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Chapter Twelve: What's Your Story?


Desmond woke with a start. He looked over at the adjacent bed, expecting to see Kelsey, but she wasn't there. He pushed himself up from the bed and glanced at the alarm clock, glowing from the night stand in neon red. "Kels?" he called out into the dark, slurring from sleepiness. But no answer came.

Desi kicked the blankets off and tumbled off the bed, leaping to his feet in a movement that only a ninja could replicate. He lost his balance and scrambled to regain it, knocking his hat off the top of the TV on the way down before he managed to recover, stubbing his toe on his guitar case. "Shit," he bit down on his lower lip and stumbled to the bathroom door, his toe throbbing. He smacked his palm against the door. "Kelsey?" he called out resolutely.

Still no answer.

Approximately a hundred million thoughts went through Desi's head as he stood there, palms pressed against the door. His heart sped up, echoing off the cavern of his chest. This was how many of his darkest, most private fears began, he thought, and he banged on the door more persistently, more frantic. "Kelsey! Open the door or I'm gonna force it open!" he threatened, feeling like every organ in his body was in a knot.

When she still didn't answer, he shoved the door open.

He didn't know what he'd been expecting when he'd pushed open the door - maybe blood, dark blueish-red and ominous - but the bathroom was empty, although messy. Relief wahed over him and he slid to the floor, his back against the sink, covering his face as the fear rushed out of him. "Oh God," he choked the emotion down into his throat, sick feeling from all the things he'd envisioned in those short moments. He breathed slowly, steadily, deeply... trying to slow his heart beat. Then he looked up, out to the empty room. "So where the hell are you then, Kelsey?" he wondered aloud.




"Careful of the curb," Nick said. He held out his hand to assist Kelsey down to the street beside him. He seemed to float, he thought, and the touch of her hair was like magic.

"Thanks," she said, smiling as she landed beside him.

"Of course," Nick answered, smiling back.

They walked along the street, lined with closed restaurants and a couple sports complexes with the Vanderbilt logo on them. Kelsey pointed one out, "Vandy's near here, I take it?"

"Right over that way a bit," Nick answered, waving his hand to the left. He pulled out his cell phone, "A little music?" he suggested, waving the phone.

"Sure," Kelsey answered.

Nick pulled up his Pandora app. "Favorite band?"

"Do I lose points if I don't say 'BSB'?" she asked, laughing.

"It's an automatic fail," he answered, nodding. Kelsey laughed. "No really, name a band."

"I dunno... How about The Lumineers," Kelsey said, "But if it helps, BSB get an honorable mention."

"At least we got an honorable mention," Nick laughed.

Kelsey smirked as he tapped in the name and the strains of Dead Sea filled the night as they walked. He slid the phone into his pocket.

"It's a nice night," he commented, taking a sip of his coffee. "This is nice."

"Yeah," she agreed.

I headed west, I was a man on the move
New York had lied to me, I needed the truth
Oh I need somebody, needed someone I could trust
I don't gamble, but if I did I would bet on us
Like the Dead Sea, you told me I was like the Dead Sea...


"So what's your story?" Nick asked, looking down at his sneakers as he sank a little bit into some loose grass as they crossed the lawn of a Methodist church, headed through a bank of tennis courts lit up by pale lamps.

Kelsey shrugged. "I'm not sure that I've got one," she said.

"Everybody's got one," Nick said.

"Well, not a very good one," she said.

"Try me."

Kelsey puffed out her cheeks with a sigh that she let out long and low. "Well I grew up in Brockton, which is a pretty tough area even as Boston suburbia goes... lived in a little house, lots of siblings... I was never terribly important among them or anything, you know. I just kind of was. But we were all okay. We all got along. I mean we weren't rich or anything, I wore hand-me-downs, but we were ok. It was my life, I guess. I was happy, whatever it was. Then my Dad got shot. Downtown, at a little convience store. He went for milk and AA batteries for a fire truck my brother got and he just... never came back. He had a hero complex, you know, he couldn't just play the victim and live; he had to try to save the day, and they killed him." She was chewing the inside of her mouth thought fully.

Nick stared at her, into her almost. They'd come to a stop a couple feet from the tennis courts, the orange-ish-ness of the light glowed down on her, and a tear slid across her cheek.

Yes there are time we live for somebody else
Your father died and you decided to live for yourself
You felt, you just felt it was time
I'm glad cause you with cats, that's just not right
Like the Dead Sea, you told me I was like the Dead Sea
You'll never sink when you are with me - oh Lord, I'm your Dead Sea


"Anyway," Kelsey said, "Everything just kept getting worse and worse from there. I met Luke, everything went on in Desi's life, and I felt more and more isolated and alone until I just started crumbling apart." She stared up at him. Tears were definitely streaming her face now. "I never told anyone this before, but sometimes I feel like those rocks out in the desert. You know, the ones that balance on those impossibly tall pedastal formations? Every year more and more of the pedastal washes away in rains and wind and the rock stays standing but someday you know it's going to just topple over and break."

Nick stepped closer to her, brought his hands up to cup her face gently, and used his thumb to softly wipe away the tears that were building below her eyelashes. The tears glistened, almost like gold under the lamp light. "Hey," he whispered thickly, "It's okay."

"I tried to kill myself," she said.

"What?"

"After the abortion, when Luke was being so terrible... I tried to kill myself. It wasn't the first time. I tried before, when I was younger, when my Dad died. And a couple other times." She held out her arm, showing him a series of scars along the inside. He stared at them, mouth gone dry. "There was just so much inside of me... so much that needed to come out..."

Nick nodded because he didn't know how else to react.

"I thought if I just let it out that it'd stop hurting," she explained. "It doesn't make any sense at all."

"It does," Nick countered.

"Desi helped me," she confessed. "Every time I'm in trouble, Nick, Desi's there."

Nick nodded again. "It's a good thing y'all are such close friends," he observed.

Kelsey nodded, "Yeah it is." She licked her lips, staring up at Nick in the pool of lamplight they stood in. A slight breeze flickered his hair like a flame and she watched until the wind had died down. "You're so ridiculously good looking," she murmured.

"I try," Nick answered, chuckling.

"You've gotta have a flaw," she said.

"A flaw?" he laughed.

"Yeah. You can't seriously be this ridiculously good looking and be so nice, too, can you?" Kelsey asked. "So what's your flaw?"

Nick shrugged. "I bite my fingernails."

She laughed.

"Besides, if that's true, then you must have a flaw too," Nick said, "Because you're gorgeous and you're nice. Let's see your cuticles." He pulled her hand up and inspected it. "Damn -- even perfect there." He grinned.

"I bit them when I was in high school," Kelsey offered.

"Past imperfections do not count as current flaws," Nick teased.

Kelsey wanted to kiss him so bad she could taste it.

But he turned just before she'd managed to work up the nerve to attempt to. She felt a sort of regret watching him walk away. She wished she'd done it - kissed him when he'd been leaning so close... She scurried to catch up to him. The Pandora app was playing music it considered 'similar' to the Lumineers.

"So what's your story?" Kelsey asked, trotting to keep up with his long gait.

Nick laughed. "What's there to tell that hasn't been told a million times in a million ways?"

"Humor me."

He shrugged, leading the way across a wide parking lot, the dark outline of bushes and trees ahead of them. Kelsey could hear a water fountain and ducks quacking in the distance. "Became a singer at age twelve... oversized ego, easy access to drugs and alcohol. That ain't a good combination. Spent the next - what? Ten? Fifteen years? - high to heaven, gettin' fat. Almost died a couple times. Met a girl that made me exercise and lose the weight and quit the drugs and the drinking. Got my heart broken." He shrugged. "I was on top and I fell down and broke. Now I'm working on getting back up to the top. It's a work in progress, but it's worth it." He shrugged, then, as they stepped through some bushes, he pointed. "Look. There we go. The Parthenon."

Kelsey, who'd been about to ask a question, turned and looked and there was the structure. It looked like it'd been transported overseas directly from ancient Greece, looming high in the night with it's chiseled columns and intricate statues along the top. Aside from the spotlights and security cameras, it was easy to forget that one wasn't in Greece looking at the real thing. "Oh wow," muttered Kelsey.

"Yeah," Nick nodded. "Impressive, ain't it? Makes you really appreciate all the crap the Greek-- er, Greekians? -- did."

Kelsey stared up at the intricate detail on the staues. "I wish I knew the stories behind those," she said. "I failed out of my Greek and mythology class."

Nick licked his lips, "I dunno which ones which, but... There's this one story a girl I was -- seeing -- She told me this story one time and, I dunno, it kinda stuck with me. The story, it goes like this where theres this dude, Icarus, and he's like a god or something, and he gets real pissed off, and I don't remember why he was pissed, just it had something to do with a Minotaur. Anyways, he gets so pissed he wants to leave town, right? So he builds these beautiful wings out of feathers and wax and he leaps from the edge of this cliff and he vows to fly as high as the sun. But see, his wings, they were wax, and the sun melted them right off him and he fell into the ocean and died."

"What an uplifting story," Kelsey laughed.

"I think everyone's got wax wings is my point," Nick explained. "Everyone has wax wings and we spend all day trying to decide whether life is worth the chance of the jump."

They stood there, and Kelsey stared up into Nick's eyes. Finally, "Nick?" she asked.

"Hm?"

"Kiss me."

He bent forward.