Nick ducked into Brian's bedroom. "Laur and I are just about to head out with Baylee," he said. Brian was doing his tie up in the mirror over the dresser, and Nick noticed he had cufflinks on and his shiny black shoes. Brian had combed his hair all nice-like and was looking like some fancy businessman. Nick leaned against the door frame. "Promise me you won't jump into this without thinking, without analyzing?" he pleaded.
Brian nodded, "Nick, I won't do anything stupid, don't worry."
Nick sighed, folding his arms across his chest. "I just don't want you to end up hurt worse then you already are, you know? You're my best friend, Rok, I just want you to be okay, to be able to get back up on your feet."
Brian turned around, having just completed putting his tie on, and was working on weedling a tie tack through it. He smiled, "That means a lot to me, Nick," he said. "Where are ya'll going?"
"I dunno, Lauren found it. Then we're going to a movie, I guess. That ought to afford you a ton of time to talk this all over."
"Thank you," Brian answered, "It's a huge help. I know Baylee would have a cow if he knew she was coming over, I just didn't want that added drama, you know? I don't know what I'd do without you and Lauren. Ya'll are like angels."
Nick grinned.
"Not that you're innocent," Brian quickly added, "Because you are far from it."
Nick laughed as Lauren's voice called his name up the stairs and he winked. "I gotta split. You relax and make sure you ask all the right questions, okay?" Nick pointed at Brian, "Keep your head on and don't get caught up in all those guilty feelings you keep rambling on about."
Brian saluted Nick. "Aye, aye."
Nick ducked out the door. "I'm coming!" he yelled ahead of himself down the stairs to Lauren, who had been just about to call for him yet again.
Brian turned and looked into the mirror again, studying his own features. He reached for the high school year book that he'd had open on his dresser since he'd first seen Emma again, and stared down at the photograph of them from the Homecoming dance in 1992. She was clutching his arm, and his face was more angular, his jaw more defined than it was now. She had more weight to her, her hair hanging in long, dark curls that almost touched the small of her back. He looked up at the mirror and pushed back his cheeks, trying to see that old, prominant jawline he'd had back then in the reflection. He took a deep breath.
Time had changed things, that was for certain.
Emma took deep breaths, trying to steady her pounding heart. She clutched her purse with her shaking hands and stared out the window as Jake drove down familiar streets between Molly's house and the house that she'd grown up in. She felt her stomach twist inside of her as he put on the blinker and the car coasted up the driveway, coming to stop behind a red truck. The kitchen light was on and Emma imagined, for a split moment, that her momma was the reason it was on, that she'd walk through the door and smell home cooked chicken and broccoli with cheese and macaroni salad.
"Now Em," Molly said, turning around and breaking Emma's imaginative situation, "Remember whatever happens tonight that Jake and I love you a whole lot and we're here for you no matter what, okay?"
Emma nodded numbly.
"You ain't asking for charity from a stranger," Molly reminded her, "But help from an old friend."
Emma nodded again. The situation felt incredibly far-off, like it was happening in a dream or on a movie screen. She couldn't believe the audacity that Molly had had confronting Brian, or the way he must think of her, begging for help like this. Emma couldn't help but imagine Brian sitting inside just waiting to laugh at them all for truly expecting him to cough out that much cash on the drop of a hat.
Molly opened the car door and got out and Jake glanced in the rearview mirror at Emma's face and smiled gently. "C'mon Ems," he said quietly, "It's gonna be okay." Emma nodded and climbed out, too, and Jake followed suit. They all closed the car doors and started heading for the front door. Every step she took felt like she was trudging through quicksand.
The front door opened and there was Brian, silhouetted by the light from the foyer inside. Emma felt sick. She'd seen her dad standing in that same place so many times over the years, usually staring out as Emma and Brian bid each other good night... She wished she had a crow bar inside her head to separate the current situation from the past that she'd seen lived out at this house. It would've made the night so much easier if they'd been anywhere else, anywhere that there wasn't memories lurking on every fiber.
"Hey ya'll, welcome," Brian called as they neared the porch.
"How ya doin, Brian?" Jake called in response, speeding up and taking the steps two at a time. They bumped fists like guys do and Jake waved to Molly and Emma, "Here are the two lovely ladies."
Brian smiled, "Good evening," he said. He held out his hand to shake Molly's hand, then Emma's. His palm was clammy, Emma noticed, and she knew from the past that meant he was nervous, and she felt a little more at ease knowing that he, too, was nervous. He smiled and his eyes moved between the three of them, "Well gosh darn it's half the class of '93 here on my door step, ain't it?"
Jake laughed, "The better half, at least."
Brian laughed and ushered them in the doors to the dining room. "I apologize if the food's a bit whacky," he said, "I cooked myself and other than things from a can or a box I have never quite mastered the whole meal preparation thing, you know?" he smiled.
"I'm sure you've done just fine. Do you need any help?" Molly asked.
"I grilled some steaks," Brian said, "And there's macaroni salad in the kitchen. I suppose if ya'll wanted to set the table..." Brian's cheeks pinkened sheepishly. "I was about to do that before but then I remembered I had to flip the steaks and all of ya'll pulled up and..."
Emma smiled at the color on his face, the way it spread across his nose and cheek bones like it always had, and she looked down at the table top to suppress the grin. She clutched the back of the chair she was standing behind.
"Our pleasure, anything to help out," Molly answered. "C'mon Em."
"Kitchen's right through that door," Brian said, pointing.
Molly nodded toward Emma, "I think she knows where it is."
"Oh. Right. Right." Brian's face deepened in color even further.
"I'll go help Bri with the steaks," Jake called, and nodded toward the back deck, and the two boys went out the back door while Emma and Molly wound their way through the house to the kitchen.
As they walked, Emma stared around at how Brian had set his things in the house. It was amazing how different it looked witth Brian's things in it. But he'd done a fair job of keeping many things the same, for instance he'd put his stereo in a built in book shelf that her father had built in the same place that her mother had put an old record player, and he'd divided his books into shelves arranged by height and color so that they formed a pattern somewhat similar to the one that her father had done. The kitchen, too, had similar things like that; for instance plates, cups, forks and knives were all easy to find because he'd put them in exactly the places her family had kept them so many years ago. Emma stood in front of the silverware drawer, staring down at the plastic white divider he'd put in and twirling a spoon around in her fingertips.
"Is it weird?" Molly asked, "Being here?"
"It makes me miss them more," Emma answered.
Molly nodded and opened the fridge, taking out steak sauce and the promised macaroni salad. She sniffed the salad, "He so used a Suddenly Salad kit."
Emma smiled, "He's a boy, what did you expect?"
Molly laughed, but it was a short-lived sort of laughter, and then her face turned serious. She rested a hand on Emma's shoulder. "It's too bad you couldn't keep this place."
"Yeah." She smiled sadly, "I was just happy I got enough to pay for their hospital bills and the funerals." Emma bit her lip and pulled out the rest of the silverware that they needed.
Molly ran her hand down Emma's back in a soothing sort of way, then collected what she'd gotten out for plates and things and headed back to the dining room. Emma stood in the kitchen, holding her bouquet of silverware, taking deep, shaky breaths. She glanced at the fridge and saw papers magneted to it. She moved to look at them. Mostly they were notices from the school, homework with circled A's and drawings that Baylee had done. But in the top corner of the freezer door there was a magnetic picture frame - that blue pattern from the fancy china with the people and quaint little houses around the edge - and a photograph of Brian and Leighanne.
Emma stared into the brilliantly blue eyes of Leighanne in the photograph, studied the curve of her smile and the long, straight blonde hair that hung to her shoulders. She was wearing a dress that, though Emma didn't know this, was one of her own Wylee designs, and clutching Brian, who was wearing stage clothes, complete with a fedora that was pulled low over his forehead. They looked like a beautiful couple, they looked like they belonged together.
Emma imagined what that photograph might've looked like had it been her in it instead of Leighanne. Would that dress have hung off her as perfectly if she'd married Brian? Certainly he'd never have been wearing those stage clothes. He'd have become a local grocer or something else that was typical, something ordinary. He never would've become what he'd become.
She backed away from the fridge, feeling her skin growing cold and her throat closing up and quickly carried the silverware back to the dining room. Molly had already spread out the plates and napkins and was spooning large amounts of macaroni salad onto the plates. Emma quickly put silverware on the napkins and turned to rush back to collect glasses from the cupboards, not wanting Molly to see her expression.
Despite their dreams and the long periods of heartbreak that she'd suffered because of the way they'd shattered, Emma suddenly realized that it never would've been fair to Brian to keep him here in Kentucky.
Brian had pulled a couple beers out of the cooler he and Nick had left on the porch the night before. They weren't ice-cold like they should be, but they were cool enough from floating in all the melted ice all day. He and Jake each had one in their hands as they stood beside the barbeque pit in the backyard.
Jake was rolling the cap over his knuckles in a way that he'd spent years perfecting the practice of in bars. "So, what's it like, being famous and all that?" Jake asked, "Anything like you used to imagine back in high school?"
"Sometimes it's great," Brian said, shrugging, "Other times it's a bitch to put it plainly."
Jake laughed. "The women must be great, though, right? You could get any girl you want."
Brian took a sip of beer.
"So how old is your son?"
"He'll be nine in November," Brian answered.
Jake nodded.
"You got any kids, man?" Brian asked.
"Nawh," Jake answered. He swirled the beer bottle around. "We've tried a few times but, I dunno. It doesn't quite work. We'd go get some help you know but we're kind of dried out after helping Em and all."
Brian nodded. He took another sip of beer, then asked the question that had been eating at him for some time now. "What's wrong with Emma anyways?"
"The Big C," Jake answered, "Cancer."
Brian put the beer down and busied himself looking at the steaks. "Where's her mom and pop?" he asked quietly.
"Dead in a car crash back in '95," Jake replied. "Her father spent two months in the ICU hooked up to all these machines and such before they had to pull the plug finally. Her momma died on impact..." Jake looked toward the glow of the windows in the house and took a sip of beer. "That's why she sold the house."
Brian bit his lip. He'd been so close to Cindy and Jack Harris that it was like hearing about the death of his own parents years later and another wave of guilt washed over him as he realized what they must have thought of him. "That's sad," he croaked the words out at last.
Jake looked at Brian for a long moment, and, seeming to have read his mind, said, "She never told'em ya'll had plans to get married. In fact, she even told'em you'd said goodbye to her before you left." Somehow this made Brian hurt worse than if they'd thought him to be a monster. He closed his eyes, trying to wrap his mind around how much things had changed, but unable to really comprehend it all. Jake sighed. "She really loved you, she protected you from what people would say."
Brian felt his throat start to close up. "She's a good person," he muttered.
Jake nodded, "Yeah, she truly is."
"She ever get married?" Brian asked.
Jake looked for a long moment at Brian before he answered, "Unless you count that sheet of paper ya'll wrote up that night -- No." Jake paused to let the words sink in, "It's too bad," he added after a long moment, "She would've made a helluva wife."
