up with interest.

“So anyways, what did the paparazzi want?” Caroline asked, changing the subject.

“To know the rest of the story that goes with that comment,” Nick said eagerly.

I kicked his leg again.

“Ow,” Nick whined. He kicked me back. Little shit. I kicked him back again. Harder.

“Oh I’m sure they would love to hear that story,” Caroline replied, nodding. I swear my face couldn’t possibly turn more red. “What were they actually after, though?”

I opened my mouth to give her some bullshit answer, but before I could Nick busted out with, “Because I ran away from my wedding and they wanted to know why.” He sounded like a little kid saying he wasn’t gonna get presents from Santa Claus this year because he’d been bad.

I struggled to keep my eyes from meeting Caroline’s, but I could feel her staring at me.

“He wasn’t ready,” I mumbled. And the excuse was just as much for Nick as it was for me, twenty-two years belated.

“Oh,” Caroline said. “Well. I hope you at least told your fiance yourself why it wasn’t happening.”

I felt my stomach twist.

Nick’s face turned even redder. “Well. I dunno. I mean, I dunno if she’d even wanna hear from me at all after what I’ve done.”

“She does,” Caroline said with authority. “She wants to hear at least that much from you. She’s probably been waiting since you walked away to hear it from you.” She stared at me sharply.

“Yeah?” Nick looked at Caroline eager, not even noticing at all the meaningful glare she was giving me. She crumpled her napkin, her eyes never moving from me, and she threw the paper plate she’d been using in the trash, then set her glass in the sink. “How do you know?” he asked her.

Caroline shrugged, “Maybe it’s a girl thing,” she replied, “But also, I’ve been there.”

Nick glanced at me.

My face grew hotter than ever.

“Anyways, I gotta get back out to the field, I’ve got to get those stables mucked out.” And before either Nick or I could even say a word she’d rushed out of the kitchen and I heard the door close behind her.

I tossed my empty paper plate in the trash, too, and busied myself cleaning out the two glasses in the sink. I wasn’t ready for Nick to be asking questions about Caroline and I. I’d spent the last twenty years actively not telling the other fellas. Well, I mean, of course Brian knew, he’d been there, but the other fellas… and even Brian’s knowledge was limited on the topic. Only Kristin really knew what happened that day....

And here it was, I thought, all that hard work keeping the secret, coming down to this.

How would I tell him? I wondered, mentally preparing myself, like I was Rocky Balboa or something. I started forming words and sentences and emotion, piecing the truth together in a way that I only could pray he’d understand and not judge me for. And when I couldn’t avoid it any longer, I took a deep breath and turned around to face him with my story.

But Nick wasn’t staring at me anymore. He was staring at his cell phone, which he’d laid on the counter in front of him. He looked up when he realized I’d turned around.

“Should I text her, you think? Tell her why?” he asked.

I put down the cloth I’d used to dry the glasses I’d spent the last five minutes cleaning while I thought up the answer to questions he wasn’t about to ask. I wasn’t prepared for this question. I took a deep breath.

“I don’t think it would hurt,” I said slowly. This was the part I wasn’t an expert on. The reaching out part. The making old wounds better part. I’d only done the running away, I’d never tried to make things right. And as a result, I had this crazy situation on my hands and no advice for him in the area where he really needed it now.

He stared down at the phone again and chewed his lower lip thoughtfully.

I turned back around and put the glasses into the cupboard, allowing Nick some time to think without me staring at him.

I pulled open the cupboards and the fridge to see what the food situation was like. They were minimally stocked with various single-serve foods and I realized we needed to get some more stuff so we didn’t eat all Caroline’s food. I turned back to Nick, “We need to do some grocery shopping,” I said.

He was still staring at his phone. He looked up, “Okay.”

“Maybe the ride will help you think what you want to say to her?” I suggested. Then, the only advice I knew was sound enough to give to him at the moment, “A ride always helped me think around here.”

Nick nodded. “Okay.”

So I went upstairs and changed my shirt - Nick insisted he was fine in the one he had on already - and we headed out to the porch. I hesitated by the rental car when I spotted Caroline just outside of the barn with a wheelbarrow. I sighed as Nick climbed into the car. “Let me see if Caroline wants us to pick up anything,” I said.

Nick had his phone back out, “Okay.”

I jogged across the yard to the barn. She was shoveling some clean straw through the gap in the fence into a troft on the other side. The dust from the hay had risen up in the air, giving it the warm smell I usually associated with laying in the rafters of the barn. And suddenly I was overcome by this memory of sophomore year when we’d skipped school and snuck up into those rafters and spent the day stealing kisses and talking about movies and our future dreams. You shouldda known then I wasn’t stayin’ in Irvine, I thought. I’d told her then I didn’t dream of an Irvine life.

Caroline looked up in surprise as I came to a stop beside her. “What?” she asked without prelude.

“We’re going to the store, you need anything?” I asked.

Caroline shook her head.

“Alright. I just wanted to make sure before we left,” I said.

“Thanks,” she replied. “I appreciate the… effort.” She turned back to shoveling the straw into the troft.

I hesitated. I looked back at the car. Nick was sitting there, waiting patiently, watching me instead of his phone now. “Do you really think he should tell her?” I asked Caroline.

She stopped shovelling. “Yeah,” she answered, “He should. ‘Cos she’s just gonna wait all her life until she gets the answer.”

I nodded.

“She deserves to know,” Caroline added.

My throat was dry. I knew we weren’t really talking about Nick and Lauren, but I couldn’t bring myself to give her an answer just yet. “You really think it’s a text message kind of conversation, though?”

“Anything is better than nothing,” Caroline replied.

“I left a note,” I whispered.

Caroline stared at me for a long moment, then she recited, “Dear Caroline, I’m sorry. I can’t stay where my heart doesn’t belong. Kevin.” Her voice was a monotone. She shook her head, “That counts for nothing.” And she turned back to the straw.

My throat ached. I’d convinced myself over the years that I’d done an okay job explaining myself in the note. That I’d said everything I could say to her, that she’d understood and I’d always pictured her reading it and, even though she’d been heartbroken, maybe understanding why I’d left and being able to compartmentalize the horrible ending the way horrible endings are wrapped up nice and neat in fairy tales and movies. But I’d given her nothing, she was right. She’d memorized the nothing I’d given her, carried it in her heart for twenty-two years.

My voice shook. “We’ll be back in a bit.”

“Whenever,” she replied, “I have work to do.” She was cold shouldering me.

I couldn’t blame her.

I jogged away.

It was becoming a trend. Me running away from Caroline.

In the car, Nick asked, “She need anything?”

“Not from the store,” I replied.




At Kroger, Nick grabbed a cart and leaned against the handle as we walked, his phone sitting in the child seat up top. We filled the cart pretty quickly with stuff - Nick grabbing things like kale and seaweed crisps and me things like steaks and shake n’ bake packs. A lot of people gave double takes when we walked by, many of them people I recognized from when I’d lived there twenty-two years ago, but some of them were younger or new faces altogether. None of them stopped us either way and I wasn’t sure if I was unnerved or relieved by the lack of acknowledgement. Nick didn’t seem to notice they were noticing us at all, he was too caught up in his own head, and in making decisions like whether he wanted chili lime wheat thins or lightly salted pretzels for the red pepper hummus he’d gotten.

In fact, Nick remained basically oblivious of our surroundings until we got to the check-out, where the tabloid magazines filled the endcap next to the candy. Junk next to the junk food, I’d always thought.

But one of the tabloids featured a huge picture of Lauren, her make-up ruined by tears out front of the church, staring after our getaway car. The headline Backstreet Boy Leaves Behind Broken Hearted Bride was emblazoned over her.

Nick picked up the magazine and stared at the picture, wide-eyed. He looked at me. I could see the same sort of panic in his eyes as I’d seen at the church just before we left.

“You know how those rags exaggerate things,” I said.

Nick’s eyes returned to the cover. “They can’t exaggerate a picture,” he said.

I thought about saying something about Photoshop, but I held my tongue and started loading our crap onto the belt for the cashier to ring up because we were already next in line. Nick put the magazine up and started helping me, but his movements were slow and when I looked at his face I knew the picture wasn’t going to leave his mind very easily.

“Kevin Richardson.”

I looked up. The cashier was an old woman, and it took me a moment to squint through the years and recognize her as a teacher at the high school last time I’d seen her. She’d taught history class my senior year. “Mrs. Kendall,” I said.

“What are you doing here? Visiting your momma?” she smiled as she swept the items Nick and I had selected across the check out and put them into bags. Nick was leaning against the cart still, watching the exchange.

“Just taking a little break from California,” I replied.

She glanced at Nick and I saw her eyes shift toward the tabloids then back to him, like she was putting the pieces together. She turned back to me. “Have you seen Caroline Watson?” she asked, “I hear she’s working for your momma up at the cabins your daddy owned.”

I nodded, “Nick and I are staying at the cabins, actually.”

“Oh, with Caroline then?” she asked.

I didn’t know how to answer that. I could imagine the rumors that either confirming or denying that could start, so I changed the topic, pointing at the frozen pizzas she’d just dragged across the scanner, “Can you bag those separately so I can lay’em flat in the car, so the toppings don’t go sliding off?”

“Of course,” she replied, and she bagged them and handed them to me with a knowing smile.




“I texted her,” Nick said after a few minutes of being in the car on the way back to the camp.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Alls I said was I’m sorry, but I figured that was better than nothin’ ‘til I can think of somethin’ better to say.”

I nodded. “That’s a good start,” I replied.




When we got back to the camp, I didn’t see Caroline anywhere. And she didn’t show up later, either. We cooked the steaks I’d gotten at the store and Nick and I sat in the living room at the coffee table, watching a game on the TV. Whenever Caroline came inside, she must’ve floated by like a ghost because I never saw her come or go, I only knew she’d come in at all because when we finally retired for the evening the light under Jerald’s bedroom door glowed on the carpet at the bottom jam.

In the hallway, Nick hesitated at the bedroom door and just as I was about to step into my room, he said, “Kev?” I looked over at him. “Thanks for helping me.”

My heart felt like it was expanding in my chest, Grinch style. In all the years I’d spent trying to guide Nick through life, this was the first time he’d thanked me for helping him. I felt warm and fuzzy all over by this sudden gratitude from him. But a little voice in my mind asked quietly, Are you really helping him, though? Helping him to run away, just like you did? I pushed it out of my head.

“You’re a good friend to me, man,” Nick added.

“You’re a good friend, too, Nick,” I replied.

He smiled and went in the room.

I stood at the door a long moment, staring at the light under the jam of Caroline’s room. Part of me wanted to walk down the hallway, knock on the door, and tell her everything. But another part of me, the unfortunately bigger part of me, was too chicken shit, and instead I ducked into my room and closed the door behind me.

I sat down on the chair by my old desk where I’d done a million homework assignments over the years and untied my sneakers’ shoelaces, dropping them to the floor. I changed into my sweats and a t-shirt and climbed into bed, but before I shut out the light, I grabbed my cell phone. If Caroline was right about this whole anything was better than nothing thing, then it wasn’t just the past that it applied to, I thought. It would apply to the present, too.

So I typed a text to Kristin.

Good night, I miss you.

I fell asleep waiting for a response that didn’t come.

Chapter Six


Nick

I woke up with a start and I didn’t know why at first. I laid there staring up at the ceiling a couple moments. Then I heard a door close and I realized something had woke me up out in the hallway. The problem with it being so quiet in Kentucky at night is that it’s so quiet in Kentucky at night that you wake up over the slightest sound ‘cos there’s no underlying sounds to drown it out, like the ocean or general traffic sounds. The floorboards creaked past my door and I realized it must’ve been Caroline because Kevin was on the other side. I looked at the clock. It was a little after five.

Curiosity got the better of me, and I knew I wasn’t gonna be able to sleep anymore anyways now that I was awake, so I got up and tugged on my jeans and grabbed a t-shirt from my bag and, kicking on my sneakers as I went, I followed her down the stairs. She was already out the door before I caught up and I jogged after her across the lawn, the sky an eerie, pale color before the sun rose officially.

“Caroline,” I called quietly.

She stopped and turned around to see me coming after her and waited until I’d caught up. Caroline looked really good, wearing those jeans and boots again and an old pull-over sweatshirt, Kentucky Wildcats logo emblazoned on her chest. Her hair was in two thick braids. “What’re you doing up?” she asked when I got closer, “Did I wake you?”

“It’s all good,” I answered non-committally. “I couldn’t go back to sleep anyways.” I’d spent almost the whole night staring at my phone, at the text message reply Lauren had given me. Just two words, It’ll be okay. Well I guess that was three. Technically maybe even four because it’ll is technically it will, but who’s counting.

“I was just getting to work,” she said.

“Cool,” I answered.

Caroline stood awkwardly for a second, “Do you need something?”

I turned red, and I shrugged. “I just… I dunno, I heard you goin’ out and I was curious where you were headed at this hour.”

“The horses need exercise and their stalls need to be mucked out for the morning so they can be fed and watered. Then there’s a broken plank on the dock up at the north end of the river, I gotta go up and repair that today because there’s a group of guys coming up to go fishing up there next week.” She paused. “Just, you know, typical caretaker stuff.”

“Well the place looks good,” I said, “Me and Kev were sayin’ that when we were pullin’ in yesterday. He really liked the sign paint.”

“Did that a couple weeks ago,” Caroline said, “I try to do it at least once a year, keep it nice for the new camping season.”

“How long have you been working as a caretaker?” I asked. I felt good because I was holding an actual, somewhat intelligent conversation with the goddess of denim and flannel. Usually when I had these type crushes on people I stammerd and made a complete ass of myself for the duration of my time with them every time I saw them. To this day, I get about 75% stupider around Kristin. It’s pretty common knowledge among the guys that of all their wives Kris was definitely the one I envied the most. I couldn’t believe how much like Kristin Caroline was. Kevin definitely, definitely had a type, I thought.

“Twenty-one years,” Caroline replied. “Ann originally hired three. I was supposed to be like a housekeeper. But then I went to veterinary school in the city and I learned how to care for the horses proper and I ended up taking over completely. Ann keeps offering to hire more people to help up here, but I can manage just fine. I kind of like the solitude.”

“Don’tcha get scared, being all alone up here?” I asked.

Caroline shrugged, “Not really. I mean, I’m never really alone, there’s always people staying in the cabins. Meet some really interesting people that way,” she added.

“That’s cool,” I answered.

And just like that my conversational mojo was gone. I stood there awkwardly, kinda flapping my arms, trying to think of something else to say to her. I kinda wanted to ask her about the text from Lauren, ask her what she thought Lauren meant by it, if I should text her back again, or what else I should say besides just sorry, but I wasn’t sure how all to ask it.

“I gotta get to the horses,” Caroline said.

“Do you want help?” I found my mouth saying the words before my brain had fully thought them through. I didn’t have a shit’s clue how to help with horses. I don’t even particularly like horses, even. But I didn’t really want Caroline to go away, I liked her company. She was nice and she was really hot and stuff and I just wanted to be near her.

She sized me up for a second. “You ever been near a horse?” she asked.

“Sure,” I answered confidently.

Which might’ve been an exaggeration.

Once when I was a kid I took a pony ride with my sister BJ and the horse had been guided around a couple lazy circles at a fair by it’s owner. Another time Kevin had rented a horse in New York for a Disney Channel special thing we did and I’d gotten to meet it for a second and it had snuffed it’s hot breath in my hair and down my neck and when I panicked it had panicked, too, and reared up and I’d been sure it was trying to kill me. That was the day I’d decided horses hated me. Then, many years later, I’d brought Lauren to a horse farm in Texas for her birthday upon her request that I go horseback riding with her. And we’d ridden the horses through these trails around the ranch and it was okay, but I’d spent the whole day nervous and the horse had been hesitant to take any of my commands because of my nervousness. So I’d spent a lot of the day on a horse that Lauren had to keep yelling commands to while I clutched to the reins for dear life, certain that at any moment it would remember it’s destiny as a horse to try to kill me and I’d be a goner. So maybe my confident response of sure should’ve been less confident.

Caroline kinda seemed like she doubted my confidence anyways. “Well. C’mon then,” she said, leading the way to the barn.

I followed, my palms getting a little sweaty, but I dunno if it was ‘cos we were going closer to the horses or if it was because Caroline’s ass looked really good in the jeans she had on again today.

We walked the rest of the way across the yard to the barn, which Caroline unlocked with a key on a ring that had been in her pocket. She tossed the padlock into an old fashioned wooden tool box that sat just inside the doors as she pulled them opened and there was a general sound of shuffling and snorting from inside. She turned on a light and the whole place glowed with a warm light. It smelled dusty and kinda gross, like horse shit I was guessing. I dunno if there’s a fancy word like manure that meant horse shit or not, but if there was that’s what it smelled like if there was. There were like ten stalls but only three of them had horses in’em. There was the brown one from yesterday when Kevin and I had first seen Caroline outside and a white one with different colored dots all over it’s neck and sides and a black one that shook his head as we walked in, making a funny sound that I assumed was what they meant when they said a horse was whinnying.

“Good morning Portia,” Caroline said, rubbing the nose of the black one to calm it down. It bobbed it’s head against her palm, pressing it’s nose into her hand and snorting. She brought her hand up it’s long snout to the spot between it’s eyes softly, then drifted onto the next one, “Peepsa,” she said to the spotted one, rubbing it’s head the same way, then, finally, the brown one, “There you are, Barbara.” She smiled as Barbara nuzzled the side of her head, then turned back to me. “Portia, Peepsa and Barbara,” she said to me, waving to each of the horses. “This is Nick,” she said to them, waving at me.

“Hi horses,” I said tentatively, staying back a couple feet.

Portia whinnied at me.

“You can touch them if you like,” Caroline suggested.

“I dunno,” I said.

Portia was reaching her neck out wobbling her lips at me. She probably wanted to eat me, I thought dramatically. “She wants you to touch her muzzle,” Caroline said, like she’d read my mind. “Just hold your hand out, palm up. Like this.” She demonstrated.

I did as she said nervously. My heart accelerated a little as the horse pressed it’s chin into my palm. It stomped it’s hooves on the floor of the stall and I almost jumped back, but before I could react Caroline said, “Get closer, she’s frustrated because she can’t really reach you good from there.”

That was part of the plan. The less it could reach me, the less damage it could do. But I listened and took another couple steps closer to the horse. Barbara snorted and Caroline rubbed her snout again as she watched. Portia moved her head along my hand, stroking herself on my palm, until my hand had moved all the way up the side of her face to what I guess was probably her cheek, this little bump under her right eye. She had really long eyelashes and dark brown eyes that stared up at me and I kinda felt like maybe she could read my mind or something. It was a little unnerving, but at the same time, I kinda felt like maybe she knew I was scared of her and she was trying to tell me she wouldn’t hurt me.

Caroline smiled, “I think she likes you.”

“Yeah?”

“She doesn’t nuzzle with just anybody like that,” she said.

“You prolly tell everyone that,” I joked.

Caroline smiled again, and turned back to the other two horses and I realized that yes, she probably did tell everybody that. These horses were used to visitors and probably a lot of those visitors were from the city where there wasn’t a lot of horses and probably these horses had been trained really well to deal with that kinda person. I looked up at Portia and wondered how many times she’d had to deal with making stupid people like me comfortable.

I imagined it was probably similar to me taking pictures at a meet and greet, dealing with nervous fan after nervous fan.

Caroline, meanwhile, had climbed up on the door of the stalls and attached leashes to the horses and she leaned over to slip one over Portia’s neck. The moment the leash went over her head the horse started stamping with excitement, tossing her head a little side to side. It reminded me when I asked Nacho and Igby if they wanted to go outside and they started running around with excitement. I backed up. The movement made me nervous again a little because the horses were so big. I mean they were as tall as I was, Barbara was a little taller, even, and I’m willing to bet that in a fight, me versus them, they’d win. You could see the muscles in their necks and bodies and those muscles were way bigger than mine, even with all the working out I’d done with Lauren over the past five years.

“Here,” Caroline said, handing me the end of the leash she’d attached to Portia. I was about to ask what she wanted me to do with it, when she reached down and undid the thing holding Portia’s stall closed and the door swung open and Portia came trotting out, a billion pounds of strong horse muscle and big thick hooves that clop-clopped on the ground. I jumped back as she came out and hovered next to me excitedly tossing her head still.

“You freed it,” I stammered.

“That’s the idea,” Caroline replied, and she turned to the other two stalls, freeing those two as well. “We’re gonna bring them out to the enclosure so they can get some exercise while the stalls get mucked,” she explained, and she clicked her tongue and led the way with Barbara and Peepsa. Portia trotted along behind Caroline, being respectful not to tug on the leash I held, looking over at me and snorting and making a chirping sorta sound at me, like she was encouraging me to keep up.

I couldn’t help but glance up at the window of the house that I was pretty sure was the one that went to my bedroom and wonder why the hell I hadn’t just stayed up there where it was safe and horseless.

If Lauren could see me right now…

We led the horses through the yard alongside the fence to a gate that Caroline opened and we stepped inside. She unleashed the three of them and when Portia stayed standing next to me, she gently swatted her hip and she ran off with the other two into the field. We stood and watched as they galloped away, weaving between each other through the grass, their hooves kicking up dirt as they went.

On the way back to the barn, Caroline said, “So what’d you think of the horses?”

I shrugged, “They’re alright.”

When we stepped back inside the barn, Caroline turned on a second lighting system that was much more industrial than the lights she’d had on when the horses were in there. “Now what?” I asked.

“Now we muck the stalls,” she replied.

I wasn’t sure what mucking the stalls meant, but if mucking was anything like another word that it rhymed with, I thought I might enjoy it so I said, “Sounds fun.”

Caroline smirked. “You’ve never mucked a stall, have you?”

“Not in my life,” I answered.

Caroline’s smirk persisted and I had a feeling maybe mucking the stalls was gonna be something I wouldn’t enjoy as much as the word it rhymed with. I watched as she opened one of the extra stalls and pulled out a couple of pitchforks and a wheelbarrow. “So it’s easy enough,” she said, “Basically, you use the pitchfork to move the dirty hay from the stall into the wheelbarrow.” She opened Portia’s stall and held out a pitchfork to me with a smile.

I took the pitchfork and looked into Portia’s stall. There was shit all over in there. This reminded me of cleaning Mr. Mulder’s litter box back home with the little plastic shovel thing. I made a face, but, not wanting to be a baby in front of Caroline, I stuck the pitchfork into the hay and started moving it little bits at a time from the pile in the stall to the wheelbarrow behind me. The dirty hay was heavier than I expected, and it only took a few good forkfuls before my arms started burning like I was working out back home in the gym. I watched Caroline over the wall that separated Portia’s stall from Peepsa’s. She’d barely broken a sweat. “You do this often?” I asked her conversationally.

She looked up at me like I had twelve heads.

“I mean… cos you’re good at it.”

“At cleaning up horseshit?”

I licked my lips. I didn’t know how to backtrack from that. So… “Yeah,” I answered. Then, “We all gotta be good at something, right?”

Caroline raised an eyebrow. “I guess so. I’d like to think my talent is something other than horseshit cleaning, but whatever.”

My face felt like it’d been set on fire.

“The stalls need to be mucked at least once a day, more if they have to stay inside because of the weather. Winter is a bitch.” She stuck her pitchfork into the pile of shitty hay in the wheelbarrow and came out. I watched as she climbed a ladder to the second level of the barn and threw down three huge bales of hay. When the bales hit the ground, a burst of dust filled the air, and my lungs, and I hacked, pounding on my chest. “Sorry,” she called down, then she used a rope to slide down to the floor like she was Jane from the Jungle or something. She flipped her hair back over her shoulders and looked at my surprised face with a laugh, “What?” she asked.

The woman had unending talent, I thought.

I shook my head. “I just ain’t never seen a woman slide down a rope like that,” I replied.

Caroline laughed and shook her head like that was the silliest thing anyone had ever said and turned to the bales of hay, pulling two of them over to Peepsa and Barbara’s stalls. “Are you done mucking over there yet?” she asked as she pulled a pair of clippers out of her pocket and started tossing hay into Barbara’s stall.

I looked at Portia’s stall, where most of the dirty hay was still in the pile the horse had kicked it into. “Uh, I dunno, almost maybe,” I replied.

“Well, hurry and we’ll get the fresh hay in there,” Caroline replied, busily spreading the fresh stuff around the farthest stall.

I grabbed the pitchfork again and started moving piles of poo from the back of the stall into the wheelbarrow, my biceps fighting me all the way. I wondered how many star stickers this would count for on my chart back home. ‘Cos yeah I have a chart on the back of the bathroom mirror. Yanno, like the ones lil kids get for homework and stuff? Except instead of homework I have to do so many arm curls or push ups or minutes planking and instead of rewards like toys or video games or whatever, when I cashed in my star stickers with Lauren I got various sexual rewards.

That system fuckin’ works man. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in the gym and had to push on through wanting to give up because I was so close to scoring myself a great night in bed.

Suddenly Caroline was behind me. “Here, let me finish this real fast so we can get this done,” she said, reaching for my pitchfork. I gave it up to her because, well, my arms hurt and I was done moving the shit. So I backed out of the way and stood by the wheelbarrow to wait ‘til she’d finished. She mucked like crazy fast. I watched as pile after pile of poo flew into the wheelbarrow.

And then it happened.

“Nick? You out here?” Kevin’s voice rang from just outside the doorway of the barn and Caroline, mid-muck, turned a little too far to see where Kevin was and the pitchfork full of horse shit flew through the air, overshooting the wheelbarrow and with a sound like death it smashed into my midsection. Dirty hay and liquidy horse poo fwapped into my chest, exploding in all directions, rolling down my shirt and jeans, landing on my sneakers, and seeping through my clothes so I could feel the shit on my skin.

I held my arms out, my jaw dropped, choking on the stench that was invading my nose. I couldn’t wrap my mind around what it was that was all the fuck over me. I stared down at myself, at the brown liquidy mess.

“I’m so sorry,” Caroline said, half exclamation, half laugh. “Oh shit.” At the word shit, she couldn’t hold it back any longer and she cracked up.

I flapped my arms, trying to get the horse poo off them that had spattered onto them.

Kevin came walking into the barn, his eyebrows creased together, and came to a standstill in front of the wheelbarrow. “Nick, what the hell are you doing?” he demanded, looking me over head to toe. A smirk crossed his face, “Why are you always getting into shit, Carter?”

Like I regularly messed around by throwing horseshit on me and standing around barns. I raised my eyebrows.

“She mucked me,” I said, pointing at Caroline.

Kevin choked on a laugh.

Caroline stuck the pitchfork into the wheelbarrow and leaned against the door of the stall, and crooned, “Oooh, you’re dirty.” She laughed, and so did Kevin, their laughter rung through the rafters overhead.

The laughter was comfortable and familiar and for the first time I could actually picture them as a couple.

A couple of assholes right now, granted, but a couple.

I stood there watching as they laughed, the shit still rolling off me in big clumps, making this nasty squashy noise as it hit the floor of the barn. The longer they laughed, the less amused I felt about the whole situation. I just wanted to get the shitty clothes off and change into something that wasn’t covered in --- oh shit.

Flashback to my bedroom in Los Angeles as I grabbed my clothes out of the closet and drawers and shoved them into the duffel bag, getting ready to high tail it before Lauren got home from the church. I distinctly remembered grabbing one pair of jeans from the closet and tossing them into the duffel bag, figuring if I needed more I’d just stop by the house. Then we’d travelled across the fucking country to the middle of cow central here and I still only had one pair of jeans.

And they were currently covered in horse poop.

“Fuck you guys,” I said because they were still laughing and suddenly my life was anything but humorous because I was sentenced to wearing shit covered jeans for the forseeable future and I couldn’t stand the smell of myself and it felt grosser and grosser by the second as the liquid poo was seeping through every layer imaginable. I wondered what kinda disease my dick was gonna contract from all the shit liquid it was getting in contact with.

I was gonna be a eunuch.

I turned and started waddling out of the barn, shaking my legs, trying to get all the stuff to fall off me. I didn’t wanna track it all in the house and make the whole house smell like shit, but I was getting in a friggin shower if it killed me. I felt like a dog.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Caroline said, trying to stifle her laughter. Kevin was still laughing boisterously, more so at my waddly-shaky walk even than when I’d been just standing there. “Wait, Nick.” Caroline squeezed between the door of Portia’s stall and the muck-filled wheelbarrow and caught up with me, gingerly touching my arm to keep me from getting the crap all over her. “C’mon, we’ll hose you down and get the - the stuff - all off of you so you can go take a shower and change.” Her voice was gentler, like she maybe really was sorry for throwing a bunch of horse shit at me.

“Okay,” I replied, melting a little bit because it was hard to stay mad at a hot person, even if they did throw shit at you.

“Kev, come help me hose Nick down,” she called, and Kevin followed us out into the yard, wiping tears from his eyes as he followed, still chuckling. I kinda wanted to kick him. But Caroline led me around the side of the barn where a big green hose was hanging up on the wall, and she started unlooping it from the rack that held it in place.

Kevin came to a stop beside me and patted my shoulder, “You’ll laugh at this later,” he told me.

I nodded. Then I reached down and grabbed a handful of shit off my stomach and turned to him, swiping it across his chest in a very deliberate way, leaving streaks from his shoulder to his belly button. “And you will laugh at that later, too,” I said.

The amusement had toned down a little bit in his eyes.

“Look at you two,” Caroline said. We both looked up. “While I loooove dirty men… let’s get y’all cleaned off, huh?” And she held up the nozzle of the hose and turned it on, blasting us with a stream of water so cold it was probably being channeled directly from the heart of Antarctica.

Chapter Seven


Kevin

“Holy mother of a moulting penguin’s balls!” Nick screamed. He was doubled over, pressed as far back against the barn as he could get, the blast of water having hit him directly in the stomach. You’d think he’d been shot or something the way he was going on. I mean yeah the water was cold, but it wasn’t that cold.

“Stand up and take it like a man,” I scolded him.

In reply, he scraped another handful of the horse shit from his stomach and flung it in my direction, missing by a wide margin because he was too busy scrambling in a lame attempt to get away from the water stream. “It’s fuckin’ cold!” he yelled.

Caroline kept spraying him as he teetered and danced around in front of the barn until most of the shit had come off, and the minute she turned off the spray, he made a run for the house. “Take your dirty clothes off on the porch before you go in!” I shouted after him. Most of the shit was off him but he was still tracking water that wasn’t exactly beautiful in scent or color, and I didn’t much feel life Swiffering every surface of the house to get rid of the scent.

Instead of waiting for the porch, though, he started pulling them off as he ran across the yard, dropping his t-shirt a few feet from the cars and running out of his pants on his way up the porch steps, disappearing into the house in nothing but boxer-briefs.

Hopefully those, at least, would stay put until he got to the bathroom, I thought.

“Well, there’s an experience in the art of Nick for you,” I said, laughing, “He is absolutely insane, huh? You know… maybe Lauren dodged a bullet with him running away and all,” I joked, and I turned around, smiling widely at her. I’d expected her to be smiling, too, when I faced her, but her face had melted into a serious expression. I’d said the wrong thing. I knew it the moment I looked at her. The smile dropped off my face, too. She quickly turned away and started rolling up the hose. “Ain’tcha gonna hose me down, too?” I asked, trying to keep a cheerful tone to my voice.

Caroline looked up. She thought about it a second, then lifted the hose nozzle and aimed. She fired the hardest jet stream of water directly into my chest. The blast really was as cold as Nick had been acting, and more than that it stung on the highest jet setting, like being hit by a pressure washer. I jumped back, “Hey, hey!” I yelled. The look on her face wasn’t playful, it was vengeful.

She turned the hose away and threw the coil onto the ground, not bothering to put it back up on it’s hook, and walked away across the lawn.

I rubbed my stomach where the water had stung and couldn’t help but think she probably had been wishing she was shooting me with something a lot stronger than ice cold water.

“Where are you going?” I called after her.

“Dodging a bullet,” she yelled.

I watched her walk away, mostly because I didn’t know what to say to her still just yet. I sighed as she disappeared into the trees on the path headed up to the river. For just a couple minutes, during Nick’s distress, it had felt normal to be around Caroline. I’d forgotten how much fun we used to have, before things got polluted by broken hearts and dreams too big for the town we’d grown in. The sound of our laughter mixed up in the rafters of that old barn had been so familiar and nostalgic, like rewinding the clocks to a time when things had simpler answers.

I walked over and got Nick’s shirt and jeans and gingerly took his cell phone out of the pocket. He’d been in such a rush for the shower that he hadn’t even bothered to get it out before shedding his pants. The screen lit up as I pulled it out, and I slid my thumb across the lock button to make sure it came to life and hadn’t been damaged by the shit and water. When the screen opened, I saw his open text message screen with Lauren. I didn’t mean to look at it, but that’s the screen the phone was on… and my eyes unwillingly scanned the words displayed. I’m not gonna lie, my heart ached a little at the realization that Lauren, who’d been stood up at the altar, had replied to him so nicely, and here I was, with Caroline pissed at me for a stupid remark and I still hadn’t heard back from Kristin.

I shoved Nick’s phone into my own pocket for safe keeping and tossed his clothes over the fence next to the barn and turned the hose on them, washing away what remained of the mess. I felt frustrated and I was kinda taking it out on Nick’s clothes with the hose, hitting them as hard as Caroline had hit me, if not harder. It wasn’t fair that Nick could apologize within days of his misdemeanor and it could take years before I could even think about getting the same words out of my mouth. It wasn’t fair that Nick could get a response and not just any response, but “it’ll be okay” - so quickly and I could try to patch up the burning bridge between Kristin and I and not even get a response. Even a negative response would’ve been better than anything.

Anything is better than nothing. Caroline’s words echoed in my head.

I finished spraying down his clothes and threw the hose back where Caroline had left it and went in the house, hauling the soaking wet clothes with me.

I could hear the shower running upstairs through the pipes and I threw Nick’s clothes into the washing machine with enough detergent to clean an army’s worth of clothes and sat down in the living room, staring up at the family portrait over the mantel. I stared into my father’s eyes in the picture and felt the muscles in my throat tighten. I sighed. He’d know the answer to this if he was here, I told myself.

Sometimes, I thought, maybe we build up the people who have passed away too much, alter them, make them more godlike in our minds than they’d really been. Kind of like how my anger had altered Kristin in my mind, my father’s absence had altered him, too. In reality, he probably would’ve been just as clueless how to fix the situation as I was. But whenever I had a problem, I always wondered what my father would’ve said for advice because I was convinced somewhere inside myself that he would know exactly how to fix everything and anything that would go wrong.

Sometimes, I felt like that’s what I tried to live up to, too. I had to be able to answer everything, especially for the people who looked up to me, like Nick and my sons, for example. That’s why we were here in Kentucky, after all, wasn’t it? Because it was what I felt like my Dad would’ve done for me if I’d been in Nick’s shoes.

But maybe it wasn’t the right answer after all. Maybe my Dad wouldn’t have had the answers any better than I did these days.

In fact, it seemed Nick had the answers better for himself than I did. He’d apologized after all, and he was doing a lot better at fixing his screw ups than I’d ever done.

And honestly, maybe he was right -- the key was me saying sorry.

But saying sorry is just so hard when you’re a prideful person and I will be the very first to admit that’s what I am and always have been.

I sighed.

“Keeeeevin?”

I looked up. Nick was standing by the railing of the second floor in front of the bathroom door, which was billowing out steam from the hot shower, looking down at me, a towel wrapped around his waist and an expression on his face somewhere between sheepish and pleading.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I only packed one pair of pants,” he said.

I stared up at him. “Who the hell only packs one pair of pants?” I asked.

Nick shrugged. The towel started to slip and he quickly grabbed hold of it. I covered my eyes just in case. “Kev… you know me, I’m stupid at packing.” His voice was a whimper.

“I’ll find something,” I said. “Just get back in the bathroom before you end up flashing me with your junk please?”

“I need pants, Kev,” he whined. “And underwear. I have underwear, though, it’s in my room.”

“Your jeans are in the wash getting clean,” I said.

“Dawg, they ain’t gonna get clean!” Nick sounded horrified, “They were saturated with horse poo, Kev, I can’t wear those again! That’s disgusting!”

“That’s what laundry soap is for,” I explained. I really wished he’d go back in the bathroom so I could uncover my eyes again. “Nick please just go in the bathroom ‘til I can find something for you to wear, please, and we’ll talk about it once you’re properly covered?”

Nick made a noise that was like being strangled and I heard the door close behind him.

I lowered my hand from shielding my eyes and grumbled as I went upstairs to his room.

He wasn’t lying in saying that he’d only packed one pair of pants. In fact, he had only packed like three t-shirts, too. The duffel bag was full of unopened packages of underwear and electronic devices; plugs, cords, and extra gaming paddles. I stared at the plethora of pure crap he’d packed and shook my head. “Seriously?” I muttered, digging past the Gameboy, the PSP and the XBOX console in the bag, “You have three gaming systems and one pair of pants? Seriously?”

Finally I gave up and, carrying one of the unopened packages of boxer-briefs, I went back to my room and unzipped my own duffel bag. Nick was no where near the same pant size as me, his hips were way too wide for that, so I dug out an oversized pair of sweatpants that were fairly new and headed to the bathroom door. I knocked. He opened the door and his head stuck out.

“Hi,” he said.

“Seriously? One pair of pants but six packages of underwear and three gaming systems?” I said.

“I told you, I thought I’d be able to go home to get more if I needed’em,” he whined.

“You don’t even wear underwear half the time,” I said, holding out the package and the sweatpants.

Nick took them, “I do… sometimes... Lauren thinks they’re sexy.” He paused, looking down at the stuff I’d handed him. “Where’d you get these?” he asked, meaning the sweatpants.

“They’re mine,” I replied.

Nick made a face, “But --”

“It’s them or wait another like twenty minutes for your jeans,” I said, “The wash cycle is almost over and then they’ve got to go through the dryer.”

“I can’t wear those,” Nick whined, “They’ve been shittified.”

I gestured at the sweats, “Then you gotta wear those ‘til we can get you downtown to get some pants,” I replied.

Nick frowned, “But your balls have been in these pants.”

“That is usually where I keep my balls, yes,” I replied.

Nick made a face, “But… my balls will be where your balls have been.” He paused. “We’ll be like balls brothers.”

“Nick your balls have been lots of places other people’s balls have been,” I said. “Just go put them on and we’ll go downtown and get you new pants, okay?” He sighed and ducked back into the bathroom and I went back downstairs.

In the laundry room, I moved Nick’s clothes from the washer to the dryer. Even though he said now that he wouldn’t wear them, I couldn’t help but hope he was just being dramatic. I couldn’t believe he’d really just throw away what looked like a pretty expensive pair of jeans, considering they’d been washed and now smelled like Tide and not even a hint of horse shit remained on them. I was just starting the dryer when I heard the front door open.

I stepped out into the kitchen to find Caroline bent down under the sink, searching for something. I hesitated, torn between running back into the laundry room and hiding out ‘til I’d heard her leave or announcing myself. I almost bolted, but then I realized I needed to stop running away from her. I needed to at least try to make things better.

“Hey,” I said.

She turned around, looking up at me. She looked like she might’ve been regretting storming off earlier, but didn’t want to say so. She was holding a box of nails. She held them up, “Just getting some stuff. I’m fixing the dock up at the north end of the river.”

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.

I had a lot of memories on that old dock. My father had taught me how to fish there, and there’d been one day Caroline and I had skinny-dipped off the end of it. The thought of the dock being ruined hurt my heart a little bit, like a monument being torn down.

“Some of the boards are loose is all,” she answered, and I felt a little better, letting out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d held. “That’s where I went earlier… and I got all the way up there, realized I didn’t bring the stuff I needed to fix it. I mean the wood’s out there already, I just needed the nails. And a hammer.” She held up the nails and gestured at a hammer that hung from her belt as she stood up and dusted her knees off.

“It’s important to have the right tools for the job,” I said, nodding. My father had told me that once. He’d been taking me to get my tux for the prom, talking about the corsage and the need for the cumberband and all that, though, not actual tools, and the job we’d been talking about was making a romantic evening for Caroline. I took a deep breath.

There were just too many memories, I thought.

“I’m gonna get back out there, it looks like it might rain, I wanna get it done before it does. I still gotta get Portia’s stall mucked out - cos, yeah, Nick wasn’t exactly a huge help there, no offense to him, or anything...” Caroline turned and started to walk out again.

“I’m impressed you got him to go anywhere near the horses in the first place,” I said. “He’s not fond of them. He panics and usually they panic, so he’s convinced they’re trying to kill him.”

Caroline chuckled, “Well, Portia’s trained for equine autism therapy, so she knew how to handle a nervous visitor.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s awesome.”

“She’s an awesome horse,” Caroline replied. “Anyway.” She shook the nails and started toward the door.

I watched her back retreating and I felt the words surge up through my stomach in a fit of camaraderie. “Caroline,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

She stopped at the door. She didn’t turn around, didn’t look. She just stopped and stared down at the box of nails. “For what?” she asked.

“Making you wait,” I said.

Caroline still didn’t turn around. I watched her shoulders move as she breathed a little unsteadily, though. She stayed there until the breath steadied, and then she hurried out the door without answering my apology.

What was with women not responding to me when I struggled to tell them things that were inside my heart? I wondered, and I kicked the cupboard doors closed because Caroline had left them opened and I leaned, even more frustrated than before, against the counter. “God damn,” I muttered.

I reached in my pocket and pulled out my cellphone and hurriedly typed, I just want you to know that I miss you and I want to come home soon and I need you to tell me that’s okay, I’m going crazy without you. I hit send before I could stop myself by second-guessing the choice. And I set the phone down on the counter. I closed my eyes, leaning my forehead against the tile.

She wasn’t gonna reply, I didn’t know why I’d even bothered sending it.

I no longer got the thought out than the phone vibrated.

I looked up, shocked.

You can come home anytime you want.

I stared at the words in disbelief, my heart accelerating. My throat felt tight, and breath kind of escaped out of my lungs for a second. I could go home anytime I wanted? I’d wanted nothing more since the moment I’d left, the moment the door has closed behind me. It’d been a stupid fight, one I couldn’t even remember the details of, one that wasn’t worth all this wreckage and heartache we had now. And all this time all I’d had to do was ask and she’d have let me come home? Just like that?

Fuck this healing time, fuck all of this. Being in Kentucky hadn’t done a damn thing for anybody. It’d screwed with Caroline’s head and Nick was having a horrible time and I was feeling like shit. There wasn’t anything keeping us there. I could go home, and by the sounds of all his whining of missing Lauren, Nick should go home because I’d given him basically the worst advice ever by not making him go through with the ceremony, and Caroline would be free to go back to her old life without having to deal with me and Nick being around annoying her and disturbing the peace she no doubt had when she was alone up here.

So I started to type - I started to say I’d be on my way tonight and I couldn’t wait to see Max and Mason and how much I’d missed Kristin, and I got like halfway through typing all that when another message popped up.

Nick I love you and what happened this week doesn’t change that. We can talk this through and we’ll be okay. Please, baby, just come home.

“What?” I mumbled and I stared at the screen.

Then I remembered I’d had both my own phone and Nick’s phone in my pocket. I’d texted my message to Lauren, not to Kristin.

No wonder I’d gotten a reply.

There was a creak on the stairs and I quickly deleted the whole conversation, what I’d said, what she’d said, everything. I dropped the phone quickly before Nick came in the room a moment later, wearing my sweatpants, walking funny, like he was trying to keep the fabric from touching him. He had on one of the other t-shirts from his bag, and his hair was stickin’ up, still wet from the shower. “I’m ready,” he said.

My heart was still pounding like crazy. I couldn’t get my head around what happened exactly. So I pushed it out of my mind because that was all there was to do. I’d do the damage control later, once I could stand to think about what I’d done, what had been said. And worse, I had to figure out how to tell Nick what I’d done.

Everything I touched I broke and was having to come up with some way to fix it. I felt like the list of problems that needed resolving were piling up around me like the Great Wall of god damn China.

“Okay,” I answered Nick, and I pushed myself away from the counter and away from my thoughts of all the problems I had, “Let’s go.” I grabbed the keys to the car and led the way out onto the porch. Caroline was already all the way across the property, headed up the trail to the river again, and I sighed as I watched her disappear into the woods for the second time as I climbed into the car, Nick gingerly arranging his legs as he pulled the buckle across his chest in the passenger seat. “Here’s your phone,” I said, pushing it into his hand, “It was in your jeans pocket, I pulled it out just before it went in the wash.”

“Thanks,” he answered, and he tucked it into his pocket.

He was so trusting he didn’t even look at it.

I wanted to tell him he should probably stop trusting me for anything. I was a tornado and I was leaving a path of pure destruction in my wake. He’d be better off without my advice.




Every bump we went over on the way down the hill into town made Nick groan like he was in deep pain. You’d never guess the way he was acting that the worst thing that was happening to him was the fact that some cotton fabric was touching his thighs. He whimpered and grabbed at the fabric. “I feel way too close to you right now,” he mumbled.

“Your dick has been far worse places than in my pants,” I answered.

“Don’t word it like that,” Nick whined.

I snickered.

Teasing Nick was a great distraction from all the noise that was in my head, and he was an easy target at the moment.

I turned onto the main street and drove down to the little strip mall that made up Irvine’s business district. In it, there was a Family Dollar that should probably have been condemned years ago, a Save-A-Lot, a place called Tobacco Shed, and an itty bitty clothing store with a dilapidated old sign broadcasting that it was Honchell’s Clothing & Shoes for Men and Boys. Honchell’s was the go-to place for work clothes and had been there for over thirty years back when I was a kid, so I guess close to fifty if not more by now. My father had taken all of us here regularly to get jeans and t-shirts for working around the camp. It wasn’t what Nick was used to, I knew, but it would get him through until we could get him to a real mall with real department stores. It’d get him out of my sweatpants, at least.

Nick stared at the strip mall as I came to a stop and cut the engine.

He looked at me, then back at the strip mall. “Kevin?”

“This is Honchell’s,” I said. “They have pants.” I pushed open the car door.

Nick looked at the strip mall again, and, again, back to me. “Kevin, you’re joking right? You’re taking me to like a Macy’s or something now, right? A Belk, even?”

I have to admit, the place did look a little… what’s the word? Scary, I guess… especially for those who had never been there before. The display window still had stuff left over from Christmas up, cotton fiber “snow” with a sun-bleached Santa lawn light. There was a weathered neon construction paper sign, too, with the handwritten notice that they’d recently restocked the XXXL Duck Dynasty t-shirts. But Honchell’s wasn’t as bad as it looked.

Like I said, my dad had taken all three of us boys there all our lives.

Every pair of pants I’d ever owned until I moved to Orlando had come from Honchell’s. Except my tuxedo for prom. That we’d driven up to Lexington to get.

I got out of the car and started across the parking lot. It took Nick a few minutes, I guess, to decide I really wasn’t kidding before he climbed out and trotted after me across the lot. There were a lot of people in the Family Dollar side of the lot and a couple around the Tobacco Shed, but it looked like we’d be the only ones in Honchell’s. Nick looked around as we got to the curb and I pulled open the door. The little bell dinged just like it always had when I was a kid and Nick followed me into the interior of the store.

I’m not gonna lie, it was a lot more run down than it’d been twenty-two years ago. But that made sense as the sole employee of Honchell’s also happened to be it’s owner, an old man who was even older now, who everyone called Uncle Devon. He probably couldn’t move enough to clean the place the way he used to and the result was a very yard sale feeling to the place, which was basically a series of tables stacked high with work clothes like Carhardt and Wrangler jeans and Hanes t-shirts and work boots. There was a display of belt buckles in the glass case under the register behind which sat Uncle Devon himself on a little bar stool lined with a heating pad and a couple cushions, reading a worn copy of The Shining.

“Kevin Richardson!” he said, looking up over the book, his eyes milky with age and voice shaky. He struggled to his feet, abandoning his roost, and wobbled around the counter to give me a hug. “You’ve gotten taller.” It was more like he’d gotten shorter. I patted his back, which felt a lot rounder than it had in the past, and he hacked a couple times as dust was kicked up around us. Nick hung back, looking around, his face somewhere between traumatized and humored.

“You’re exactly as I remember you, Uncle Devon,” I said.

“Are y’all related?” Nick asked from behind me.

“No,” I answered.

“Oh.” He looked confused, but he didn’t ask any other questions.

“We’ve missed you ‘round these parts,” Uncle Devon said, oblivious to Nick’s question. His shaking hand patted my arm. “I’ve seen you on the TV. We have some Backstreet Boys t-shirts over there by the Duck Dynasty.” He pointed. Sure enough, there was a selection of old Backstreet t-shirts from the Millennium era and older.

I felt bad that in all the times I’d come to my mother’s house I’d avoided coming to visit Uncle Devon. Honchell’s was one of those places whose very existence reminded me of my father. I’d hardly ever come here without him in all the years I’d lived in Irvine and the last time I’d come in had been to buy a belt when my old one had broken on the way to the funeral.

I looked around the store. “Not a thing has changed,” I said.

“Most fossilized things don’t change,” Nick whispered.

Chapter Eight


Nick

I bought my own pair of sweatpants, two pairs of jeans, and a pair of camouflage pants, which Kevin got Uncle Devon to let me put on in the fitting room, which was full of boxes piled almost up to the ceiling. A peek in one of the boxes showed that these were the recently restocked Duck Dynasty t-shirts, and I wondered how many t-shirts Uncle Devon planned to sell with those guys on them. I sorta folded the sweatpants as best I could and carried them back out to Kevin, who was helping the old man back onto the bar stool behind the counter. He looked like he could be cousins with the Kentucky Fried Chicken guy. I wondered why Kevin called him Uncle Devon if they weren’t related.

“See, that wasn’t so bad, you found some stuff,” Kevin said as we walked across the lot back to the rental car.

“Yeah, I guess not,” I answered, and we climbed into the car.




It started raining as we were driving up the mountain back to the camp, and I hugged my bag to my chest as I watched the rain fall against the windshield, blurring the sight of the trees. We were just pulling up into the driveway when a loud crack of thunder shook the car, and a bolt of lightning like crazy close shot through the sky, lighting up the yard like day time, even though it had already started getting dark.

“Jesus that’s bright,” I marvelled as another crack of thunder rumbled overhead.

Kevin was squinting into the field, though. “Shit,” he said, “One of the horses are loose.” And without waiting for me to say anything, he shoved the door opened and got out, disappearing into the rain.

“Kev, dude!” I yelled. Had he not seen that lightning? I wondered. That was the kinda lightning people get struck by in the movies. And we were surrounded by trees. Running across a field was probably one of the stupidest things the guy could do.

And yet, I pushed the door open, leaving my bag there, and ran after him.

Because stupid is as stupid does, I guess.

He was right. Portia was loose, her mane flying behind her as she ran, wild eyed, through the yard, her hooves spraying muddy grass behind her and she panicked, the storm swirling in the sky overhead. There was another rumble of thunder and a flash of lightning, which glistened off the jet black fur on her back like a reflection.

“Where’s Caroline?” I shouted as Kevin came close, running behind the horse, who turned just before she got to the driveway, where I was standing, her breath heavy.

“I don’t know!” Kevin shouted back over the rumbling sky. “We gotta find her. She’s gonna be way more effective at getting this horse in the barn,” he added, looking around, like Caroline might just suddenly appear out of no where. “She knows it’s god damn name for starters…”

“It’s Portia!” I shouted.

“What?”

“Portia!” I shouted louder.

The horse reared around at the sound of it’s name and started toward Kevin and I, running through the dark. I blinked in surprise. The sky lit up a third time and the horse ran right for me. I held my hands up, praying it wouldn’t run me down, my heart racing as it came to my side and, though it clopped it’s feet in a wild, nervous fashion, it didn’t run me down. She looked like a little kid that had to take a pee, shifting her weight from one side to the other, nervously tossing her head, her hair flying through the rain. I reached out and touched it’s nose, “Hey, it’s okay,” I yelled to her, “It’s just a storm. You’re huge, you shouldn’t be scared, you big baby.”

Kevin reached for the hair of her mane, which he grabbed onto gently as a leash to guide her to the barn. He pulled her gently toward the barn, clicking his tongue. “Keep talking to her!” he shouted as she started to rear when he pulled her along.

“Hey Portia, hey!” I called, trying really hard not to be afraid of her, and I put my hand on her neck tentatively. “It’s okay!”

Together, Kevin and I walked toward the barn, and inside we found the other two horses clustered at the far end, their stalls still open, the wheelbarrow and pitchfork exactly where we’d left it earlier that day after the incident of the mucking had occurred. Kevin shooshed Portia into her mostly cleaned pen, and closed it before moving the other two horses into their stalls as well. Once he’d gotten them put in he looked at me, “We gotta drive up to the north end of the river,” he said, “That’s where Caroline was headed earlier... She was gonna muck out the stall after that, so she’s gotta be up there still ‘cos this ain’t done.”

I nodded.

The storm was nasty as fuck. The rain was falling so hard it stung on my bare skin and it was cold, though not as cold as the hose water had been thank God, and it was hard to see much further than a couple feet. We hurried back to the car and I looked over at Kevin as he started the engine. He was worried, I could tell. The look on his face was one that I hadn’t seen in a long time. In fact, I think the last time I’d seen it had been this one night when he’d come back to the hotel room back during the Never Gone tour and he’d found me drunk out of my mind, complaining that my heart was tight and hurting.

“I can’t stay dry today,” I said, trying to lighten the mood a little bit.

“Yeah,” he mumbled.

He backed down the driveway and back to the dirt road that wound up the mountain, driving past the camp and up and up and up… until the road literally ended in a small parking lot. The storm was still raging like crazy outside, though the lightning strikes were getting further and further apart. Kevin slammed the car into park. “Wait here,” he said, and he got out without any further deliberation.

I sat there for exactly three seconds before I launched myself out of the car and ran after him.

He rushed down a short trail and even over the wind in the trees and the rumbling of thunder I could hear the rushing river. It smelled musty, like leaves and stuff. The trail reminded me of this park in Tennessee where Lauren and I had gone running during the Autumn the year before called Radnor State Park. I wasn’t one for hiking and trails much, other than for paintball purposes, so Radnor was pretty much my only reference. But unlike Radnor, which is paved and smooth, this trail was natural, jutted with roots that poked out and uneven and slippery in spots from the rain. The only good thing was the canopy of trees overhead kept most of the rain from falling through and it was more of a light mist under here.

“Caroline!” Kevin shouted her name over the thunder, and I could tell by the glow above in the leaves that lightning had followed it.

We were gonna end up toasted out here like marshmallows, I thought.

“Kevin?” I looked up, Caroline had emerged from a small wooden shed that was off to one side of the trail, her eyes wide. “Kevin?”

He ran over to her, “Caroline, you’re okay.” He wrapped his arms around her in a big bear hug as I hovered a few feet away, watching as he embraced her. She stared at me over his shoulder in surprise and delicately patting his back.

“Yeah I’m okay,” she said, “It started storming while I was fixing the dock so I went in the shed there… Are the horses okay? Did you see them? They’re still in the fields, I was worried about them, Portia’s terrified of storms and --”

“We got’em,” Kevin reassured her. “C’mon, we drove up.” And he grabbed her hand to steady her as she walked out of the woods to the uneven pathway and the two of them rushed ahead of me down the trail, back to the car. I kinda felt forgotten, even. I stumbled along after them back out to the car. The winds were calming down and the lightning was further away, less intense, the rumbling thunder quieter.

We all got in the car, me in the back seat this time, and I grabbed my bag from the front before Caroline could sit on my stuff. I was really glad I’d opted to buy more than one pair of pants - I’d been close to buying just the camo pants I had on that were now soaking wet. I was so not putting Kev’s sweatpants on again.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Kevin asked when Caroline was shivering on the way back down the mountain.

She nodded, “I’m just cold,” she replied.

He turned the heater on so the air blasted out warm and dry.

By the time we got back to the house, it was only just barely raining. We got inside and Kev made Caroline sit down in the living room while he started up the fire place. “I’m okay,” she argued, “I gotta get out there and get Portia’s stall finished mucking so she can have fresh hay, she can’t sleep in that dirty hay.” She started to get up but Kevin stopped her.

“I’ll do it.”

“Kevin, it’s fine, I’ll --”

“Stay here, you’re cold, you’ve done enough for today, just relax,” he insisted. Then he went outside, leaving Caroline sitting in the living room and me standing in the doorway, holding my bag from Honchell’s.

I cleared my throat and Caroline looked back at me. “Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” I replied.

“I see you got some new clothes,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Kevin bring you to Honchell’s?” she asked.

I nodded.

“He’s always been obsessed with that place,” she laughed, shaking her head, smiling fondly. She undid the braids and let her hair hang down, all frizzy and messy and leaned back so she was laying on the cushions of the couch, staring up at me. “I’m sorry about getting that stuff all over you,” she added. “I know we were laughing at you and stuff earlier. Kevin and I always had a wicked sense of humor when we were together.”

“I see that,” I nodded. I walked around the couch and sat down on an ottoman in front of a big overstuffed chair. I really wanted to go upstairs and put on a different pair of pants, since now my camo pants were soaked from the rain, but the fire felt nice and I didn’t wanna go. Plus, it was kinda nice talking to Caroline. “Portia came when I yelled her name,” I said. “When we pulled up, she was loose,” I explained, “And Kev jumped out of the car and he was trying to find you ‘cos he didn’t know the horse’s name and I was like ‘it’s Portia!’ and she came. That was kinda cool.”

Caroline smiled, “She liked you,” she said.

I wanted to be that guy that was like well I liked her but I was still only halfway there with the horses and I had a feeling I’d be staying that way.

But halfway is a lot closer than I’d ever been before, so Portia could be proud of that anyways.

“So did you talk to your fiance?” Caroline asked.

“I texted her,” I said.

“And?”

I stared at my knees. “I dunno… I told her I was sorry, like literally that’s all I said is I’m sorry, and she answered back. She said --” I reached in my pocket for my phone and tried to pull Lauren’s text message up, but it wasn’t there. I stared at the phone, confused. I had actually sent the text hadn’t I? Or had I dreamed that? I remembered waking up thinking I’d had a dream I wanted to tell Lauren about, but I couldn’t even remember if that was this morning or the morning before. Had I dreamed that I’d texted her and I hadn’t actually said sorry at all?

“What’s wrong?” Caroline asked.

“I - I dunno. I can’t find the text. I thought --” I scrunched up my nose, trying to remember.

Caroline was still staring at me expectantly.

“I dunno. Maybe I dreamed I texted her. I thought I did, though.”

Caroline pulled a blanket around herself. “Well, if you haven’t you should,” she said. She looked over at me thoughtfully. “Why did you leave?”

I shrugged.

“No fair shrugging, you gotta actually answer,” she said, shaking her head.

I scratched my neck and thought about it a second, then I said, “Well… what we’ve had for the last five years has been really good,” I explained, “And… I dunno, when I was little, my parents used to fight and I could hear them screaming at each other down the stairs and they’d break stuff and yell all night and it scared me. And I remember them when I was really, really little and how in love they were, like before, and my mom always told us this story about how they met and how much in love she was with my dad and stuff and…” I shrugged, “It seemed like the point in the story where it changed was where they got married and had me.” I stared at my hands. “I dunno. I didn’t want that to happen to me and Lauren.”

Caroline was hugging her knees. “Well, I mean, that’s not gonna happen for sure. That’s just one story out of a million stories.”

“The divorce rate is higher than it’s ever been, though,” I pointed out.

“That doesn’t mean you will get divorced,” Caroline persisted.

I nodded.

“Do you still love her?” Caroline asked.

“Yes,” I said, no hesitation at all. It surprised me a little. I dunno why. I guess because the I love yous had been a long time coming on both ends for Lauren and I, and the wedding seemed like eons ago, I felt like I’d been in Kentucky for centuries, rather than just days. I understood why Kevin used to say time stood still in the bluegrass hills.

“So you should tell her that. You should tell her everything you just told me,” Caroline said. “Because she’ll want to know. She needs to know.”

I rubbed my hand on my knees. “So how come you know so much about all this?” I asked.

“Because,” Caroline said slowly, “It’s happened to me.”

“Someone ran off on you on your wedding day?” I asked, surprised.

Caroline nodded, “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t picture that,” I said, “You’re really hot, who would do that?”

Caroline shrugged, “I guess he just wanted other things is all. It wasn’t really fair of me to have expected him to stay with me to begin with, he had bigger dreams than I could ever fulfill, that’s all.” She picked at the fabric of the blanket. “But after he ran away, I didn’t hear from him again, and I’ve always wondered if -- if I’d been more willing to change, if I hadn’t been so stubborn about being home and --” Caroline shrugged again.

“Was it Kevin?” I asked.

Caroline shook her head. “I’m not going to answer that. It’s his prerogative to tell you if he wants you to know.”

I folded my hands together. I mean that meant yes, but it meant she didn’t want me to tell Kev she’d told me. I pictured Kevin at nineteen standing in the same church I’d been in when I’d left Lauren about to run out on Caroline. I couldn’t picture it. Kevin seemed too… I dunno what’s the word… good, I guess… to have run away on someone like that. But then again… I flashbacked to my panic attack, to the way he’d taken control, how he’d looked into my eyes like he was reading my mind. He’d been able to see into my mind that day because it was so like his own mind twenty-two years before.

“Promise me you’ll tell her,” Caroline said.

“I’ll tell her,” I promised.

Caroline smiled, “Thank you.”

I nodded.

Kevin came back in a few minutes later, and he went out in the kitchen and washed his hands before he returned to the living room and sank down into the brown chair across from me, groaning as he gripped the armrests. He put his feet up on the ottoman in front of him and wiggled his toes in the direction of the fire. “That Portia’s a sweet horse,” he said. “Beautiful horse. Gorgeous.”

Caroline smiled, “She’s a sweetheart. She lived at a farm in Tennessee that auctioned her off when they had to downsize and I got her for a really decent price. She was already mostly trained and everything, just needed a home.” She smiled. “I trained her once she got here, but she was used to children already because the farm she was at did events at the Nashville Fair and stuff.” Caroline turned to me, “Portia’s a trained autism therapy horse,” she explained. "Someday I want to start an Autism Equine Therapy camp program.”

“What’s autism equine therapy?” I asked. It sounded painful.

“Working with horses helps kids with Autism because studies have show that the movement of riding a horse can soothe a child with a disorder on the spectrum… It helps them learn to focus and socialize and it’s helps them to be drawn out of the prison that many of them feel like they are in because of their disorders. I’ve been working on getting a degree in therapy so that I can start a program like that and hopefully one day I’ll be able to open the camp up for children with autism to come and visit and help take care of Portia and the other horses. It’s perfect because I’d be able to let them rent cabins while they were visiting the horses, so Ann would make more money and I’d be able to do the therapy work I’m studying for... I’ve been working with Peepsa and Barbara, too, but Portia’s already trained. She was sort of my final project when I did the equine veterinary program in Louisville and realized I wanted to get into this field.”

“That’s really cool,” I said. “Lauren would fucking love that.” The words had come out of my mouth before I’d really thought about them. I looked down at my hands.

“Well, if I ever get the opportunity to start the, then you’ll have to come and visit,” Caroline replied. She smiled, then added, “With Lauren.”

I looked up.

Kevin was staring at his lap.

“I dunno if she can even stand me anymore,” I said. Then I said to Kevin, “Dude, do you know if I texted Lauren or if I dreamed that?”

Kevin looked up, “What? Why would I know if you texted Lauren? It’s not like I look at your phone.”

“I know,” I replied, “But I mean, like, did I mention having texted her? I thought I did, but I can’t find the text I sent her. I thought she replied even but there’s no messages on my phone from her at all. Which, actually, that’s weird, ‘cos we definitely texted when we first got to the church ---” I rubbed my chin.

“You said you texted her when we were coming home from Kroger,” Kevin said.

“Okay so I’m not crazy, then. My phone’s crazy.” I stared at it, “I wonder what the hell it’s doing? All my other texts are there, it’s just Lauren’s that’s missing. I wonder if I deleted it somehow?” I started playing with my phone, trying to see how hard it would be to accidentally delete an entire text message conversation.

Pretty hard it seemed.

Kevin stood up suddenly. “I think it’s time for bed,” he announced.

Caroline raised an eyebrow at him.

“Okay,” I agreed. I had a lot of thinking to do with how to tell Lauren what all I’d told Caroline that night. I wasn’t sure how I was gonna word it to her, but I figured I could pull up an email and start trying to piece the words together so that I could eventually send it to her. Especially the part where I still loved her. Because, yeah, as hot as Caroline was and all, I knew it wasn’t really gonna go anywhere anytime sooner than the whole me and Kristin thing was going to. It was something to say, something to fantasize about, but nothing that would ever really happen because at the end of the day the only woman I wanted in the bed next to me was Lauren.

I just had to tell her so.

And figure out how to get over this phobia of weddings.

And see if she’d still have me after all the crap I’d put her through.

I got to my feet and Caroline did, too, and the three of us went upstairs. I nearly tripped on the trick step, though Caroline and Kevin both stepped over it like it didn’t even exist. We got to the doors and I said, “Night guys,” as Caroline was passing by on the way to her own.

“Night,” Kevin and Caroline both said at the same time.

I pulled the door shut and kicked off the camo pants, pulling on a pair of grey sweats I’d bought myself at Honchell’s. I put the phone on the charger plug and I was just about to get into bed when I realized I could hear their voices still in the hallway.

I heard my name.

I got curious.

I went over to the door and listened.

Chapter Nine


Kevin

“Night.”

We’d said it at the exact same time, our voices blending together, and I’d looked over at her in surprise as Nick closed the door. Caroline looked just as surprised as I was. She was standing in front of her open door, her hand on the knob, the moonlight from the windows in the room reflecting pale on her skin and hair. The way the light touched her, I was reminded of the night my father died, when I’d been sitting in the old chapel all alone until Caroline came just in time to be there for me at the worst moment of my entire life.

I could still feel the memory of her touch that night, her gentle fingers and the rough chapel carpet.

Her hand released the door knob and she turned toward me. “Kevin,” she said, her voice low, “I need to know… if I’d moved with you to Florida… if I’d been more willing to… to change… would you have stayed?”

Her eyes were pleading.

I walked closer to her, not wanting to talk too loud, afraid of Nick listening. I stood just a foot from her and I said quietly, “Yes, but it wouldn’t have been right if I had. It wouldn’t have been fair to you. You didn’t want Florida, you didn’t want the change, it would’ve been for me and you would’ve been unhappy and in your mind it would’ve been my fault and you would’ve resented me for it the same as if I’d stayed here. I’d have changed and I’d have been unhappy and in my mind it would’ve been your fault and I would’ve resented you for it.”

Caroline chewed her lower lip, staring down at my hands, watching as I moved them as I spoke, and I realized that there were tears beginning to form in her eyes. “Instead I’ve been unhappy and resented myself and you for it,” she said thickly. She looked up at me and the tears clung to her eyelashes, her lip trembled. “Kevin, I know you’re married and you’re happy and --” she choked. “I just wish --” Caroline took a deep breath. “Lordy.” She waved her hands at her eyes, “Listen to me. This is wrong. I can’t even believe I’m even thinking about you like this --”

“I am married,” I said thickly, and I couldn’t believe the words that were about to come out of my mouth, “But I don’t know about happy these days.”

Caroline stared up at me. “What?”

I looked down. “I didn’t just come here because of Nick and trying to help him after his wedding. I came here because I didn’t have anyplace else to go. I’ve been living in a hotel for like a month now… Kristin and I… we’ve been fighting and it’s been bad and I moved out. We went to Nick’s wedding together, on a truce, but we were far from getting along. We fought all the way to the church, and then I got there and Nick was having a panic attack in the groom’s room. And I stood there and all I could think of was how fucking miserable my life had become after getting married and when Nick looked at me with that panicked look in his eyes like I had back in 1991 --” I shook my head. “Caroline, I couldn’t let him go through with it. I couldn’t. I had to get him out of there. I know now it was a mistake, an impulse, something I did more for myself than I did for him…” I shook my head. “He should’ve stayed there and gotten married.”

Caroline was quiet for a long moment, letting all of that sink in.

“He’s learning a lesson he wouldn’t have learned without this side step,” Caroline said. “He’s learning how much he loves her and maybe because of this he’ll never take their love for granted.” She shrugged. “Maybe it’s making what they’ll have in the future that much stronger.”

“Maybe,” I answered.

Caroline was staring right up into my eyes. “What are you fighting with Kristin about?” she asked.

I took a deep breath.

A thousand memories had spun through my mind, like Polaroid pictures, instant and grainy and fading around the edges. “It started after Max was born.”

“You have a kid?” Caroline interrupted.

“Two… Mason and Maxwell.”

Caroline smiled, a sad sort of smile, “I’d love to see them sometime.”

“I have pictures on my computer,” I answered.

She nodded. “So Max is the younger?”

“Yeah, he’s just about a year now. Mason’s six,” I added. I took a deep breath, “We’d agreed that two was enough and after Max was born Kristin was going to… you know, make it so we couldn’t have anymore, while they were doing the C-Section, and… I don’t know, she had the baby and they did the operation while they were in there, and afterwards, she just…” I shook my head. “I guess it was postpartum. She got so depressed, she was just unable to move. She’d lie in bed and she’d say that her back hurt her or her stomach hurt her or her head and her limbs and she couldn’t get up and couldn’t I please just look after the children for her? And I did as much as I could. Here I was, in the middle of a promo run for the new album and Kris can’t even get out of bed and I’m hauling poor Max to all the rehearsals and everything for the tour and it was okay at first because everyone wanted to see the baby, you know, but then it got to be a burden and I was about to start the tour… So I called Sue, my mother-in-law, and I told her I needed help. And she came out from Shawnee to Los Angeles and moved in to help with the baby and Kristin got so mad at me. She thought I was insulting her, that I didn’t think she was a competent mother.”

Caroline was staring at me, listening, leaning against the wall.

“I wasn’t trying to imply that. I mean, well I guess I was. Just, she was sick. I knew it wasn’t her fault, I knew that and I respected it and I was trying so fucking hard to get her the help she needed but she wouldn’t go see a doctor and there wasn’t anything I could do. I couldn’t back out of the contract for the tour, I couldn’t take the baby with me. Sue was my only option. But Kristin and I fought somethin’ fierce, like you wouldn’t believe over it. And in the fight, we both said a lot of things that shouldn’t have been said, things you don’t quite forget were said, you know? And there wasn’t any time to work on it because I had to go. So I went. And when I came back, the fight was still there, the animosity was still there. And Sue stayed because I was going back out on the road again soon and Kristin became more and more resentful of her and of me and she would pick fights over things, just to spite us, I think, like a kid acting out, you know?”

It felt so good to get this stuff off my chest. I’d been carrying the world on my shoulders, it felt like, and it was like the burden was becoming lighter with every sentence.

“It just brewed and brewed until finally it exploded over a stupid thing… she was yelling about, I don’t know, it was something about an empty box of cereal or something and it just erupted like a volcano you know because I’d been suppressing all this anger for a year, trying to be the perfect husband and the perfect friend and son and whatever and I hollered at her and she kicked me out, said if I wasn’t going to respect her then I could leave.”

Caroline sighed at the end of the story, shaking her head, staring down at her hands sadly.

“I just want my wife back,” I said and I choked on the words because they were the realest thing I’d ever felt. “And I’m scared, Caroline, I’m scared because I don’t know if she’s still in there or if she’s gone and if we’ve said things we can’t unsay. I don’t know how to fix it.”

Tears were glistening in Caroline’s eyes, clinging to her lashes when she looked up at me. “Well for starters, don’t wait for twenty-two years before you say you’re sorry.”

I laughed, a choked up, comic-relief sort of laugh. “Good tip,” I managed to say.

“One you could use to learn,” she nodded.

“One I should’ve learned twenty-two years ago,” I said.

Caroline smiled. “Seriously, though, Kevin… just tell her the truth, tell her what you just told me. That’s the answer for both of you boys. You keep telling all the wrong people all the things you feel and the people who need to hear it ain’t hearin’ it.”

“It’s hard. I’m not good at all that mushy love crap,” I said.

Caroline raised an eyebrow, “Oh c’mon Kevin, you’re in a freakin’ boy band, of course you’re good at the mushy love crap.” She laughed.

I laughed, too, in spite of myself. “But those songs are all written by other people most of the time and it’s emotions about their stories, not my own. It’s my own that I have the problem with. And plus when I do figure out how to wrap words around my emotions, I do a stellar job at fucking up the delivery of them.” I was thinking specifically of earlier, when I’d texted Lauren instead of Kristin. “I’ve texted Kris,” I added, “I told her I missed her. She didn’t answer.”

Caroline shook her head, “It’s gonna take a lot more than a couple text messages to fix that mess, Kevin. By the sounds of it you’re in a deep hole and if you’re gonna get out then you’re both going to have to work together and it’s going to take a lot of patience and a lot of understanding and a lot of love. But most of all it’s a lot of hard work. But if y’all still love each other, then the work won’t be impossible, and the reward for it will be worth every ounce of blood, sweat and tears you put into it.”

It was the best advice I’d ever been given.

Caroline stood upright. “Anyways,” she said. “You think on that. I’m going to bed. I have an early day tomorrow.” She turned toward the bedroom door, and paused before going in. “And by the way, thank you for coming up to get me earlier, and for finishing Portia’s stall. I really appreciated the help. I know I’m not great at saying things like that, I like to think I’m all Miss. Independent, but the truth is I really needed a hero and tonight it was you.”

“It was no problem,” I replied.

“Night,” she said.

“Night,” I answered. And I turned and headed back down the hallway toward my room, but once my hand touched the knob, I knew there was no way I was going to go to sleep after all that talkin’ we’d done and I knew there was only one way to solve all the swirling thoughts in my mind. I headed for the stairs instead.

“Where are you going?” Caroline asked. She hadn’t yet closed the bedroom door, I realized.

“I think I’m gonna go for a ride actually,” I replied.

She stared at me from the gap in the door, biting her lower lip like she was making a choice, hesitating. “Can I come?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I answered.

She disappeared from the door and returned a moment later, swinging a sweatshirt over her shoulders and rushing to join me on the stairway.




It was like a hundred nights before it. That was the beauty, though. We got in the car and I started it up and Caroline giggled, “Turn off your headlights,” she said, “Like old times.” I’d picked her up after midnight a hundred times, no headlights on to keep her momma and daddy from knowing I was there and that we were sneakin’ off for a night of God knows what, God knows where. So I backed out the driveway in the dark and didn’t spin the headlights on ‘til we got to the road, ‘til we’d passed the camp sign and Caroline whooped with delight just like she always had, then laughed at the nostalgia of it all.

“God almighty I can’t believe we’re forty-something years old, can you?” she asked, “This feels like it was yesterday.”

“You don’t look a day over twenty-five,” I told her.

And she laughed, “I don’t know about that.”

“You’re gorgeous,” I replied. “The Kentucky air does good things for you. Always has.”

Her smile was lit up by the moonlight coming in through the windshield as I drove down the mountain out to the town. We were passing the high school on the way out of Irvine and Caroline leaned forward, spinning the dial of the radio. We had the windows up ‘cos it was still a little chilly from the rain and all, but everything felt perfect, like a memory. You know those pictures where people are holding up an old picture in front of a new reenactment of that picture and they blend together almost seamlessly? That’s what it felt like. And all the stress and pain and worries that had been pulling me down for the past year seemed to melt away.

“Okay, not to be the girl in the song or anything but Oh my God, this is my song,” Caroline cried out, and she turned up the volume as Luke Bryan’s voice swung into his second verse. I tapped the wheel in tune to the song because I knew it well and when the chorus came, Caroline and I both started singing along.

“She was like, oh my God, this is my song
We've been listenin' to the radio all night long
I can't believe that it came back on, but here it is
She was like, come here boy, I wanna dance
'Fore I said a word, she was takin' my hand
Spinnin' in the headlights she gave me a goodnight kiss
And I said, play it again, play it again, play it again
And she said, play it again, play it again, play it again…”

When we finished, both of us laughed and Caroline held up her hand for a high-five, which I gave her and she turned down the radio a little bit. “Remember the night we drove to Nashville?” she asked, “And you sang Johnny Cash in that dive on Broadway?”

“Oh Lord, only barely,” I replied, “I drank both our beers that night.”

“You sang Ring of Fire and it was amazing.”

“If you say so,” I laughed.

Caroline grinned, “I love everything you sing.” She blushed.

“Do you now?” I laughed, “Everything?”

“Everything,” she said fervently.

“You ain’t even heard everything I’ve sung,” I argued with a laugh.

“Have so,” she answered.

“Prove it,” I teased.

Caroline thought for a moment, then said, “Roxie… you got nothin’ to worry about… it’s all a circus, kid, a three ring circus…”

“No fucking way,” I laughed.

“These trials… the whole world… all show business! But kid, you’re working with a star!! The biggest!!!” she continued, then she cleared her throat and, in the deepest voice she could muster sang, “Give’em the old razzle dazzle… razzle dazzle ‘em… give’m a show so splendiferous.. row after row will crow vociferous… Give’em the old flim flam flummox… fool and fracture ‘em… How can they hear the truth above the rooooooar… throw’m a fake and a finagle, they’ll never know you’re just a bagel! Razzle dazzle’em… and they’ll beg you for mooooore!”

I cracked up and clapped one hand against my knee as I drove. Caroline gave a fake little bow, “Thank you, thank you,” she laughed, “I’ll be here all week.”

I laughed all the harder. “Oh my Lord a’mighty, how in the hell did you -- I didn’t think any of my run in Chicago made it to the internet,” I laughed.

“I don’t know if it made it to the internet,” she said, “I went to see you in it.”

“You came to see me?” I asked, surprised, looking over at her.

“Yeah, twice, when you were in Louisville. It was marvelous. I clapped so hard for you. I was so proud.” Caroline was grinning ear to ear. “I wanted to tell you so but I couldn’t get anywhere near you and of course I was scared and everything was still… you know. It hurt like hell but I knew when I heard you were coming I had to go, I just had to because… well because it was your dream, wasn’t it? And it was really honest to goodness true and… I hadn’t gone to any of the Backstreet Boys shows and… I don’t know, this felt more like it was you to me anyway. And I had to go. So I went. And you were incredible.”

I blushed. “Thanks,” I said.

“I understood for the first time why you had to leave Kentucky that night, Kevin,” she said. “I mean the night when we went to Nashville. When you sang Johnny Cash. And I remember riding home and looking over at you and I was so fucking scared because I didn’t wanna lose you but I knew it was really selfish of me to keep you. Not just because you wanted to go but because the whole wide world deserved to hear you sing.”

I gripped the wheel, my throat tightening up.

“If I’d kept you, if you’d stayed, it’d be like caging up a beautiful bird just to look at it and never let it fly,” she said. She paused. “I just wish I’d been a bird, too.”

“You weren’t ever a bird, Caroline,” I said.

She looked over at me.

“Birds are too fragile, they take off the moment anything scares’em, they’re not reliable. They come and go and they’re just for show. You weren’t ever, ever a bird.” I shook my head. “You were always more than me. Always. You still are. You’re steady and you’re strong and ain’t nothin’ breaks you, you just stand up to it, you’re incredible, you. You have this heart, this big old gold heart buried down in there. You’re a rock with a core of gold, Caroline. You’ve always been my rock.”

Tears filled her eyes.

“I don’t mean that mean or nothin’,” I clarified.

She shook her head, “It’s just that’s the most beautiful, kind thing anybody’s ever said to me.”

I laughed, “Ain’t nobody told you how incredible you are?”

“Not since you last done it,” she said. “I ain’t trusted nobody since you left. I didn’t want nobody else. I didn’t understand what happened and I thought I wasn’t ever gonna see you again and that I’d never know the answers to all my questions and I was scared.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

And I meant it even more than I’d meant it the first time I’d said it.

“Kevin, I’m so very glad you came to Irvine,” she said. “Maybe it wasn’t the right choice for you and Nick but for me… for me it’s been the most… healing... “ She stopped mid-sentence and stared at me, her lower lip trembling. “Just thank you for coming back.”

I nodded, my throat aching.

“I finally, finally feel like I can move on.”

It was the kinda moment when you realize that anything could happen - anything at all - and you’d be surprised by none of it, because something was stirring in the air that just felt like it was going to be a night you’d never forget.

And, damn, was it ever.

Chapter Ten


Nick

Kevin and Kristin were fighting.

I laid in bed after they’d finished talking out in the hallway and stared up at the ceiling, hugging the blankets to my chest. I felt a little sick to my stomach. Okay, maybe a lot sick to my stomach, even.

If Kevin and Kris couldn’t make it as a couple, then who the hell could?

I moved my feet nervously between the sheets, feeling the cotton against the underside of them, anxiety running through my body like electricity. I could feel it burning on the insides of my skin.

When I’d decided I wanted to propose to Lauren, it’d been because of stuff AJ had said about how great the sex was once you got married. ‘Cos yes, I’m that shallow. At first, I’d been like well if the sex gets better what could go wrong? so that’s when I first started ring shopping. Then the more I thought about it over the course of the next couple months, while I was trying to find the right ring in every country we visited on a European tour run, the more I realized it’d be actually kinda cool being able to be like ‘my wife said this’ or ‘my wife said that’ the way the other guys did. They were forever talking to each other about their wives and it was like an exclusive club I wasn’t a part of. I was the odd man out, the youngest again, just like it’d been when I was thirteen and they would talk about sex or something and they’d hush the moment I walked in and smile at me like Cheshire cats because they were talking about something I didn’t know about. And somewhere between the point of being excited ‘cos I’d get to talk with the guys about the wives and be included in the conversation and the day I found the ring in a shop in Key West, I got excited about the realization that if I got married to Lauren I wouldn’t have to worry about her someday breaking up with me.

That was my biggest fear. Every time I did something totally stupid and Lauren said things like ”Nick, we need to talk”, my immediate reaction was ”Are you breaking up with me?” If she was, I wanted it ripped off like a bandaid. It would hurt less the faster it happened, I reasoned. If I had to lose Lauren then she had to go quick enough that my system went into shock so that I couldn’t feel the blow.

The reason marriage scared me was because it was a commitment, it was something that didn’t end. And I realized one day when I was sitting on a plane behind Kevin and Kristin that the fact that my two biggest fears were losing Lauren, and making a commitment to her didn’t make sense. How could I be afraid of losing her if I was afraid to make a commitment to her? And if I just got over the fear of making the commitment, then we’d have a commitment and I wouldn’t lose her.

So in short, AJ bragging about his and Rochelle’s sex life might’ve got the ball rolling on the whole engagement thing but it was Kevin and Kristin that made me believe in the marriage that I would be proposing. They’d been together forever, I had reasoned, and they were still lovey dovey, touchy feely. They’d just announced they were gonna be having another baby soon, in fact that was the last time Kris was gonna be able to fly with us because she’d be entering her third trimester the following week, and in June they’d have Richardson Baby Numero Dos. And they were so in love with each other… after all the years and they were still sneaking kisses every place they could get alone for even a second, and Kevin still put his hand on the small of her back when he introduced her to people, like touching her reminded them that she was his.

I promised myself I’d put my hand on Lauren’s back every time I introduced her ‘til the day I died out of gratitude for her presence in my life.

I dunno why I got so fucking scared the day of the wedding, in retrospect. I was in a pretty good place mentally for it and everything it’s just --- Well, no. No I do know what happened actually. The day before the wedding my mother had called. I’d been having issues with her posting stuff about me on the internet, so I’m not sure why I answered when she called, I just kinda thought maybe she’d changed her mind about coming and needed money for a plane or something, and I got excited and I answered. But it wasn’t that. She was trying to talk me out of getting married and in the process, she reminded me of all the horrible fights her and my dad used to have and she reminded me of nights when they’d come up to my room and set BJ down on my bed and told us to choose which one of them we loved more. “You’ll get to that point one day, too,” she’d warned, “It’s in your blood. You’re going to end up just like your father.”

I’d hung up, but the words had rooted themselves and the next day as I’d paced through the groom’s room, they’d echoed in my head.

Then Kevin… I’d told Kevin I was scared, expecting him to give me a pep talk. When he’d started into my eyes when I’d reached full blown panic attack, when I was feigning cardiac arrest and clutching the wrong arm and all that… I’d expected him to tell me how great marriage was and how I was going to be okay if I could just make it down the end of the aisle to see her come around the corner in her dress. He was supposed to tell me how magic and amazing his life with Kristin had always been because that would have helped.

Instead, he helped me run away.

And now I knew it was because him and Kristin were fighting.

They were my proof that real love existed and that there was hope for a marriage to last, and they were falling apart. How could anybody last if they couldn’t last? How long until Brian and Leighanne fell apart? Howie and Leigh? AJ and Rochelle? Me and Lauren didn’t stand a chance if these power couples I’d looked up to and respected couldn’t make it.

I rolled over onto my stomach and hugged my pillow close to my chest, leaning my head against it and closing my eyes. I held onto it tight as I fell asleep.




I woke up hours and hours later in a horrible position that made my back tight and my neck ache like hell. I tore myself from the mattress, my brain melting out of a strange dream in which I screamed at Kevin and Kristin that unless they got it together I was gonna quit the band and run away to train an autistic horse.

I blinked at the bright sunlight reflecting off the trees and I knew I’d slept in. I looked over at the clock on the nightstand and realized it was after nine in the morning. I stretched and shuffled off to the bathroom, my mind still mulling over everything I’d heard and the weirdass dream I’d had. I needed to talk with Kevin about this, I realized, because it was really bothering me a lot. Maybe more than it should have. But I needed to know if he was gonna get a divorce or something, I needed to prepare myself.

So when I’d finished in the bathroom, I went to his bedroom door and knocked. When my fist hit the wood, though, it swung open by itself. It hadn’t been shut all the way. Kevin wasn’t in there.

He must be downstairs, I thought and I trotted down the steps to the living room, then out to the kitchen. No Kevin anywhere. “Kev?” I called out. Then, for good measure, “Caroline?” But no reply came.

I pushed the front door of the house open and stepped on to the porch. Looking out toward the field, I expected to see at least the three horses running around, maybe Caroline putting food in their troft or something, but there was no signs of life. When I turned back around to go inside, I realized the rental car was gone.

I stared at the place in the driveway where Kev had parked every time since we’d come.

They hadn’t come back yet from their drive?

I wandered back into the house and pulled my phone from my pocket.

Hey where are you? I typed in a text to Kevin, and then I sat awkwardly in the kitchen on the bar stool, unsure what exactly one does when one is left alone on a camp in Kentucky. I rubbed my chin and looked around the kitchen. I wondered if I should let the horses out, since they probably had to pee and stuff but then I remembered they just went to the bathroom in that nasty ass hay and also that I didn’t trust ‘em as far as I could throw’em anyways. So they could wait ‘til Caroline came back.

I got up and rummaged around the kitchen ‘til I found some food and I got it cooked and ate, all the time eyeballing my phone, waiting for Kevin to answer me. But he wasn’t answering.

Sometime around eleven I started to think crazy.

What if they’d been in a car wreck?

What if they’d run away together and weren’t ever coming back?

What if they’d gone to a hotel and Kevin had cheated on Kristin and I was gonna be the only person that knew what happened besides them and I was gonna be burdened with knowing and not being able to tell?

I rubbed my hands through my hair, squeezing my head, wishing there was a way to relieve the horrible throbbing up in there. I laid my head on the counter, the cool tile felt good on my face.

The front door opened and I sat up. I heard hurried footsteps on the stairs and a door slam above me. Then Kevin came in the room, his hair and clothes a little disheveled. He took a look at me and cleared his throat, turning to the fridge. “Morning,” he mumbled, turning to face me a moment later, a bottle of water in his hands.

Anger was rising up in my guts. I couldn’t believe he’d do this to Kristin - to Mason - to Max - to me. I glowered at him.

“You okay?” he asked.

“You’re so stupid,” I hissed, and I slid off my stool and started for the stairs.

“Nick?” Kevin put the bottle of water down and grabbed my arm before I could leave the kitchen. I lashed out, pushing him off me with a strength I don’t think he’d expected. It’d been a long time since our physical strengths had been compared and I’d done a lot of working out by then, so he looked surprised when I easily threw him off and he stumbled back a couple feet. “Nick what’s the matter?” he asked.

“What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” I asked. I shook my head, “What’s the matter is you are cheating on your wife, and you’re gonna end up with a divorce and just ruin everything. You’re gonna wreck it all! Love doesn’t even exist really, it’s just a stupid game everybody plays and nobody actually wins. Everybody ends up hurt, especially the good people, and -- and I didn’t think that you were a player but I guess everyone is.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,” Kevin said, waving his hands in a stopping motion, “Slow down there, boy! I did not cheat on Kristin.”

I was too kerfluffled now to just calm down, though, and my mind was moving way too fast in way too many directions forward. I couldn’t believe Kevin was expecting me to just ignore the fact that he was doing this to Kristin, of all people, and also it shocked me that Kevin, the always morally just and right Kevin, would not own up to a transgression when specifically confronted. I was pissed. He seemed like a complete hypocrite in my eyes suddenly and I felt the rage swell up in my guts.

“No? What do you call it then? You’re in the middle of the morning walk of shame and you’re gonna try to act like this ain’t happened? Kev, I ain’t stupid! I’ve seen the walk of shame before - dawg, I’ve taken the walk of shame before. I fuckin’ know what it looks like, man. I just never thought you would be someone I’d catch doin’ this! I never thought you’d do this shit to Kristin no matter how shitty it’s been lately between y’all! I believed in you guys, and you just wrecked it, wrecked it all. It’s your fault, it’s all your fault. I should be married to the most beautifulest woman in alla the world right now, happy and gettin’ my brains fucked out in Bora Bora, but nooooooo! You hadda be like all helping me run away alls so we could come here to Kenfucky where you could like hook up with your high school girlfriend or fiance or whatever the fuck she was… is… was… I dunno! How long y’all been plannin’ this huh? Do you have like a secret Facebook event group or something? Did you get like a reminder on my weddin’ day that was like don’t forget you’re getting fucked in Kentucky this weekend?”

I was panting, breathless, by the time I got it all out.

Kevin stared at me.

“I’m not gonna just stay here and be your excuse anymore,” I said, “So fuck you.”

Kevin licked his lips as the metaphorical dust settled between us.

“Are you finished?” he asked, his voice shook, just barely staying level.

I nodded.

“I didn’t cheat on Kristin,” Kevin said firmly. His voice broke though as he continued, “I’m not going to pretend the thought didn’t cross my mind, but I didn’t do it. I didn’t.”

I pursed my lips and looked at the floor because I could see sadness in his eyes and it seemed like it was almost disrespectful to look directly at him when he was sad looking.

“You heard us last night,” he said, and it was a statement more than a question, but I nodded anyways. “I didn’t mean for you to hear any of that,” he said, “And I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

I frowned and looked up, “Y’know what upsets me, Kev? I’ve seen you almost every single day for the last year and a half and you ain’t talked to me about it. I’m supposed to be your friend, and you had all this shit going on in your life and you never said anything to me, you just suffered in silence like you didn’t have nobody to talk to, even though I was right there.”

Kevin shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I knew you held Kris and I and our relationship in a high regard that way, that we were one of the only examples of a good marriage that you had, and I knew it would bug you. Especially since you’d just proposed, and you were still teetering on the edge of being nervous about it… I didn’t want to pop your bubble and ruin everything by telling you my problems, which I didn’t really want to admit I was having anyway because I’m so fuckin’ proud and stupid and… Nick, I just didn’t want you to have to deal with it.”

“I just feel like a little kid again when you don’t tell me stuff, like you think I’m too little to understand or help,” I said. “I hate that Kevin, I hate that ‘cos I ain’t a lil kid no more and I can help and understand and maybe I ain’t the best at fixin’ stuff like that ‘cos I ain’t been through it but at least you couldda told me and I couldda been there for you.”

Kevin nodded. “You’re right.”

“I mean what’s the point in havin’ a friend if you can’t talk to ‘em about shit that’s buggin’ you?” I added.

“You’re right,” Kevin repeated. “Nick. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, dawg,” I said and I stepped over and threw my arm around Kevin’s shoulders, “Just let me be there for you in the future, a’ight? You’re always, always there for me and I just wanna return the favor sometime.”

Kevin nodded, “I will. Thank you, Nick.”

“Yeah no problem, man,” I answered. Then, with my arm still flung around his shoulder, I asked, “So… if y’all weren’t bow-chicka-wow-wow....then… what the fuck were you doin’ all night?” I asked.

Kevin suddenly looked uncomfortable again. He hesitated. “Well… we went for a drive.”

“Yeah, I gathered that part when I saw the car was missing,” I answered. I let my arm slide off Kev’s shoulders and I went to the cupboard and pulled out a box of Cheerios and started making myself some food. I waved the box at Kev, offering him some too but he shook his head. “Where’d y’all go?”

Kevin blinked at the wall for a couple minutes, gathering thoughts. I started searching for a spoon. Kevin came around and opened the drawer with the silverware and handed one to me. “Just… around the town, mostly… Listening to the radio and stuff.”

I eyeballed him. “Dude, there’s obviously more to this story then you’re sayin’. What happened?”

“Well there’s this spot we used to go to up this hill, there’s this clearing, you can see all the town lights for miles and miles and all these stars because you’re up away from all the city glow and stuff,” he said.

“Like a make-out point,” I said.

Kevin twitched. “Yeah.”

“And?”

“And… we turned the radio up and threw a blanket down and were looking at the stars and talking and stuff and… I guess at some point we… fell asleep.”

I chomped on a mouthful of cereal, waiting for him to continue, when he didn’t, I said, “And?”

Kevin shifted his weight, “And… Okay, Nick, don’t freak out, okay?”

“....okay…” I said slowly.

“A cop drove up and found us and it’s private property and it got sold since we were younger and now it’s got these no trespassing signs up all over and we didn’t see’m ‘cos it’s dark and the officer -- well -- arrested us.”

I spit Cheerios everywhere.

Chapter Eleven


Kevin

I told Nick the honest to God truth.

Caroline and I didn’t do anything.

We really did fall asleep laying on a blanket up on the look-out, a spot we called Uncle Devon’s Point, as it was up the hill past his house. We’d been laying there talking about everything we’d each been through since we’d last seen each other, you know, catching up. I told her about all the crazy fans and she told me about her crazy campers. We talked about how she went to college and all the stuff she learned in veterinary school and all the stuff she was learning in her online psychology course for her therapist’s license and all that. It was nice, just having someone to talk to again, it’d been a long time since Kris and I had talked like this, and slowly our words became further and further apart, the surroundings becoming hazier and hazier under the hooded eyelids of sleepiness… and before I knew it…

The blue lights were what woke me up, forcing me to squeeze my eyes shut from the sudden brightness. Two shrill chirps of the siren and I shielded my eyes from the light to see the cruiser come to a stop a couple feet behind the bumper of the rental car, and the Kentucky State Police logo on the door as it swung open.

I shook Caroline awake and she groaned, “Whaaat?”

“Wake up. Now.”

She rolled over and squeezed her eyes shut against the light. “Aw Jesus,” she muttered. “Here we go.”

“Here we go?” I asked.

She sat up, hugging her knees as the cop came over, his face still obscured by the flashing blue lights behind him.

“Well shit if this ain’t a brisk stroll down Memory Lane?” he hooted.

I recognized the voice as soon as he spoke. It was Michael Spornacki, this kid that was on the football team with me that had moved to Irvine from some place in northeast Tennessee, and immediately had a raging crush on Caroline that had spent the greater part of our Junior and Senior years trying to get her to dump me for him. Part of me had always figured she’d ended up with him after I’d jumped ship. Mostly because I’d seen him once since high school when I’d come back to Irvine to see my mother and he’d stopped by and inferred several times that he’d gotten in Caroline’s bed since I’d last been there. Graphically. In front of my mother. He was that kind of guy.

I had a feeling the minute I heard his voice we were in for shit.

“Mikey turn those goddamn blue lights off,” Caroline shrieked at him in a whiney tone that instantly transported me back to high school. Her accent was thicker than thick and twangy as hell, lazy from sleep.

Mikey laughed. “So what’s going on up here, you two?” he asked, “Gettin’ a little frisky this mornin’?”

“We were talking and we fell asleep,” I said, struggling to my feet.

“You know this all up here is private property?” Michael asked. “You ain’t supposed to be up here, I got a call about a car comin’ up this here direction and I was asked to come look inter it.”

Yeah, he really said inter.

“I’m gonna have to take y’all in, down to the station,” he added.

“Go to hell, Mikey,” Caroline said. She had gotten to her feet, too, and I was folding the blanket we’d been laying on. “Uncle Devon ain’t going to press no charges and you know it.”

Michael shook his head, “Uncle Devon don’t own this land no more, Carrie,” he said. “Sold it a couple years ago now. It’s posted all ‘round the road comin’ up here that it’s private property and it’s trespassin’ comin’ up here.”

I took a deep breath, “Look, man, we’re leaving. It’s not a big deal, alright?” I said, putting the blanket in the backseat.

“Well see, I don’t know how they work out in fancy ol’ Cally-fornie-a, but beakin’ the law is a big deal ‘round these parts.” He paused. “You might remember?”

I stared at him. He was a lot shorter than me, but he was bulkier, always had been, and I took a deep breath in through my nose, mentally counting to ten to keep from making a comment about the guy’s poor communication skills. “You aren’t seriously suggesting that you’re going to arrest us for taking a nap, are you?”

Michael pulled a pair of cuffs from his belt and shook them so they reflected the blue lights.

“I ain’t suggestin’ nothin’,” he said.




Of course bringing us down to the station at that moment was more of a Michael-Spornacki-is-an-asshole thing than it was an actual Kentucky state law thing and we didn’t end up detained long before he had to let us out of the little cell he’d put us in. It was like a grand total of an hour, more of a prank than an actual arrest.

Caroline spent the entire time in the cell laying on her back on a wooden bench, her feet up on the wall, casually reminiscing while we waited for Mikey to get over himself. “Remember last time we were in this cell?” she asked, looking over, her hair falling over the side of the bench in a long stream. Her eyes twinkled.

When we were fifteen in the tenth grade we’d been picked up after we got caught graffiting our names into a big heart on the underside of a bridge that went over the Kentucky River. The officer that found us had brought us in and called our parents and within a half an hour my father and Caroline’s daddy had come to pick us up with suppressed humor in their eyes. Neither of us had gotten in trouble much for the incident, other than the thirty minutes or so we’d spent in this very same cell as Michael Spornacki had stuck us in now.

“You still had spray paint all over your hands,” I said.

She giggled. “Literally caught red handed.”

“I wonder if that heart and K-E are still on the bridge,” I laughed.

Caroline grinned, “We could go look.”

“We should,” I laughed.

“Y’all ain’t supposed to be havin’ fun in there,” Michael called from his desk.

Caroline had laughed even harder.

Michael had let us out five minutes later.




And now here I was, facing Nick in the kitchen as he spewed Cheerios everywhere. “The fuck?” he barked, “You got arrested?” He stared at me with wide eyes and a little bit of chewed up Cheerio on his chin, disbelief written all over him.

“I mean only in the very technical sense,” I said, “It was more because the cop’s an asshole.” I opened the fridge and pulled out a can of cola.

Nick was still spluttering with surprise, “Dude, you’re fuckin’ serious?”

“Yes Nick, I’m fuckin’ serious,” I answered, popping the can open.

He stared at me. “The whole point of us comin’ here was to stay out of the news,” he said. He turned to look out the window at the driveway. “Kev, what if the paparazzi come here? They’re gonna go nuts. First I run away from my own wedding, then you get arrested with your mistress and --”

“Relax,” I said, petting Nick’s shoulder, “It’s not gonna make the news, it really wasn’t a big deal. And also, she’s not my mistress,” I reiterated.

“They don’t know that,” Nick said.

“Seriously Nick, it’s not even going to be local news,” I said.

I no longer had the words out of my mouth than Caroline came downstairs with a frown, piling her hair into a messy bun on her head as she walked into the room. “My phone is blowing up,” she complained, “Everybody in town is calling me.”

Nick’s eyes flashed to me.

“What?”

“Michael submitted his police report in this morning’s newspaper and I’ve been getting calls from everybody in town. Uncle Devon’s called three times. Says you didn’t say anything about getting back together with me and wants to apologize for not telling you that he sold our make-out property. Apparently he knew we went up there a lot back in high school.” She nudged me as she walked around me and got the orange juice out of the fridge.

“See?” Nick said, “I told you. The newspaper.” He eyed me meaningfully.

“Nick, fucking TMZ is not going to read the Citizen Voice & Times,” I snapped.

Caroline raised an eyebrow. “What?” There was a laugh in her voice. She was in an exceptionally good mood for someone who’d been woken up before the crack of dawn by flashing blue police lights.

“Nick thinks the paparazzi is on it’s way from Cally-fornie-a,” I said, mocking Michael’s butchered pronunciation.

Caroline smiled, “I doubt it,” she said. “They probably couldn’t find Irvine if they tried. Nobody ever comes to Irvine. Except for the ten people a year that attend the Mountain Mushroom Festival. And most of those are misinformed stoners.”

I laughed. It was an old joke that we’d made many times over the years about the biggest claim to fame that Irvine had. Well, besides being my hometown, that is. They loved bragging about that. There’s a whole section on the town’s official website dedicated to bragging that they’re the ones that reared and nurtured me.

Nick looked torn between continuing to whine about the supposedly real possibility of the paparazzi invading middle Kentucky and commenting on the existence of the Mushroom Festival.

“It’s really not a big deal, bud,” I said, clapping him on the back.

Nick sighed and picked up his Cheerios again and sat down on one of the bar stools. He glanced between Caroline and I as he chewed and she poured her orange juice and I leaned against the counter sipping the soda. I felt like he had something he wanted to say or ask, but I wasn’t sure what, and Caroline remained oblivious of his stares. She downed the juice pretty fast, then said, “Well boys, I gotta get to work. The horses aren’t going to muck out their own stalls.”

We both watched her leave the room, then turned to face each other again.

Nick put down his spoon. “So I know about you and Caroline.”

I took a deep breath, “Nick, I told you what happened, I didn’t sleep with her. We just fell asleep,” I said.

“No I mean with the wedding, that you left her at the wedding and alla that.”

“Jesus,” I muttered. “Is there anything you don’t know about now?” I asked.

“Probably not,” he said, “So… why’d you leave?”

I leaned against the counter. “Because it wasn’t right. Because I had other places I needed to be. If I’d stayed, I never would’ve met Lou Pearlman, never would’ve been in the Backstreet Boys. Never would’ve made it any place past this camp.”

Nick said, “But you loved her, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did,” I answered. I looked out the window. “You know what, c’mon. We’re going for a walk.”

Nick abandoned his Cheerios and followed me out the door and across the yard. It was warm out and the sun was bright. Caroline was out in the field, riding the brown mare whose name I’d found out was Barbara, the other two horses running alongside her. I led Nick the opposite way to the trail that led through the woods. I’d walked along this trail so many times in every season, and I knew every step of it like the back of my hand, every jutting root, every twist. I let my hand graze the bark of a tree whose girth had almost doubled since I’d last been through there. And, when we rounded the corner to the clearing the chapel stood in, I came to a stop, staring up at the building.

This was obviously the one part of the camp that Caroline didn’t come to. The paint on the chapel was peeling and the red door had faded to a weird melon color. One of the windows was broken and a couple shingles had fallen off the roof. I put my hands in my pockets as I stared at the shabbiness that had taken over one of my favorite places in the world.

“What’s this?” Nick asked.

“It’s a chapel. We were going to be married here,” I said, and I walked up to the door and pushed it opened. It was never locked. My father’s thought was that it was a house of God and God would never want to keep somebody out. So he hadn’t even put a lock on the door.

Inside, the air smelled musty and it was obvious the roof had leaked on some of the pews in the middle, their once red velvet cushions now mildewed. I walked to the front of the church, to the very pew I’d been sitting in the night my father died, and I sat down. Nick followed me, looking around the place with a nervous expression. He sat down next to me.

“I was sitting here,” I said, “And the phone rang and it was the doctor up at the hospital in Louisville and he asked for my momma and I told him she was in bed and he said that he was sorry, but my father had passed away and he needed us to come.” I stared up at the window I’d been staring through that night. I could feel Nick’s eyes on me. “Me and Caroline were sittin’ out here… I’d come up from Florida because of my father being sick, I hadn’t even planned to stay. I was living with Kristin already in Orlando, working at Disney. But when he died I didn’t think I could leave Kentucky, I thought I had to stay and take care of this place ‘cos I knew my momma couldn’t do it alone. I broke up with Kristin and I came back here and things just… fell into place, like nothin’ had ever changed, like I never left. Caroline was there for me during the absolute worst moment of my life. Getting that call. Letting go of my father.” I took a deep breath. “Nick, it meant the world to me then and it means the world to me now and it’s something that I will love her forever because of. The person who holds your hand at your lowest point is someone whom you never fall out of love with. So then, once I decided to move back, Caroline and I were spending every second together and then I asked her to marry me and it was everything my Kentucky life should’ve been.”

I got up and walked across the front of the church to the office door, pushing it open. Inside, nothing had changed at all. The mirror my momma had brought in was still there, even. I walked over to it and stared at my reflection, my eyes roving over how much it’d changed in the last twenty-two years. I was a different man, and not just for age, but for the experience in my eyes. I turned to Nick, “I was standing right here. And I was trying to put on my tie and Kristin came in the room.”

“Kristin was here?” Nick asked.

“She’d come to Kentucky to remind me to follow my dreams,” I said, turning and staring at the spot she’d stood. I could almost see her… standing there, leaning against the door with her plaid skirt and cream-colored turtleneck... My mouth went dry at the memory of her. She’d seemed like an angel, coming in there at just the right moment, saving me from my own mistake. “She knew staying in Kentucky wasn’t what I wanted. She was just the only one who knew it enough to stop me.” I licked my lower lip and pointed at the window, “We climbed out that window… went down a different path back to the driveway and we got in Kris’s car and we drove back to Orlando and I never looked back.” I looked at Nick. He was staring at the window. “The difference between what Kristin did for me and what I did for you, Nick, is that Kris helped me run to my future and, well, I think I might’ve helped you run from yours.”

Nick put his hands in his pockets. “Now I think we’re both just running away.”

I nodded.

Nick sat down on the desk in the corner. I turned back to the mirror. I remembered the feeling of that old silk bowtie not wanting to fold the way my father had taught me, how frustrated and cheated out of life I’d felt last time I’d looked into it. My hands mimed through the actions of tying a bowtie - something I’d made a point of learning perfectly after I’d gotten back to Orlando.

“You need to go back to Kristin and I need to go back to Lauren,” Nick broke in.

My heart felt just as heavy now as it had twenty-two years ago. I turned to Nick. “Kristin won’t even talk to me,” I confessed, “I’m afraid she doesn’t love me anymore.” My eyes traveled back to the door where the memory of her stood just as plain to me as the day she’d been there. I felt tears stinging the back of my eyes.

“Maybe you need to go and remind her she loves you,” Nick said.

I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.

“I’m just as scared as you,” Nick said, “I dunno any more than you do what’ll happen if I try to go home. Lauren might not even be there. She might’ve gone to Larry’s, or Bora Bora, or God knows where.” He shrugged, “But I dunno maybe we gotta be brave and try if we want to ever get our women back. We ain’t gonna get ‘em back without tryin’, right?”

I looked down at my feet. “Nick, I have a confession to make.”

“And here you thought I knew about everything already,” he teased, a hint of a smirk playing on his face.

“I… I tried to text Kristin the other day to tell her I wanted to come home and… it was when I had your phone because I was trying to clean your pants… and I accidentally sent the text I wrote for Kristin to Lauren.” I took a deep breath, “I deleted the conversation, that’s why you couldn’t find your texts from her last night.”

Nick stared at me, and the humor melted off his face as I spoke. There was a long pause at the end of the confession, and when he’d gathered himself, Nick asked, “What’d you say to her?”

“I told her I was sorry and I wanted to come home.”

“What’d she say? Did she know it was you?”

I shook my head, “She didn’t know it was me.”

“What’d she say?”

“She said you can come home anytime you’d like, she wants to talk and work it out and make things right. She said what happened doesn’t matter. She loves you.”

Nick’s eyes were dangerously close to tears. He jumped down off the desk, “I need to call her,” he said, “I need to call Lauren. Like right now.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Dude, what the hell, there’s no bars up here.” He looked around frantically, “I gotta get back to the house.”

“Okay.”

We walked quickly back out of the chapel and out to the path. I glanced back at it as we reached the pathway and Nick broke into a run. He tore down the path and across the lawn as fast as I’d ever seen him run before, disappearing into the house before I was even halfway across the yard. Caroline was far off, on horseback, riding along the tree line of the property by the cabins beyond the house. I walked slowly, letting everything mull inside me.

If I wanted it, this life was here, and it was possible. I could walk away from LA and from Kristin and I could stay here and I could see it all piecing together. Me and Caroline together, making the therapy camp happen. Max and Mason could visit and spend a couple weeks out here during the summer. I could imagine Caroline teaching them how to ride, and eventually we’d get them each their own horses and Mason would name his something like Tony Stark and we’d all have happy lives...

But it wasn’t the life I wanted, it was just a life I didn’t have to fight for, a choice that wouldn’t take a lot of work. A life I could’ve had.

Just like it’d always been.

And for the second time, I needed to be brave, take the step, leave Kentucky, and fight for what I really wanted.

I reached the house and went up to my room. I could hear Nick in the next room talking, though I couldn’t hear the words he was saying. I looked around the room I’d grown up in. It looked like maybe I still had some more growing up to do.

Chapter Twelve


Nick

I pulled my phone out of my pocket as I rolled across the bed, having run all the way from the mouth of the trail, across the lawn and up the stairs to the bedroom. I was breathless, but focused. I felt like all my muscles were tight, the nerve endings yelling Lauren’s name. I needed to call her now, while I was still brave. My heart rate accelerated as the phone rang and I landed on my back, staring up at the ceiling, trying to ignore Cyndi Lauper staring at me from the closet door.

Six rings. That’s how long it took.

“Nick, oh my god, hi,” Lauren was breathless, too. But I could hear voices and motivational music and stuff in the background and knew her breathlessness was probably ‘cos she was at like a gym or something. “I’ve been hoping you’d call.”

I had to get the words out before my insides exploded: “Lauren, I love you,” I said.

She let out a breath that sounded like relief. “I love you too.”

I let out a similar breath, one I’d been holding for some time and hadn’t even realized it.

“I miss you. So does Nacho and Igby and Mulder.”

“I miss them, too,” I replied. “Are they being good?”

“Yes, they just want their daddy-human,” Lauren answered. “Nacho sniffs around your pillow every night.”

“I miss him,” I answered.

“So come home, Nick,” Lauren said, “I don’t care if we can’t get married yet, just come home.”

I shook my head feverishly, even though she couldn’t see me, “No, no, no,” I said, “I want to get married. What I did, leavin’, it was stupid and I shouldn’t have run off. I don’t even know why or what all I thought I was scared of. I want to be with you forever, that’s what I’m most afraid of is losing you, and I dunno what I thought was so scary about having legal documents saying I’ma spend all my life with you. I’m so stupid sometimes. I love you so much. Please don’t think I don’t love you because I have this whole time, so, so, so, so, so, so much.”

I didn’t feel like I could stress it enough to make her understand how much.

I could hear the smile in her voice. “So where are you? How long ‘til you get here?”

“I dunno… I gotta get a flight and stuff… I’m in Irvine, Kentucky.”

“Kentucky?” I could picture the way her nose crinkled as she said the word in the tone she did and I laughed a little because I loved her crinkle-nose. “How in the world did you end up in Kentucky?” she asked.

I rolled onto my side so my back was to Ms. Lauper. “Kevin,” I answered, “Kev’s dad, who died in ‘91, he used to run this camp and when the paparazzi wouldn’t leave me alone, Kev had this idea we come here ‘til I figured out what I was doin’, basically.”

“Wait, you’re camping?” Lauren’s voice was incredulous, “You are camping? I cannot picture that.”

I laughed. “Well, it’s not really camping,” I said. “It’s like a log cabin in the woods. There’s indoor plumbing and a real kitchen and stuff. It’s the house Kev grew up in. Just they own cabins and a bunch of land and stuff that people could rent.”

“Well that sounds more like something you could handle,” Lauren laughed.

“Yeah, no, baby, you know me, if it was like real camping I’d have been like oh hellz nawh,” I said.

Lauren laughed harder. “God damn, I missed you.”

I wanted to reach through the phone and hug her. “I’ma come home as soon as I can get a flight.”

I wondered if Kevin would stay or come with me, based on his situation with Kristin…

“Good. This is where you belong.”

“Wherever you are is where I belong,” I agreed. Then, “Lo? Can I tell you somethin’, and you won’t mention it to nobody?”

“Of course.”

I took a deep breath, “So part of the reason I’m in Kentucky is ‘cos when I freaked out at the wedding Kevin kinda is the one who… you know… got me out of there and stuff… I mean don’t blame him or nothin’, ‘cos it was totally my fault, but, like, Kev helped me ‘cos he thought I really was having a panic attack and stuff. Like I was faking a heart attack and stuff… But anyways, part of the reason we came to Kentucky is a’cos Kevin was staying in a hotel all month. Him and Kristin have been fighting he said, and he’s been goin’ through hell for like a year and nobody knew it.”

Lauren’s voice dipped with sympathy, “They split up?”

“Not like officially, but she kicked him out of the house, I guess, and they haven’t really gotten to talk it out much,” I explained, “He’s real upset. And I found out all kinds of stuff about him this week... Like he was engaged before I met him and Kristin like pulled a speak now or forever hold your peace kinda thing. But like before it started... like she was to him what he was to me at our wedding. Him and Kristin like ran off to Orlando and then he met Lou and me and BSB and alla that.”

“What? That’s crazy!” Lauren said, “I never would’ve pictured that backstory for Kevin, he seems so… straight up, I guess.”

“I know!” I said, “And I met the girl… She works on the camp, her name’s Caroline. She’s been real nice. I told her about you and she told me to call you. She’s been rooting for us to get back together. You’d like her, Lolo. Like, the whole time we were cleaning the horse stalls the other day we were talkin’ about whether I should text you or not and --”

“Pause,” Lauren interrupted. “You were cleaning horse stalls? You?”

“Yeah,” I answered.

“You?”

“Yes me,” I said, laughing, “I touched a horse and everything.”

“I can’t picture that. Almost more than I can’t picture you camping. Nick, country boy you is really sexy in my mind,” Lauren said with a snicker.

“You shouldda seen country boy me getting mucked,” I told her.

“What?”

“Caroline mucked me.”

“What?”

“You know, like mucking the stalls? Caroline like was mucking Portia’s stall -- that’s one of the horses, by the way, not like a Porsche like the car or nothin’ -- and she threw the horse shit at me and it was like fwapp and was all over me and I was covered in horse shit all over the place and I only packed one pair of pants and she sprayed me with a hose and I was runnin’ in the house pullin’ my clothes off to go shower and I hadda wear Kev’s sweatpants to the store and -- LAUREN, the store. The store is so stupid. It was so little. And they had like an army’s worth of Duck Dynasty t-shirts all up in boxes piled to the ceiling baby! The ceiling. I’m so not exaggerating at all, neither. And there’s a dude -- Uncle Devon -- he’s not Kevin’s uncle but that’s what he’s called -- and he’s older than a dinosaur.”

She was laughin’ so hard by the time I finished the whole story, I grinned at my excellent story telling skills. Making Lauren laugh was one of my favorite things in the world. The more I talked to her, the more I wondered what the hell I’d been so afraid of in the church the day of our wedding. I would do anything to be able to turn back time to the moment my panic started and remind myself of all the awesome that was gonna follow once Lauren and I got married.

I knew just from her laughing that me and Lauren were going to be okay.

Now I just had to figure out how to help Kevin.




Some time later, when Lauren and I finally hung up with the promise I’d call her the next morning with my plans for when I was coming home, I snuck out into the hallway and knocked on Kevin’s door. It was mid-afternoon, but I mean the guy was up all night getting arrested and stuff so who knew if he was awake? But he only took a moment before he opened the door. “Hey,” he said. “You call Lauren?”

I nodded.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“We’re good,” I answered, and the words warmed me up from the inside out. I smiled, “I think this mighta even made us closer maybe.”

Kevin smiled, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m glad for you, Nick,” he said. Then he sighed and backed into the room, sitting down on the edge of the bed. I followed him in. I felt like I was entering hallowed ground, like a mission party landing on a foreign planet and looking around. Or else maybe like I’d walked into Kevin himself.

I looked around the room.

It was still painted like a young boy’s - dark blue upper walls, with a sports theme border and dark wood up about waist high. He had a shelf over the desk with two football trophies and a signed football on a little stand. A UK sports poster hung on one wall, a Michael Jackson poster on another. There was a map of the world over the headboard of the bed with tacks in the places he’d been last time he’d lived here - only a few places were marked off, nothing international. A poster with a bunch of aeroplane models hung next to that on one side and on the other side, right by the pillows, were Polaroids tacked to the wall. Pictures of Kevin and his parents and his brothers and Caroline and some horse that didn’t live in the barn anymore and dogs that I had never met.

This was the things of the Kevin I’d never known, the Kevin before Backstreet, the Kevin before his dreams had begun to come true.

I could see the traces of the Kevin I knew here clearly.

“Are you gonna call Kris?” I asked.

Kevin took a deep breath. “I’m afraid to. What if she doesn’t answer? Or worse, what if she does and she makes this break-up official?”

“What if you call her and she tells you to come home?” I suggested, “What if she starts cryin’ sayin’ she missed you?”

“Well then why hasn’t she called me or texted me?” Kevin asked.

“Maybe she wants you to make the first move.”

He stared down at his knees.

He seemed more vulnerable somehow here, in this place, surrounded by everything from when he was just a boy. I could suddenly picture him, freckle-faced and gangly-limbed, kneeling on the bed sticking those tacks in the map at North Carolina, Chicago, Nashville and Orlando on the map, reading all the cool facts about the planes, and dreaming of one day growing up and getting away.

It was a strange feeling because I wanted to take care of him.

Me! Taking care of Kevin! -- It seemed like an impossibility.

Kevin had alway taken care of me.

“I mean, if you never call her it’s gonna be over anyways,” I pointed out. “If you call her at least you know. Sometimes it’s the wonderin’ thats the hardest part.”

Kev nodded.

“So call her.”

He pulled out his phone and I watched him tap to her name on his recent calls list. His thumb hovered there. He looked up at me.

“The hardest part is pressing the button,” I said.

And he brought his thumb down on the screen.

We both stood there, waiting, the phone ringing… ringing… ringing… I held my breath. My fingers crossed. Ringing… ringing… ringing… It’d taken even Lauren six rings, I told myself, and I stared at Kevin’s phone as he held it to his ear. I wondered if his heart was beating as fast as mine was. It was practically in my throat.

Answer, please answer, I mentally begged Kristin. I hoped my telepathy would reach clear across the country.

Ringing… ringing… ringing…

Kevin pulled the phone away from his ear, “See… she’s not going to pick up, Nick, I told you. She doesn’t love me any ---”

“Hello?”

Both our eyes snapped to the phone.

“Hello?”

Kevin hurried to put it to his ear. “Kris? Kris? It’s me, Kev,” he said hurriedly. “We gotta talk, baby.”

I backed out of the room as Kevin twisted in the swivel chair and I pulled his bedroom door shut behind me as I reached the hallway, leaving him alone to talk to Kristin.

I sighed in relief as the door clicked into place.




I wandered outside after that because being anywhere in the house felt like I was too close to give Kevin the privacy he needed, so I sat myself down on the edge of the porch, staring out at the field as Caroline rode Peepsa around. Earlier she’d been on Barbara, but it was apparently the next horse’s turn now, and Portia was running alongside them as Barbara quietly ate grass on her own. The horses weren’t so bad, I thought. They were almost beautiful from a distance, even, with their flowy tails and long legs running through the sun and the grass.

I’d been sitting there watching for awhile when Kevin came out and sat down next to me and we both just sat there watching the horses run.

“If I book us a flight,” Kevin said, “Would you be opposed to leaving tomorrow?”

I looked over at him, “I wanna go home.”

Kevin nodded.

We both turned back to watching as Caroline slowed and slid down from Peepsa’s back and started undoing the saddle from her, putting it on Portia.

“So it went okay, talkin’ to Kristin?” I asked.

“I mean things aren’t fixed,” Kevin replied, “But… we’re gonna talk, and that’s the first step, you know? It’s gonna take a lot of work to repair what we’ve done to our relationship, but every good thing takes work.”

“Y’all are worth the work,” I said, nodding.

Kev nodded, too.




It was almost nine before Caroline came inside from doing all she was working on out there. Kevin had booked our flight for the next afternoon and we’d both packed and put our duffel bags in the hallway by the foot of the stairs. We were playing Boggle in the living room when the door opened and we heard Caroline come to a stop in the foyer. There was a long pause before she stuck her head into the living room.

“Y’all are packed,” she commented.

Kevin tipped the timer onto it’s side to pause the game and I looked up. “We, uh, we had a long talk with our women today,” he explained, “And it turns out we’re both welcome to come home.”

Caroline stood in the doorway. She nodded awkwardly, “Well hey,” she said, her voice thick, “That’s awesome. I’m happy for y’all.” She smiled, but it was one of those kinda smiles that you do when you’re only smiling for show. She ducked out of the living room.

Kevin and I turned to look at each other. I raised my eyebrows. “I didn’t even think about the fact we were going to have to tell her we were leaving,” Kevin mumbled. He stared down at the Boggle board. I put down my pen. If he was gonna look at the Boggle without the timer running, then we were done with the game anyways. Kev’s very serious about Boggle fairness etiquette. Honestly I’d peeked at it like three times while Caroline was leaning into the room and I’d been totally prepared to steal the words coffee, foe, and fee when we restarted the game timer.

“Well, I mean, she knew we were leavin’ at some point, it’s not like we were gonna move in here or nothin’,” I said. “And she’s the one that’s been encouraging us to like call our girls and stuff.”

Kevin nodded slowly.

“We aren’t doin’ nothin’ wrong or anything,” I added.

Kevin sighed. “I’m gonna go talk to her,” he said, and he got up and walked out of the room.

I poked at the Boggle board and played with the hourglass timer, tilting it back and forth. I felt bad for Caroline that we were gonna leave her or whatever, but she’d said she liked her solitude out here at the camp and stuff. If that was true, then she should be glad we were leaving. And plus, she wouldn’t have to deal with memories of Kevin buggin’ her anymore if we left her alone, and I’m sure the only reason she wasn’t ready for me to leave yet is ‘cos I hadn’t yet been too hyper around her or gone stir crazy yet or nothin’. Though it wouldn’t have been much longer before I did. I’d only really spent one evening in the camp thanks to all the crazy shit that’d gone down over the last couple days, but I was already bored as shit. I mean seriously we were playing Boggle. Everyone gets sick of me pretty quick once I get hyper and stir crazy.

Just ask the other Backstreet Boys.

There’s a reason we tour in five buses now.

Caroline came into the room carrying a frozen dinner plate thingy and sat down, putting the food onto the coffee table next to the Boggle board. It was a limp manicotti sort of thing with a pathetic smattering of cheese. Kevin followed her.

“Caroline,” he said, “C’mon.”

“Kevin, seriously, I’m fine,” she said. She stuck a fork into the manicotti-like-substance and all the ricotta slid out like two pieces of a halved caterpillar. I made a face.

“I’ll come back and visit more,” he promised. “I’ll bring the kids. I know Mason would love to learn to ride a horse. I can’t picture a better person to teach him than you.”

Caroline nodded and started eating the manicotti, despite it’s dead caterpillar look. I watched like most people like horror movies - somewhere between fascination that anyone would eat that shit and disgust that anyone would eat that shit.

Kevin sat on the couch, a full cushion separating the two of them. “I’ll talk to mama about hiring a second person up here, too, so you ain’t all alone. I don’t like that you’re alone up here, it concerns me and --”

“I’m fine, Kevin,” she snapped. “I’m fine being alone, I’ve been alone up here for years, I know how to take care of myself and the horses and the property, I don’t need help, I don’t need anyone here. I’m fine.”

Kevin rubbed his knees, “Caroline --”

“Kevin,” she said in a voice that even I knew was a warning, “I. am. fine.”

He shut up.

We sat there in silence. Caroline finished eating the manicotti thing. Then she gathered up her stuff and stood up. “Well, you guys have a safe trip home and all that if I don’t see you in the mornin’. I’ve got to get an early start, got to buy some more hay for them horses in the mornin’, so I probably won’t be here when you leave. Make sure you lock up, Kevin.” She turned to me and her voice was less automated, less cold. “It was really nice to meet you, Nick, and I hope you and Lauren work it out.”

“We’ll be okay,” I answered confidently.

Caroline smiled what looked like a genuine smile. “I’m glad. You’re a good kid.” She turned back to Kevin. “Goodnight,” she said firmly, and she left the room, her feet echoing on the steps.

I looked at Kevin.

He hung his head and sighed.

Chapter Thirteen


Kevin

The next morning, Caroline really wasn’t there. Her orange Kia Soul was missing from the driveway when Nick and I carried the duffel bags out to the rental car a little after nine in the morning. We had a couple hours to drive back to Louisville and catch the flight, and I dawdled as long as possible, hoping Caroline would come home so we could say goodbye, but finally we had no choice but to go. I started to leave a note on the counter, but at the last minute I decided against it. It was too much like the last time I’d left this place if I did.

We got into the car and Nick buckled himself in, staring out the window as I backed down the driveway. His eyes were lingering on the barn. I had a feeling he might’ve liked the horses more than he was willing to admit, once he’d got to know them a little bit. My stomach ached as I drove away, the house getting smaller in the rearview mirror until we turned a bend and it was gone. And then the sign did the same, disappearing among the trees as the car began the winding descent to the bottom of the hill.

We stopped by quickly to see my mother and tell her we were headed out. She was upset we weren’t staying longer and she’d only gotten to see us the two times, but as I handed her the keys to the cabin, I promised her I’d be back to visit again soon. “You ought to look into maybe hiring a second hand up there, too,” I suggested. “I think Caroline’s lonely, whether she wants to admit it or not.”

We drove through the center, and Nick watched as Honchell’s went by and the greasy spoons and we came to the edge of town. I saw the bridge that crossed over the Kentucky River and something tugged at me.

“Wait a second,” I said. And I pulled up to the side of the road. “I gotta check somethin’ real fast.”

“Okay,” Nick said.

I left the keys in the ignition and got out and jogged down a slippery little path down the banking of the river and under the bridge. The river was low, unusual for this time of year, leaving a pretty good banking under there. I made my way under the bridge and looked up at the spot that Caroline and I had started to graffiti. There it was, the heart and the first two letters of my name. We’d intended to write Kevin loves Caroline there. I patted my pockets, as though I expected a can of spray paint or a sharpie to appear, but I didn’t have either on me, of course. I would’ve liked to have finally finished our illegal artwork. If for nothing else than to send Caroline the message that what we’d once had would always be special to me.

Always.

I put my hand on the graffiti and took a deep breath.

It meant something that it was still there, after all these years, that nobody from the city had come down here and cleaned it off or painted over it, or the weather and rising waters in the river hadn’t eroded it away. It meant something that it meant something to me that it was still here, too, but I didn’t know what any of it meant.

I wished I knew. I wished the universe could shout it out to me. It’d make things easier.

I walked back up to the car and got back in. Nick looked over at me with one eyebrow raised. He’d put on his headphones, one ear covered by the set, the other tucked behind so he could hear. “You hadda check somethin’ under a bridge?”

“Yeah. It’s a long story.”

I felt like the graffiti Caroline and I had made together was private, our own little mark on the world, so I didn’t want to tell him about it.

And even if the graffiti wasn’t private, the feelings I was having about it… about Caroline… definitely were.

Luckily, he didn’t ask any further questions.

The drive back to Louisville was quiet. I didn’t feel like listening to music, and Nick had his one headphone on, and we didn’t talk much. I felt bad that we’d left without getting to say goodbye to Caroline, but there wasn’t anything to be done. She just hadn’t been there.

In Louisville, we turned in the rental and shouldered our duffel bags and checked in for our flight. I walked slowly through the airport as we headed toward security, some crazy part of me thinking maybe Caroline would show up, though why I didn’t know. She had no reason to, I just felt like things were being left incomplete. We went through the security checkpoints and made our way to our flight terminal. Nick got himself a Starbucks, making a big production of having missed coffee for the last few days, and we settled down to wait for the flight. I leaned back in my seat and had almost fallen asleep when we were called to board. “Time to go,” Nick mumbled, elbowing me.

I fell asleep on the flight home and I dreamed of long rides across state lines, singing country songs on the radio, and the feeling of Caroline’s head resting on my shoulder, sound asleep as I drove and drove, planning the day I’d get away from those simple times and simple places…




Lauren was waiting at the Los Angeles airport.

She was looking expectantly up our way, standing by the baggage claim. A smattering of photographers hovered a few feet away, pretending to be interested in a kiosk of brochures for local attractions. As we came down the escalator from the terminals, she came into view, and Nick pushed his way the rest of the way down, snaking between other passengers, his arms flung out like a little kid as he ran across the lobby to her. He slammed into her so hard she stumbled several feet back; the fact that he’d wrapped his arms around her tightly was probably the only thing that kept her from falling over from the impact.

The moment he’d run into the scene, the photographers had given up their idle browsing and started snapping pictures.

Nick didn’t seem to notice or care that they were photographing them. Although I’m pretty sure I saw Lauren flip them the bird behind his back.

I collected both our bags from the carousel before going over to them. Lauren eyed me. “So you’re the one that helped him do this,” she said in a stern voice.

“He was clutching his arm and asking what cardiac arrest felt like,” I said in my defense. “Granted, it was the wrong arm, but still.”

Lauren looked at Nick, “You didn’t even grab the right arm?”

“Yeah, no, I did, I grabbed the right arm!” Nick said. And he put his hand on his right arm, demonstrating.

“No, Nick --” Lauren sighed. “You’re so pretty sweetie.” She kissed his cheek, then looked back to me. “Thank you for taking care of him.”

“I’m sorry I helped him go,” I said. “I should’ve made him stay.”

Lauren shook her head, “Everything happens for a reason,” she answered, “I’m just glad he’s home now.”

I felt like we were talking about a lost puppy.

The paparazzi followed us all across the airport and out into the lot, where we all piled into Lauren’s car. Nick squeezed her hand in the front as she drove to lose the paparazzi, circling the airport roadways twice before shooting out to the highway and weaving her way through traffic, headed for mine and Kristin’s house. She shook the photographers like they were nothing and Nick relaxed in his seat, his head turned, just staring at her. I definitely felt like an extra wheel or something, sitting in the back, picking at the strap on my duffel bag, worrying about what I would be arriving home to.

When Lauren pulled into my driveway a few minutes later, I leaned down to look at the house. It sat quietly there, like there’d never been a fight before within it’s walls. I slid the strap of my duffel over my head and leaned forward, putting a hand on each of Nick and Lauren’s shoulders. “You two are gonna be okay,” I said. “I believe in y’all.” I squeezed. “Be good.”

“Good? Kevin, please,” Nick said, winking.

I slid out of the back seat and walked up the driveway, waving to them as they backed out. Nick was grinning, Lauren talking, and as the car pulled out onto the street, Nick gave me a thumbs up and then they were gone.

I took a deep breath and turned toward my house.

As I made my way up the walkway, I wondered what would be my next step. Just unlock the door and go in, ring the bell? I wasn’t sure. So when I got to the step I stood there awkwardly for a moment, feeling like a stranger on my own stoop. I was scared to make my presence known.

If only I’d been more honest with Nick, I’d have called him to come back and pick me up again…

The truth was, the night before I hadn’t even gotten to talk to Kristin.

The truth was, things were worse than I’d ever expected them to be because Kristin had changed her phone number.

The voice who had answered my call the night before had not been hers, and Nick had left the room before he’d had time to hear that part of the conversation.

I’d only flown home because something deep inside me knew that Nick wouldn’t go home unless I did, and he needed to go home to Lauren, that was where he belonged. And also, staying in Irvine, alone with Caroline, was not an option for me because everyday there I could feel something inside me kindling for Caroline again. It’d been raging, tempting me from the deepest places in me ever since she’d said she was ready to move on. Ever since she’d laughed and sang along with the radio.

Play it again, play it again, play it again.

And even though I’d denied it, even though I’d shut it down, there’d been a moment, laying on the blanket under the stars, before we fell asleep, when she’d been talking about her studies and the program she wanted to start with the horses, that I’d wanted more than anything to lean over and press my mouth to hers. I’d wondered if she still tasted like strawberry Lip Smackers and Bubblelicious. She still smelled like Love’s Baby Soft.

Yeah, things with Caroline had been about to get real dangerous if I’d stayed much longer.

I owed it to the past twenty years with Kristin to try.

I was nothin’ if I wasn’t a faithful man. And if I’d stayed in Irvine, if I’d had another night like the other night with Caroline Watson, then… well, I’d have been nothin’ because my faithfulness would’ve slipped.

Like an avalanche.

So long story short, Kristin had no idea I was here.

And I had no idea what to expect.

I wanted to run away, but I had no place to run to, so I took a deep breath and was just about to press the bell button when the door opened and Mason came out, quickly attaching himself to my waist with a bleat of excitement. “Dad! Dad! You’re home!” he shouted, his arms wrapping quickly around my waist.

“Hey, Mason,” I said, “Yeah I am.” I ran my hands through his hair as he hugged me tight, his face pressed to my stomach as he squeezed me, his little fists digging into my back. “I missed you buddy,” I said thickly.

Then Kristin came around the corner, carrying Max on her hip. He was chewing his hand and had slobbery spit all over his chin, but she looked gorgeous. I mean she had no make up, her hair was a little messy, she was wearing a sweater and jeans that she’d obviously been wearing for playtime, there were traces of paints and Cheetos dust on her, but she was perfect. I felt frozen, like I didn’t dare to move, like I might scare her off.

“Hey,” she said, slowly… surprised.

“Hey,” I said, slowly… hopeful.

Max reached out his chubby arms, leaning out from her torso, trying to get to me.

I held my arms out for him.

She stepped hesitantly forward, leaning toward me to deposit my son into my arms. Kristin’s touch was warm and soft, and I inhaled, trying to catch her scent, but she didn’t come close enough for me to smell her hair or anything. I squeezed Max close as Mason let go of my waist and I breathed in his baby smell and my heart melted. This was where I was supposed to be, with my kids and my wife in my house. I held Max tight until he started squirming and pushed away from my chest with his palms, kicking his legs to get down. The two boys ran off the minute I put Max down, Mason excitedly leading the way. I turned to Kristin, and we were alone for the first time in months.

We stared at each other, her eyes so beautiful brown. “Kris,” I said, “I’m sorry.”

There was a plethora of responses she could’ve had.

It’s okay.

I’m sorry, too.

I forgive you.

I’m glad you’re home.

I missed you.

And a million combinations of those words.

“Kevin,” she said, and I waited, wondering which one of the phrases she was going to go with. She bit her lower lip, considering her words. I imagined that she was constructing them, manufacturing the perfect response. She sighed, looked down, like she was refreshing herself, then looked up. “What are you doing here?”

The muscles in my hands tightened, quivering with restraining my disappointment. My heart slouched. I cleared my throat, “I’m home,” I answered.

She glanced in the direction of the living room, where the boys were probably playing, and she stepped out onto the stoop, forcing me to back up, pulling the door to an almost close behind her. “This is not at all appropriate.”

“To come home to my wife and kids?” I asked.

She stared at me, her eyes were not warm like they usually were, like I’d perceived them to be just a few moments before. “You can’t just show up here, unannounced and --”

“You changed your phone number, how the fuck was I supposed to be announced?” I demanded, interrupting, but she never stopped to hear my words.

“-- get the kids all excited, make them think you’re home to stay. Do you know how long it’s taken me to get Mason to go to sleep without you singing to him? He knows you aren’t on tour, he knows something’s going on, and I’ve spent the last several weeks trying to make him understand what’s going on. You can’t just walk in here and get them going like this. It upsets them. It’s not fair.” Kristin glowered at me.

I shook my head, “What’s not fair is you not talking to me about what’s happened between us,” I responded.

“You don’t get to treat me like a broken toy for a year and then walk in here and expect things to be fine between us,” Kristin said firmly.

“I’m not expecting things to be fine between us,” I said, “I’m expecting us to work for what we had. We made vows to each other, Kris, remember those?”

“Yeah I do,” she hissed, “They’re the same ones in which you promised to stand by me in sickness or in health and then you abandoned me when I was sick. You made me feel worthless.”

I felt like I’d been slapped. “I didn’t abandon you,” I snapped, “I had to work.”

“You chose to work,” she retorted. “You chose to go back.”

“I’d always planned to go back, you know that, as soon as Mason was older and the contract with Jive was up. You knew I planned to go back.”

“We had just had a baby and you left on tour.”

“The tour was scheduled way before you told me you were pregnant.”

“I’m sorry. Nine months isn’t long enough to reschedule some stupid tour dates?”

“You know it isn’t as easy as all of that. And besides, it’s not up to me, it’s up to management.”

Kristin shook her head.

“Kris, this is… this is old shit, and it’s not worth fighting over anymore, I said I’m sorry, can’t we please, please just… move on… focus on the future, on fixing this between us?” I begged.

“It hurt me Kevin, it hurt me that you didn’t stay by me when I was depressed, when I couldn’t move. Every muscle in my body hurt, I felt heavy like a soggy old towel and you left me. You promised me once that you’d never, ever leave me when I needed you, but I guess there was an asterisk there that said unless there’s a fucking tour date.”

“That isn’t true.”

“It is true, it is.”

“You make it sound like I walked out without trying to help --”

“Calling my mother doesn’t count,” Kristin snapped. “She judged me the entire time she was here, like I was a bad mother and such a disappointment to her. That was such a huge boost for my already broken down self esteem.”

“Well what’d you want me to do? Cancel the contract with management, lose literally hundreds of thousands of dollars on cancelled tour dates, and end up sitting around the house, listening to you bitch about not wanting to get up to change a diaper?” All the anger of the last twelve months came rushing to the forefront, my stomach turning with resentment.

Kristin’s hand swept across my face so fast and harsh that I didn’t even see it coming.

We both stood there, stunned, staring at each other in surprise. Neither knew what to say to the other in the wake of it, and the sound of her hand on my skin seemed to echo in the gap of space between us.

Mason pulled the door open. My heart raced with fear he might’ve seen her hit me, that he might’ve heard it. But his eyes were too excited, too hopeful, and I knew he hadn’t. “Are you guys comin’ inside?” he asked. “I wanna show daddy my t-rex transformer.” He leaned against the doorframe, his little cheek smooshed against the wood.

“Daddy can’t play right now,” Kris said, turning around and shooing Mason back in the doorway, “I’m sure he has a tour date or something he’s got to get to.” She stepped inside and stared back at me, starting to close the door.

“Kris,” I said, “Please, c’mon, how do I fix --” But the door shut before I could finished. “-- this?”

I stood there on the step, feeling pretty numb. I bit my lip. I literally didn’t know what to do. I turned around and started walking. I shoved my hands into my pockets, my duffel bag hanging off my shoulder, my mind going a hundred thousand places at once. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, repairing this mess we’d made, but at the same time I didn’t think it’d be impossible. Had we really said and done so many stupid little things that added up to not being able to fix a twenty-year-old relationship? Had it really come down to this? To her refusing to let me into my own home? Changing her phone number on me, so I didn’t even know how to get in touch?

I ended up at a hotel again. I got myself a room and climbed the stairs instead of taking the elevator up to the third floor. I threw myself onto the mattress, not even bothering to change or turn on a light or anything.

I was literally right back where I started.




I woke up an untold number of hours later, my phone vibrating in my pocket. I felt disoriented and confused for a second, staring into blank darkness. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and the light glowed at me, Nick’s face grinning up at me from the screen. The pieces started falling back into place in my mind. Nick and Caroline and Kristin and the hotel and everything. I sighed and dropped my phone onto the nightstand without answering it.

I wrapped my fingers around the pillow and pulled it over my face, blocking out the light and noise from the phone.

I didn’t even know what to say to Nick right now. He’d no doubt be asking how it had gone with Kristin, and I didn’t have the energy to pretend everything was okay. I hadn’t even finished processing what had actually happened yet for myself, not to mention explaining it to Nick.

It was too much.

Chapter Fourteen


Nick

“What a dawg,” I said, pushing the charger into my phone and rolling back over to snuggle against Lauren. I wrapped my arms around her and shuffled my feet under the blankets ‘til they were warm enough that she’d let me run them down her calves without complaint. I pressed my nose into the space behind her ear and kissed her head. “He’s already --” kiss “ -- gettin’ it on --” kiss “ -- over there.” I ran my hand down her side, over her hips, along her thigh…

“Mmm,” Lauren murmured, turning into me so my mouth ended up on her mouth, “So, Pot,” she said between kisses, “Have you called any other Kettles black today?”

“Don’t make racist jokes,” I said, sucking her lower lip into my mouth.

“I’m not,” she said, her voice coming out funny since I had her lip held captive, “I’m saying you’re accusing him of doing exactly what you’re doing right -- ohhh.”

I grinned, then kissed her mouth, silencing her.

I dunno what was bugging me about Kevin, but there was something. I just had this weird, nagging feeling that wouldn’t go away, even as I was laying in bed doing all kinds of dirty, dirty stuff with Lauren, I couldn’t shake the feeling like I needed to call Kevin. I mean we’d dropped him off at his house, and he was probably just as, you know, preoccupied as I was, but it still bothered me that he hadn’t answered.

“What if he didn’t have his keys and Kris wasn’t home?” I mumbled into Lauren’s mouth.

“We’ve been over this a dozen times already, Nick,” she groaned.

“I know but…”

“You tried calling him, there’s not a lot else you can do besides that,” she pointed out. “He’ll call back when he can. Maybe they’re talking. You said he told her they needed to talk.”

“Maybe.”

Lauren sat up. She grabbed my face, holding my cheeks between her hands and stared into my eyes, “Nickolas, talking about Kevin? It’s not good for the sex.”

I sat up, too. “I know. Neither’s thinkin’ about him. But I can’t stop. I dunno why, I just can’t.”

“You know, I’m really close to starting to question what all happened between you two out in Kentucky, Mr. Carter,” she said, raising an eyebrow.

“Aw shut up, nothin’ like that,” I answered, pushin’ her hand. “Can we try callin’ him again?”

“You might as well,” Lauren said, waving her hand at the phone, “Neither of us is gonna be in the mood much longer with all this Kevin talk.”

“Bushy eyebrows don’t turn you on?” I asked, winking as I reached for the phone.

“Oh God no,” Lauren shuddered.

“What if I grew one like that?” I asked, smirking.

“Baby please, you can’t even grow hair where it’s supposed to grow,” she teased, “Remember the great 70s porno stache of twenty-twelve?”

“Shhh.”

“You need rogain for your chinny-chin-chin,” she whispered, running her fingers over my chin.

The phone was ringing as we both giggled and she ran her fingers over my face.

”It’s Kev, leave a message.”

“Kevvvvv-in,” I sing-songed, “Call me back.” I hung up and looked at Lauren. “See, he still isn’t answering, I’m really concerned, like for real.”

“Would you answer if you were having sex?”

“Sure,” I lied, “I’d be like hey I’m gettin’ bonked I’ll call you back.” I paused for dramatic effect, then added, “I mean that’d be like accented by like moans and grunts or whatever, depending on the part of the sex we were at but --”

Lauren playfully punched my arm, “Come off it, you would not answer the phone, don’t be an asshole,” she laughed.

“And plus,” I said, thinking about it more, “It doesn’t make sense they’d be having sex actually, ‘cos she wasn’t even talkin’ to him before yesterday. Do chicks go from like zero to sex that fast?”

“Maybe he walked in and it was like fireworks, sparks flying everywhere, and she just had to have him like right there,” Lauren suggested. “You know, like how this all started?” She raised an eyebrow.

It’s true. We’d literally only just barely made it in the house before we started getting rowdy. We’d tripped over Nacho in the foyer, our mouths already connected, shedding clothes all the way up the stairs as we tried to keep our lips touching, like some sort of crazy mating ritual.

“Maybe,” I said.

Lauren ran her palms down my chest. “You said he said they were okay yesterday, right? After they talked?”

I thought about the chat Kev and I had on the porch of the house. I couldn’t remember the exact words he’d said on the topic, I’d been overcome with excitement that I was gonna see Lauren and then concern for Caroline. I knew I’d asked him how it’d gone with Kristin on the phone, and it seemed like he’d said it’d gone okay, but the more I thought about it the less that seemed true. He’d been quiet and withdrawn all the way to Louisville, hadn’t played any music or complained about my headphones being on (which was one of Kev’s pet peeves, he hates when people use electronic devices instead of talking to someone they’re physically in the room with, he’s not someone you ever wanna hold a conversation with while texting or trying to follow a football game on your phone). He’d slept on the plane, which Kevin loves talking on planes about all the subtle little feelings and nuances of the plane, like what those little moving parts on the wings are for and why turbulence exists and stuff.

Probably shit he learned from that damn poster he’d had over his bed, I thought.

“I wish he’d just answer his phone,” I said.

Lauren moved her hand from my chest to my shoulder and squeezed gently. “You’re a good friend, and he will appreciate that when he finally answers. But Nick, right now, I really, really, really need you to focus.” She raised an eyebrow.

“Focus?”

“Mmhm,” she nodded, “I need you to focus on what we are doing. You and me. Right here, right now. C’mon baby, I know you can do it.” She leaned forward, kissing my neck.

I tilted my head to one side to allow her easier access to my neck.

Then a thought occurred to me. “What if his phone battery died and Kristin’s not home and he doesn’t have his keys and he’s just sitting on the stoop? We didn’t watch him go inside.”

Lauren sighed. I felt her warm breath on my neck. She pulled back so she was kneeling on the bed in front of me. “Baby, would you feel better if we drove over there and made sure he’s not just sitting on the doorstep?”

I nodded.




Nothin’ much was going on at the Richardson house as Lauren pulled to a stop across the street in front of some other random house. She put the car in park and leaned back so I could see out her driver side window. “See?” she asked, “No Kevin on the stoop.”

I stared at the house, “Yeah,” I said.

“Feel better?”

“I dunno,” I answered, staring out at the house.

Lauren ran her hand over the curve of the steering wheel, staring at me, chewing the inside of her lower lip.

“I’m sorry,” I said, turning to her. “I know this is annoying.”

Lauren reached over and ran her hand through the hair at the back of my neck, scratching a little. “Can we go home now?” she asked.

I nodded, feeling like I was melting into her hand.

“Okay, good.” Lauren started the car, “Because I have plans for you.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm…” she answered, “Big plans.”

“I like plans,” I said.

And I tried like hell to push Kevin out of my mind. He’d call when he could, I told myself, and then he’d tell me all the great stuff that went down with him and Kris and how he was doin’ just fine and everything would be okay.

For now, all I need to worry about was me and Lauren and these big plans she had for me.




Kevin still hadn’t called me back the next day at breakfast. I was sitting on the couch in the basement home-gym with a bowl of Cheerios, watching while Lauren worked out. She was doing curls, sitting on a medicine ball. I’d been resisting the urge to mention Kevin all morning, but my ability to ignore my worries was wearing thinner and thinner. I glanced at the clock on my phone.

Lauren brought the weight to her shoulder. “So out of curiosity,” she breathed, lowering the weight, before bringing it back up again, “and I don’t mean this to seem like I’m being pushy or pressuring you,” she lowered and lifted again, “but when did you want to start talking about what happened and when to reschedule the wedding?”

I chewed on a spoonful of Cheerios quite loudly. “I dunno, anytime,” I answered. “I really mean it this time, baby, I ain’t spooked at all. I ain’t goin’ no place this time. Really.”

Lauren dropped the weight onto the floor gently. “You said that last time, too.”

“I mean it though,” I said, shaking my head, “Baby, I realized that I’m more scared of losing you than I really am of marrying you, so running away doesn’t even make sense anymore. I’ve learned my lesson. Really. I’ll marry you right this second if you want to.”

She picked up the weight with her other arm, “We can’t get married right this second, Nick, I’m in the middle of my reps,” she replied with a little sarcastic grin.

Fuck I love that grin.

“I’m just saying. Whenever, wherever,” I stared at her. “Baby, we’re meant to be together.”

“Okay Shakira,” Lauren started doing her curls again. “So… let’s talk about a date then. I know that was the hardest part the first time,” she added with a raised eyebrow.

I opened my mouth to give her an answer when I felt my phone vibrate. I pulled it out. It was Kevin. “Holy fuck, it’s Kev!” I jumped up and slid my thumb across the screen to answer it.

“Here we go again,” Lauren sighed.

“Kevin?” I asked, rushing for the stairs, almost tripping over Igby, who was asleep on the third step. “Hey, how’s it goin’?”

He was quiet for a moment. “Nick… can I come over your place?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. I paused. There was something wrong in his voice. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothin’... could you pick me up?”

“Yeah, sure,” I repeated. I paused again. There was something really wrong in his voice. “Kev… what’sa matter?”

“Just… come get me.”

“Okay, I’ll be at your house in, like, ten minutes,” I said.

“Nick… I’m not at my house.”

“Okay… where are you?”

Kevin sighed. “The Marriott on Third.”

“I’ll be right there,” I promised without asking any questions. I hung up the phone and put it down on the kitchen counter. I took a deep breath.

Lauren came out of the basement door, Nacho and Igby at her heels, running a towel over her face. “Everything okay?” she asked. She took a sip out of her water bottle.

I shook my head.

“What’s wrong?”

“He’s at a hotel again,” I said. I looked down at the tile countertop. “He needs me to go pick him up so he can come here.”

“So the peace talks aren’t going so well over there,” she said slowly.

I shook my head again.

Lauren put her water bottle down on the counter and put her arms around me. “Are you okay?”

I shook my head yet again because I felt like if I spoke I might choke on my words or else start crying and I didn’t wanna do that.

“Nick,” she said, “It’s going to be okay.”

“But they’re breaking up,” I said and sure enough my voice was croaky, like a frog’s. “I don’t want them to break up. It’s not fair. What’s the point of love if it never lasts?”

“Hey now,” she said, and she reached in and swept her hands across my cheeks, staring into my eyes. “Don’t be like that.” She shook her head, “You can’t give up like that on love. It doesn’t always make sense, but that’s only because it doesn’t follow any rules.”

I looked up at her. “You realize that if Kev and Kris break up the most healthiest relationship in alla the people we know is Brian and Leighanne?”

Lauren kissed my ears, “Give me your balls, sweetie, I’ll keep them in my purse and that way we know we’ll last for ever.”

I laughed in spite of myself, even with the tears threatening to leak out of my eyes.

“See, aren’t you glad now that love doesn’t follow rules and you can keep your balls to yourself?” she asked, “I mean, as long as you share them during playtime and all.” She winked.

“You’re dirty,” I mumbled.

“So are you.”

I pulled her tight to me.

“Besides. Maybe we’re the healthiest relationship in all the people we know,” she suggested. “Did you ever think of that?”

I shook my head.

“It could be true, you never know.” Lauren smiled, kissed my chin, and pulled out of our embrace. “Now go get your friend.”




Kevin was waiting on the curb by the front entrance of the Marriott when I pulled up. He had his duffel bag on his shoulder and his sunglasses on. He climbed in as soon as I pulled up. “Thanks,” he mumbled, leaning back into the seat of the car.

“Yeah, no problem,” I answered. I drove for three blocks before I decided that, even though it was probably not what he wanted to talk about, I needed to know. “What happened?” I asked, “Y’all were gonna talk and work on it, you said so.”

Kevin rubbed his eyes under his sunglasses. “Yeah. I said so,” he mumbled. “Nick, I didn’t talk to Kris the other night. She didn’t even know I was coming home ‘til I got here yesterday and... “ he sighed, “Let’s just say I wasn’t welcome.”

“Well did you tell her you wanted to talk and work at it?” I asked.

“God damn it, Nick, of course I did, she didn’t want anything to do with it, she made it sound like I was some kind of fuckin’ crimminal for trying to do my job. Like I was strategically trying to make her life a living hell. Like I woke up every morning for the past year being like hmm, how can I make Kristin’s life suck.” He ran his hands through his hair and bent forward, the seat belt stretching with him as he stared down at his knees. “Telling her I wanted to work it out didn’t help anything, it just got me a slap across the face. Literally.”

His voice was harsh and rough. I bit my tongue.

“I’m a fuckin’ failure,” he mumbled.

I looked over, “How do you figure that? You aren’t a failure, I mean, look at where you’re from - that little tiny town with denim jeans from Honchell’s - and look where you’ve been since, Kev. You’ve been to the top of the world and back, you’ve been on the cover of Rolling Stone man. You ain’t no failure.”

“Maybe not on a business standpoint but in a personal way, yeah, I am.” Kevin shook his head, “Nick, I can’t do anything right. I keep fucking up all the people I care about. Look at Kris, look at Caroline. Look at you.”

“What about me?”

“You never would’ve run off from the wedding if it wasn’t for me. You would’ve sucked it up and gone out there and got hitched like you were supposed to do. If I hadn’t helped you run --” Kev shook his head. “And that’s not the first time I’ve failed you. I’ve failed you a hundred times in the past, between not protecting you from yourself with the drugs and alcohol to not treating you like a real friend, not treating you like a real man. I still think of you as a little kid sometimes, Nick. And I’m still hurting you, disappointing you with this whole mess with Kristin and I.”

I flexed my jaw a couple times, trying to decide how to respond.

When I’d gone a few minutes, without thinking of anything, I stole Lauren’s line. “Love is doesn’t always make sense because it doesn’t play by the rules, Kev.”

“What?” he looked confused.

I shrugged, “I dunno, Lauren said it earlier.” I brought the car to a stop at a red light, then turned to look at Kevin. “You gotta do what makes the most sense for you, man. You aren’t disappointing me. I just want you to be happy after its over, you know?”

Kevin nodded. “Which is why I’m not going to give up just yet. I just need some time to… to come up with a plan.”

“Atta boy,” I said as the light turned green.




“How long do you think he’s going to stay?” Lauren was pulling the blankets down on the bed. I was brushing my teeth. It was almost a week later and Kevin had been sleeping on our couch downstairs since I’d gone to pick him up.

“He’s planning,” I said importantly. But it sounded less important because it came out all garbled ‘cos of the toothpaste. I spit into the sink basin and repeated, “He’s planning.”

Lauren was sliding into bed, her knees gliding over the silky sheets. I threw my tooth brush into its case and wiped my mouth quickly, and rushed to get into bed with her. “I get that he’s planning, but I mean, can’t he get an apartment or something?”

I pulled her into my arms as we both settled against the pillow, wrapping myself around her back. “I don’t think he wants to be alone,” I said.

Lauren ran her hands down my arms and tangled her fingers with mine, “But I’d like to be alone with you,” she mumbled.

“He’ll figure out what he’s gotta do soon,” I answered, kissing her ear in a little trail.

“Yeah,” she murmured. “But… Nicky…”

“Shh, don’t call me Nicky,” I whispered in her ear, then I buried my nose in her hair and took a deep breath, ready for sleep.

“Did you talk to management about the date yet?” she asked.

I opened my eyes.

“Nick?”

“Baby,” I whispered, “It’s sleepy time.”

She sighed. “You know this is exactly what happened last time, right?”

“I’ll talk to ‘em.”

“Okay.” She rubbed the space between my fingers with her own fingers. It felt good, but distracting. I tightened my fingers around hers to stop her and closed my eyes again, completely ready to just drift off to sleep. “Nick,” she whispered.

“Mmm?”

“What if his plan is to just stay here?”

“Lolo…”

“I’m serious, maybe he doesn’t have any other plans.”

“I’m sure he has other plans.”

“Well tomorrow, you should talk to Kevin, too. Try to help him along a little maybe?”

I wanted to do that even less than talking to management again.

“Yes,” I answered, ‘cos I just wanted to sleep.

“Okay.”

She got quiet. I thought maybe I’d finally answered every worry she had. I started breathing deep. I was almost asleep when she whispered, “Nick?”

“Jesus, just go to sleep,” I mumbled.

“I love you.”

“I love you too, now sleepy-sleepy.”

She giggled.

But she at least let me fall asleep.

Chapter Fifteen


Kevin

If anyone had told me I’d have been staying at Nick’s place a week or more, I never would’ve believed it. I thought for sure that either Kristin would reconsider and call me or I’d think of some perfect thing to say or do to show my love for her and I’d be back in the house within a day or two. But here it was, going on Day Eight at Fort Carter and I was no closer to my great eureka moment than I’d been when he’d picked me up in front of the Marriott. And it didn’t feel like it’d been a week since I’d been refused entry to my own home, either. Then again, I’m not sure what anything really felt like. I just felt numb. And lost. Like Robinson Crusoe, endlessly floating with the wreckage, waiting for a glimpse of land… I was supposed to be planning a way to get Kristin back, but honestly all I wanted to do was sleep and forget.

I could tell I was starting to overstay my welcome, though.

The morning of the great “aha moment”, I was sitting at the dining room table with Nick and we were eating some eggs I’d scrambled and Lauren was shooting him looks while she tied the laces on her gym sneakers. Nick was leaning down in his chair, his back curved along the seat and back of it, looking green around the gills as he picked at his eggs, actively not meeting Lauren’s eye.

I had a feeling he’d been given the urgent assignment to talk to me.

And I couldn’t blame either of them for feeling like they were - her for wanting me out or him for being uncomfortable about asking - because I’d been there. There’d been a ton of times back in the day when Nick had been a little too drunk and ended up calling me for a ride and smashed on my couch for days at a time and Kris would hiss in my ear that it was time for Nick to go and it would be something I’d been thinking for some time but hadn’t had the balls to say yet. It’d always been nice to have Kristin to blame, though, when I finally brought it up to Nick.

The thought of her stung.

Lauren stood up. “Nick, don’t forget to talk to bring up the new wedding date when you meet with management today… and stuff,” she said pointedly as she headed for the door.

Nick’s already sullen face sank even more. “I won’t forget,” he mumbled like a school boy being forced to greet the teacher good morning.

Lauren left.

When the front door closed, I turned to Nick. “The faster you ask me, the less awkward it’ll be,” I told him.

Nick’s face turned red. He stared down at the eggs, suddenly seemingly enamoured with them, pushing them around with his fork as he spoke, “Lauren just wants to know like how long you’re gonna stay,” he mumbled. He looked up, dropping the fork, a slightly panicked look on his face, and added, “But I mean it’s not like you’re not welcome to stay or nothin’ either, just we was wondering and stuff and… yanno… Just… like… maybe...yanno… a estimate, maybe. Like a… a status update.” He looked miserable.

If I was any more of a bastard, then I would’ve played with him a little bit.

As it was, I was too tired to mess with his head, though.

“I don’t know,” I said. I sighed and put my fork down. “I’m not getting much thinkin’ done,” I admitted. “There’s got to be something I can do to … to fix it. But I don’t know what. And I don’t know what to do until I think of it.” I shook my head at my plate.

“Whenever’s fine man,” Nick practically whispered the words.

“Look, I know it’s important for y’all to have some alone time,” I said. “You’re trying to recover from a really hard blow to the relationship. I’m amazed she’s taken it as well as she has.”

Nick nodded.

“I just wish I had the words to -boom- make my relationship right, too. I wish there was like a magic word. Abracadabra.”

“Dawg, you’re tellin’ me,” Nick whined, suddenly animated. He sat up, “I fucked up last time gettin’ a date settled, yanno, so now she’s like practically acting like if I can’t get a date settled on today then like I’ma run off again or somethin’ and I dunno how Lori’s gonna take that. She’s gonna flip the fuck out. She went through all kinds of circus act shit to get me that first date.” Nick shook his head. “And she’s gonna push the whole prenup thing like way more now. I’m scared. Lauren’s gonna fuckin’ neuter me if I don’t get this worked out, man.”

I was still surprised she hadn’t neutered him anyways for running off. I felt… well, not jealous, but kind of, I guess. I couldn’t believe that Nick and Lauren had managed to weather a storm as large as all that but Kristin and I weren’t even able to try to talk it out. I guess the word was impressed. I hadn’t forseen Nick ever having a relationship that strong.

I guess that’s just another way I still thought of him as a little kid.

“It’s gonna be tough,” Nick was saying, breaking into my thoughts, “Talkin’ to management about all this. You know Jack’s pissed because of the way TMZ is going nuts and then me just dropping off the radar to go to Kentucky? That’s what the meeting’s all about. The second they heard I was back in LA, they pounced. Pretty sure I’m in hot water without trying ot take command and tell ‘em I’m going for round two on the wedding date thing. So… yeah, abracadabra, like you said, I wish I had magic words for that.”

“Hmm,” I mused, rubbing my chin. Taking control of meetings was my specialty after… “Well.. That I just might have some magic words for.”




The management team looked surprised when I walked in with Nick a couple hours later. JSo’s brows knit together and she turned to the papers in front of her, shuffling quickly, “Kevin… this… this isn’t a BSB meeting,” she said, turning to look down the line at Lori, who shook her head.

“I know,” I said, “I’m here to help Nick out.”

Jen looked at him, then back to Lori, then back to me. “Well, I mean, okay. Help him out with what?”

“I, uh, need to talk to y’all about… about re- re-scheduling my wedding,” Nick stammered.

Lori’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re kidding me.”

Nick shook his head.

“Right now, press is a nightmare, y’all should wait ‘til the media calms down over the first mess you made,” intoned Jack.

Nick’s face was slack. He stared at the table.

“They don’t want to wait,” I responded. “What happened at the first wedding was horrible, but it wasn’t because he doesn’t love her and it wasn’t because of anything other than just cold feet with a bad influence there to help him run away.”

“But wasn’t it you that --” Jen started to ask and I nodded, cutting her off.

“Yeah, I’m the bad influence,” I answered.

Nick studied his fingernails.

“When did y’all want to get married?” I asked Nick.

He looked like I’d just stuck a spotlight on him at the worst possible second. “Wheneverisfinebutsoonwithinthemonthortwo,” he said in one breath without looking up.

“Ok, so they’re open within the next two months,” I translated. I looked around at the management team. “He needs one week.”

They instantly started giving me reasons why not. I sat and let them talk. Nick sank lower and lower in his chair the more they talked, Jack practically shouting that the news was gonna eat this shit alive if he did this right now, and Lori yapping like one of them teeny tiny dogs about the timing being even worse now than it’d been before while Jen was listing off BSB events coming up within the next couple months.

Finally I cleared my throat. “I didn’t ask y’all whether he could take a break. I asked y’all to look at your schedules and find a date that best works that you will be working around because he is taking the break for this wedding.” I took a deep breath, “Y’all work for him, not vice versa, and this is not optional. Period.

Nick looked up at me, eyes kind of wide, and then, encouraged by my confidence, he added, “Yeah, it’s … not optional.”

Lori looked pissed, Jack flabbergasted, and Jen… well Jen was kinda used to me taking control like this. She just looked tired.

I’d done it a hundred times.

Harry, Nick’s agent, who’d been quiet until then said, “Okay so let’s make this work. Nick wants a second stab at the wedding guys, so we give it to him. Lori, Jen? Find a date. Jack, any news is at least news. We work for Nick, not vice versa, so… let’s make it work.”




“Fucking hell dude, you’re like, like, like… dude… Kevin, you got balls of steel,” Nick was hooting as we walked from the Starbucks on the street level back to his car. He mimicked punching the air, “Gave’em the ol’ one - two, told’em who’s boss. Literally.” Nick laughed, grinning up at the sky, “Shit, that was fucking awesome man. Fucking awesome.” He shook his head as he got into the car.

I shrugged, “You gotta just stand up to them. That’s all.”

“That is so much easier said than done, though, man,” he said, shaking his head. “I get in there and I dunno I just feel so stupid, like a little kid trying to run a show and they sound so full of authority and stuff, it just feels like there ain’t nothin’ intelligent I could say.”

“You got this, Nick,” I told him, “You’re a man. You gotta take charge like one. You can’t let them walk all over you. You are the commodity. You are the boss. Without you, then they have nothing to represent. Ultimately, if you don’t show up, they’re the ones that are screwed.”

“True,” Nick said quietly.

“Damn straight it’s true,” I said, nodding, “They need to remember that now and then. They work for you. Just like I told’em.”

“Dude, Lauren’s gonna be so happy,” Nick said, turning the car on.

I sighed as I buckled in and Nick pulled away from the curb, “Just wish I could take control of the Kristin situation as easy as I did that,” I commented. I pictured myself just walking into the house and being like no, we are married and we are going to work on this, period, this is not optional. But I’d basically tried that the day we got back from Kentucky and that had definitely not worked out like I’d imagined it would.

Nothing worth having is easy, I thought. Hadn’t Caroline said that, too?

Nick sipped his coffee, “I mean, you will eventually, Kev. You just gotta put your thinkin’ cap on ‘cos eventually you’re gonna find a way back to her heart, and then y’all are gonna be all good.”

“Wait.. wait a second.” A light bulb had flicked on in my head. “Wait. Say that again.”

“...Uh.. y’all are gonna be all good?”

“No the thing before that.”

“Uh… eventually you’re gonna find a way back to her heart?”

“Back to her heart,” I mumbled. “That’s it.”

A long time ago, back during the Lou Pearlman years, when I’d been constantly on the road, constantly broke, constantly running here there and everywhere with no pay off, Kristin and I had a fight about whether Backstreet Boys was worth the bullshit that Lou was putting us through. Kristin was one of the first people to see what a jackass Lou was being towards us, but I was still blind to it. No, I’d tell her, that’s just how the business goes, and she’d argue with me for hours, screaming that I was being used and I was stupid for letting him waste me away the way he was doing. You’re making him rich, Kristin had screamed one day. And when Brian was sick and Lou wasn’t willing to help out, she’d gotten even madder. Like Leighanne, who’d given Brian an ultimatum of get treated or get another girlfriend, Kristin had come to me and made one of similar standards. Make your relationship with Lou right or make a new relationship because she wasn’t gonna stick around to watch everything I’d worked so hard for fall apart because of Lou failing to keep up his end of a fair contract.

We’d had a blowout of unbelievable proportions and I’d been sure that it was over. Not because I wanted it to be over, but because she wouldn’t talk to me. It was a lot like it was now between Kris and I. And out of that wreckage, in the lowest hours, when I’d wanted nothing more than to find a way to fix it, I’d written the song Back to Your Heart with Gary Baker. And when I’d sung it to her, she’d given me a second chance.

And Lord almighty if a second chance wasn’t what I needed right about now.

If music had saved us then, it could save us again.

“What’s it?” Nick asked, confused.

“Nick, I gotta do a ‘Back to Your Heart’ again. I gotta write her a new song.”

“Hey that’s a cool idea,” Nick said, grinning. “Magic words.”

“Yeah,” I mumbled, “Magic words.”




When we got back to Nick’s place, I called all my buddies that were my usual suspects for co-writing, but most of them were busy. It was frustrating a hell, finally knowing what I needed to do, so certain that this song idea was gonna work, and not being able to find anyone who could give me a hand. I mean I could’ve just done it myself, or had Nick help me for that matter, but it was more important than that. I needed a professional, someone who could help me get just the right words out, words that could mend the broken pieces.

“You should call Andrew,” Nick said. “Andrew’s always interested in doin’ stuff. Y’all could even use my home studio in Nashville if you wanted. You could stay there.” Nick said, hewas watching a football game, his feet up on the back of the couch, Mork from Ork style, Nacho asleep across his chest.

It was a pretty ideal offer. Free studio time, free place to stay. Nashville was one of my favorite cities in the world because it felt like home and there were so many good memories within it’s limits. There was a great vibe there. And a great vibe is what I needed.

I nodded, “That could work… that could work…”

So I called Andrew Fromm and the next thing I knew it was all set up for the following Tuesday to meet up in Nashville and get to writing a musical apology that would sew my family back together. I’m not going to lie, I had extremely high expectations and hopes for the song, it had to be completely perfect because I was going to gamble the most important things in my life on it. But I had confidence. If I wrote the words that described the stuff I felt, then there was no way in hell that Kristin could ignore it, no way she wouldn’t understand exactly how I felt and know that we had to give our love a second shot. We had to. Like we owed it to the universe to.

I booked a flight to Kentucky for the next morning, figuring I’d head down home to get out of Nick and Lauren’s way and maybe just stay at my momma’s house for a couple nights then drive down to Nashville. I had promised her I’d come back soon and all.

And yes, part of me kind of hoped that I might bump into Caroline while I was there.

It was because I hadn’t gotten to say bye to her before, I told myself.

But the long of short of it all was that this song idea just had to work.

It had to because I wasn’t sure what else would.

Chapter Sixteen


Nick

I pulled up to the departures curb the next morning with Kevin in the passenger seat. We were moving slowly forward, closer and closer to the drop off. “You’re sure you don’t wanna stay with us and fly out Monday, cos… that’s ok,” I said. I felt bad he felt like he needed to go so fast. I mean, Lauren was probably at home lighting candles and throwing rose petals on the bed as I spoke, but I needed to make sure Kev knew that I wasn’t throwing him out or anything, too.

“I know,” Kev nodded. “I told my mother I’d come back soon, I didn’t get to see much of her while we were there, and it’ll give me a couple days to get a head start on Andrew.” He smiled.

I took a deep breath, “Well, whatever you do, don’t let that bastard tell you he’s bad at Call of Duty. He’ll get you gambling and then turn on his bad ass skills and whoop you good and walk with all the cash.” I’d learned this the hard way.

“I barely even know what Call of Duty is, Nick,” Kevin said.

“I’m just saying.”

We were next up to the drop off.

“Lemme know how it goes,” I said. “I’d love to hear it if you need someone to listen or whatever before you send it to her.”

“Sure,” Kevin agreed.

“Say hi to everyone. Y’know. Your mom. Andrew. Caroline, if you see her.”

We rolled up to the drop off. “Yeah, I will. And thanks again.” He waved my Nashville house key at me. “Go home and be with your fiance.” Kevin reached around in the back for the duffel bag. He leaned back out and patted the roof of my car twice, like he was releasing a cab. “See ya buddy,” he said.

I watched as he walked toward the automatic doors ‘til the car behind me honked.

I hoped the song thing worked for him.




Lauren was sitting in an overstuffed chair in the den, reading a cookbook, her glasses on, a pen clenched between her teeth and a notebook balanced precariously on the arm of the chair beside her. I snuck up behind the chair and reached around her, handing her one of our old wedding invitations. “What’s this?” she asked, letting the pen fall onto her chest.

“Open it,” I answered.

She tilted her head back to grin at me, then turned back to the invitation, opening it slowly. Inside the text was a mess, scribbled out bits here and there. “Nick Carter and Lauren Kitt are getting married!” the top of the card boasted, and just below that I’d added “(for real this time!)” I’d crossed out the old date and written in the new. She stared at it for a long moment, then she rolled to look at me, kneeling in the chair, the cookbook, and the pen, falling to the floor, making Igby, who’d been sleeping in front of it apparently, run off.

“Nick?” she asked, eyeing me carefully as she faced me, “Did you talk to Lori?”

I nodded.

“So this is for real?” she asked, waving the invitation at me, “This isn’t another box truck with a date that’s gonna get pulled away from me, right?”

I took her glasses off her face and put them on my own, “If you think that card’s a box truck, you might need some new glasses. Shit baby, it’s blurry in here.”

Lauren let out a scream and launched herself over the back of the chair on me, knocking me to the floor with a thump, landing on top of me.

“I love you Mr. Carter,” she said, staring down at me when she’d finished kissing me and freaking out.

I smiled, “I love you too,” I answered, staring back up at her.

“Now we gotta replan everything,” she said. I’d leaned up been about to kiss her, but the realization had made her sit up and roll off me, so she was sitting on the floor beside me.

“Why replan? Just we’ll do what we did before,” I said. I sat up, too and I put my hands on her shoulders and leaned over to kiss her, but she turned her head, biting her lip thoughtfully just before my lips made contact.

“Shit there’s so much to do,” she mumbled.

I tapped her shoulder.

“What?” she asked, looking at me.

“I’ma need you to focus,” I said with a smirk.

Lauren grinned. “Oh… using my own words against me now, Cassanova?”

I nodded. “Now c’mon, get back on top of me ‘cos I got plans.”

“Plans?” She asked, straddling me as I laid down. “Oh, now you have plans, do you?” She ran her palms over my chest. “We never even got to do all of my plans, Mr. Distracted By Kevin.”

“Then we’ll do your plans,” I said, “As long as we’re doing somebody’s plans, I’m happy.”

“I have a feeling we had similar plans,” she agreed.




We were a tangled knot of limbs. At some point we’d made it up to the bedroom, though we were in it upside down, under the covers like a tent, our feet up on the pillows. I grabbed hold of the blankets and tugged them out of the grip of the mattress, freeing our heads. The fresh oxygen out from underneath the blankets felt sharp in my lungs and Lauren breathed deeply, laughing. “I don’t remember feeling suffocated in tents when I was a kid,” she said.

“Me either. Maybe kids are equipped with super lung capacity,” I suggested.

“Or maybe it’s something to do with the higher thread count we undoubtedly have now.”

“Yeah I doubt my Star Wars sheets had a 900 thread count,” I agreed.

“Aw, you had Star Wars sheets,” Lauren laughed, “You’re such a nerd.”

I snuggled closer, running my hand over her forehead to push her hair back, my hand drifting through her hair. I stared into those beautiful eyes of hers. To me, she looked like an angel. I always felt humbled when I stared into her eyes. Like I didn’t deserve her. And after everything I’d done, I probably didn’t. “Lo?”

She was still laughing at my Star Wars sheets. “Yeah?” The smile on her face couldda lit up the whole world if we had a power shortage, I was sure of it.

“Why’d you forgive me so easy, when I didn’t really deserve it? Even Kevin said that running away like that was the point of no return. And yet when I called you took me right back. Why?”

Lauren’s smile didn’t fade, though it warmed as she sobered, and she cupped my cheek with her hand, “Because I love you.”

“No,” I said, “Besides that. ‘Cos, I mean, you could’ve got over me.”

Lauren shook her head. “Not ever.”

“Never?”

Lauren was still shaking her head.

“I wouldn’t have got over you, either,” I said.

“That’s how it is when you’ve found the One Person that’s made for you, Nick, you just love’em no matter what they do and you forgive them quick because it’s better that way. You get back to the good stuff faster.” She ran her thumb across my cheek. “Besides,” she added, and her smile clouded, “It wasn’t entirely your fault.”

“How do you figure?” I asked.

Lauren sighed, “I put so much pressure on you. Between getting a date and my mission to domesticate you, I don’t know. I was talking to Larry about it. I kind of stopped being me and started being like Bridezilla me and, looking back, after you left I thought maybe I’d scared you away.”

“I was scared,” I said, “But it was stupid, I was scared of us becoming my parents.”

“We’re not gonna be your parents, baby,” Lauren said. “And if I ever get to be anything like your mom, I want you to take me to the shooting range and put me out of my misery,” she laughed.

“I missed you so much like instantly,” I said. “You shouldda felt it in my heart. I was laying on the bed in the hotel that night and alls I could think about was how nice a hug from you would’ve been.”

“I missed you, too,” she replied. “But I promise no bridezilla this time. And you promise no running off this time. We’re going to make it to that damn altar, Nick. And we’re going to have a great life together. I hope when we’re a hundred we’re still laying in bed like this making sex forts in our 900 count sheets.”

“That sounds like a fun role play,” I snickered.

Lauren laughed, “No, we aren’t role playing old us having sex.”

“But we could do everything extra slooowwwwly,” I wiggled my eyebrows suggestively.

“Sounds a lot like the time we role played slow motion land,” she pointed out.

“Oohh...duuuude… sllloooow mmmoootionn lllaaaand waaas kick aaass…” I said, slowly, “I… got too taaaalk liiiike Keeeevinnn.”

Lauren laughed, “Oh my God. Slow motion land can never happen again. I’ll always think you’re actually role playing that you’re Kevin now.”

“Ew,” I made a face, “No.”

“You know, an inordinate amount of our sexual endeavours have you thinking about Kevin lately.” She raised an eyebrow.

I laughed. “You know it’s just ‘cos I’m worried ‘bout him.”

“I know, sweetie, I’m just teasing you.”

I took a deep breath. “Do you think his idea with the song will work?”

Lauren shrugged, “I don’t know. For his sake, I hope it does. But…” she paused, thought about whatever it was she was about to say, then shook her head.

“But what?” I asked ‘cos now I had to know.

“Nevermind,” she said.

“C’mon, tell me,” I pleaded.

Lauren hesitated. “Well I was going to say that… maybe if it doesn’t… he’d do better to… to move on.”

“Move on? From Kristin?”

Lauren bit her lower lip. “I have a confession.”

“What?”

“Kris and I have been talking.”

I blinked at her, sitting up slowly, “What?”

“We’ve been talking. Not really long, just since the wedding. When you guys left, I was out on the street and the paparazzi were all over the place, like a swarm, and I was trying to get back inside, but they kept screaming questions at me - all these stupid questions, and I was just trying not to cry in front of them anymore than I already had. I was already feeling guilty and empty and all these things and they were making me angry. Like Hulk angry.”

“It’s bad when you’re Hulk angry,” I intoned.

Lauren nodded, and continued, “But Kristin and Larry came out of the church together and they helped me get inside. And inside it was all chaos, too, so they pulled me out to this room… I’m guessing it’s where you guys were ‘cos there were ties and half finished glasses of scotch everywhere. And they set me down and Larry went to go get me some water and Kristin knelt down in front of me and she was just trying to make it all better, you know? Anyway, she helped me out of the dress and told me to call her later if I needed to talk. And I did, so we talked for hours, Nick.”

“About what an asshole I am?”

Lauren laughed, “About what an asshole all men are, actually. Which is when she told me what was happening between her and Kevin.”

“But you sounded surprised when I told you on the phone.”

“I think all I said was they split up in sympathy,” Lauren said, “I’m not gonna win an Emmy or anything.”

“So what’d she say?”

“I think she wants a divorce, Nick,” Lauren said gently. “I think the song might be a nice gesture and maybe it’ll make her think twice, but… I don’t know if it’ll work. It might be too little, too late, you know?”

I couldn’t picture Kevin and Kristin divorced. It seemed anticlimatic, them just breaking up, like we’d been through all this long drawn out story for nothing but broken pieces in the end. It was hardly the fairy tale ending that I now liked to believe in. The fairy tale ending would be the song touching the ears of it’s intended and everything turning out alright in the end, everyone in the arms of their beloved.

“She’s… seeing someone,” Lauren said.

“Say what?”

Lauren blushed, “Not like that. I don’t think. It’s just there’s this guy she knew in highschool, or college or something, who added her on Facebook and he’s a psychologist. She’s like his patient, nothing more, and he gave her a prescription, that’s why she’s doing better now.”

“Well… well maybe since she’s doing better, she’ll be able to understand how much Kev wants to fix it between them,” I suggested.

“Maybe,” Lauren replied.

“Cos he does,” I added, nodding. “He really does.”

Lauren nodded, “I believe you, Nick,” she laughed, “I’m not the one you have to convince of that.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

But her words pinged a realization in me… started a ball rolling through my mind. Maybe I could find a way to help Kevin, to kind of prepare the landing pad for him to swoop in with his song. Maybe if I could convince Kristin that he really wanted to fix things then when he gave the song to her she’d be all ready to receive it just the way he needed her to and she’d run into his arms just the way he was imagining.

Maybe the fate of the gods rested in my hands, I thought dramatically.

I could do this.

I would do this.

The fairy tale ending would happen after all and they’d owe it to me, but I’d be modest, I told myself, I’d never tell anyone that it was me that they owed it all to.

“We should order some food,” Lauren suggested, breaking into my thoughts.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“I’ll go get the menus,” she laughed and wiggled out from under the blankets.

I sat up as she left the room. When I heard her feet on the stairs, I crawled across the bed and grabbed our cell phones from the night stand. Kevin had said that Kristin had changed her number but Lauren apparently would have the new one, since they’d been talking and everything, so I scrolled through Lauren’s contacts ‘til I found it and added it to my own phone.

I’d call her later, I thought as I put the phones back where they’d been, careful to put them back exactly, because I had a feeling Lauren wouldn’t entirely approve of this plan I was hatching. But I’d call her later and I’d tell her about how much Kev loved her and beg her to just hear him out and to let me give him her new phone number and she’d be impressed and tell me to give him the number and he’d call her with his song and it would be like magic had happened.

Abracadabra.

Lauren came back just as I was settling back into position under the sheets again. As she laid the menus all out on the bed, I looked at the phones, feeling quite good about myself and the plan.




“Well, I made it to my momma’s place,” Kevin said later that night when he called. Lauren and I were laying on the couch, Ghostbusters 2 on TV, an empty pizza box laying on the coffee table, a couple crusts we’d ripped to give to the dogs in there after they’d rejected them. “The traffic in Louisville was a bitch.”

“I’m glad you made it okay,” I said as Lauren got up and started picking up the box while I talked.

“Did you tell Lauren about the date?”

“Yeah, I gave her the modified invitation,” I said, grinning up at her and winking. She winked back and left the room, carrying the box with her. “You start writing the next great love song?”

“I scratched some notes on the plane, but not a lot. It’s really hard getting everything I feel about it into words, you know?” Kevin sighed, “It’s complicated. There’s a lot going on in there, I guess.”

“You’ll get it,” I replied. I grinned to myself, thinking of my plan to help. “You staying at your mother’s or the camp?” I asked.

“Momma’s,” Kevin answered. “I might swing by the camp and see how Caroline’s doing, though.”

“Well, say hi to her if you do,” I told him.

“I will.”

Lauren came back and settled herself back beside me on the couch.

“Hey, and invite her to the wedding, too,” I said, “She was there for me when I wasn’t sure Lauren would wanna hear from me ever again, you know, and she told me to try and... I feel like she needs to be there.”

Lauren looked over, one eyebrow raised.

Kevin’s voice was low, “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

“Thanks.”

“Anyways, I better get going. It’s late here. Y’all have a good night, I’ll call ya when I get to your place in Nashville.”

“A’ight. Peace, man.” I hung up the phone and tossed my cell onto the coffee table.

“Who are you inviting to the wedding?” Lauren asked, snuggling into me.

“Caroline,” I answered.

Lauren took a moment to think. “The girl from the camp?” she asked, “The one you said was Kevin’s ex?”

“Yeah,” I answered, “She and I talked about you a lot and stuff while I was there. She’s real nice, you’ll like her.”

Lauren hummed, “Well that will be interesting.”

“What will?”

“Oh… nothing.”

“No what’s interesting?” I pleaded ‘cos now I had to know.

Lauren laughed, “You can’t let anything go can you?”

I shook my head.

“I think you need to practice letting things go,” she suggested with a smirk.

“But bayyyybeeeee, I can’t, I can’t let it go,” I whimpered. "I ain't Elsa."

Lauren laughed, “You can let it go because it doesn’t matter,” she said quietly.

“But what’s it?”

Lauren smiled, “Sweetie… it just is.”

Chapter Seventeen


Kevin

I tucked in my shirt. Then I untucked it. Retucked it. Untucked. Sighed and retucked it again as I trotted down the stairs to my momma’s kitchen. I could smell breakfast sausage and pancakes and my stomach growled.

The moment I sat down, she put a plate in front of me and poured maple syrup on there generously ‘til I said stop. Momma joined me after a couple moments of fixin’ her own plate at the counter. I ate hungrily. There ain’t nothin’ like my momma’s home cookin’ in the morning.

We made small talk mostly while we ate. I wanted the keys to the camp again, but for some reason I felt weird asking for them, like I needed a reason or an excuse or something. I didn’t know why I felt like that. After all, going to visit a friend to apologize for not saying good bye last time you were there, that wasn’t all that strange, right? Yet…

“Momma,” I said as we were washing the dishes after, side by side at the sink, her hands buried in the hot soapy water while I dried with an old blue dish cloth. “Last week when Nick and I were here, Nick left some clothes up at the camp and I was going to go up and get them for him. Do you think I could have the keys?”

Momma stared into the soap bubbles for a moment. “Of course,” she replied.

“Thanks, Nick’ll appreciate it.”

She rinsed the soap off her hands and wiped them on her apron when we were done. I dried the last of the dishes while she went to get the keys, and when she came back she handed them to me. “The caretaker will be on the property, too, just so you know in case y’all run into each other,” she said.

I nodded.




There was butterflies in my stomach as I drove up the mountain, past the sign, and up to the house. The sun was out, the sky blue, beautiful day, and I drove up, parking in the driveway. I pushed the car door open and shielded my eyes, looking out toward the horses, but I didn’t see her out there anywhere.

Well, if I was gonna make an excuse, the least I could do was follow through with that part before I went off searching everywhere for Caroline. So I went up and unlocked the front door, headed for the laundry room. The machine was running, but Nick’s “shittified” jeans and t-shirt were still folded on top of the dryer. I picked them up and carried them back out to the car, noticing there were some dishes in the sink and mail on the counter. Uncharacteristic from what I’d seen of Caroline’s cleaning habits. I felt bad, maybe she’d been so lonely since we’d left that she hadn’t bothered cleaning.

I tossed Nick’s clothes into the car and headed for the barn.

“Caroline?” I called as I pulled the door open. Inside, there were the horses in their stalls. I walked over and ran my hand along the side of the horses’ faces. “Hey girls,” I said, wondering where Caroline was at, if she wasn’t out with the horses.

“Excuse me. This is private property. What you’re doin’ is called trespassin’ and --” I turned at the sound of the voice. Michael Spornacki was standing in the doorway of the barn, looking surprised. “Well I guess it ain’t trespassing for you,” he said as he lumbered to a stop. “This time,” he added.

“Sorry ya can’t arrest me for it today,” I replied.

Michael walked into the barn. “She didn’t mention you’d be coming by.”

“Well she didn’t know I was,” I answered.

“Well you had to have got the key from her,” he said.

I paused. “I got the key from my momma,” I answered, confused.

“Who’d you think I was talkin’ about?” Michael asked.

“Caroline?” I asked.

He snorted, “You think she willingly hired me to watch over the horses while she’s gone, please man. Your momma done that.”

I blinked back confusion, “I’m sorry. What?”

“Your momma, she hired me to take care of the camp up here while Caroline’s away this weekend,” he said. “But if you’re going to be up here I don’t much understand why. Or else has Callie-fornie-a made it so you don’t remember how to tend a horse?”

“Where’s Caroline?” I asked, deciding to ignore the jab. I realized that her car hadn’t been in the driveway, and felt kind of like a dumbass. It was hard to miss a bright orange Kia Soul, I should’ve known she wasn’t here. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

“Up in the city, getting her certificate,” he said. “She only had a couple tests she had to take on site left to do. Should be back Monday afternoon.”

“She got the certificate?” I asked, a feeling of pride swelling up in me.

“She done had it a long time ago, technically. She finished the course back almost two years now,” Michael replied, “Just was puttin’ off them tests is all. She finally went for’em.”

I wondered why she’d put off taking the tests so long. Wondered what made her go now for them. Why she hadn’t told me she’d completed the course she’d talked so animatedly about when we were talking that night.

“So how long you stayin’ for?” Michael asked.

I shook my head, “I was just leaving,” I answered, and I headed back to the car. Michael’s cruiser was parked beside me in the spot where Caroline’s Kia had sat nearly the whole time we’d been here before. I felt a new wave of stupid wash over me. Why the hell hadn’t I noticed it missing before?

Once again, my momma had failed to mention a key piece of information about the caretaker, I thought, as I backed out onto the road by the sign.

I drove back down the mountain, thinking about Caroline and her therapist certificate and everything she’d told me about her plans for the camp. Tears came to my eyes as I reached the bottom and came to a stop at the sign. She’d worked hard for years and achieved a dream, right here in lil ol’ Irvine, Kentucky. Despite everything she’d been through, she’d done it. And I couldn’t have been more proud. She deserved it.

“Michael Spornacki, momma?” I said as I tossed the keys onto the table a few minutes later. She was sitting there, reading a Woman’s Day magazine with Dr. Oz on the cover, a glass of sweet tea in a mason jar beside her.

“He’s a strong boy,” she commented, “Figured he could handle them horses okay.” She sipped her sweet tea like she was innocent.

“Couldn’t have mentioned it wasn’t Caroline up there when ya gave me the key?” I asked.

“I thought you was goin’ up there for Nick’s clothes?” she asked. “If I’d have known you was goin’ up there for Caroline then I would’ve mentioned it, of course.”

I put Nick’s folded clothes on the table.

She looked over the top of her magazine at them. “Well, see, then, you got what you went after.” She smiled and turned back to the article.

“She got her certificate?” I asked.

Momma lowered the magazine to the table. “Yes,” she answered, “Isn’t that marvelous?”

I nodded.

“Pity she can’t open the camp, though,” she said, returning to the magazine.

I reached over and lowered it again. Momma was smirking ever so slightly, the corners of her jowls trembling with humor.

“Why can’t she open it?”

“Can’t afford it immediately,” Momma replied, “Applications for 501c.3 costs money, you know, and there’s the matter of all the things she’ll need designed, you know, all them flyers and brochures and things to mail out and, of course, she’ll need a sign for the property.”

I stared at her.

“Of course,” Momma cleared her throat, “It would bring an awful lot of revenue to the camp in general, might be a wise investment for the, ahem, owner.” She looked up at me.

“Momma,” I said, “You love to meddle.”

“I don’t meddle,” she argued, “I ain’t meddled a day in my life. I merely make suggestions.” She shook the magazine out of my hands. “Now give me back my readin’. I need to find out what this month’s superfruit is. That Dr. Oz is a fox.”

I groaned and turned away. I hesitated. “Momma?”

“Hmm?” she asked from behind the magazine.

“I’m gonna hold onto the keys for the camp a couple days,” I said.

“As long as you need them, dear,” she answered.




I was supposed to be working on the song, but I’d have all kinds of time with Andrew in Nashville starting Tuesday to do that. This all had to be done before Monday afternoon if I was going to surprise Caroline right with it. And she deserved the surprise. I’d work on the song Monday night, I told myself, and besides, this would give me some time to think about it, get some words flowing around in my head.

That’s what I told myself as I spent the weekend getting estimates on graphic design work and a print shop, calling the city hall and inquiring about the 501c.3 process, and gettin’ a carpenter to do an express job on a new addition for the sign at the camp.

Monday morning, I drove up and came to a stop beside the sign and got out, toting my father’s old tool box I’d found in Momma’s garage collecting dust. I knelt down under the sign and used his old screw driver to turn two eye hooks into the bottom of the sign and hung up the new addition from three short chain links. I backed up to look at it.

Down Home Equine Therapy Camp.

I nodded and put the tools back in the car, and drove on up the rest of the way to the driveway. This time, the Kia’s absence was quite noticeable.

Seriously, how had I not noticed it missing before? I wondered.

I jogged up the steps and into the house and walked out to the kitchen. Michael had left a pretty good collection of cups in the sink, and Caroline’s mail was in a messy pile on the counter. I neatened it up, and cleaned out the sink, then took out the bottle of champagne I’d bought for her, the blue and white ribbons around the neck of the bottle, and pulled out a couple glasses from the cupboard, which I set next to it, and I leaned the envelope containing the money for her 501c.3 and the graphic design estimates against the bottle.

Congratulations, I’d written on the front of it.




I didn’t wait for her to come home.

I’d planned to originally, but as I sat there, waiting, I’d paced around the house, practically wearing grooves in the wood floor, and one of the times I’d walked out to the kitchen and seen the champagne and the envelope and everything I’d really seen the envelope. And I’d felt dizzy.

I wasn’t in Kentucky to see Caroline and make all her dreams come true, that wasn’t the point. And despite what I’d told myself all weekend, I was losing focus on what I had come for. I’d come to work on a song to get my wife back. And instead I was inching dangerously closer and closer to a precipice that could make me lose her forever.

I passed the Kia on the way down the mountain. But it was dark and the lights kept me from seeing her face. Mercifully, they probably kept her from seeing mine, too, I hoped.

I drove quickly to my momma’s house. “I’m going to Nashville tonight,” I told her as I went by. “Now.” I went up to the spare bedroom and got my duffel bag, which I’d never fully unpacked. I was thankful for it. It let me get out of there fast. And my heart was ready to explode. I couldn’t believe I’d let myself lose sight, for even a second, of the real reason I was down home to begin with.

“What about Caroline?” Momma asked. “All that work, don’t you wanna see Caroline’s reaction?”

I shook my head, “Momma, I done enough for her.”

“It’s late to be drivin’ to Nashville,” she said.

“Momma, I’ve driven to Nashville later than this from here,” I said.

“But Kevin --”

“Momma, I’m going to Nashville. I need to get a song written, I told you that’s why I was comin’ down, I have studio time with Andrew Fromm. You know him. He wrote that song that Newsboys guy you listen to sang. Peter Furler. Reach. You know that song, momma. Andrew Fromm wrote that. I gotta go write with him in Nashville. It’s a very important meeting.”

“I do like that song,” she admitted. “He’s a talented writer it sounds.”

“Yeah, that’s why I gotta go to Nashville now so I can meet him early tomorrow.”

“But --”

“Momma, please, relax I’ll be okay. I just have to go tonight,” I said.

I felt like I was hustling her.

I hadn’t told her why I needed to write the song, hadn’t told her what was going on with Kris and I. And I couldn’t tell her, either. I couldn’t tell her that I was losing sight of the mission of winning Kristin back by getting too far into the mission of surprising Caroline. I couldn’t explain why I needed to go before I saw Caroline.

I couldn’t even explain that to myself.

And I knew that once Caroline got home, saw the sign, opened that envelope, she’d be on her way here. Because she’d know then that the car she’d passed had been me and that this was the only logical place I’d go.

I had to leave before she got there.

“I’ll call you when I get to Nashville,” I said, pressing the keys to the camp into my momma’s hands.

She didn’t look pleased, but she leaned up on her tip-toes to give me a kiss on the cheek. “You drive carefully,” she said, “You know how them city folk drive, like they ain’t got enough time on their hands.” She shook her head, suddenly distracted by the thought of all those drivers out there, “Like gettin’ a place ten minutes later’s the equivalent of the apocalypse,” she added.

“I know, momma, they drive like maniacs,” I said and I kissed her forehead. I hurried out to the car after we’d said goodbye and I drove like one of them maniacs until I got out of the Irvine town limits, where I let myself breathe a little bit because here, on the road, I would finally be able to focus on the song I needed to write, the words I needed to say to get back to Caroline’s heart.

Kristin’s heart.

I meant Kristin’s heart.

Shit, I thought. And my hands shook a little.

I reached for the radio knob.

”She was like ‘Oh my God this is my song, I’ve been listenin’ to the radio all night long Sittin’ ‘round waiting for it to come on and here it is’...”

I turned the station.

“...the flames went higher, and it burns, burns, burns…
The ring of fire, oh the ring of fire…
The taste of love is sweet
When hearts like ours meet…”

I turned the radio off.

What the fuck were the odds?

Shit, I thought again.

What was happening?

I drove all the way down 65 South into Nashville, my heart thumpin’ in my chest.

It was because I was scared of how Kristin would react, I told myself. I wasn’t positive how she was gonna take the song once I wrote it and my body was trying to do some sort of defensive thing, trying to make me forget. Trying to make me think I wanted something else more. Surely that was it. I just had to squash the stuff I was feeling and thinking. I just had to stay focused on me and Kristin and the song and making everything I felt for her come out perfect and she’d understand and it’d all go back to the way it used to be before all this crazy shit happened.

I was gripping the wheel so hard my knuckles were white.

It was nearly midnight when I pulled up to Nick’s house in Franklin and cut the engine. The house had automatic lights and they glowed from the windows like there was someone home. I pulled my duffel bag over my shoulders as I walked up to the door, digging out the house key he’d given me.

Inside, the house was nice. I’d only been here once or twice and Lauren had redecorated since the last time. I dropped my bag on the floor by the stairs and wandered around the house ‘til I got the feel of the layout. They had crazy art on the walls and a big weird chandelier hung over the table. Upstairs, theirs was the only bedroom. The other rooms were full of stuff like all Nick’s awards and exercise equipment and a computer set up that Nick had for gaming that looked like something out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

I settled myself on the bed, bouncing a little on the mattress gingerly. I tried not to think about all the sex they’d probably had all over this bed. I laid back into the pillows and stared up at the ceiling, my brain spinning and spinning through everything, the tune of Ring of Fire still echoing through my head.

I think I drifted off, or maybe my brain just stayed so busy that I didn’t feel the time slip by, but it was around three in the morning when I had an idea for the first verse of the song. Words just poured into my brain and I knew they were perfect. I mumbled them as I got up and went on the hunt for some paper.

Somewhere in this damn house they had to have some paper.

I was downstairs in the kitchen, pawing through the drawers, muttering the words, trying not to forget them. When I finally found the paper, it was in the form of Ninja Turtle post-its in Nick’s futuristic gaming room. And I sat in the computer chair, scribbling the words onto the face of Michelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo and Raphael.

Only Nick would have fricking Ninja Turtle post-its.

I mean, where the hell do you even get such a thing?

I sat back and leaned the post-its against the computer, staring at the words I’d written so frantically, repeating them under my breath, making sure they’d make a good start. If I was gonna get back into Kristin’s heart then I was gonna have to say it right.

But they weren’t the right words after all that.

I ripped the page off the pad and crumbled it, tossing it to the floor.

By morning, I’d used all Nick’s Ninja Turtle post-its and two other pads of paper I’d found in the depths of the Desk from the Future. Almost all the sheets were in balls around the floor. It looked like it’d snowed in there. I sat there, ready to pull my hair out, frustrated beyond belief, just wanting inspiration to strike in some form - any form - when the doorbell rang.

I probably looked like a mad scientist when I opened the door.

Andrew was standing there, a scarf around his neck that looked suspiciously Wylee in nature, and grinned when he saw me, “Good morning.” He held aloft a tray of styrofoam cups from Dunkin’ Donuts and a box of donut holes. “Songwriting fuel.” He had a guitar strapped to his back. He seemed to notice me only at this point. “Shit, what happened to you?”

“Up all night,” I muttered.

“Good thing I brought the fuel,” he said with a grin, and he stepped into the foyer.

I closed the door behind him.

I realized only now that I’d somehow managed to kick several balls of paper from the computer room, down the hall and they’d followed me down the stairs like tumbleweed. Andrew bent down and picked one up, putting the box of donut holes down on the steps. He unrolled it and stared at my chicken scratch writing. He raised an eyebrow, then looked at me. “This is awful,” he said honestly.

“I know,” I answered.

“You were up all night writing this crap?” he asked. He looked up the stairs, at the other escaped paper balls that had followed me down.

“No I have the masterpiece version upstairs,” I said sarcastically.

Andrew reballed the paper and tossed it onto the floor with the crowd of others and grabbed the coffee and donuts from the steps. “You need me even more than I thought. C’mon, to the music room.” And he led the way out to Nick’s kitchen where a side door led down to the home studio he’d constructed in the basement.

With the flick of a few switches, Andrew lit up the room, whose wood paneling was warm and welcoming. Nick’s guitars were on stands lining one wall, a couch that was older than sin lookin’ lined the other, about a hundred thousand stuffed animals from fans cluttered the back of it. A signed Buccs flag hung on the wall. It was very Nick in there.

Andrew set the coffee and donuts on a foot locker that was being used as a table, and pulled open a drawer under the little soundboard, grabbing two notebooks and a couple pens from a plethora that filled the drawer.

So that’s where they’d been hiding.

“Here,” Andrew said, shoving them at me. “Write down what you want to say.”

“If I could do that, it wouldn’t be snowing paper balls up stairs,” I said.

“It doesn’t have to be pretty. Just get it out. Basically, you’re bloodletting words. Just get that shit out of you.” Andrew turned and opened the box. “And here, have a donut.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“The donuts are non-optional,” he said, shoving it into my hand. “Write.”

And so I started writing.

When I finished, I handed it to Andrew, and reached for a second donut because Andrew was right the donuts were non-optional, they tasted good and I was hungrier than I’d realized. We’d drank two of the four coffees that he’d brought along and he’d gone upstairs to microwave the other two just before I’d finished. I sipped my second one while he read what I’d written down.

“This is good,” he said, “Well, I mean, not good, it’s basically heart breaking. But it’s something to work with… better than your balls that we left upstairs.”

He was lucky I wasn’t Nick because Nick would so have had something dirty to say to that.

“Yeah?” I asked, “You think we can get a song out of that?”

“Oh definitely,” Andrew nodded, “Definitely. A damn good one, too. We just gotta focus.” He sat down and grabbed what had to be his third donut and swiveled himself around in Nick’s desk chair, facing at the soundboard and then back to me, staring down at the words I’d written in the notebook. “Hmm,” he murmured. “Okay. Let’s try this,” he said after some time had passed and grabbed his guitar.

C’mon, I willed the universe, c’mon and give me my abracadabra.

Chapter Eighteen


Nick

I was playing on Steam, shooting up digital zombies like crazy. Lauren leaned over, putting a cup of blueberries beside the keyboard. “I’m going to the store,” she said. “I already have Cheerios on the list. Anything else?”

“Uh uh,” I shook my head.

“Do you even know what I’m saying?” she asked. “Or am I like the teachers in Charlie Brown?”

“Wahh wah… wah wahwahwah…” I mocked.

“Nerd.” She ruffled my hair. “I’ll be back.” She kissed the top of my head and started for the door.

I listened close. The second she’d closed the front door, I paused my game and pushed my laptop to the side, springing to my feet and running to the window. I peered out a crack in the curtain and watched as her little white car drove away, then I ducked back into the house.

I had a mission.

I grabbed my cell phone, the dogs following me as I jogged up the stairs.

Even with Lauren out of the house, I still felt like I had to be super secret. So I huddled myself into the bathroom, Nacho and Igby crowded in at my feet, and I sat on the edge of the bathtub. I pulled up the number I’d saved from Lauren’s phone and called Kristin.

The phone rang a couple times, but then she answered.

“Hello?”

“Hey… Kristin?” I asked, making sure.

“Nick?” her voice pitched in surprise.

“Yeah, it’s me,” I answered. “I got your number from Lauren.”

“You’re back,” she still sounded surprised.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I’m back.”

Kristin was quiet.

“So.. uh… how… how are you?” I asked.

“Um, I’m… fine.”

“Yeah? Mason and Max?”

“Yeah they’re both fine, too.”

She sounded suspicious.

Couldn’t blame her, I’d literally never called her before in my life.

“Okay, look, you ain’t stupid, I’m sure you know I’m gonna bring Kevin up and that he’s the reason I’m calling and stuff,” I said, “So lemme just get to it. Kris, he’s really sorry.”

Kristin sighed my name. “Nick…”

“No please hear me out,” I said hurriedly. I stood up, the dogs rushed around my feet, and I paced to the door and back again, “Ever since he told me what all’s been going on with you guys, he’s been all whining and sad and I miss Kristin and stuff. You gotta give him a chance, he’s balls out crazy about you. Deep down, you know y’all are supposed to be together. Forever.”

Kristin sighed again. I could hear Mason and Max playing in the background. Some kind of obnoxious kid’s show was singing loudly on the TV set.

“He just misses you guys,” I added during her silence, “You and the kids and stuff. Why don’t you give him a chance to say sorry?”

“It’s not as easy as all that, Nick,” Kristin interjected. She must’ve walked out of the room the kids were in ‘cos the sound quieted. “There’s a lot that went on between Kev and I that you wouldn’t understand.”

“I ain’t a lil kid no more,” I argued. “And there’s like love and shit and that stuff’s supposed to transcend things that happen or whatever.”

“Supposed to, but it doesn’t always,” Kristin said.

I leaned against the sink, back to the mirror, “C’mon. You and Kev are stronger than all that.”

“I thought so once, too, Nick,” Kristin said.

I shook my head, “No, no you are, you still are. You’re gonna be okay, you just gotta listen to what he’s gotta say to ya.”

“Nick, no,” Kristin said.

“Yeah-huh,” I argued.

“Nick, this isn’t your fight,” she said, a tired tone to her voice, “Why isn’t he the one arguing this?”

I set my jaw. “Because you changed your phone number and I hadda steal this one from Lauren’s phone maybe?”

“Nick, he had a really long time before I ever changed that number to come back and apologize and he couldn’t even do that,” Kristin said. “He had months to fix this. And it didn’t matter enough to him then to do anything.”

“But - maybe he didn’t know how to,” I said.

Kristin’s voice was sad, “If he’d just done it when he should’ve, it wouldn’t have been hard.”

“It’s always hard to say sorry.”

“Especially when it’s too late,” Kristin replied.

I stared at my shoes, at the dogs at my feet, at the black and white checkered tiles that Lauren had redone the floor in. I chewed my lower lip, thought about the idea that an apology could come too late to be useful, even for the people who were supposed to love you unconditionally.

I thought about Kevin saying sorry to Caroline twenty-something years after hurting her and how she’d forgiven him.

Was it easier to forgive people who you didn’t love unconditionally? Or did Caroline truly love Kevin unconditionally? But I knew Kristin did too, didn’t she? Could unconditional love grow conditions over time?

“But… but sorrys that came later than that haven’t been too late before,” I said.

Kristin sighed.

“How can sorry after twenty plus years be accepted and one after a few months not be?” I asked, desperate.

“Twenty-something years?” Kristin sounded confused.

“Yeah, when we were in Kentucky, Kev told Caroline Watson he was sorry about hurting her when he left and all that,” I said without thinking. Then I quickly back pedaled. “I mean we bumped into her and after he went right back to whining constantly about missing you ‘cos he told me how you saved him from her and stuff ‘cos you’re so - uh, Kristiny.”

“Wait. You went to Kentucky? Is that where y’all have been at? And y’all saw Caroline Watson?” Kristin’s voice was full of disbelief.

“I… yeah… but I mean, the point is… sorry can’t be late… right? It’s just… if it’s meant, right? It can’t… ‘cos like, unconditional love and… all that?”

Kristin was quiet.

“You love him, right, Kris? Don’t you love Kevin?” I asked.

“Do you remember the last time you came to our house drunk, Nick? After Mason was born and Kevin brought you out front to the lawn and told you that you had to go?” Kristin’s voice was hushed, probably afraid of the kids overhearing her talking.

I remembered the night well. It was a bad night. I’d been too drunk to drive home so one of my drinking buddies had agreed to drop me off and somewhere along the ride I’d gotten really, really homesick, but not for my house, rather, for the BSB tour bus. I wanted so much to crawl into my bunk on that old bus and curl into a ball and wake up the next morning sixteen again, with a world of choices ahead of me, and I pictured myself not making any of the wrong ones. I was homesick for my friends, the only family I’d had in years, the fellas. So I’d asked to be dropped off at Kevin’s house. I’d stumbled across the lawn, sick to my stomach, messed up beyond belief, seeing things in this weird hazy sort of way, like all the colors and edges were smeared, and I’d knocked. Kevin had come to the door with his pajamas on, his hair a mess, Kristin lurking behind him, clutching Mason. And when I’d slurred my way through my reason for being there he’d looked at me with the saddest look in his eyes I ever saw and he’d told me I couldn’t stay. “I’ll call you a cab,” he said, “But you can’t stay. I’m sorry.” I’d begged him, but he’d refused. “Nick,” he said, “Someday, you’ll understand this and you’ll thank me for it, but I can’t help you tonight. I can’t let this bullshit keep happening. It’s the end. I love you, Nick, but it’s the end of us being hurt by each other.” And the next week, he started the motions that would lead to him quitting the Backstreet Boys.

“Yeah,” I whispered, “I remember.”

“I can’t let this bullshit keep happening,” Kristin recited, and I felt my heart breaking for Kevin, “Someday, he’ll understand and he’ll thank me for it. It’s just over. I love him, Nick, but it’s the end of us being hurt by each other.” She took a deep breath, “Do you understand?”

I shook my head no, even though I knew she couldn’t see it.

“Nick, I already filed the divorce papers. As soon as we know where he’s at, he’s going to be served.”

My throat ached.

I hung up the phone.




“Niiiiick…” Lauren’s voice traveled through the house, “What did you do?”

I was sitting on the floor in the bathroom still, having spent the last hour thinking about what Kris had said and the ideas of forgiveness and unconditional love. I hadn’t even felt the time pass by much. Nacho had jumped up on the closed toilet seat and laid down, staring at me while Igby sat in the corner by the door, looking at me like I’d finally gone crazy just like he’d always been waiting for.

I heard the fridge door open and close a few times, the rustling of paper and plastic bags, the cupboards door close. “Nick,” Lauren yelled, “Where are you?”

“Up here,” I yelled back.

A few seconds later and from the stairs she yelled, “Marco?”

“Polo,” I replied half heartedly.

The door opened and Igby ran out and jumped on the bed. Lauren stood in the doorway. She looked down at me sitting on the floor and sighed, “Nick, you called Kristin?”

“Yeah,” I said. “How’d you know?”

“She called me.”

“Oh.”

Lauren shook her head.

“I was just trying to help, I thought if I called she’d understand how much Kevin loves her and how worried he was about her.”

Lauren squatted in front of me. She stared into my face. “Nick, you can’t fix everything for everybody. Sometimes they gotta fix stuff for themselves. Or not fix them.”

“Yeah but Kev’s always done everything for me, and I dunno I wanted to help him out.”

She patted my foot. “The thought is what counts, Nick.” She squeezed my toes. “I’m sorry. She said she was kinda rough on you.” Lauren paused, “She, uh, also mentioned you stole her number from my phone.”

“It was for the greater good,” I mumbled.

Lauren sat down next to me so our elbows were touching. “I know, you know.”

“You know what?”

“That there’s some weird thing in your head that if you can’t fix Kevin and Kristin that you and I aren’t going to be okay.” She leaned her forehead against mine and started into my face until her eyes looked like one giant eye. “We’re going to be okay, regardless of who breaks up and doesn’t. Okay?”

“I know,” I said. “We’re the healthiest relationship I know, too. I know. We already talked about all that.”

“Then why are you still acting like a crazy person?” she asked.

“Cos Kev deserves to be happy,” I answered.

Lauren nodded, “Fair.”

“She’s gettin’ a divorce,” I said, “She already filed. She doesn’t know where he is, that’s the only reason he isn’t served yet.” I stared up at Lauren.

She took a deep breath. “I told her he went to our place in Nashville.”

“You sold him out?” I asked, disbelief dripping from my every word. “Baby, why -- why would you -- how could you --”

Lauren’s eyes were all soft. “Nick, he’s gotta deal with it. He’s got a right to know. They have to serve him the papers. I had to tell her.”

“But…” I frowned. “So they’re gonna serve him?” I suddenly felt overwhelmed by this deep feeling of loss that I couldn’t explain entirely.

Lauren nodded.

“I feel like my parents are breaking up all over again,” I mumbled. “You know when they tried to serve my mom, she broke a remote control on my dad’s face through the window of his fuckin’ car? Course he brought his girlfriend with him to drop off the papers and stuff but I mean, still. A remote control, Lauren.”

Lauren rolled her eyes, “Nick, Kev’s not gonna break a remote control on anybody’s face.”

“How do you know?”

“Because, Nick,” she replied, “He’s not certifiably insane like your mother is.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s going to be okay. It might take some time but he’ll get back to his feet and he’ll be okay,” Lauren said in her best promising voice.

“Yeah,” I said again.

She rubbed my shoulder. “C’mon, you. Get off the bathroom floor. You aren’t ten and your parents aren’t breaking up. You need to be a big boy now.”

I struggled to my feet. “Love is getting the shaft here, though, don’t you see that?” I asked as I followed her down the stairs.

“Then consider this your challenge to make it better,” she answered.

“I tried to make it better, it didn’t work, instead she’s serving him divorce papers.”

Lauren shook her head, “No, you tried to fix a specific instance. What I meant was make love better. You can’t fix anyone else, but you can make love better by doing your very best at it. You and I, together, we can make love better. Singlehandedly if we must.”

I thought about making a quip about lovemaking and my excellent skills, but I bit my tongue. It wasn’t the time for that.

We were back in the kitchen and putting away the rest of the groceries Lauren had gone to get. I shook a celery stalk at her. “I know I’m gettin’ to be a broken record about this, but…”

Lauren looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

“Do you love me unconditionally?”

Lauren stared at me. “Yes,” she said without hesitation.

“Really?”

“Nick, the fact that we’re standing here should tell you that. The first time you did some dumbass thing and I didn’t run off should’ve told you that.”

“Say we get married --”

“So that’s a theory now?”

“-- and twenty years from now I do some dumbass thing --”

“More like twenty minutes from now,” she muttered.

“Are you gonna break up with me cos of it?” I asked. “Am I gonna find myself getting my ass served papers?”

Lauren sighed, “So the dumbass thing isn’t going to fade with age?”

“Prolly not,” I answered, “It’s actually gotten more severe with age. Take that into consideration when answering my previous question.”

“Oh boy,” she said. She put down the jar of sauce she was holding. But she was smiling. At least I amused her. “Okay how about this. If you do some dumbass thing, I promise not to serve you papers as long as you promise to apologize - sincerely - about it.”

“What if I dunno I did it?” I asked. “What if I didn’t know what I did was a dumbass thing and you’re just mad at me forever and I never know it ‘til boom I got served?”

“I promise to tell you that you did a dumbass thing before it gets to the point of no return.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

We stood there at the table, holding the stuff we were about to put away, staring at each other awkwardly. “Should we, like, shake on this or somethin’?” I asked.

“Sure.” Lauren held out her hand and I shook it. As our handshake parted she asked, “Now do you feel better?”

“Eh, I’m a’ight,” I answered, turning to put up the celery.

“Alright enough that maybe we could talk wedding plans?” she asked.

“Okay,” I answered, closing the fridge.

“Okay, so I was thinking that Wedding 2.0 should be small. Just friends and family.”

“Sounds good,” I said, “Less people to witness it if I freak out again.”

“Too soon for that to be funny, Carter,” she said in a warning tone. “Next thing. I was thinking we do something tame for the honeymoon, like go home to Key West or something. Mexico. Something small. Bora Bora can be rebooked, but we have to go three months out from the original date, within six months of that. So I was thinking… you’re booked on tour and cruise and all that through the end of November… so… we could use a break in December.”

“Sounds good again. You’re thinkin’ of everything,” I commented.
“Well that’s all I thought of. So what’s your thoughts on 2.0?”

“I thought we could call it Wedding the Remix, yes?”

Lauren laughed. “Okay. Your thoughts on Wedding the Remix?”

“That was my thought on Wedding the Remix. That we call it Wedding: the Remix.”

Lauren laughed again, luckily, and shook her head, “You are so lucky I love you.”

“Trust me, I know.” I sat myself down at the table, all the stuff put away finally. “I would so not love me if I was you.”

“That’s surprising, given how much you love you,” she commented with a smirk.

“Heyyyy,” I whined.

Lauren kissed the top of my head, “I’m kidding, baby, sort of.”




That night, Kevin didn’t call me and I didn’t dare to call him because I didn’t know what to say to him. I wondered if he’d been served the papers, if he was okay if he had, or if he hadn’t and he was just enjoying life, working on that song with Andrew, completely unaware that there was no reason to continue on with it. I hoped Andrew was there with him when he got the papers at least, so he wasn’t alone.

Lauren poked me.

I looked over at her. We’d been sitting in bed reading, well she was reading and I was holding up my World of Warcraft gaming guide and thinking.

“Hey,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Next week at this time, if you don’t run away again, we’ll be Mr. and Mrs. Carter.”

“I’m never gonna run away from you again,” I said, “Unless you have a squirt gun or a water balloon or we’re playing tag or --”

“Shut up,” she laughed.

I grinned.

“Can you believe it’s a week already?”

“That’s the way we planned it,” I said, “So..kinda.”

Lauren raised her eyebrow. “You’re being a dumbass.”

“I’m sorry.”

“See? No divorce papers.”

“Thank God.”

“We got this, Nick.”

Chapter Nineteen


Kevin

Andrew and I spent almost the entire day in the basement, working on the lyrics, on the melody, taping in the soundbooth, trying to piece together the song. It was around four in the afternoon when we made a call for food to be delivered and we were sitting in the kitchen, waiting for it to arrive. Andrew was a pretty funny guy, he had some great stories and a massive amount of talent. I could see why him and Nick were friends. I didn’t see any of the brutal Call of Duty barbarian that Nick had described in him, but then again I know even Nick tends to switch into Conan mode when he turned on the PlayStation so maybe it was the lack of stimuli.

“I’m not trying to brag here or anything,” Andrew was saying, “But this song is pretty slick.” He was sipping one of the beers we’d dug out of Nick’s fridge. Lord knows how long they’d been there, but they tasted good enough, so we’d popped he caps and clinked the bottles together and downed the necks in a toast to good songwriting.

“I don’t particularly need slick, I just need my wife to hear me,” I said.

“If she doesn’t hear you from this… she needs a hearing aid.”

The doorbell rang.

Andrew got up, “And I need that meatball sub that’s at the door to get in my stomach.” He winked, and went to get the door.

I sipped more beer.

Andrew came back a moment later, “It’s uh, not our food.”

I looked up.

Caroline stood behind him.

I put the beer down on the counter.

Andrew looked from Caroline to me, then back again. He looked excited. I had a feeling he thought Caroline was the one the song was for. My heart rate sped up. I stared at her. She looked nice in plaid and denim, her hair down and fluffy, curly as could be. She stared at me with wide eyes.

“Why didn’t you wait ‘til I got home?” she asked.

My mouth felt dry.

Andrew motioned he was gonna go downstairs, grabbed his beer bottle, and rushed down the steps to the basement.

“Kevin, I got to the house and I saw that sign and I got inside and there was that champagne and the money… I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, I just got so choked up, I knew it was you, I knew it was. I thought it might’ve been you when I passed the car on the road goin’ up, but then I saw the sign and I knew it was and -- I went to your momma’s house, but you’d already left. She said you was comin’ to Nick’s here in Nashville. I had to get Mikey to look up the address at the department.” Caroline paused. “Kevin, I - I had to thank you. In person.”

I swept my hands across my hips, drying the sweat that was pooling in the palms.

“Why didn’t you wait?”

“I couldn’t stay,” I said.

The sunlight coming in the windows behind me danced on her face in shards, lighting up parts and darkening others, catching a subtle glitter in her lip balm, making her mouth sparkle in a tantalizing manner, making her skin look so smooth.

“Why?”

“Because I had to write a song with Andrew Fromm.” I thumbed toward the basement door, where he’d just run off to.

Caroline’s eyes were searching me, moving left to right in a desperate fashion.

“I have to save my marriage,” I mumbled.

She blinked. Her voice was low, “Am I… a danger… to your marriage?”

My heart raced. “A little.”

“I’m not trying to be.”

“It comes natural.”

“How?”

“Just being you.”

She stared at me, a startled look on her face. Just as her features started to fold into a questioning expression, the doorbell rang. She glanced in the direction of the door, then turned back to me, a deer in headlights look on her face. I didn’t feel like I could’ve moved if a nuke dropped from the ceiling beside me. The bell rang again.

Andrew popped out from the basement door, “Sorry,” he mumbled, “Don’t wanna interrupt you and your - your wife…” he snuck through the kitchen, “But… food…” and he disappeared into the hallway going out to the foyer.

“She’s not my --” I stopped. He’d gone before I could correct him.

Caroline pointed at the door, “I’ll, um, show myself out.”

“What? You just got here.”

“I can’t stay.” She shook her head, “I’m not -- I’m not the kinda girl that comes between --” she waved her hands at me, “...all that.” She started toward the door.

“Caroline. Wait.” I said, her name having escaped me like an involuntary exhale. I took two steps towards her, reaching out, but not quite catching her. I didn’t know what I’d been about to do or what would’ve happened if Andrew hadn’t come back at that exact moment. I’ll never know. But Andrew stepped into the room, blocking Caroline’s departure.

“It uh, wasn’t food again,” he said.

I looked up, half expecting to see Kristin standing beside Andrew. But it wasn’t Kristin. It was a gawky-looking, thirty-something year old man with thick glasses, a mustache, and a bicycle helmet, standing there holding a manilla envelope.

“Uh… hi?”

“Are you Kevin Scott Richardson?” he asked, looking at the envelope and reading in a nasally, awkward sort of voice.

“Uh… yes?”

He held out the envelope, slipping it into my hands heavily. “You, sir, have been served,” he announced, and he fished around in his jacket’s inside breast pocket for a little notepad, where he scribbled a note, looking at his wristwatch.

“Wait, wait.. what? What is this?” I asked. There was an Avery label on the front with my full name printed in a serif font. I started to rip it open.

“I’m a professional servicer,” he announced, “I don’t know what I serve, only that it’s served to the correct person.”

I slid a sheath of heavy linen documents out of the envelope.

Petition for Divorce.

I started at the words.

“Don’t shoot the messenger, as they say,” the server-guy wheezed like this was funny.

I could barely hear him, though. The word Divorce was growing, I swear it, just expanding, getting bigger and bigger and bigger, leaping off the page, blowing up in my eyes, taking over…

Everything sounded lightyears away.

“Kev?” Andrew sounded concerned.

I stumbled back, the weight of the word Divorce pushing me, and I hit the wall. Or a counter. I dunno. A surface. That was the most I could perceive. It was as though my line of sight had narrowed. All I could see was the word Divorce swimming in front of me on a pool of slightly off-white paper.

I don’t know where Andrew went from there. I don’t know if he left, or if he just went out of the room. I don’t know who showed server guy out. All I know is I couldn’t see anything except that word.

Panic attack, my brain told me.

But identifying what was happening didn’t make it any better.

“Kevin,” Caroline’s voice penetrated the noise in my head, all this noise from the one word, like a billion drums were beating on my brain. Div-orce. Div-orce. Div-orce.

“Divorce,” I choked the word, strangled by the shock.

“What?” Caroline had one arm around me, I realized. She looked at the papers in my hand, the papers I was clutching in disbelief, and she gasped. “Oh no,” she murmured. “Oh Kevin.”

I felt like I was gonna be sick, I thought for a fleeting moment.

And then, I was.

All over Nick’s nice, newly retiled kitchen floor.

And Caroline’s shoes.

And also my shoes.

“Oh no,” Caroline said again, “Oh Kevin. I’m sorry.” She let go of me for a moment and started opening Nick’s cupboards until she found the all natural recycled paper towels Nick and Lauren used. As soon as Caroline had let go of me, my knees had stopped working, though, and I found myself kneeling on the floor. In the sick, I presume. My hands shook. I still couldn’t see anything but Divorce in my mind. “No Kevin, it’s okay, I’ll pick it up,” Caroline said, coming back. “Oh sweetie, you’ve got it all over you, oh no.” She started swiping those stupid fully recycled fucking paper towels over the sick, mopping up the mess I’d made, picking up after me, and my stomach turned from the smell of it but she didn’t bat an eyelash. Course the girl picked up horseshit for a living and I was getting god damned divorced.

Divorced.

“We need to get you cleaned up,” Caroline said.

She helped me up the stairs, holding my arm over her shoulder. In the bathroom, she turned on the shower faucet. “I’m not gonna help you with that, obviously, but you need to shower. Can you shower?”

I nodded.

“Okay. I’m gonna be right out here. Call me if you need help.” She looked at me nervously. “Kevin. Are you okay?”

“Okay? Do I look okay?” I asked weakly.

It was the only words I could muster.

Caroline looked sorry she’d asked. “I’ll be right out here,” she repeated.

She left the room and I stripped and got in the shower and let the hot water run over me and leaned, my palms spread open on the wall, breathing, watching the hot water pour off me, washing away the evidence of the vomit down the drain until it was gone.

Gone like my hope.

Gone like my wife.

Gone like the last twenty years.

I was beyond numb.

This, I thought, is what it would be like to have the very soul sucked out of you.

I literally couldn’t imagine a worse pain. Even losing a loved one to death wasn’t this bad. At least when they died, they hadn’t chosen to leave you. Kristin, though, she’d looked at the last twenty years we’d spent in our relationship, all the years of marriage, all the tender moments we’d shared, all the nights together, all the passionate I love yous and kisses and memories, and she’d chosen to file for a divorce.

Without letting me even defend myself.

I wished the hot water could boil away my very skin.

When I’d fully scalded myself, I got out and wrapped a towel around my waist. My dirty clothes lay on the floor haphazardly, and I exited the bathroom in a cloud of steam that billowed into the bedroom like an oncoming storm.

Caroline was sitting on a chair, staring out the window. She looked over. “Better?” she asked, concern in her eyes. She stood up.

I shrugged.

She’d turned down the bed.

I didn’t need any more of an invitation than that. I crawled in and pulled the sheets up around my neck.

Caroline came over and sat down next to me on the bed, her back against the headboard. She put her hand on my shoulder. “I know you don’t wanna talk right now,” she said, “But when you do, I’m right here. And I’m not going anywhere.”




I woke up from a dreamless sleep suddenly. My eyes just snapped open. I felt disoriented again for a second, but when I breathed in, I could smell traces of Nick’s cologne and… and the Love’s Baby Soft. I turned my head. Caroline had fallen asleep, on top of the blanket I was beneath, her head against my shoulder. I stared at her, less surprised than I should’ve been. My eyes roved the room until they came to rest on the manilla envelope. Caroline must’ve picked it up from wherever I’d left it and she’d put it up on the nightstand.

I sat up slowly, Caroline’s head slipping from my shoulder and onto the pillow beneath me, and I grabbed the manilla envelope, tilting it so the papers slid out again and I stared down at it.

In the interest of the marriage of I, Kristin Kay Richardson, and Kevin Scott Richardson, and in the interest of Mason Richardson and Maxwell Richardson: I, the petitioner, Kristin Kay Richardson, am petitioning the court for a divorce from the respondent, Kevin Scott Richardson. My spouse and I were married on June 17, 2000. I, the petitioner, ask the court to grant me a divorce as the marriage has become insupportable due to discord or conflict of personalities that destroys the legitimate ends of the marital relationship and prevents any reasonable expectation of reconciliation. I ask the court to make custody orders of the Children listed above as follows: Mother and Father should be Joint Managing Conservators of the Children. Neither parent should have exclusive rights to the care of the children or the choice of their primary location of residence, but neither shall remove the children without the express agreement of both Mother and Father. If my spouse and I can agree on how to split our assets and debts as created during our marriage, then we request the court supports our agreements. I ask the court to legally change my name back to the name I used prior to this marriage and will henceforth be known in all legal documentation as Kristin Kay Willits.

It all came down to this. A few pages of agreements followed, splitting everything equally into two parts, and a page with her signature on it at the end.

“Kev?” Caroline’s voice broke through my reading.

I hadn’t realized I was crying until that moment. I swiped my face. “Hm?”

Caroline sat up. “Are you okay?”

I shook my head no.

“What can I do to help?”

“I don’t think there’s anything.”

Caroline sighed. “I’m so sorry Kevin.”

I stared at the document again, at her neat little signature at the bottom, at the little paper arrow asking me to sign below it, showing my agreement to all the terms and whatever she’d included in the pages prior.

I, the respondent, space for signature, agree to the terms put forth by my spouse, the petitioner…

“But I don’t,” I mumbled.

“What?” Caroline asked from behind me.

“I don’t, I don’t agree, I don’t agree,” I repeated, each time I said it feeling more angry. “I don’t fucking agree,” I shouted the last one, throwing the petition to the floor. “It ain’t fucking fair!” I yelled. I stood up and kicked the document. I kicked it right into the wall. I turned to look at Caroline, who was staring at me with an undisturbed expression, just waiting for me to get my fit over with. Well I wasn’t done yet, so I yelled at her. “I didn’t fucking do anything that wasn’t perfectly normal to do. I had to work, I had to go to fucking work to pay for the house we live in. I have to work for everything I got,” my voice pitched louder and louder. Caroline didn’t bat an eye. “I worked my way up from that fucking hole of a town you and I come from, Caroline, that fucking hole. I was facing a life becoming my father. I made something of myself. I made myself, I did it all by myself. And she expected me to give that all up like that.” I clicked my fingers. “She didn’t want to get out of bed. I had to go. I called her momma. It ain’t like I called Satan. It ain’t like I just said to her fuck you I’m going anyway. I called for help, the only god damn help I could think of. She didn’t want help from anybody, but god damn I needed the fucking help whether she needed help or not! I couldn’t take anymore, Caroline, I couldn’t… She wouldn’t get up. The baby - the baby needed her and she wouldn’t get the fuck up.” I was sobbing.

Caroline still wasn’t showing any signs of reaction.

“I got so frustrated, I just wanted my old wife back, the one who laughed and wanted to experience everything… It just pissed me off. You know?”

Caroline nodded.

“We both said things we didn’t mean.” I ran my hand through my hair with a sigh and shook my head. “Both of us did. And it took awhile, because we didn’t talk about it for a long time, but now I told her I was sorry, I told her and she didn’t wanna hear it. I didn’t even do nothin’ wrong and I still apologized and she still didn’t give a fuck. She just … serves me fucking papers, like I’m something to throw away. I didn’t do anything wrong. Why’s she given up on me?”

Caroline rubbed her nose.

“Why’s she given up on me, Caroline? Why? God damn it.” My face was soaked from tears. I swept my hand across my snotty nose and my eyes and shook the wet from my fingertips. I stared down at my feet. “I wrote her -- a -- a song -- to -- to say-- the words I couldn’t -- couldn’t say before. I waited too long, and -- oh god damn.” I couldn’t breathe.

Caroline’s words were soft, “So don’t sign.”

“Wh-what?”

“Don’t sign the papers.”

‘What am I supposed to - to do?”

“You wrote her a song,” Caroline said, “So… sing her the song. Don’t sign it. Win her back, regardless of this stupid petition…” Her eyes were glazed, like she was trying not to cry, too. “If you love her… sing her the song you wrote for her, and if there’s a chance, you’ll have taken it. And if there isn’t… then you sign, then you move on, then you heal. But you have to try. At least try.”

I stared at Caroline.

“If you don’t try… you’ll always wonder, Kevin,” she whispered. “Trust me. I know.”

Chapter Twenty


Nick

“This feels really familiar,” Lauren commented. It was two days before the wedding and we were sitting in traffic at LAX, waiting for our turn to get to the arrivals curb. She looked at me with one eyebrow cocked.

“I know,” I said apologetically, “But he promised he’d be out by wedding night.”

Lauren sighed, “If he isn’t, I’ll personally carry him out to the curb, I swear it.”

“Well I mean, would it be so terrible if he was? We could use a house sitter for the wee--” I paused mid-sentence at the look she was giving me. “Don’t worry, babe, he’ll be out by wedding night. No worries. I promise. I’ll make sure.”

She nodded, but I could tell she didn’t believe I’d ever put my foot down about the time limit. Which she was right so I was pretty much just praying the big plan worked and Kevin would be invited back in his own house by the end of the week.

He’d called and asked us to pick him up at the airport again, and asked if he could stay with us again, just long enough for him to get the song to Kristin’s ears. He’d told me about his meltdown over the divorce papers, how he’d been at the house alone after Andrew had left, and his choice to not sign the papers until he’d been given his fair chance to sing the song he’d written to Kristin. “It’s going to be okay once I get those words out of me,” he said eagerly. “I just can’t give up hope without one last chance.” And then he’d asked me to let him stay with me so he wouldn’t have to be alone.

Only an asshole would’ve said no at that point.

“There he is,” I said, pointing. Kevin was standing at the very edge of the arrivals platform, his duffel bag on his shoulder, looking around over the plethora of cars swarming around. I unrolled my window. “Kev!” I shouted as Lauren came to a stop a couple car lengths away. I waved and he waved back and jogged, dodging between cars, and tossed himself into our backseat. “Hey,” I said as he pulled the door shut.

“Hey guys, thanks for picking me up.” He looked up at Lauren as he added, “And letting me stay with you again. I promise it’ll be brief. I’ll stay out of your hair. I’ll help out with whatever you need for the wedding.”

“No problem,” I said quickly.

Lauren smiled in the rearview mirror as she pulled away from the arrivals curb.

“So… you wrote the song,” I said.

“I wrote the song,” he confirmed.

“Think it’s a hit?” I asked, turning against my seatbelt to look at Kev.

“I hope so,” he answered. “God, I hope so.”

“When are you going to play it for her?” Lauren asked.

Kevin’s voice was nervous, “As soon as she’ll give me the time to.”




That afternoon, I had a fitting on my new tuxedo. In all the hub-bub of traveling from the wedding to the house to the hotel to Kentucky I’d somehow managed to misplace my original suit somewhere, so I’d had to go through the process of tailored suit fitting all over again, which had been a torture the first time but far worse the second as my size had increased since I’d been there last. Kevin decided to come with me, sitting on the bench and watching as the tailor stuck pins all over me to mark where the suit needed to be customized. We talked small talk, stupid stuff, just about the latest stuff on the radio and the time Kev had spent writing with Andrew and everything.

At least until my tailor, Johnathan, left the room.

“Nick,” Kevin said suddenly, “I need to talk about something, but… I need you not to judge me for it.”

I had been told to stay very still while the tailor went to get some stuff to finish up the process. I had pins literally threatening to stab me in the back and sides and legs and arms if I didn’t obey the command to stay still. I tried to shuffle ever so slightly to one side, trying to see Kev in the mirror. I couldn’t see him, though. “Uh… okay?” I said.

“I saw Caroline while I was gone.”

“Did’ja invite her to the wedding?” I shuffled more. A pin stabbed me in my thigh. I froze. I was gonna have to settle for staring at myself in the mirror and not making eye contact with Kev at all during this conversation.

“Yeah. I told her to come. She probably won’t, though, Nick, she’s not a traveller.”

“Well, I hope she does,” I answered.

Kev was quiet a second.

“Why would I judge you for seeing Caroline?” I asked. He didn’t answer immediately. “Kev?”

“Nick… I’m… I think I’m still in love with her.”

Fuck the needles. I turned around. A thousand little pin pricks stabbed me at once and I tripped on a pant leg that had come loose, falling to one side and only just catching myself before I went down. Johnathan was gonna kill me, all kinds of pins had fallen out in a scatter on the floor. “What?”

Kevin stared up at me, his face almost scared looking. I dunno if he was more scared of my reaction, the flying pins, or the stuff he was feeling. He rubbed his hands together nervously. “I was at my momma’s house and I just really wanted to see her and I couldn’t really feel why, just that I did, and I made all these excuses to go and I got there and momma’s hired someone else to take care of the property while Caroline’s up in Louisville for the weekend because she was gettin’ her therapist certificate and I was so damn proud of her… So I went and I spent the whole weekend - the whole weekend, Nick - getting together all these things to surprise her. I got her a sign for the camp and the money for the graphic design work and the 501.c.3 she needs to start the camp and a bottle of champagne and I go and wait for her to come home and I’m pacin’ around and I realize I’m imagining her coming home and wrapping her arms around me and kissing me to thank me. I realized it wasn’t just about Congratulations, it was more than that. It was pride in someone you love. And then I go before she gets back, I ran. Again. I ran away. I go to Nashville and I was freakin’ out and kept tellin’ myself I had to write a song, had to write a song for Kristin, except I kept thinkin’ Caroline’s name instead and I get to Nashville and I can’t think of any of the words I needed to say to Kristin. Alls I can think is Caroline’s name. Alls I can think about is the smell of her skin and the way her hair falls on her shoulders.” Kev put his face in his hands.

“So wait, you didn’t actually see her?” I’m confused.

“She came to Nashville,” Kevin’s voice is muffled.

“She what?”

“She saw the stuff I did. I left it all there at the house. She knew it was me. My momma told her where I went and she came to Nashville. Came right to your house. Andrew thought she was the one I was writing the song for.”

I stared at him, flabbergasted.

“She was there when the divorce papers came,” Kevin confessed.

“You said you were alone.”

Kevin looked up. “I was with Caroline Watson. She stayed the night.”

I felt dizzy.

“Did you…?”

“No.”

“Jesus.” I ran my hands through my hair. A couple more pins fell from my arm. “Jesus.”

Kevin stared up at me like he was waiting for words of Yoda-like wisdom to come from my mouth. I didn’t even know what to think, what to say. I wobbled my jaw, trying to think, but there was nothin’ coming to mind. “What’d she say about the papers?” I asked.

He looked deflated by the question. “She told me not to sign’em. She told me to come back home and sing her the song and fight for my marriage. She said I had to try.”

“She’s right, Kev,” I said. “I’m glad she said that.”

He nodded.

“Did you tell her that you… you know, are still…?” Saying Kevin was in love with anyone who wasn’t Kristin felt too weird to do. I’d literally never seen the guy with another woman. Ever. In my entire time of being around him. It’d always been Kev and Kris. I mean I got it that, technically, Caroline came first, but… I couldn’t imagine it, the idea seemed too foreign.

“No,” Kevin replied. Then, “Well. Maybe. I don’t know. She asked me if she was a danger to my marriage and I said yes.”

If I hadn’t known how to respond before, I definitely didn’t know how to respond now. I stared at Kev, words refusing to come. My brain couldn’t even form a coherent sentence at that point, it just kept spewing out random, disjointed thoughts that seemed to be spinning from a tornado of possible reactions.

Johnathan came back in the room, “Okay, let’s get you finished up and out of ---” he came to a stop. “What in the hell happened in here?” he asked, aghast, looking around at the pins that glittered all over the floor around my feet.

“Uhh..”

“I told you not to move,” he snapped. He put down the box of tools and things he’d gone to get and knelt, picking up the pins from the floor with an annoyed sigh.

“I’m sorry, lemme help you pick them up,” I said, and I started to bend down to help.

“No! Don’t bend --” he started, but he didn’t start quick enough, I was already in the motion of bending and there was a tremendous tearing sound and a rush of cool air to the backside and my hands hovered over the floor by a few inches. I stood still, not daring to move. “---over,” Johnathan finished.

Kevin cleared his throat, “Nick, could you, uh… the mirror.”

I looked back. I was mooning the mirror. I stood up quick, ripping out another couple pins that bounced off Johnathan’s back as I grabbed the seams at my ass and held them shut. “Shit,” I mumbled.

Johnathan stood up, abandoning the pursuit of all the pins on the floor, and I could tell by the look on his face he wasn’t very happy with me.




I threw the box with a nice off-the-rack suit in the backseat and climbed in. Kevin had bought one, too, and he tossed that back there, too, as he got in. He looked over at me, “I’m sorry. That was kind of my fault.”

I didn’t answer. I gripped the wheel without turning the car on, my head leaning against the headrest. I closed my eyes. “Fuck,” I whispered. “Do you think Lauren will notice?”

“The difference between off-the-rack and custom tailored?” Kev asked, “Yeah. Probably.”

I sighed.

“You looked good in the one you got, though, so she won’t have much to complain about,” he added.

I turned on the car and started heading to our next stop to pick up Lauren’s dress from the dry cleaners, where it had been sent to get the hems cleaned because she’d worn it outside chasing after me. I thought about that for a minute, about Lauren, running out of the church after me. I wondered if Caroline had chased after Kevin.

If maybe she still was in a way.

I turned to glance at Kevin. “What’d Caroline say when you told her she was a danger to your marriage?”

He cleared his throat. “Well, we stood there a couple seconds in silence, then she said she wasn’t that kind of girl, and, for a twist in fate, she started to run away, but then I stopped her, and Andrew came in with the servicer.”

“So she still loves you.”

“What?”

“She still loves you.”

“How do you figure?”

“Because if she ain’t that kinda girl to be a danger to the marriage, then there’s a reason she’s a danger.”

“Because I love her,” Kevin replied.

“Well yeah, but if she didn’t love you back she couldda just been like I don’t love you or I moved on or whatever, she couldda just squashed it then, rather than being like, I’m not that kinda girl and running away,” I pointed out. “She couldda just ended the possibility. She was basically saying she was a danger. She was agreeing with you. Whatever you were saying by saying she was a danger, she was agreeing with that.”

Kevin stared at me, his jaw dropped.

I pulled up to the dry cleaner’s. “I’ll be right out,” I said, and I got out and went inside the store to get the dress, leaving Kevin sitting there thinking about what I’d just said.

When I came back out he was stroking the hair on his chin with one hand, a faraway look on his face. I put Lauren’s dress in the back - it took up almost the entire seat - and got into the front. “You okay?” I asked him.

“Yeah,” he answered, but his voice was hollow, a stock answer while he was thinking.

I drove home in silence. He didn’t say anything until we were turning onto the street that brought us down to the house.

“Nick,” he said, “If she loves me, why would she tell me to go back to my wife?”

“Because,” I answered, “She’s not that kind of girl. She was doing the right thing.” I pulled up behind Lauren’s car and cut the engine.

“Well… what do I do?” Kevin asked me, his voice desperate.

“What the hell do you mean what do you do?” I demanded, “Kev… you’re married, you have kids, you love your wife, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then you fucking tell her so,” I answered. “You can’t give up on her because you got some butterflies for some chick you haven’t seen in twenty years.”

Kevin looked like I’d just smacked him. “It’s more complicated than all that,” he said.

“Is it?” I asked. “Really?”

“Nick, Caroline and I go back with roots deeper than you can imagine. I’ve known Caroline longer than you’ve been alive!”

“But do you love Kristin?”

“Yes I love Kristin, but that’s not the point, the point is --”

“Why are you even questioning this?”

“Because!” He shouted, “I don’t know what I want!”

We sat there in silence for several moments. I shook my head, “Well you better make up your mind,” I snapped, and I got out, pulling open the back door and getting Lauren’s dress and the box with my tux in it out. Kevin made a frustrated sound and grabbed he tux he’d got out of the back, too, and slammed the passenger door.

Lauren was sitting on the couch as we came in. She tilted her head back to see us through the living room doorway, “Hey fellas,” she called.

Kevin rushed past me, headed up the stairs to the guest room. I went into the living room and put the tuxedo box and her dress on a chair and threw myself at the far end of the couch she was sitting on. I pulled her feet into my lap and started absentmindedly rubbing them gently.

“Everything okay?” she asked, lowering her glasses to look at me.

I stared at her feet, “I guess so. I dunno. Sure.”

Her eyebrow raised.

“All I ever wanted all my life was for the guys to, like, confide stuff in me, and now that Kev’s doing it, I ain’t so sure I like it,” I said, looking over at Lauren as I kept rubbing her feet.

“Hmm,” she murmured, twisting her lips in thoughtfulness. “It can be hard really knowing somebody.”

“Yeah.”

“But the only way to show someone you love them unconditionally is to know everything about them, even the dark stuff,” she added. She reached over and ran her hand down my shoulder.

I sighed. “I should go talk to him.”

“Yup.”

“Okay.”

“And later on we’ll, uh, finish this massage, of course?” she asked.

I smiled and lifted one of her feet to kiss the tip of her toe. “Of course. And other things, too.”

Lauren’s eyes twinkled.




I knocked on the guest bedroom door. “Knock, knock,” I called, “I’m just a simple asshole requesting permission to speak to you.”

“You aren’t an asshole,” Kevin called back. I assumed that was good enough of an invitation to enter, so I pushed the door open. He was laying on the bed, his fingers woven together over his chest, eyes kinda sad looking.

I shrugged, “I was kinda an asshole. I mean, instead of like actually being unobjective about everything I kinda just snapped at you.”

“You snapped at me? I’m the one that was shouting like a bastard down there.”

“You did kinda get loud,” I conceded.

“It’s really hard to tell if I feel what I feel because I’m scared, because deep down I knew those papers had to be coming at some point, or if it’s because that week we spent at the cabins reawakened something in me that’s been dormant for years and years.” Kevin shook his head.

“I dunno,” I answered. I leaned against the window sill, my arms crossed. “I can’t make a choice for you, either, but you gotta make a choice before you do anything ‘cos… Kev, you can’t end up with either of ‘em out of default, you gotta end up with them because they’re the one you want to be with deep inside you. You can’t just default to Kris if you don’t really wnt her most anymore, and you can’t try it with Kris and default to Caroline because she’s what’s left, either.”

Kevin slid his fingers into his hair. “I know.”

“And you can’t default to Kris because you think that’s what I want, either. I’m gonna stand by you whatever you decide, Kev.”

He nodded, “Thanks man.”

“Yeah.” I stood up and started for the door.

“Thanks for listening, Nick.”

“Thanks for talkin’ to me,” I replied.

Kevin stood up, “You’re better at it than I expected,” he laughed, and he came over and crushed me into a hug. “You’re a good friend.”

I patted his back.




Lauren lowered her glasses again when I returned to the living room. “Well?”

“We’re cool,” I answered, sitting back down beside her.

“So… what happened at the tailor?” she asked.

I realized she’d opened the box and found my suit. It was folded back in the box, but the lid was off. I looked at her, “There were pins flying everywhere, it as a pin-pocalypse. Like in the movies when there’s a person with a machine gun and there’s bullets flying every which way.”

“Sounds very dramatic,” she commented.

“It was. Johnathan made me buy off the rack ‘cos he couldn’t handle it anymore,” I said.

Lauren shook her head, but she seemed amused enough. “And is Kevin okay?”

“Yeah, he’s okay. I guess.” I chewed my lip a moment. “He’s still in love with Caroline.”

Lauren’s face registered surprise, “Oh?”

“Yeah. And Kristin, too, of course.”

“So what’s he gonna do?”

I shrugged. “I dunno.”

“He better decide,” she said.

“That’s what I told him.”

“Well I mean he better decide quick,” she amended, “Since they’re both going to be at the wedding and all.”

Chapter Twenty-One


Kevin

I woke up on the day of Nick’s wedding, my stomach in knots.

Despite having spent the last several days making a choice, I had yet to actually make the choice. Every time I thought I absolutely had made up my mind, I got this sinking sense in my stomach that would drive me right back into my indecision. On the one hand, I had twenty years of a relationship history and children with Kristin, but we’d been falling apart and there were now things between us that threatened to undo everything, no matter how much I loved her, and I was genuinely afraid of whether, given the same situation, she would choose me. On the other, I had Caroline, who I’d loved strong from the roots of my life and who had practiced, multiple times now, that old saying if you love something, let it go, who had chosen my happiness over her own. But Kristin was my wife...

And that’s pretty much the circle my mind had been going in for days.

I got up and opened the box the off-the-rack suit had come in and I carried it with me to the bathroom in the hallway. I could hear the shower running from the bathroom in Nick and Lauren’s bedroom. I pulled the suit on in the bathroom, dusting the shoulders off and fixing my hair.

When I was finished, I stepped into the hall, sock-footed, my tie over my shoulder. Lauren was just coming out of their bedroom, her dress over her arm, purse in her hand. “Morning,” she said.

“Morning,” I answered.

She smiled and came down the hallway, looking my suit over. “You look nice.” She paused. “Nick says I’m not supposed to bug you about it, but… did you choose?”

I sighed and shook my head.

Lauren reached out and put her hand on my heart. “Choose from in here,” she said, “Not your head. Or your dick. It’s gotta be the soul.” She pulled her hand back, “If it’s from in there, it won’t even be a choice, it’ll be as easy as an exhale.” Her phone vibrated and she looked down to pull it out of her jeans pocket, then looked back up at me, “I gotta go, the girls are out front waiting for me. I’ll see you and Nick later. Make sure he gets to the altar this time, will ya?”

“I will. I promise.”

Lauren smiled, “Thank you.”

I watched as she hustled down the stairs, then I turned back to the guest bedroom to get my shoes and wallet before going to collect Nick from his room. When I knocked he yelled out, “Does the groom have to wear a bowtie?”

I opened the door. He was sitting on the bed, legs crossed, in his nice shirt and suit jacket over boxers, the pants laying on the foot of the bed waiting for him. He had the bowtie around his neck tied in a knot and a frustrated look on his face, a diagram of how to tie a bowtie glowing from his iPad on the bed next to him. “Kevin, help,” he whined.

“C’mere,” I said. Nick got up and I realized his jacket didn’t cover his junk. “Put your pants on and then c’mere,” I revised.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said as he tugged his pants on.

“You know you could’ve got ready there,” I told him. “Just a thought.”

He shook his head, “I don’t wanna have much downtime, I plan to mingle while we wait. Lauren’s getting ready there. I’m gonna stay busy so my brain doesn’t start playin’ tricks on me again.” He was buttoning the waist and zipping his fly, then came over to me.

I waved my hand to spin him around so he was back to me. “Let me see your hands, I’m gonna show you how to do this.” I guided Nick’s hands through the motion of making the tie. “Over… through… loop… and pull,” I said, directing his hands. Then I undid the tie. “Try it.” He fumbled his way through it a couple times until he succeeded at getting a windsor knot tied, albeit kind of crooked. I reached up and straightened it out. “Good job. You’re officially a man.”

He grinned, touching a hand to the tie at his throat. “Thanks, Kev. It’s rough not havin’ my dad here. I mean, helpin’ me with my tie’s traditionally his job and all.”

“I didn’t have my dad, either,” I reminded him. I fixed it one last time ‘cos he’d knocked it crooked again feeling it. I felt like I’d come full circle.

Nick looked at me with this strange expression, and I had a feeling that was the first time he’d thought about the fact that we had the lack of paternal influence in our lives in common.

We finished up getting ready, putting on shoes and headed out. I drove this time, Nick sat in the passenger seat nervously twiddling his thumbs. I glanced over at him with a smile, “You doing okay over there?” I asked.

Nick nodded.

“Left your running shoes at home, right?”

“Yeah,” he squeaked, “I ain’t runnin’ far in these bitches, they’re slippery.”

I laughed.

The wedding was being held outside at a resort on a cliff overlooking the beach this time. Lauren had joked that it’d be harder for him to run if one side of the venue was a cliff. It was beautiful outside, the sunlight playing on the water, making it sparkle far into the distance. We passed a couple of savvy reporters, leaning against their cars, polishing their lenses, but otherwise nobody much had arrived yet other than Lauren and her wedding party, whose cars were in the lot.They’d set up chairs and flowers all over and there was a tent with tables and there were some caterers getting ready to put out champagne and finger foods. Nick led the way up the walkway into the main building where a sign at the door declared that the reception was being held in a conference-ballroom to the left. The lighting was low since we were among the first to arrive. At a bar across the room, Alex, Lauren’s little sister, was standing between two stools, watching as a bar keeper mixed some drinks.

“You look nice, soon-to-be-big-brother,” she commented to Nick with a wink. “You’re staying this time, right?”

He had to be getting sick of that joke by now, I thought, and I promised myself I wouldn’t make it again.

“Yeah,” he replied, “Couldn’t run if I tried in these slippery-ass shoes,” he added, recycling the joke he’d told me that morning. The best defense for a repetitive question was a repetitive answer. That was something we’d learned somewhere about the twenty millionth time we’d been asked the boxers or briefs question.

She got the drinks she’d been waiting on and with a wink and a wave, headed back to the bridal party. “Hope to see you later,” she called as she left.

Nick looked at me. “I should charge every person that makes that joke a dime.”

I patted his shoulder and turned to order a drink.

People started trickling in and as they did, Nick’s riches would’ve been piling up if he really did charge for that joke. It came in various forms, but almost every person made it nonetheless. He laughed good naturedly and came up with an array of stock replies that he recycled, and I hung out like a landing place as he made his way around the room, ordering drinks and leaning against the bar.

Then I saw her.

Kristin walked in, holding a purse in her hands, looking around, Mason at her side. I don’t know where Max was. Probably with her mother, I thought bitterly, Who she doesn’t need help from. I shook the comment from my mind. I needed to be better about that. Especially if I was going to stick to my choice to stay with Kristin. I’d need to wash all that negativity out of my system.

I finished my drink as she walked into the conference-ballroom. I was going to need all the alcohol I could get.

I was just about to start my walk across the room when the door opened again.

And there she was.

Caroline.

I stopped two steps from the bar, hanging back, my heart racing.

Kristin. Caroline. Kristin. Caroline. Kristin. Caroline…

Nick came over quickly, making a beeline for me from clear across the room. “Dude. Kristin’s here,” he said lowly.

“So is Caroline,” I answered.

Nick’s eyes roamed over to the door. She spotted us. Caroline did, I mean. She waved and started over.

And at that exact instant, I heard Mason. “Daddy!”

Nick looked at me, “Good luck.” And he turned away.

Mother fucker had been making jokes all night about not running away, yet there he went. I hoped his damn shoes would slip.

Mason ran into me at a full run, slamming into my waist and burying his head against my stomach. “You didn’t come see my dinosaur transformer the other day,” he accused.

“I’m sorry, bud,” I answered.

Kristin was following Mason, and as I watched her approach, I saw Nick rushing across the room to greet Caroline, to stop her from advancing toward me. I patted Mason’s back as he hugged me. “I miss you,” he said. I didn’t know what to say to him to make everything that had happened right in his little mind.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you lately, little man,” I said.

Kristin came to a stop in front of me. “Hi,” she said. Her voice shook with uncomfortable formality.

I stood up, my hand on Mason’s shoulder. “Hey,” I answered. A hundred thousand words tumbled through me, a mess of pros and cons, some of the words telling her I wanted her back, some telling her I was letting her go. I didn’t know how to form them, either way, my heart just sat in my throat, all tight and beating against the lining.

“I know you got the papers,” she said. She took a deep breath, “Did you sign them?”

“No,” I replied.

Kristin sighed, “Kevin.”

“If I sign it, it’s because I agree and I don’t,” I replied.

She looked down at Mason, “Look, I don’t want to make a scene here, but let it suffice to say that I know exactly what you were doing in Kentucky all weekend.”

“What?” I blinked. How’d she find out about the song? I wondered if Andrew had tweeted about it or something. I opened my mouth about to voice my confusion, when Caroline walked up, Nick trailing behind her, wide-eyed, his shoes squeaking as they slipped on the wood.

I felt bad now that I’d prayed his shoes would slip.

Kristin looked back as the squeaks approached us, her eyes slipping over Caroline and Nick. She turned back to me. “Speaking of,” and she reached for Mason’s hand. “C’mon, Mason. We need to go find Lauren.”

It clicked what she’d said. “Wait, Kris, it’s not what it looks like.”

Kristin peeled a reluctant Mason from my waist, “Don’t you act like I’m stupid, Kevin Richardson, why else would you go to that camp after twenty-one years?”

“Because Nick needed a place to go,” I said.

Caroline was just far enough away she could hear, but had come to a stop. She was biting her lips, Nick slipped into the back of her, catching himself on her shoulders with a blush to his cheeks.

“Bullshit,” Kristin hissed.

Mason looked up, “Are you guys fighting?” he asked.

God bless the kid had taken a year to notice.

“No,” Kristin said firmly. Too firmly. Mason’s eyes lit up with worry, like he suddenly could feel the tension that we’d somehow managed to keep from him for so long. I felt this overwhelming sense of guilt all of a sudden. Of all the things I’d never wanted our fights to hurt, it was the boys.

“Kristin, nothing happened,” I said lowly. I didn’t really want to have this conversation with Caroline right there.

She stared into my eyes, “Nick said you apologized.”

I looked at Nick.

His eyes were wider than wide.

“I was faithful to you,” I said to Kristin. “Saying sorry doesn’t mean I was unfaithful.”

“You haven’t been faithful to me since you walked out of the house last year,” she snapped.

“Nick,” I barked, “Can you please… take Mason somewhere? Anywhere?” His eyes were tearing up and I couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t fight in front of him. I couldn’t. It wasn’t right. And the fact that Kristin was willing to give in to emotions like that made me angry.

Nick shuffled around Caroline, hand out, “Hey, wanna come see if they got the little weiners out at the catering table yet?” he asked, bending low for Mason’s palm.

Mason grabbed hold of Nick’s hand, looking longingly at me.

“Go ahead, Mase, I’ll see you in a few minutes,” I said.

Nick led the way out, bent down for Mason’s hand, talking about all the great stuff the caterer was bringing. Caroline hovered, looking uncomfortable, unsure if she should follow Nick or stay here, unsure if she was in or out of the conversation. I looked back to Kristin. “I have never cheated on you,” I said in a low, hard voice that I hoped left no room for discussion on the topic.

“I never said you cheated, I said you were unfaithful,” Kristin snapped. “Faithful would’ve been staying and helping me. I’m not having this fight again Kevin. Just sign the papers.”

A couple other groups were facing us now.

“Kris, I’m not signing them,” I hissed, “Until I’ve had a chance to try to make it right.”

“You can’t make it right,” Kristin said. “If there was a way, then I wouldn’t have sent them to you to begin with. This isn’t high school or college or what the fuck ever, Kevin. This is marriage and it is broken and it’s over.”

“Please.”

My voice sounded so pathetic.

She opened her mouth to say something, but instead Caroline’s voice broke through. “Why don’t you just give him a damn chance to tell you how he feels? Don’t you owe him at least that after all this time?” she snapped, stepping up beside Kristin.

Kristin’s focus shifted from me to Caroline. “I would think you of all people would be rooting for him to sign the papers and so you can finally run away with him.”

“Oh. Like you did?” Caroline snapped.

Terror sank through my body like cold water being poured over my head. I felt like all the organs in my body had fallen to the base of my core.

“That was different,” Kristin’s voice was sharp.

“How?” Caroline asked. “It was my wedding day and you came and literally ran away with him.”

“You were ruining his life.”

“And what do you think you’re doing by being such a bitch?”

I looked around. Where the fuck was Mike or Drew or any of the damn bodyguards that usually swarmed around any place that we were at? I could sure use one of them right about now. Lauren was gonna kill me if this escalated much higher. I could see one or two photographers that had managed to get in discreetly taking pictures from the corners of the room as the scene unfolded.

I grabbed at their arms, “Can we go somewhere more, uh, private?” I requested under my breath, nodding toward the press guys hungrily collecting images for their ragazines.

“I shouldn’t have come,” Caroline deduced instead of us moving anywhere. “This was a mistake. Nick invited me, I just wanted to come to support him.”

“Right, and to collect your bounty,” snapped Kristin.

Caroline turned on her with a speed that could only have been explained by her time working with the horses. “For your information, all I have done is told him to try like hell to make your relationship with him work.”

“I’m sure,” Kristin said.

Caroline looked angrier than a spitfire.

Kristin’s eyebrow was raised, a cool, smouldering anger in her eyes.

I didn’t know how the hell to diffuse this. The clicking of the paparazzi’s cameras felt like heart beats, slowly speeding up, getting more frantic. I felt like the room was getting smaller around us.

“I have waited for twenty-two years,” Caroline said, her voice shaking, “For him to even apologize to me.”

“And apparently wait around for him to come back so you could pounce right on him the moment he was in town,” Kristin said coldly.

Caroline’s jaw was set, “I work for Ann at the camp.”

Kristin’s eyes widened with humor and a smile, “Oh. Ohhh.” She looked at me. “No wonder you suddenly decided to go back to the camp after decades of avoiding it.” She turned back to Caroline. “You’re disgusting, stealing married men from their wives --”

“YOU STOLE HIM FROM ME FIRST!” Caroline shouted, her face red.

“He wasn’t married yet!” Kristin snarled.

“That’s enough,” I said, but neither of them heard me.

“Only by minutes!” Caroline snarled back.

“You were going to break his spirit,” Kristin snapped.

“Like you’re one to talk about breaking his spirit,” Caroline cried, “You didn’t have to see the way he cried over you. Like his world was shattered. I have never seen anyone cry like that before!”

“Oh so you were there then, too.”

“At least I was there for him,” Caroline said.

“I was there for him through a lot more than you’ve ever been. I saved him from you when you were trying to bottle him up and keep him as your very own up there in Hickville because you didn’t even love him enough to think about his dreams.”

“Why do you think I haven’t tried to get him back for twenty fucking years?!” Caroline yelled.

“Enough,” I tried again.

“SO! You admit you’re trying to get him back?” Kristin took a step forward.

“So what if I am, you clearly don’t want him anymore!” Caroline stepped forward, too.

Kristin’s eyes were fire. “Well, until he signs the divorce papers, he’s still mine. And he doesn’t want to sign the papers, so maybe you should think about what that means, you little bitch. He doesn’t want you.”

“ENOUGH!” I bellowed the word as hard as I could.

They both looked to me.

My words were quieter now, “Enough.”

Caroline nodded, and I could see tears glistening in her eyes. “You’re right. Enough.” And she left. Quicker than I could form the words to stop her this time, heading out the door.

I looked at Kristin.

“That was completely uncalled for,” I said roughly.

“I want the papers signed by the end of the day,” she said, and she left, too.

And there I was at the bar, alone. I’d gone from too many women to no women at all.

Everyone in the room quickly turned away, trying to act like they hadn’t been watching and listening to everything that had been said. Polite, forced conversation sounds suddenly filled the room where as moments before the only sound had been Caroline and Kristin’s voices. The paparazzi looked like they were gonna piss themselves with delight as they reviewed the photos they’d taken.

“Fuck,” I whispered, turning to the bar.

The bartender was staring at me, absently swiping a washcloth on the counter, not even really trying to look like he wasn’t listening to that whole thing. He was looking at me with this expression of pity or something. “You, uh, want another drink or something, pal?” he asked. “On the house?”

I shook my head. “No. Thanks.”

I needed to get out of that reception room.

I needed air.




I was sitting on a bench outside of the resort, looking out to the parking lot rather than the cliff or the wedding area. I felt like my negative tension needed to stay away from the wedding areas. My heart metaphorically hurt. The only thing keeping me from getting in the car and driving away was the fact that Nick had been so excited that morning when I’d helped him with his tie. He needed me there and I couldn’t choose to deprive him of that. But I didn’t want to infect everyone with my crappy mood, so I’d exiled myself away from the party.

I’d been there a good twenty minutes when Nick suddenly planted himself next to me. “So you almost caused a girl fight at my wedding, huh? That’s a bad ass wedding gift, bro.” He smirked, elbowing me.

I shook my head. “I feel like shit.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s my own fault. My lack of decision left me with no women at all.”

Nick sighed, “So… Caroline was gonna leave but I told her not to.”

“She’s still here?” I asked, my voice hopeful.

“Mhm,” Nick nodded. “So’s Kristin.”

I looked over at him.

“You gotta pick, man. And you gotta do it now, before one of them kills the other one. Seriously, them bitches be crazy.”

“I know,” my voice was raw.

“What can I do to help?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

Nick leaned back against the bench, staring up at the sky. “Yanno. Okay. Here’s what I think.” He sat upright and turned to look at me, “And I know I ain’t very smart about this shit ‘cos, I mean, y’know. I don’t have a helluva lotta experience, but… Lauren says we’re a strong couple, the strongest we know actually we decided this week,” he smirked, “Anyway… So I think you need to talk to Kristin either way. Like whether you’re makin’ up or not, you gotta talk to Kris. You gotta do it today. Before the ceremony.”

I stared down at my lap.

“If not for you and Kris, for Mason. You know how upset that poor kid was? Jesus. I had to feed him like twelve hot dogs.” Nick paused. “Oh. Yeah. Your kid might have a stomach ache later and it was definitely not because he had twelve hot dogs.”

I looked at Nick with an eyebrow cocked.

He shrugged. “But seriously man. Y’all gotta work out what to tell him. If nothing else you gotta do that. So here’s my thing. If you talk to Kristin, and you get in there and you realize hey this ain’t over, you fix it. Right there. But if you get in there and for even a second there’s still a question about you and her and you and Caroline and all that shit, then you gotta let it go. Because if you go into it, fixin’ it, with Caroline on your mind, the second somethin’ goes down between you, the first time anything even remotely dumbass happens, she’s gonna flip out on you or you on her and both of you is gonna be thinkin’ of Caroline.”

I digested the words slowly. He was right.

I looked up at him. “When’d you get to be so wise?”

“On Dagobah, sometime, when in exile I was,” he said in his best Yoda voice.

I smacked his arm.

Nick smiled and stood up. “So, fuck you by the way, stealing the thunder on my wedding day. All those damn paparazzi saw me come back after I got Mason back to Kris and they’re all do you have any comment on the fight and I’m like yo what fight and that’s how I find out there was like almost a fuckin’ fist fight in my reception hall while I’m out not eating twelve hot dogs with your kid,” Nick led the way back toward the conference-ballroom. “I mean, dude, you get me a chick fight for my wedding and you couldn’t even make sure I was around to see it…”

Chapter Twenty-Two


Nick

Mike had cleared out the photographers that had managed to get in and set up an invited-guests-only security team at the entrance to the driveway so by the time Kev and I went back to the reception hall, there wasn’t anybody around to bug him. Everyone kind of glanced around at him and whispered when we first walked in, though, which was enough to make him turn a little red around the edges. “They all think I’m a colossal douchebag now,” Kev muttered as he skirted around the crowd of people who were trying to act like they weren’t looking at us.

I shrugged, “They should mind their own business, then,” I said.

Kevin sighed.

“Okay, look, here’s what we’re gonna do,” I said, “We’re gonna get a couple drinks and go upstairs to the groom’s room, and I’ll text Alex and have her bring Kris over and you two can talk it out and nobody will think anything of it, they’ll just think you and me are off toasting or something.” I tapped my hand on the bar, “Diet Mt. Dew for me and a scotch on the rocks for Kevin here.”

The barkeeper looked at Kevin with concern, then ducked away, nodding as he got the drinks.

Kevin leaned his back against the bar, looked around a second, then turned back-to the room. “They’re all staring at me.”

“They’re judging you for not getting me the second there was almost a girl fight,” I joked. The bartender handed me my Mt. Dew and Kevin’s scotch, which I rattled the glass of and handed to him. “C’mon, now we go upstairs.” We made our way past a group of Lauren’s friends from Paris, one of them giving Kevin a strange look. I hoped he didn’t see it.

Upstairs, the groom’s room was staged in a library type room with a big chair you could picture some Hugh Hefner style dude in a velvet smoking jacket sitting in. They’d even provided a tray of cigars, which Kevin stood inspecting while I texted Alex and asked if Kristin was in with the bridal party and, if she was, could she bring her to the groom’s room a sec.

Uhhh..ya. Hold on, she texted back.

“She’s comin’,” I told Kevin.

“Okay,” he said.

I looked at the tray of cigars, too, and picked a couple up. “These are nice,” I said, inspecting them. I slid them into the inside pocket of my jacket, planning to save them.

Kevin was rolling a cigar between his forefinger and thumb.

“You know what you’re gonna do?”

He shook his head. “I know what I should do and I know what I want to do and I know what I want to want to do.” He sighed.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

Kevin slid one of the cigars into his jacket pocket, too. “I wish there was a clear answer,” he said, “Some sign that would make all of this obvious.”

I’d wished that a shit ton of times, too. But there was never, ever a clear answer like that, not when it came to love. It was always convoluted. Everyone was always making up their own way, doing all the crazy shit that we see in the movies. All of it added up to love in one way or another.

“You know. It’s weird,” I said.

“What is?”

“Love. All the stuff we do for it.” I shrugged. “Just weird is all.”

Kevin put the cigar down. “You want to know the secret?” he asked.

“What secret?” I like secrets, he had my undivided attention.

“The secret to love, Nick,” he said. “Love is the one thing you need that you can’t adequately give yourself. You need love from another person. And love’s rare. So you gotta appreciate it when you get it, even though it’s routine, you gotta wake up every day thanking God you got it from someone else. And you gotta remember that it’s important and that it’s worth it. Every day. Especially the bad days. Love is more important than your ego or your pride. So when you’re so sure you’re right during the fights, you gotta stop and remember that love is more important than you winning. You already won. You gotta be willing to let it go.”

I nodded.

“Love’s strong Nick, and it’s hard to break, but once it’s broken…” Kevin shook his head, “...ain’t no promise you’ll ever get it back.”

There was a knock at the door and before I could move to answer it, Alex just pushed it open and came in, trailed by Kristin. Instead of looking angry, like I’d been expecting, Kristin looked sad. Her eyes were red and puffy around the corners and her make up a little smeared. She stood there biting her lips, staring at Kevin. He looked up at her and stared right back.

I backed away from Kevin until I was next to Alex, and nudged her, nodding to the door. “We’ll be -- uh --” but neither Kevin nor Kristin seemed to notice I’d started to say anything at all, and I led the way out into the hall, leaving them alone, without finishing the sentence.

Alex looked at me as I pulled the door shut, “Don’t you think someone should stay to moderate, just in case?”

I shrugged.

“I heard there was a fight downstairs,” Alex said as we walked down the hall, “She told us she fought with some girl Kevin went to school with or something.”

“Yeah,” I said, and then, “It was crazy, Alex, they were like slappin’ each other across the face and screeching and then they were on the floor and rollin’ around, like that scene in the Parent Trap when Haley Mills is fighting Haley Mills all over the floor and they spill the cake on that one camp counselor lady…”

It was the first of many times I would exaggerate the story in my lifetime.

Alex shook her head. I dunno if she knew I was exaggerating or not. “I haven’t seen that movie in ages,” she said with a laugh. We were standing at the very top of the stairs, down the hallway from the bride and groom’s rooms, overlooking the foyer. “I always liked the part when they did the performance for the parents and they sang Let’s Get Together.”

I laughed, looking down at my shoes.

“Lauren and I used to sing that in the backyard when we were kids. She’d be the Boston sister with the pretty dress and I’d be the California casual one, and we’d do the dance parts we remembered. It was pretty silly.”

I smiled, picturing Lauren and Alex playing together as kids. “Sounds pretty fantastic to me.”

Alex laughed, “I’m sure Daddy has video somewhere.”

“I’ll have to ask Larry, ‘cos I’d fuckin’ pay big to see that,” I said with a grin.

Alex smiled, “Hmm, making future plans to talk to Dad… so I can report to Lauren that you’re holding up okay? No plans to run away?”

“I mean I have butterflies in my stomach but I’m good,” I answered. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good.” Alex smiled, “I kinda like the idea of having a big brother so you need to stick around.”

“I will, Alex.”

She grinned.

Then, from downstairs, “Hey Nick?”

I turned to look. Caroline was standing at the bottom of the steps. “Can I talk to you?”

I turned back to Alex, “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she replied, “I’m good.”

I gave her a quick hug, then headed downstairs, where Caroline was standing by the door. We went outside, the sunlight blindingly bright. Pretty much everyone was there now, the parking lot was a lot more full than it’d been when Kevin and I had gotten here. Caroline led the way to the very same bench Kev and I had been sitting on earlier, but she didn’t sit.

“I just wanted to tell you congratulations and I’m glad you made things right with Lauren,” she said, turning to face me.

“I am too,” I answered. “You helped a lot. So thank you.”

Caroline shrugged, “I seem to be a master at fixing everyone else’s relationships,” she said. She stared at the resort building, a sad sort of expression in her eyes. She shook it off, then turned back to me. “Anyways, I don’t want to be in the way and cause anymore scenes and honestly all I want to do is bitch slap Kristin for hurting him when he’s trying so damn hard to make her love him again…” she shook her head and puffed out her cheeks. “Some people don’t know how lucky they are,” she added. Her eyes met mine, “Anyway, I just wanted to say that I appreciate you inviting me. But I need to go.”

I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I didn’t think there’d be such a scene with Kris and stuff. I didn’t think it all through.”

“In all these years, I never realized I was so angry at her for taking him away, but --” she shrugged. “I guess I was after all.”

“I guess,” I answered. I stared down at my feet.

“I want him to be happy,” she said. Then Caroline’s voice went quiet, “I always thought I could make him happy.” I looked up at her. Her eyes were diverted up to the heavens. “I thought maybe -- maybe he was gonna give me a chance to… He signed the note he left congratulating me on the certificate with love Kevin.”

“So you got your certificate,” I said.

I wanted to change the subject. I hated the feeling in my guts that Caroline was going to be nothing short of shattered from all this. She was so nice, too nice to be broken hearted. I was kinda glad she was leaving, if for no reason other than I wouldn’t have to see it happen.

Caroline nodded, “I did. Finally.” She smiled a little through the anguish in her eyes. “You and Lauren should come visit the horses sometime. See the new sign at the camp.”

“I’m sure Laur would like that,” I said. I looked around, “Too bad we don’t have any of the champagne, I’d toast your achievement.”

Caroline laughed shakily, “We don’t need to toast my achievement.”

“Yeah huh, when someone does something amazing they deserve recognition in the form of a toast or - or -” My eyes landed on Lauren’s french guy friend standing a few feet away, smoking a cigarette and talking on his phone in rapid French. “Oh, I know!” I grappled to feel my chest and pulled the cigars I’d put in there out, handing one to her. “Guy… hey… uh... guy? er… Francois de… uh.. guy?”

He turned around, “Oui?”

“Do you -- errm --- uh… Vooly voo er...lighter…?” I mimed lighting the cigars.

He blinked at me. “I speak English,” he said in a thick accent.

“Oh. Well, uh, could we borrow your lighter?”

He lowered the phone a second and reached in his pocket and produced a Bic which he tossed to me. I lit the cigars and tossed it back, “Mercy,” I said.

He rolled his eyes and turned away, pocketing the lighter and saying something into the phone that probably translated Lauren’s marrying a colossal ass.

Caroline was laughing. She put the cigarette between her teeth, “Do I look sophisticated?”

“Eh…” I put the cigar between my teeth, too. “Do I?”

“You look like Groucho Marx.”

“Kevin would for real,” I said, and I put my fingers up over my eyebrows as I inhaled and puffed the smoke out around the cigar.

Caroline laughed, “Oh my God. He would.”

“Them fuckin’ eyebrows, man,” I laughed, shaking my head. “You know who else he looks like? Bert. Like Bert and Ernie.”

Caroline wiped tears of laughter from her face, “Jesus. Nick you’re bad.”

“I know. I’d be gettin’ the Dirty Brow for this if he could hear me. That’s what we call it, when the brows come together ‘cos he’s angry.” I mimicked the face that produced the Dirty Brow. “Like this.”

“I know that face,” Caroline laughed.

“Has his brows always been so fuckin… huge?” I asked.

“Always.”

I laughed, coughing on the cigar smoke. I wasn’t sure I really liked the cigar.

“I always liked his eyebrows,” she said wistfully. She smiled, but the words had taken the humor out because it just reminded us both that she had lost him and it brought a kind of sobriety to the moment. She studied her cigar.

I looked down at my feet. “Thanks for coming.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

“Kev didn’t think you would ‘cos you don’t like traveling.”

Caroline shrugged, “Maybe I will travel more now. Who knows.” She looked over at the ocean. “It’s beautiful here. I see why you guys like it so much. I’ve never lived anywhere but Irvine.”

“Well any time you wanna come to California, let me know, I can show you around.” I smiled. I stubbed the cigar out against the metal handle on the bench we were standing beside. I definitely wasn’t a fan of cigars, I decided.

“I don’t even have your phone number,” she replied. She must not have liked hers, either, ‘cos she copied me, stubbing it out. “Here,” Caroline smiled and handed me her phone, “Put your number in.”

So we stood there, me tapping in my information into her phone. “There,” I said when we were done, “Now we can stay in touch.” I smiled. “Text me so I have your number.”

“I will,” she answered. She took a deep breath, “Anyways. I’m gonna go to the airport and see if I can get an earlier flight back to Kentucky,” she said. “I’m sorry to miss the actual ceremony, but it’s for the best. I don’t want to cause anymore scenes.”

I nodded. “Thanks for coming,” I said.

“Good luck, Nick. And tell Lauren congratulations from me.” Caroline patted my arm, then she turned and I watched her walk across the lot to a small rental car at the far end. She waved before she got in and I waved back. I sighed. Despite all my whining and pushing for Kris, I realized as Caroline left that a small part of me had been rooting for her all along.

Back inside, it was a cloud of congratulations as I walked across the room to dispose of the cigar. Caroline had taken hers with her, I realized.

I hoped she would have a happy ending, too, someday.

I got another Mt. Dew and talked to various friends and Lauren’s family members. Larry and I were talking about football when Kevin came in the room. He straightened his suit jacket as he walked toward me.

“Where’s Kris?” I asked.

Kevin shook his head.

“Can I get another scotch on the rocks, please,” he requested from the bartender, putting his glass from before on the counter. The bartender took it and squirreled away.

“Kev?”

He stood there, licking his teeth, a deep, contemplative look on his face as he waited for his scotch. Finally, he looked up at me. “I signed the papers.”

I stared at him, my brain scrambling to wrap around the words. “What? What? Why?”

He took a deep breath. “I… I made up my mind, Nick.”

“But… the song.”

Kevin shook his head. “Where’s Caroline?”

“But the song was gonna work,” I tried again.

“I’ll tell you what happened later,” Kev said, “Right now, I need to talk to Caroline. Now.”

“She left,” I said, “I thought you’d chose Kristin, I didn’t try to stop her, I just -- Kev, she left like an hour ago now,” I added looking at my watch.

“What?”

“She was gonna get her flight rescheduled,” I said, still in disbelief, “You -- but -- Kristin -- how did -- Kevin??”

“She was going to the airport?”

“Kev!”

“I’ll explain it later, Nick. Right now, I gotta plane to catch.” He put the glass down and ran for the door of the conference-ballroom, knocking into Larry and a couple people he was standing with. “Sorry,” he said, and he ran on.

I ran after him, “Sorry,” I said to Larry as my shoes slid across the floor panel.

“Nick!” He yelled, “What the hell are you doing?” A panicked look filled his face. He thought I was running away again, I realized.

“Larry, dude, I swear I’ll be right back!” I yelled, “I gotta take care of somethin’ real fast.” And I ran after Kev before I could get a response, before I could explain anything.

My heart raced as I skidded and slipped after Kevin, ‘til I finally got frustrated and kicked the stupid slippery shoes off in the foyer. I’d collect them on my way back inside.

Kevin was standing beside the car, frustratedly patting himself down, trying to find the car keys in his jacket pockets when I caught up to him. I held the keys up, which I’d taken when we got to the resort. “Looking for these?”

“Yes,” he held out his hand for them.

“You’ve had a couple too many to be drivin’ Kev,” I said, shaking my head.

“Nick, c’mon man. I’ve got to catch up to her.”

I said, “You can call her.”

“I don’t have her phone number,” he said.

Frustrated, wishing I’d made her type her info into my phone, too, when I’d typed mine into hers, I tried again, “But Kevin…”

“Nick, please,” he said. He stared at me with wide, desperate eyes. “I have to catch up to her.”

“But --” I flapped my arms at the resort, “But --”

“Nick. I can’t let this go another twenty years.” His voice was so pleading, so full of certainty, that I knew I couldn’t be what stood between him and catching up to Caroline.

I took a deep breath.

“Get in,” I said, unlocking the door.

“What?” Kev looked confused. He reached for the keys, “You’re gonna let me --”

I pulled my hand back and pointed to the passenger door. “I’m driving. Get in.”

“Nick, you can’t, you’ve got a wedding you have to be at. Your wedding,” he added, “Which you’ve already missed once.” He waved his hand at the building behind us. “You can’t go running again.”

“We’ll go, we’ll get Caroline, we’ll come back. I won’t miss the wedding if we move fast; we just gotta catch up with her. No way did she get a flight change already. We might even catch up to her before she turns in the rental at the garage,” I pointed out.

He stared at me. “Nick…”

“Kev. C’mon. Get in. And you can tell me what the hell happened on the way.”

Chapter Twenty-Three


Kevin

One hour and Twenty Minutes Ago…

“We’ll be -- uh -- “ Nick thumbed at the door and Alex followed him into the hallway as he pulled the door shut behind himself, leaving me and Kristin standing there, facing each other in the silence.

I wanted to say something, but I didn’t know what. I just knew there was something. We didn’t look directly at each other, both choosing instead to go with sidelong views of the other. Her eyes were all red around the edges and she stood with a hesitant posture. She licked her lips slowly, not in a seductive way, but in the way she did when she had somethin’ hard to say and a limited number of ways to say it. Seemed both of us had somethin’ to say and neither of us knew how to start.

Kristin spoke first, “I’m sorry. About the scene downstairs.”

“It ain’t me you should be apologizing to, it’s Nick and Lauren, isn’t it?” I asked.

“I already said sorry to Lauren,” she said.

“Then I suppose you’re absolved,” I replied.

Kristin looked at me. “Kevin,” she said, “What’re we doing? Standing at Nick Carter’s wedding, causing fights over things that happened back in college…” she shook her head. She wiped away invisible tears, blinking faster than usual. “Tell me the truth. Did anything happen with her in Kentucky?” She wasn’t asking in a vengeful wife sort of way, just in a way that she genuinely wanted to know, like an all cards on the table sort of thing.

So I said, “No. Nothing happened.” I took a deep breath, “But only because I was being faithful to you.”

She thought for a moment, chewing her lower lip gently, and walked further into the room, loosening up a little bit. She ran her hands over a shelf of books, her fingers running across their spines, the pale color of her nail polish bland against the dark shades of the book covers. “Faithful to me, or too chicken shit to take a shot?” she asked.

“Faithful,” I replied sternly.

She turned to me, “So you’re trying to say you don’t have any feelings for Caroline?”

I stared at her.

Kristin smiled. “Don’t worry, it was obvious anyway the moment she walked in the room this afternoon.”

My mouth was dry. “I mean it doesn’t mean I love you any less, Kris.”

Kristin sighed. “I know you think that.”

“Kris...”

She shook her head, “Kevin, we both love each other less today than we did before. You know it and I know it, too. If we didn’t, there wouldn’t be a question hanging between us.” She opened her purse and produced a copy of the petition for divorce. I recognized the font, the white space on the page, the way it was tri-folded. I stared at it. She waved it in the air. “If we didn’t love each other less, these papers wouldn’t exist.”

“They don’t have to exist,” I said.

Kristin shrugged, “Even if we burned them, the memory of them would be enough.” She put the document down on the desk. “It’s like they say about words - they can be forgiven but never forgotten.”

I reached in my own pocket and produced the lyrics that Andrew Fromm and I had worked so diligently on. I unfolded the page, my hands shaking.

“What’s that?”

“My song, I wrote you a song,” I said.

Kristin’s eyes looked sad. I knew she was remembering the time years and years ago when I’d gone to her house in the rain to stand out front with a boombox John Cusack style playing the demo version of Back to Your Heart. She’d come down the stairs in slow motion it’d seemed and we’d embraced on the lawn just as the rain shorted out the cassette deck.

Before she could say anything or stop me or whatever she was thinking of doing with those beautiful doe-eyes of hers, I started singing in a cracking voice:

“It’s a long time coming, should’ve done this years ago
I’m sorry, I miss you, and now that I’m home I don’t wanna go
I’ve been too proud to ask for a second try
So please, let’s restart the spark, open the door to you and I...
I ran away from the only thing I wanted
And since the door closed my heart has been haunted
I can’t see a crowd without seeing you
Here I am, on my knees, asking what to do
I know it’s a long time coming, should’ve done this from the start
Baby, please, show me the way back to your heart…”

My voice hung in the air.

It was cheesy. I’d even named it “Back to Your Heart 2.0” as a working title. It would never see the light of day. And whatever Andrew Fromm had said in the kitchen of Nick’s Nashville house, it was shit start to finish.

At no point was that more blatantly obvious than as I stood there in the silence that followed the words melting into the atmosphere, waiting for a reply.

Maybe, I told myself, feelings aren’t supposed to come out pretty. Maybe they’re just supposed to come out.

“Kevin…”

“There’s more,” I said, thrusting the page at her, “See? There’s more. I know it’s shit, but I mean every word. I feel them.” I thumped my hand against my chest, right over my heart.

Kristin took the page, but she didn’t look at it. She was looking at me. “Honey,” her voice was thick, “Kevin. It’s not for me.”

“What?”

“The song. It isn’t for me.” She held the page back out to me.

I took it, feeling numb. “What do you mean it isn’t for you? Of course it’s for you. I sat in Nick’s place in Nashville, agonizing over writing this…”

She tilted her head to one side. “Kev. It’s for Caroline.”

I looked up at her.

“C’mere.” She set herself down on a short little couch and patted the cushion next to her. I walked over and sat slowly, staring at her. My mind was going over the words with an urgency. Had I seriously subconsciously poured myself into lyrics for Caroline? I could feel a lump growing in my throat, a realization dawning in my mind, a pit deepening in the bottom of my stomach. I looked at Kristin. “Kevin, this divorce isn’t rewriting what we had. It doesn’t mean that we didn’t love each other, or that we didn’t have amazing memories, or even that I don’t still love you. And you still love me, too.” I nodded. “And maybe that’s the most heartbreaking part of this. The fact that it isn’t a bitter divorce. It isn’t hateful. It’s just… an ending. Things were said that can’t be unsaid, things were done that can’t be undone. On both parts. Mine and yours. We both made mistakes and we both came down too hard on each other. It didn’t erase our past. It couldn’t ever erase the past. But it ended us. It ended the trust I had for you, and it ended the respect you had for me and we broke. We’re broken and the only way to heal is to move on.” She stared into my eyes for a long moment. “I believe you have been faithful to me --”

“I have,” I said. The words were meant to be strong, but they came out weak and thick.

“I know. I believe you. And Kevin, I’ve been faithful to you, too, but --” she took a deep breath, “There is another man for me, too, Kev, just like there’s Caroline for you. And I think we owe it to each other… to… to let go… so we can move on with the people we’re splitting our affections with.” She reached out for my hand with one hand and swept the other through my hair, cupping my temple in her palm. “I’ll miss your eyes somethin’ fierce.”

I could barely see, my vision blurred by tears.

Kristin held out the divorce papers.

“I love you enough to tell you to follow your heart,” Kristin said. And tears were in her eyes, too.

“Do you have a pen?” I whispered.




Now

“So… is it really?” Nick was barrelling down the Pacific Coast Highway.

“Is what really what?”

“The song? Is it really for Caroline?” he questioned, glancing uncomfortably long away from the road to give me an expectant expression.

“Would we be driving to LAX if it wasn’t?” I asked, pointing at the road, reminding him to pay attention.

“I dunno, I’ve done crazier things in my life,” Nick said with a shrug.

Like drive down the Pacific Coastal Highway without looking? I thought.

“After I signed the papers, I stared at the lyrics for a long time and Nick, she’s right.” I gripped the handle above the window as Nick squeezed between a semi and an Escalade by a hair and cut into the next lane over with barely a glance back, inciting honking as he took a left turn exit into LAX. My heart was in my throat for so many reasons already -- Nick’s driving just another one of the many. “I was driving to Nashville from Kentucky and alls I could think of was her and every time I thought of Kris and the song the words were seizing up in me and then Andrew asked me to write what I felt and a lot of it was about Kris but a lot was about Caroline too and we weeded through the things I felt ‘til we found the most passionate things and… and I guess those are the things I wanted to say to Caroline.”

Nick shook his head, “I wish you’d realized it sooner, I wouldn’t have let her leave…” He slammed the brakes on as he pulled into slower moving traffic of LAX’s complex roadways. My knuckles were white as I clutched the handle, and I closed my eyes. “And dude there’s another man?”

“She didn’t cheat on me any more than I cheated on her,” I reminded him.

Nick sighed.

The car jerked as he cut across a couple lanes sharply. A horn honked. “Jesus,” I mumbled.

“Fuckin’ traffic,” Nick muttered. “Dude, Lauren’s gonna have my balls if I ain’t back in time for the wedding.” He sounded nervous.

My palms were sweating.

“You know, this shit only ever happens in movies? Like the Wedding Singer?” Nick pointed out.

“I know,” I mumbled.

“I actually can’t think of any other movies this happened in,” he said.

“Happened on Friends,” I pointed out.

“Oh yeah,” Nick said, “Shit AJ would be proud of you for knowin’ that.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“You gonna sing her your song?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“What’re you gonna say?”

“I don’t know,” I answered.

There was a colossal thump and a jolt and an unsettling disturbance in equilibrium. “Fuckin’ median,” Nick hissed.

I squeezed my eyes tighter shut. And he’d been worried about me driving. Even with a lot more alcohol than I’d had, I couldn’t possibly be any worse at drivin’ than Nick was doing, I thought.

But then again, we’d made great time getting to LAX from Malibu. Which was handy, seeing as, like he’d pointed out, we had to move quite quickly or he’d miss his own wedding again, this time through no (or at least hardly any) fault of his own.

He couldn’t be late.

I couldn’t let the girl fly away.

I realized that we hadn’t really moved in sometime and opened my eyes. Traffic at the airport was ridiculous, bumper to bumper as far as I could see. The departures door wasn’t too far ahead of us. I looked over at Nick. “In the interest of time…”

“What?”

“Wish me luck.” I shoved the door open and before Nick could say anything, I ran like hell for the unloading dock. I could hear him yelling my name from behind, but my feet moved too quick and I was soon out of hearing range. All I could focus on was finding Caroline as quickly as possible and getting us both back to Nick. I ran through the doors, into the lobby of LAX and stared around wildly. People were streaming every which way, people from every sort of life - tall, short, all races, both genders, every build, every social bracket. They swarmed around me and I realized that in an ocean I was one drop of water seeking another drop.

She could be fuckin’ anywhere.

I looked at my watch. I estimated it would take Nick twenty minutes to make a lap around the LAX lot, and I needed to be back to the curb for when he managed to get there.

Think, Kevin, think, I demanded myself.

First thing’s first: find out where her plane is taking off from.

I ran to the huge digital departures board that loomed in the center of the lobby, over a series of escalators that led the way up to the security booths. I scanned my eyes over the soupy red letters. None of the flights were going to Kentucky. She was obviously making a connection, if she’d found a new flight yet, that is. The board had proved no help whatsoever, but I continued staring up, like I expected the words to melt away and a map to appear, clearly depicting which way I needed to go.

“C’mon,” I whispered a prayer under my breath, “I know I ain’t talked to ya in a piece, but if you just lemme have this one I swear I’ll be better about keepin’ in touch.”

I took a deep breath, my eyes roaming over the various airline counters, their snaking lines stretching way back toward me in tight arcs. I had no way of knowing which one she’d booked.

“Help me,” I continued my whispered prayer.

I turned to look further down the breezeway. And there was a sign.

Need help? Customer Service is here to help you.

I walked over to the counter. A heavy set woman sat behind the counter, staring benignly around the lobby. She spotted me a good ten feet off and smiled at me, waiting until I got to the counter. “May I help you?” she asked pleasantly.

“I’m looking for a passenger, a particular passenger.”

“What flight are they on?” she asked, clicking at her computer keyboard.

“I don’t know,” I replied.

She paused in clicking, then looked up at me. “Oh.” She paused. “Departing?”

“Yes.”

“Where are they headed?”

“Eventually, Kentucky.”

“I don’t see any flights for Kentucky on our schedule.”

“Neither do I,” I said.

She stared up at me. “So you don’t know what flight they’re on or where to find them, or where they’re headed to exactly?”

“Right.”

She stared at me.

“Her name is Caroline Watson,” I said, looking at my watch. I glanced around the lobby again, hoping she’d show up. Suddenly, I couldn’t even remember what she was wearing. I remembered she looked spectacular in it, but my mind had drawn a blank on what it was. I looked impatiently at the woman behind the desk as she stared at me. I waved for her to start tap-tap-tapping her keyboard. “Please. I have to find her.”

“Sir, I can’t give you information about a passenger if you don’t have any information about the passenger’s flight. We are not at liberty to disclose information due to privacy laws.” Her voice was tired. She’d said this a million times a day for the unforseeable past.

“Please,” I begged.

“Sir, no amount of pleading is going to make your situation worth losing my job,” she said apologetically.

Frustration rushed through me. I gripped the edge of the desk. “But I love her. And she doesn’t know.”

The woman gave me a tight-lipped, faux-apologetic smile.

“Fuck.” I turned away, looking down at my watch again. I had fifteen minutes. I glanced back at the entry doors. Nick was out there, somewhere, driving around the loop. Traffic was still inching by. I didn’t have time to mess around. I had to find Caroline. Now. Or else I’d have to give up. Nick had to be back to the resort in time for the wedding.

And then I spotted her.

She’d changed into jeans and a sweater and was on the escalator, her luggage on the step below her, near to the top, a pair of headphones on.

Because of course she had to have headphones on.

“Caroline!” I bellowed. Several people near to me stopped to look my way, but most people kept right on going without even so much as a glance. I pushed my way forward, breaking between groups of people. I felt a bit like that old video game Frogger, dodging people instead of 18-wheelers. “Excuse me, excuse me. Pardon me. Excuse me. Coming through. Excuse me.” I pushed and dodged and ducked.

I looked up. She was at the top of the escalator and I was only about halfway across the lobby. My heart jumped into my throat as she stepped off the top landing of the escalator, pulling her suitcase along behind her. “Caroline!” I shouted again. “Wait!”

Propelled by this new urgency, I plunged forward once more, plowing down several offended flyers, shoving my way among them. I got to the escalator and ran up it, ducking around the lazy people standing and riding up it. At the top, I rushed forward. I couldn’t see her, but obviously she was headed for security which was right up ---

A thick arm caught me, wrapping across my chest, almost knocking me down. “Whoa, hold up there, son,” said a deep voice. It was a TSA agent. “Do you have a ticket?”

“No, but I don’t need to fly, I just need to catch up to that woman --” I waved in the direction I’m sure she’d gone.

“Sir, you can’t pass this point without a ticket.”

“But Caroline just came through here and I need to talk to her -- Caroline!”

He pushed me back from the edge of the ticketed passengers only area. “Sir, if you return down stairs and get a ticket --”

“I need to get to a wedding, I don’t have time to go downstairs and get a ticket,” I snapped, “I just need to get to Caroline. Please. Just a couple minutes and I’ll get her and we’ll be all good and --”

“No.” The agent glowered at me. “I can’t authorize that. Now step back.” He pushed me good and I stumbeld a couple feet. I stared at him.

“Please.”

He shook his head. “If you go downstairs and get a ticket --”

“God damn it, aren’t you listening?” I cried. “I need to tell her that I love her. I need to tell her to come back.”

“I’m sorry son,” he said. “But you need a ticket.”

“Fuck,” I swore and I turned back to the escalator going down. I looked at the watch as the steps moved slowly downward. I had five minutes. No where near enough time to get the ticket and get back upstairs and have any hope of catching her. I looked up at the ceiling. Every fiber of me wanted to get the ticket anyway and go after her. But Nick’s wedding. I could text him, I told myself, text him and tell him to go back without me. But he needed me there. Nick needed me at his wedding like I’d needed my dad at my wedding.

It was important.

I closed my eyes as I stepped off the bottom of the escalator and the people behind me flowed around, headed to their destinations.

I felt numb.

Sure I could wait.

Sure I could find her. It wasn’t like it was hard to find her.

But somehow it seemed more impossible if I didn’t find her here.

I walked slowly forward, glancing back, the storybook dreamer of me hoping to see her come running back from security, shouting my name.

The traffic sounded louder when I stepped back out onto the Departures curb and looked around, trying to spot Nick’s car in the mess of vehicles that filled the street in front of me. He was several lanes out and only halfway past the curb. Ahead, it looked like there may have been an accident, which was keeping the traffic crawling. I cut my way through the cars to Nick’s door and opened it, sliding myself inside.

Nick looked over. He glanced at the back seat where I did not have Caroline. He looked back at me. “I’m sorry Kev.”

“I saw her. She was going to security. I tried to catch up to her but they wouldn’t let me by to talk to her without a ticket.”

“Did you get a ticket?” Nick asked.

“No,” I answered, “Course not. By the time I got a ticket and caught up to her and all that you’d have missed your wedding all over again,” I answered, “I can’t be the reason you lose Lauren. It’s bad enough being the reason I might lose Caroline.”

Nick waved at the cars in front of us. “At this fuckin’ rate, I’ma miss it anyway,” he answered.

I looked back at the airport, then back to Nick.

“Go, man, you gotta try it,” he said. “Text me when you find her and I’ll let you know if I’m still stuck here or not.”

I nodded. “If you get out of this mess, go to the wedding.”

“Okay,” he agreed.

“Okay.” I paused, hand on the door, “Good luck, Nick. And thank you.”

He nodded.

I ran back across the roadway, back into the lobby, back across the room to one of the desks, where I breathlessly grabbed hold of the counter. “I need a plane ticket,” I said.

“And where are you traveling?” asked the attendant.

“Somewhere, anywhere,” I replied.

“Anywhere?” she looked confused, “But where are you headed to?”

“Security checkpoint,” I answered. “I need to talk to a girl.” She looked at me. “She’s upstairs and they won’t let me through to talk to her. Please. Any ticket at all will do.”

Her eyes widened, “Oh my gosh, this only happens in the movies,” she said, lighting up. Her fingers flew across the keyboard. “Do you have your ID?” I fished in my wallet and handed it to her. “Everything’s current?” she asked. I nodded and watched as she typed everything in. “And how are you paying today?”

“Credit.” I pushed my card to her.

Within minutes, I was running back up the escalators. I wondered if Nick had got through the traffic yet, if he’d make it back to the wedding on time. I waved my ID and my boarding pass at the agent that had stopped me, who acted like he’d never seen me before, nodding at my pass and inspecting it’s authenticity and everything. Finally, he let me through and I ran like nobody’s business toward the security queue.

She was four snake folds ahead of me, a line of tired, bored looking people between us, hauling their luggage and children with them.

“Caroline!” I yelled again.

She still had her headphones on.

“Caroline!”

I looked down at the line divider. It was one of those little nylon strap things. “Fuck this shit,” I muttered and I unsnapped the divider’s end, letting it clatter to the floor. “Excuse me,” I said, pushing around a businessman in a brown tweed suit, unsnapping that divider, too, and pushing by a pissed off looking hispanic woman who looked like she might’ve been thinking about smacking me for stepping into her personal space. I unsnapped that divider, upsetting an elderly couple, the old man yapping at me about respect for rules, and meanwhile the hispanic woman was shouting for someone to stop me, the maniac, from cutting them all in line.

“Caroline!” I unsnapped the last divider that separated us, pushed around a herd of Japanese children with their parents, and pulled her headphones off her head, “Caroline!”

She grabbed at her headphones, startled by the removal, and turned quickly to face me, “What the hell do you think you’re doing!?” She yelled, then her eyes met mine and she stopped mid-shout, stunned. “Kevin?”

“Caroline.”

She blinked at me in surprise, “What the -- how did you -- why -- Nick’s wedding! Kevin! What are you doing here??”

“I came for you.”

“What?”

The line moved forward. The Japanese family glared at us as they moved around us.

“I came to stop you from leaving, don’t go.”

“Kevin,” she was turning red, “C’mon, I’ve been a part of enough scenes today.”

“I love you.”

She stared at me, her eyes wide.

“I love you,” I said again, just in case she hadn’t heard me the first time. This was, after all, the part where the girl freaks out, hugs the guy, and they have a really long, over dramatic kiss and the music goes all floaty and things get blurry around them and the credits go up and all that. But she just stared at me.

“But… but what about Kristin.”

“I signed the divorce papers. I signed the papers, Caroline. I signed them for you. I wrote a song. I wrote a song and it’s about you and I didn’t even know it ‘til Kris read it and she pointed it out. I love you. I’ve always loved you.”

She swallowed.

She still looked shocked.

“Kevin… I…” she shook her head, “I can’t do this right now. It’s… it’s too quick.”

“Please,” I said.

Somehow, we’d shuffled our way to the front of the line. “No. I can’t do this right now. It’s too much. It’s too quick. I can’t. Not yet.” She turned and hurried away to the security checkpoint, kicking her shoes off as she went, throwing them into a bin.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked as she pushed the bin onto the conveyer belt.

“Go home. Pause. Think about it. Let the pieces fall. Get back on your feet. Then we’ll talk about this again.” She turned to the metal detector. She glanced back at me for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she said simply. “I just don’t want to be the one you picked because she left you.”

The security guard waved her through.
“That’s not what you are, though, I --”

“Kevin,” she said sternly from the other side of the detector, pulling her shoes back on, “Go home.” And then she turned, pulling her suitcase from the belt, and disappeared in the mass of people on the other side.

It was my turn to stand as she ran away from me.

The guy who’d come up behind me tapped my shoulder, “You gonna take your shoes off or what, buddy?” He demanded.

There was a huge lump in my throat.

“You go ahead,” I replied numbly. I turned and walked away.

“You find her?” the agent by the front of security, the guy that had made me buy the ticket, asked as I walked by.

I nodded.

“Where is she then?” he asked.

I shrugged, “On the way wherever her plane’s going,” I answered. I took the escalator, clutching the handle to keep me upright.

Outside, Nick wasn’t more than ten car lengths along from where he’d been. I walked over and got in.

He looked even more surprised than he had before.

“Fuck,” he whispered, a disappointed look on his face.

“I found her,” I said.

His disappointed look became confused. “But…?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it. I just wanna get the fuck out of here.”

Nick bit his lips. “Oh,” he said. Then, after a pause, “I don’t think we’re going too far too soon,” he said.

I looked around. There had to be a way out. I couldn’t stand being here, so close to her, yet so far away. And Nick’s wedding time was looming closer and closer, like invisible walls closing in. I just wanted to get the hell away from LAX. I looked at the traffic, then across a barely-there median strip at the opposite side’s empty street. “Pull a U-turn.”

“What?”

“A U-turn. That side’s clear.”

“Says no U-turns,” he said, pointing at a sign.

I looked around again, “Yeah well… fuck the sign.” I answered.

“Yeah but --” he looked concerned.

“Trust me, you can’t be late because… Well, this watching the woman you love walk away from you stuff?… This feels like shit.” I said.

He hesitated for the slightest moment, then, “Dude. Since when are you the badass rule breaker and I’m the one that needs to be talked into it?” he asked as his foot came down on the gas pedal and propelled us around in a U-turn onto the opposite side of the roadway.

I took a deep breath as we left the airport behind. I couldn’t dwell on any of my shit right now, I realized because, honestly, that wasn’t fair to Nick. And God damn it at least one of us deserved a happy ending.

I looked at my watch.

I just hoped we could get there in time.

Chapter Twenty-Four


Nick

This one time, I was supposed to meet Lauren at a fancy restaurant for a date for our two year date-iversary. Well that morning, I’d dropped all my suits off at the dry cleaner except for one. Or at least what I thought was one. I realized that night, an hour and a half before I was supposed to be at the restaurant, that I’d kept the top of a black suit and the pants of a dark navy blue suit. I’d had to run out and buy a new pair of black pants to go with the suit and I’d gotten to the restaurant just as she was giving up and walking across the lot to her car. I’d done this whole production of leaping between her and her car door, blocking access to her getaway, wailing about what a dumb fuck-up I was and how she needed to forgive me.

“You are always late,” she’d yelled at me, “Always. And it’s always some stupid excuse like this.”

I’d pouted.

“No, no - pouting is not going to get you out of this, Nick. No.”

“But -- Lauren, baby, I didn’t mean to be late. I never mean to be late, it just happens, babe…” I’d moved forward, putting my hands on her hips. “I love you. I just --”

“You what?” She’d stared up at me.

“I… uh.” I paused. It was the first time I’d said the L-word. “I uh have strong feelings of like for you.”

“Oh hell no, too late, buddy, you just said love. You love me.” She’d smirked.

“See? An instance when being late is good.” I’d grinned.

“Shut up and kiss me, you tardy bastard.”

It’d kinda become a joke between us after that. But I dunno how funny she’d find it if I was late today. Especially after what happened last time.

Particularly since I was about to show up with a $150 ticket for pulling an illegal U-turn.

“What are the odds that she’ll be amused by my lateness and all this? Like in a aww Nick’s so adorable, he’s always late kinda way?” I asked, glancing over at Kevin nervously.

The blue lights of the police car flashed in my rearview mirror as the cop was calling in my license and registration.

“I mean, I’ll have the ticket to prove this happened, plus you got my back, bro, right?”

Kevin was bent forward, head in his hands.

“It’s not like I don’t have a valid reason for being late, right?” I asked.

Kevin sighed.

“I mean, I was tryin’ to get outta the traffic, right, to get back sooner is how this all happened, right?”

He looked over at me. “I’m sorry. This is my fault.”

I stared at him.

“I shouldn’t have tried to follow her.” He leaned back into the seat, looking up at the ceiling.

I didn’t know what to say.

“Fuckin’ U-turn,” Kevin muttered, looking out the window, away from me. I stared at his face in the passenger side rear view mirror.

The cop came back and leaned down to look at me through the window. He ripped the top page from his pad of tickets, handing me a yellow carbon copy, rambling about how he didn’t wanna catch me pullin’ anymore illegal turns and ambled back to his cruiser. The second he’d pulled away from the curb, I pulled off too.

Kevin glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “If we’re going to get there, we’re gonna have to move somewhat fast,” he commented. He looked back at me. “We only got one hour ‘til the wedding starts.”

It was about 45 minutes from LAX to the resort in Malibu without any traffic at all.

My palms instantly broke out into a sweat.

“Okay. Okay. It’s gonna be okay. We just gotta… just gotta do it, gotta get there, is all.” I felt my foot drop heavier on the acceleration. I wondered where the cop had gone, what happened if you got stopped for speeding the same day as you got stopped for making an illegal U-turn. Do they eventually just haul your ass to jail for being a really fuckin’ bad driver or something?

If I was in jail, I’d definitely have an excuse for my lateness, at least, I thought.

We pulled onto the 405. Traffic was moving, but it was thickening as we moved north toward the Pacific Coast Highway. I felt like I should’ve been breathing into a paper sack. Every time a car put on it’s brakes, my heart would leap up into my throat. Time ticked away and I gripped the wheel tighter every minute that passed.

Didn’t help that, since I’d kicked my shoes off in the lobby in my attempt to catch up to Kevin before, I was driving in my socks.

If you’ve never driven in socks or barefoot before I don’t recommend the experience.

We were approaching the 10, which was the bypass that would take us out to the PCH, when suddenly there was a wall of vehicles ahead. I felt every hope I’d had rush out of me, like a balloon deflating. “No,” I choked, “No, no, no, no.”

Kevin was staring out the passenger window.

“Pull into the right shoulder.”

“What?”

“Pull into the shoulder!” he reached over and yanked the wheel, veering us very suddenly into the shoulder. I straightened out only just in time to avoid hitting the barrier.

“What the fuck Kev you tryin’ to get us killed? Dude! This is illegal! You can’t drive on the fuckin’ shoulder!”

“Get off the exit here.”

Somewhere in the middle of the traffic, locked in by other cars, a cruiser’s blue lights blinked on. But there wasn’t shit he could do to get to us. Gridlock. I looked at Kevin. “He’s gonna call ahead,” I wheezed, “We’re gonna get stopped, I’m not gonna make it, Lolo’s gonna break up with me, my whole life’s gonna suck and I’m gonna die alone. Oh God, Kev, I don’t wanna die alone.” My words were coming out garbled as my mind raced.

“GET OFF THE EXIT!” Kevin shouted over my rambling words.

I’d almost missed the turn. I whipped the wheel into the exit at the last possible second and we went flying down the exit faster than anyone ever, ever should. I put my brakes on and the car fought to slow down. There was no way it would stop before the end of the ramp, though, and traffic was flowing on the main road.

“We’re gonna get in a accident, and I’m gonna die on the way to the wedding!” I wheezed.

The light turned green as the words came out of my mouth.

“At least you won’t be dyin’ alone,” Kevin hooted. “Quick! Full sail ahead, Carter! Take a left!”

“Where the fuck we going?”

“Trust me,” he said, “Left!”

I turned left. It felt like the car was on two wheels as we took the turn it was so sharp. But we made it. I looked over at Kevin. “Kev, we’re like the goddamn Dukes of Hazzard up in here.”

“You’re gonna take a right up here,” Kevin pointed ahead, flapping his hand, ignoring my Dukes comment.

I was starting to get the hang of this.

My feet were flying from brake to gas so fast my socks started falling down. I kicked them off and to the side quickly.

“There’s the highway!” Kevin yelled, pointing.

It was like angels were singing. The on ramp for the Pacific Coast Highway loomed into view and I turned onto it and there was considerably less traffic.

“TIME?” I shrieked.

“Five minutes!”

“God damn it god damn it god damn it,” I muttered. And I pressed the gas all the way down. I’ve never literally floored it before, but -- I guess there’s a first for everything. The car shuddered it was going so fast. We were doing almost ninety. In a forty-five.

Kevin clutched the handle over his door.

I wove between the other cars, passing them like they were standing still practically, literally doing twice the speed limit. My heart felt like it, too, was doing twice the speed limit. I was like somethin’ outta the Fast and the Furious, and I was so gonna end up stopped or something. I pictured the news tracking us with a helicopter, a high speed chase to a wedding. I’d say I’d do while being read my rights.

The exit we needed was coming up. I put the brakes on and moved into the shoulder again. I’d done it once, I could do it again, I thought, and the wheels squealed as we got off the exit. We came to a jarring stop at the end of the ramp and moment later and Kevin let go of the handle over his door as I leaned forward to stare at the red light.

“Seriously after all the law breakin’ drivin’ you’ve done in the last hour you’re gonna stop for a friggin’ red light?” Kevin demanded, looking over at me.

I looked both ways. There wasn’t a blessed thing coming. “Good point,” I said, and I gunned it.

We were almost there. But we only had two minutes. I scrambled through my pants pocket for my phone, pressed the Siri button and yelled, “Call Alex!”

It started ringing.

It took five rings, then, in a hushed, anxious whisper, “Nick, where the fuck are you?”

“Alex! STALL. I’m coming. I’m almost there. Please. Stall.”

“Why the fuck would you leave? You are insane.”

“Just stall, Alex, please!”

“You better have a good reason for not being here,” she said.

“I do.”

“Well hurry, I don’t know how long I can stall. Daddy and Lauren are in the lobby already. People are getting anxious outside. He said if you ain’t back in time he’s gonna kick your ass.”

“I’m coming,” I replied.

She hung up.

“Shiiiiiit,” I groaned.

Kevin had his eyes closed. “Please, please, please,” he was whispering. “It’s my fault if you don’t make it there, we gotta make it, I can’t be the reason -- Please.”

I could see the sign for the resort looming up ahead. I cut a left into the driveway and up to the parking lot. Even from the car I could hear the music playing and the hum of anxious people talking. Alex was standing on the front steps of the hall, dancing foot to foot, staring off into the parking lot as we pulled up. I ground to a halt at the very top of the lot, blocking like five or six other people in, leaving the car there, keys in the ignition and everything, and, barefoot, I ran across the lot to Alex, Kevin following me.

“I’m here!” I shouted. People turned around in their chairs off to the right to see what the commotion was about. “I’m here, Alex, I’m here.”

“Thank God, I told them I had to pee and the couldn’t start without me,” she announced. “You only just made it, though, they’re just in the foyer here,” she waved at the door.

Kevin muttered out, “Thank the sweet baby Jesus.”

“Thank you Alex,” I wheezed.

“Hurry, get up to the altar.”

“Thank you,” I repeated, and Kev and I both ran for the altar, right up the middle of the guest chairs. I grabbed Kevin’s arm when he went to sit down, “Aw hell no, you’re comin’ up here with me, you just got a promotion.” I dragged him along.

At the front of the wedding party, the minister stood under the archway of flowers, waiting. He looked relieved to see me. As did everyone in the crowd when I looked back. I pressed a hand to my chest, taking deep breaths, trying to balance my heart rate and get some oxygen in my lungs. I looked back at Kevin, “We made it. We fuckin’ made it,” I whispered.

“You made it,” he nodded.

“Granted, I’m barefoot, but we made it,” I said.

“Nobody’ll notice you’re barefoot.”

“I ain’t never run so hard in my life,” I hissed.

“The irony being that you were running to this wedding instead of away like last time,” Kevin said quietly.

I started to reply, but then I saw her and yeah my breath had been gone before that, but it was gone in a whole other way. She looked like an angel, floating toward me over the grass at Larry’s arm. My stomach dropped about a hundred million feet into the ground and I grabbed onto Kevin to stay stable because I was overwhelmed and I felt like I might pass out or cry or something from the sheer beauty of her.

Everything I felt must’ve been on my face ‘cos Lauren spotted me and a laugh crinkled her nose, making a smile spread across her face, only adding to the radiance that was her.

I didn’t have time to get nervous, but if I had been nervous that smile would’ve cured me. If only I’d made it to this point last time, I thought, then a lot of stuff wouldn’t have had to happen. None of the shit we’d been through recently would’ve happened. Kev wouldn’t be standing there behind me, braving his way through a broken heart.

The music switched from a sweet tune to the wedding march and everyone turned to look at the angel I’d already spotted. A collective ooh went through them all and I grinned with pride. She was gonna be mine in just a few short moments.

Larry led her up the aisle, whispering something to her, which made her smile and lean in to kiss his cheek. He patted her hand, then his eyes swiveled up to meet mine and, even though I kinda expected a bit of an angry expression there, I saw only warmth. I tried to convey the same thing back, but I dunno if my eyes were able to move off Lauren long enough to do it right.

And suddenly they were there and Larry unhooked Lauren’s arm from his and put her hand on mine, smiling, and backed away to his seat.

Lauren stared into my eyes, a smirk playing on her face, “I know,” she whispered.

“Know what?” I whispered back.

“That you just got here,” she replied.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You tardy bastard,” she shook her head, a twitching smirk on her lips.

I wanted to kiss her. I started to lean in to do so, but the minister reached out and stopped me, “Hey now, no rushing ahead,” he said loudly. The audience laughed.

“Well shit, dude, hurry up and get to that part, I wanna kiss her,” I said.

Everyone laughed again.

Lauren’s smile grew.




“So where are you going for your honeymoon?”

We were sitting in the conference-ballroom at a long banquet table having just finished dinner, and everyone was dancing and mingling, enjoying the reception party while Lauren and I sipped champagne together at the table. I had told her about what happened with Kevin and he airport and Caroline and how we raced to get back to the wedding. The story had been punctuated by people coming up to congratulate us and ask us questions about the honeymoon and if Lauren was taking my name and make continued jokes about me always running one way or another at weddings.

One of Lauren’s friends was leaning on the table. “You’re going some place nice I hope?” she asked.

“We’ll be going to Bora Bora in December,” Lauren said, “We’re just gonna do a small thing for now. Nick’s got a tour starting soon and everything. Probably go to Key West, maybe?”

Her friend nodded, “That sounds nice,” she said.

When she’d left a few minute later, I looked at Lauren. “Baby,” I said, “I know we kinda decided we were gonna go to Key West but… I have another idea for a place we could go.”

“Oh yeah?” Lauren asked, reaching up to move a piece of hair that had fallen across my forehead. “Where’s that?”




Igby lay across Lauren’s lap, sleeping. In the backseat, Nacho ran excitedly from one window to the other, smearing dog snot all over the place. I put my hand on Lauren’s hand, my fingers grazing over the two rings on her left hand. I squeezed her hand in mine and she squeezed back. The car rumbled it’s way up the long hill, and finally we came around the corner to see the sign, welcoming us to the camp, the smaller sign pronouncing it to be Down Home Equine Therapy Camp.

“I like that,” Lauren said, looking at the sign as we passed it. She looked back at me, “I can’t believe you’re willingly taking me to see horses.”

“Well, I mean, I did have ulterior motives to this,” I reminded her.

Lauren laughed. “I know, but still.”

We drove up to the house and I parked beside Caroline’s car. Lauren was looking around the property as I put the car into park and cut the engine. “Wow,” she said, looking up at the log cabin. “This is gorgeous.”

“I think Kev said his dad built it,” I said.

“Damn,” she said.

We got out and I put my hand over my eyes, staring off into the field, trying to spot Caroline. Lauren was pulling a couple bags from the backseat, Igby standing lazily at her feet, while Nacho had already run over and started peeing on the bushes that lined the front of the house. I turned and grabbed a couple bags, too, wondering where Caroline was at, and started for the front door. I was just about to the top step of the porch when the door swung open and there she was.

She stood there in the door frame, staring, wide-eyed, at the car behind us. She looked at me. “Is he with you?” she asked, her voice excited.

“No,” I replied.

The light faded from her eyes, “Oh.”

“He was going apartment hunting in LA today,” I said. Which was what Kev had told us that morning when we were checking in for our flight.

“Oh. And also -- hi, by the way,” I added.

“Hey,” she said. “Apartment hunting, huh? Well. I’m glad he’s… doing okay.” Then her eyes moved past me. “Lauren. You must be Lauren.” She smiled, “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Lauren laughed, “And I’ve heard a lot about you,” she answered.

Caroline jogged down the steps, past me, and gave Lauren a hug.

“I was hoping you had a vacancy,” I said, “I would’ve called but you never texted me with your number… and, well, Lo and I are on our honeymoon...”

“I’m sorry, it’s been a long weekend,” Caroline explained, “I really was going to text you at some point. I really do want to stay in touch. As for a vacancy, of course I have one… I’d make one for you, you know that. But there happens to be an available guest cabin,” she nodded, “So you have some privacy.”

I pulled out my wallet, “Do you take credit cards?”

“Consider it a wedding gift,” she replied.

I put my wallet away. “Thank you,” I said.

“The least I could do after… you know… the scene I caused.”

I shrugged, “Takes two to fight,” I replied.

“Besides, it wouldn’t have been an authentic event in the Backstreet world without there being girls fighting over one of the Boys anyway,” Lauren chimed in.

Caroline laughed, “Well I’m glad I added to the authenticity of it all.” She hesitated. “Anyways, let me get the keys and I’ll show you the cabin so you can put your things up.” She went inside the house.

“I like her,” Lauren said the moment the door closed behind her.

“I do too,” I said.

Lauren smiled.

Caroline came out a few moments later and led the way to a little golf cart parked ‘round the side of the house. We got the luggage up on it and collected the dogs and climbed aboard. She drove down a trail that Kev hadn’t showed me that went behind the house and into the woods towards the cabins that could only just be seen through the trees from the main house.

“These are cute,” Lauren commented. Then, “So Kevin grew up here, huh?”

“Sure did,” Caroline replied. “I practically did, too, I was here so often.”

Lauren stroked Igby’s head like she was Dr. Evil. “Must not be the same up here without him,” she said, staring down at Igby.

Caroline was quiet. “Not really.”

“Seems a shame,” Lauren commented, “Him having to get an apartment in LA all by himself… when he has a perfectly good home he could come to…”

I looked at Lauren.

My wife was brilliant.

Caroline was chewing her lips.

“But that’s life, I guess,” Lauren added. “It just doesn’t always make sense, does it?”

Caroline came to a stop in front of a cabin. “Here we are,” she said.

We climbed out of the golf cart, Nacho ran for the line of trees. I swear the dog has an unending supply of pee in him. I grabbed the stuff from the back of the cart as Caroline walked up the little path to the door. “There’s a cart parked around the side in the car port, key’s on the hook in the cabin here,” she was saying as she unlocked the door.

Lauren and I followed her in, Igby right at Lauren’s heel. I paused at the door to call Nacho, who came running up the steps, his little claws clicking on the wood as he bolted past us, rushing into the house and leaping onto the couch in one swift motion.

Caroline waved her arms around the cabin, “You’ll want to run down to the Kroger to stock the kitchen, but Nick knows the way there. Feel free to use the cart to explore. There’s a swimmin’ hole down to the right if you stay on that trail we were just riding, and if you go back up the other way it goes up to the north end of the river, there’s some fishin’ up there. We have a canoe, stop by the house and I’ll get you the oars out of the shed if you’re interested, we also have fishin’ gear in that shed up by the north end. And of course there’s the horses. I’m more than happy to bring you out on the horses if you’d like.”

“Thanks,” I answered.

Caroline smiled awkwardly, “I’m glad y’all came to visit. I’ll see y’all up by the house. If you wanna stop by, I’m going to barbecue up some chicken. You’re welcome to have at it, so you don’t have to go to Kroger tonight.”

“That sounds good,” I answered.

“Okay. I’ll see you in a bit then.”

“Okay,” I replied.

Caroline backed out of the cabin and pulled the door shut. Lauren went to the window and watched as she drove away in the golf cart. She turned back to me, “She’s gone,” she said.

“Do you think we kept her busy long enough?” I asked.

“I hope so,” Lauren answered.

Chapter Twenty-Five


Kevin

”You helped fix my screw up, man, I owe you,” Nick said. He had cornered me in the reception hall at his wedding. Lauren at his side, clutching his arm. “You need to go to Kentucky to win Caroline back. And I wanna help, if I can.”

“We want to go to Kentucky with you. Tomorrow.” Lauren added.

“But… your honeymoon,” I said, blinking in surprise.

Nick shrugged, “We can do it anywhere.” Lauren giggled. “You know what I mean, babe,” he said turning to her. He turned back to me, “Ain’t she kinky?” Leave it to Nick to find a gal as dirty in the brain as he was, I thought. “But seriously.”

“I don’t know,” I said, casting my eyes to the floor. Nick for some reason was still running around barefoot. His toes poked out from the bottom of his off-the-rack tux that was slightly too long in the ankle for him. “I don’t even know what I’d say to her.”

“Well you got all night to think it up,” Nick answered. “You love her, don’t you?”

I nodded, looking back up at him, “Yes,” I replied. It might’ve taken twenty-something years to get to the point that I knew that again, but I did, with a reverence that filled me top to bottom. I felt like one of those glow-in-the-dark light sticks - I’d been snapped in half by the events of the day, something inside me had been broken by signing those papers, but now the stuff inside me was free and glowing fluorescently.

“Then that’s what you need to tell her,” Lauren said urgently.

“But I told her that at the airport,” I said.

“Then you gotta tell her somehow that’s special,” Lauren replied.




I shook the can of spray paint vigorously and pulled the cap off it. Red paint shot out of the nozzle and onto the wall as I moved my hand through the curve of the missing letters.

V - I - N - L - O - V - E - S - C - A - R - O - L - I - N - E, I wrote with a flourish, finishing the job that we’d started years ago.

I stepped back, paint on my hands and my clothes, and surveyed the handiwork. Finally, it was completed, and I hoped she’d see the poetic gesture I was trying to make here, that she’d see the meaning in it that I saw. I wanted to finish what we’d started.




”You know she’s gonna ask where you at, dawg,” Nick was saying as we checked in at LAX for our flight to Louisville. “What do we say when she asks?”

“Tell her I went apartment hunting. That’s what I was gonna do if I’d stayed in LA,” I said.

Lauren looked profoundly relieved.

We’d gotten two rental cars when we landed. Two because I’d planned to stay in Irvine for a piece after Nick and Lauren left. They followed me down the back roads of Kentucky closer and closer to home. I stopped at an Ace Hardware a couple towns away, paranoid we might bump into her and ruin the surprise. And then it was off to the camp, where I parked by the sign as Nick and Lauren drove the rest of the way up.

So they weren’t really lying when they said I wasn’t with them. I wasn’t, really.

I’d waited at the end of the driveway until Caroline had taken the golf cart off to the cabins with Lauren and Nick and then I’d driven up and parked behind the car they’d rented. I popped the trunk and grabbed the bag from Ace, withdrawing one of the two cans of spray paint and the note I’d written and the flowers. I glanced nervously in the direction of the trail, leading off into the woods, and quickly arranged the stuff on the step, spreading some of the petals around and capturing the note beneath the weight of the can so the wind couldn’t carry it away.

I took a step back and surveyed the scene before running back to the car and driving away.

Meet me by our heart under the bridge. - K

That’s all I’d written.





I was still admiring the finally completed heart when I heard car tires on the gravel overhead on the road. I cocked my head, listening close. The car door opened and closed up above and I tossed the spraypaint can at the bag I’d pulled it from. I could hear the advance from the crunching gravel and crackling twigs along the side of the bridge, descending the hill, and with all my might I prayed it wouldn’t be Michael Spornacki that rounded the corner.

And for once my prayers were answered.

Caroline stepped around the edge of the bridge, clutching the note I’d left on the porch in one hand, a wide-eyed look of confusion on her face. She came to a stop, staring at me.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “You’re here.”

I can’t blame her, being surprised as she looked. I was almost just as surprised to be there as she was to find me.

“I’m here,” I answered.

She bit her lips, still staring at me, like she didn’t know what to say. I wished I could read minds. I’d have done anything at that moment to know what she was thinking. I stood really still, like movement could scare her off like a deer or something. Then she noticed the graffiti on the wall. She gasped and turned to it, her palm outstretched. The paint dripped a little bit from the letters I’d added. She touched the wall beside the heart, her eyes roaming over it, taking it in. “You finished it,” she whispered.

“It needed finishin’,” I answered.

Caroline touched the letters, red paint getting onto her fingers like it was on mine, and she turned to me. “I’m sorry I ran off on you at the airport, I needed some time to think. A lot happened in a little time and I just felt so… overwhelmed by it all.” She rubbed her fingers together. “You understand, don’t you?”

“I do,” I replied. “And I’m sorry I overwhelmed you like that.”

“Did you make it back to the wedding?”

“I did. It was really nice. They’re a great couple, Nick and Lauren.”

“Yeah they are,” Caroline said. She paused, staring down at her fingers. She looked up, briefly meeting my eyes before she spoke. “You really signed Kristin’s papers?” she asked, and she turned her eyes away from mine so she was looking into my chest.

“Yes,” I said thickly.

She hesitated a moment then, “Why?”

“Because what she and I shared was over,” I replied.

Caroline looked up, “And I was what was left over?” she asked, “The one you’re gonna choose because you can’t have her?”

“No,” I shook my head. I waved my hand at the graffiti on the wall. “You’re the one that’s always been there, incomplete, in my heart. I’ve always loved you, all along, you’re the one I’ve missed when I didn’t know I was missing. You’re the one that, when she was gone, I found again, the one who’s never given up on me completely, the one who wanted me when I wasn’t anybody worth wanting.” I searched her face with my eyes. I couldn’t tell if she understood, if she believed what I was saying at all. “Caroline, I came here so we could finish what we started decades ago.” I put my hand on the painted heart.

Tears filled her eyes, “You ain’t lyin’?”

I shook my head, “I ain’t lyin’. I love you, Caroline.”

She choked back a sob and took two fast steps into me, pressing against my chest, her arms wrapping around me, clutching my shirt in the back in her fists. “I love you,” she said, her voice muffled by my chest. At least I think that’s what she said, she was crying, her shoulders shaking. I held her close, my arms folded around her.

We stood there what felt like forever, my chin on her hair, the water of the Kentucky River rushing past us. The sun went down, tinged the river and the sky pinkish and then turned it all to gold. “We better get back up to the camp,” I whispered.

She nodded into my chest.

We separated and I grabbed my bag with the paint cans and swung it over my shoulder and we climbed up the steep path that led back up to the cars. My hand wrapped tightly around hers, helping her up the slippery rocks and gravel. At the top, we stood awkwardly between the two cars. I still had her hand in mine. I looked down at it, running my thumb over her knuckles gently, then looked back up at her.

“You really think that we can make it this time?” she asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

“You aren’t gonna run away on me?”

I shook my head.

“And I’m not just… filling some kind of hole in your heart or something?” she asked.

“Of course you’re filling a hole,” I replied. “But it’s a Caroline-shaped hole, so you’re doing damn good at it.”

She smiled slowly, “You’re such a dork.” She swept her hand over the tears in her eyes and turned to her car, “I’ll see you at the camp.”

“Okay,” I replied, and I got in my car, too.




Nick and Lauren were sitting on the steps of the house when we pulled up, illuminated by the warm glow of the porch lamp. Nick stood up the second our headlights cut the dark. As soon as I’d cut the engine he jogged over, bouncing foot to foot. “Well?” he asked as I pushed the door open, “Did it work? Did it work? Are y’all together? Did it work?”

Caroline got out of her car, slamming the door, “Nick Carter,” she said in a twangy voice, “You lyin’ lil shit, you said he wasn’t with you!”

Nick paused in his hopping. “I -- well, he wasn’t, was he? Not technically?”

Caroline shook her head.

Nick looked confused, “Wait. Wait, I don’t get it. Did it work?” he looked at Lauren, then back to me and Caroline, “Kev?”

I snaked my arm around Caroline’s waist. “It worked,” I replied.

“FUCK YES!” Nick yelled, and he ran for Lauren, who stood up as he jumped at her, giving her a huge hug and she caught him, somehow without falling over. “We did it, baby!” he hooted. Lauren laughed as he squeezed her, bouncing excitedly around, carrying her arms with him, flapping them wildly about like he was some kind of crazy bird.

As ridiculous as he looked, it was basically how I felt on the inside. I looked at Caroline with a smile and she smiled back. It was nice, everybody having their somebody, and I wondered at the full circle we all had come in, at how many things might never have happened if it hadn’t have been this way.

Everything happens for a reason, I guess, I thought, and I was thankful for it, even if I hadn’t been able to see it as it unfolded.




Two months later, the Boys and I were on tour and we’d just wrapped up our show in Cincinnati. Brian and I were going to drive south to visit our families, since we had the next day off, and I was just dialing Caroline’s number as I climbed onto my tour bus, wiping my face with a hand towel, when I looked up and found she was sitting there, smiling, waiting for me.

“You came,” I said.

She’d been busy at the camp, prepping for her first session with a group of parents and their kids traveling from West Virginia to see the horses. They were scheduled to arrive the next day, actually, and when I’d invited her to the show in Cincinnati, she’d been nervous about having time to get everything done before they got there in the morning. I’d told her it was okay if she didn’t make it to the show, that I’d drive down myself after.

She laughed, “I did, and I’m so glad I did. That was a great show. You were incredible.” Her eyes sparkled. “I’m so proud of you.” She stood up. “And… also, I have something to show you. I couldn’t wait for you to get to Irvine to show you.”

“Yeah?” I tossed the hand towel into the laundry hamper and walked over, expecting the something to be a hug or a kiss, but instead, she grabbed an envelope off the counter, opened it and pulled out a paper, which she shook to unfold.

“In a fine example of perfect timing, this came in the mail today,” she said, holding it out to me.

I took it, staring down at the page. It was the 501c.3 registered officially to the Down Home Equine Therapy Camp. I looked up at her, “Holy shit! Look at you!” I reached out and wrapped my arms around her, careful not to smoosh the certificate on her back as I hugged her tight. “Now it’s my turn to be proud of you, damn girl, makin’ your dreams come true and all that.”

She grinned and took the page back, staring down at it. “It wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for you, Kev. Thank you.”

“You know what this calls for, this calls for a celebration…” I went over to the mini fridge and rooted around. All I had in there was a half empty container of orange juice. But it would do. I pulled it out and poured two glasses, handing one to her. “To Down Home,” I said.

“Down Home,” she replied, and we clinked our glasses together and drank.

Once we’d finished, I put my glass down on the counter, “You’re going to need updated flyers and brochures,” I said, “Now that you’re a registered 501c.3. Which means you’ll need some new photography done…” I paused and pulled open the window of the bus. Outside, a gaggle of crew members were standing around. “Hey y’all,” I shouted, “Justin down there with you?”

“Yeah?” Justin yelled back.

“You available tomorrow to take some pictures for me?”

“Sure, I guess so. Where at?”




We’d tied balloons to the camp sign to welcome the families. The horses were freshly cleaned and brushed down, the fields newly mowed. Justin was just walking back from taking pictures of the cabins out in the woods, his camera slung around his neck. He looked strangely out of place, his hipster hair and big ol’ camera giving him away as a city boy, even though his flannel shirt might’ve suggested otherwise. Caroline was sitting astride of Barbara, stroking her mane, and I was leaning against the fence, watching as she rode in circles, exercising the horse’s legs. Justin came up and leaned against the fence with me. “This place is rustic,” he said.

I didn’t know if rustic was a compliment or a complaint.

He took a couple steps back and knelt down, taking a picture of Caroline on the horse from between the rungs of the fence.

“Good Lord I’m nervous,” Caroline mumbled as Barbara came to a stop alongside the fence. She slid down from the horse’s back, stroking her front haunch before climbing over the fence.

“You are going to be spectacular,” I replied.

Justin was snapping pictures of Barbara, leaning over the fence to get some close ups of the horse’s face, clicking his tongue to get her to move her head in the direction he needed for the picture. “I would’ve liked this place when I was a kid,” he said.

“Yeah?” Caroline looked over at him.

“Definitely,” he replied.

I guess rustic was good.

Caroline took a deep breath, “It’s just terrifying.”

“I understand,” I replied. “Good things are always terrifying. You’re scared ‘cos you want it so much, that’s all. But once you get started, you’ll see it ain’t as scary as you think and you’ll be okay. You’re reaching a dream.”

She smiled.

“Can I take some shots inside the barn?” Justin asked.

“Sure,” Caroline replied.

We led the way to the barn and Caroline pulled open the doors so Justin could do in. The other two horses were in their stalls and they shuffled and whinnied as Justin snapped pictures of the rafters and the hay, the equipment hanging on the walls and the horses looking at him from their pens.

I turned to Caroline, looking right into her eyes. “I have a question.”

“Yeah?”

“Will you marry me?”

Caroline smiled. “Will you promise not to run away this time?”

“I promise.”

She laughed, “Then I’d say marrying you is long overdue.”

I bent forward, pressing my lips to hers, and she wrapped her arms around my neck. We were just getting to the good part when Justin came out of the barn and I heard the click of the camera. “Good shot,” he commented with a smirk to his voice, “And look, there’s the kids.”

I looked up. A big school bus was rumbling up the driveway, painted bright white with the Autism Speaks blue puzzle piece logo on the side. Inside were a group of people coming to see the horses that Caroline had worked with, coming to Irvine, Kentucky, to find answers and to find hope again. I felt like telling them that was exactly what they’d find here by coming down home.

Epilogue


Nick

I knocked on the door.

“Come in.”

The sunlight was coming in through the window on the far side of the room, reflecting off the mirror. I sat myself down on the desk, just like I’d done when Kevin had first showed me this place. He was standing in front of the mirror, staring into it, fixing his tie.

“This place fixed up nice,” I commented.

“Took a lot of work, but we got it done,” he agreed. He turned to face me, his tie a little crooked and I jumped up and walked over to straighten it. “How’s the tour with Jordan going?”

“Great.”

“How’s Lauren?”

“Good. She’s good.” I smiled. My hands dropped from the tie. “You doin’ okay? ‘Cos I gotta rental out there with our names on it if you need to go. We can go out the window here.”

Kevin laughed, “Caroline made sure it was locked this morning.”

“A locked window is your slippery shoes…” I grinned. “I’m still convinced Lauren like oiled those bitches down on me, I felt like I was walking on ice the whole time we were in the reception hall.”

Kevin smiled, “I wouldn’t put it past her.”

“Me neither!” I answered.

Once we’d finished chuckling over the idea of Lauren oiling down my wedding shoes, Kevin sighed and looked around. “I feel like this whole year’s been spent in these grooms’ rooms for us, huh?” he asked.

I nodded. “Running in and out of them, mostly,” I said.

Kevin smiled.

“I was asked to come see if you’re ready in here,” I told him.

He took a deep breath, “I think I am.”

“Good,” I smiled. “I peeked at the bridal party earlier and she looks gorgeous.”

“She always does,” Kevin answered.

I grabbed the door, pulling it open, “Well c’mon, man, before you’re late for your weddin’.”

“Wait. Lemme hang a U-turn.”

“Ha. Get your ass out there to the altar,” I said, waving him out the door.

Kevin laughed, and grabbed a folded paper from the desk, “Can’t forget these. My vows.”

“You got anything good to say?”

“Spent all night writing.”

“Speaking of you writing all night… You owe me Ninja Turtle Post-it’s, dude,” I said as Kevin stepped through the door into the chapel, the stained glass window lighting up the newly renovated seats with warmly colored sunlight. “We’re still findin’ little crumpled paper balls all up in the foyer. I swear you had a freakin’ confetti party up in there with ‘em.”

Kevin laughed, “Remind me later and we’ll stop on the way to the honeymoon to get your damn Post-It’s at Target.”

“There ain’t no Target in this town,” I argued.

“We’ll go to Honchell’s then,” he said.

“Dawg, all they’re gonna have is Duck Dynasty Post-its,” I argued, and I pulled the door closed behind us.