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Chapter One / Kevin


“Dad… Who's this lady?”

Mason held up a Polaroid.

I reached for it and took it from his hand, looking down at it. It was a photo from Homecoming, dated 1988. There I was, dressed in a dark blue suit, my football helmet hanging from the hand at my side, my other hand on the shoulder of my date, Samantha Chambers. She smiled up at me from the picture, her eyes crinkling around her bright blue eyeshadow and big hair. Sam looked beautiful in her salmon-pink dress sparkling and puffy, hanging just above her knee. I remembered trying to vacuum damn glitter from that dress out of my daddy's truck for weeks after the dance.

“Her name is Samantha,” I replied.

I put the photograph down and reached for another one. “Here's your Uncle Tim when he was your age.”

Mason picked the Polaroid back up. “Who is she, though?” he asked.

“A girl I dated in high school,” I replied, “Before I met your mother.”

Mason studied the picture. “She looks nice.”

“She was,” I said with a shrug. I picked up one of my Aunt Anne, Brian's mother, and held it up, “Aunt Anne.”

Mason put the Homecoming photo down and grabbed the picture of Aunt Anne and added it to a pile in a small shoebox at his side. He picked up the little clipboard and consulted it, checking Anne off the list. He had a school project requiring he make a family tree, complete with photos, as a term-long assignment. So, there we were, in the attic, digging through all the family pictures I had, trying to find all the ones he would need to create his tree.

“So how old were you in that picture anyways?” he asked.

“Seventeen,” I replied, rooting through the trunk full of images. Birthdays, Christmases, family vacations, and graduations… Memories slid by in three by three or four by six stills. “Just a kid.”

“You looked like a dork,” Mason said, picking it back up again.

“I'll have you know, I was cool when I was seventeen,” I said defensively, taking the picture away from him.

Mason looked up at me, his eyes sparkling with amusement. “Dad, I don't know if you were ever cool.”

“I was! I was very cool, actually,” I argued, “I was on the football team. I played defense. They called me Train.”

Mason laughed.

“And everyone wanted to date Sam,” I added, “She was the head cheerleader, and that hair --” She'd had the biggest head of curls in the entire school. They were natural, too, not like some of the other girls who had to use twenty million rollers and enough Aquanet to asphyxiate a small village. I smiled, unable to come up with a description.

Mason looked doubtful. “That hair is giant. Like… black cotton candy.”

“Everybody had hair like that in the 80s,” I said, tucking the picture into my jeans pocket.

“Like cotton candy?”

“Yeah.”

Mason snickered, “Even Mommy?”

“I didn't know her personally in the 80s, but yes, she did. I've seen pictures,” I answered.

We continued on sorting through pictures and talking until he'd collected everyone on his list of people he needed from my side for the family tree project and called it a day, replacing the lid on the dusty old trunk and heading downstairs. Mason rushed off to his room to play and I went on down to the living room, where Kris was helping Max with a batch of freshly made Play-Doh. Max was laughing and squeezing it through one of those press things that made it into long spaghetti strands. Kris looked up as I walked in and threw myself onto the couch.

“How'd it go?” she asked, “Find everybody up there?”

“Yeah,” I said. “He thinks I was a dork when I was younger, though.”

Kris laughed, “You were a dork.”

“I wasn't!”

“Okay, Aladdin,” she snickered.

I grinned. I couldn't entirely defend myself. “I was a cool dork.”

Kris looked at Max, distracted completely by the Doh and doing okay on his own, and she crawled over so she was kneeling in front of me on the couch and leaned in for a kiss, putting her hands on my chest. “Yes, a very cool dork.” She smiled into my eyes.

I kissed her softly.




It was a few days later, and I was at the store, on my way to an interview with the fellas. I reached in my pocket for my wallet and felt something fall to the floor behind me. Turning, I saw the Homecoming photo sitting on the tile. I handed the cashier my credit card and quickly picked the photo up off the floor. I'd completely forgotten it was in my pocket.

“What's that?” Nick asked, darting 'round and snatching it from me before I could put it away. He danced by to the end of the counter and studied it as I rolled my eyes and turned back to complete paying. “Who is that?” he changed his question.

I took the receipt the cashier was holding out to me and tucked it into my wallet, “Mason needed a bunch of pictures for a school project,” I replied, stepping out of the way so Howie could pay for the stuff he was picking up.

Brian leaned over Nick's elbow to see the picture, “Oh hey – Sam Chambers,” he said, pointing, “I remember her. You two were tight back in the day. Whatever happened to her?”

“I don't know, we lost touch after I moved,” I replied, shrugging. “I think somebody said once that she moved to Iowa to live with her grandparents not long after I left.”

Brian turned away, unwrapping the bag of peanuts he'd bought.

Nick absently shook his juice as he stared at the picture, “You look like a serious dork.”

What was with everyone calling me a dork in this picture? I snapped it out of Nick's hand and shoved it back into my pocket. “I wasn't a dork,” I said.

Outside in the lot, AJ looked up from where he'd been crouching, smoking, at the edge of the building, and trotted over, pulling up his loose jeans as he ran, cigarette clutched between his teeth. Brian waved away smoke until AJ stamped out the cigarette. Howie came up behind us with his little bag. “Let's rock n' roll, y'all,” he said, “We're running late.” We piled into the back of Nick's SUV and he drove down to the television studio.

We were doing a small bout of promotion, since we were in the studio and recording the new album and everything. We were taping one of the many all-women morning talk shows, and there was a line outside the studio for us to wade through to get inside. I took my time getting inside, signing autographs and taking a few selfies with the girls waiting to see us. Promising to stop again on the way out, I ducked inside where the other fellas were already lounging around the green room. Nick was eating grapes from a bowl like he was in some sort of grape eating challenge.

The interview was going well, we'd performed our number and other than Brian's voice cracking ever so slightly at the beginning we'd done really great. The women weren't asking Nick about his arrest, which had become a sort of hot button issue with him with how many times people had asked, and AJ was eager to talk about Ava and the possibility of adoption that him and Rochelle were discussing still. Howie and Nick both chimed in about their experiences as expecting fathers and the woman chatted happily with Brian about Baylee's performance on Broadway… Then, they brought up our movie and we all started talking about when we were younger, in the 90s and getting nostalgic and I'm not really sure what in hell brought it up, the discussion had never really veered in a direction that called for it, but suddenly Nick was like, “Kevin, you should show'em that dorky ass picture you got in your wallet,” he laughed.

“Oh Jesus, no.”

“No for real, you should, you looked like a total nerd.” He turned back to the ladies, “He seriously did. In high school. Total dork. Even dorkier than that,” he added, pointing to the photo they'd put on the screen behind us.

“I wasn't a dork,” I said again for what felt like the millionth time.

“You so were,” Nick argued. “Show'em.”

“Yes, show us,” begged one of the hostesses.

I sighed and pulled it out, handing it to AJ, who looked at it, snorted, “Yes you were,” he said and handed it on to the hostess, who held it up for the camera to see. I flushed red as the camera adjusted to show a close up of the picture on the screen behind us.

“Aww,” cooed the hostess. “Is that your prom?”

“No, it was Homecoming,” I replied, “'88. I was seventeen.”

“Daaaamn Kev,” crowed one of the ladies looking back at the picture on the screen, then back to me, “I would've been so into you in high school.”

“I know, me too,” agreed another, laughing.

“So who's the lucky girl?” asked the first one. “Is this your wife?”

“No. High school girlfriend. Her name was Sam Chambers,” I replied, shrugging. “We lost touch after high school.”

She looked at the camera and deadpanned, “Well, wherever you are Sam, you were crazy for letting this one get away.” She laughed and handed the picture back. “I'm sure she already knows that, though.”

“I think it's interesting you carry that in your wallet,” pointed out the second woman shifting in her seat. “Does your wife know?”

I tucked the picture back into my pocket quickly. “I wasn't really carrying it on purpose. My son has a class project and we were going through some old pictures. I forgot I had this one in my pocket, honestly.”

The ladies grinned and nodded, and I sighed as they changed the topic and started talking about other stuff, hoping Kristin would believe me about the reason why I was carrying a picture of my old girlfriend around in my pocket. I looked down at Nick and made a mental note to kill him later for having brought it up on national television.