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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.