Chapter Eleven
Eleven
The Lounge was a no-frills bar located at the end of a strip mall north of town. With its rickety stools, low lighting, and cheap drinks, it was the kind of place people went when they were feeling low and wanted ambience to match their mood. At least, that’s why Kyle was there that night. At twenty years old he wasn’t legal yet, but the bartender, Doug, hadn’t given him any bother. Kyle had done some work on Doug’s prized Mustang not long ago. And if that wasn’t enough, unbelievably to Kyle, his hockey history still carried a little weight around here, even though he played only rec league now.
He knocked back the remainder of his first beer and held up the empty bottle to Doug. “Can I get another?”
“Coming up.”
Kyle checked his watch: seven fifteen. His heart skipped a beat when he realized that right about now Casey would be coming across his letter, if she hadn’t already. When he pictured her reading it, he had the strongest urge to run out of the bar and get to her as soon as possible, stop it all from happening. But then he remembered why he’d done it, that it was for her sake, and he stayed put.
“Give me a shot of something too,” he told Doug. “Dealer’s choice.”
Doug grinned through his full black beard. “You got it.”
Kyle felt bad doing this to her today, the same day she received her big news, but a clean break was for the best. That’s what he’d written in the letter, something about how their lives were going in two different directions, and they needed to let each other go. He couldn’t remember exactly; he’d been in a rush. He wasn’t much of a writer, but there’s no way he could say it to her face, so it was the best he could do.
Doug placed the beer, along with a shot of golden liquid and a slice of lime, before him.
Kyle pulled his car keys from his pocket and laid them on the bar. “Keep those. I’ll call someone for a ride later on.”
“Looks like you’re on a mission tonight, dude.”
When Kyle nodded, Doug pressed his lips together in understanding, took the keys, then left him alone.
His mission was to drink himself into oblivion. It was the only way he knew to get through this night, to block Casey from his mind. He’d drink till he passed out. He didn’t even really care if he woke up again.
He closed his eyes, thought back to her face that afternoon. In the two years they’d been together, he’d never seen her so happy. She’d come running into the garage and thrown her arms around him in front of Mr. Abbott and the whole crew. She’d done it. She’d been accepted to Dartmouth for next year. She wanted to study psychology and brain science, and Dartmouth had one of the best programs in the country. They had even awarded her a partial scholarship. Her mom would have to take out a loan, and Casey would have to apply for student loans to cover the rest. But she was going. In the fall she’d be leaving for an Ivy League college in Hanover, New Hampshire. It was only four hours away, but it might as well be four days. It was a different world.
“Kyle McCray?”
He turned at the sound of the raspy voice to see Missy Heeler a few stools over. They’d been in the same year in high school, and now she worked as a cashier at the IGA. A glittery blouse fell off one shoulder, and long dark roots showed through her otherwise blond hair. It might have been the way she was so at ease, slouching on the stool and leaning heavy on the bar, but something told him she was a regular here at the Lounge.
“Hey, Missy.” He flipped her a brief smile and stared back at his beer, hoping to avoid conversation.
He’d slid the letter under the Higginses’ front door before heading here, knowing she would eventually see it. She was home, making them a special dinner that evening. After she’d shared her news with him, and he did his best to be excited for her, she’d pressed her body against his and whispered in his ear: Mom and Wyatt are gone overnight on a school trip. I want to make you dinner, and then you can stay over. That was a big deal to them, being able to spend a whole night together. He felt himself deflate even further at the thought of passing up the chance to fall asleep holding her.
They rarely got to do that, even though they’d been having sex for well over a year and a half now. When Casey told him she was ready a few months after their first date, he’d resisted for a little while. She was only sixteen at the time; he was afraid she might regret it, or get scared. And he thought so highly of Mrs. H and Wyatt, loved spending time at their house, assisting Wyatt with his models and helping Mrs. H cook while Casey was studying, eating dinner with their family. Mrs. H approved of Kyle and Casey, and he didn’t want to screw it up.
Then there was Dad, dropping hints about how much she had ahead of her, that it would be a real shame if she ended up pregnant and stuck in Potsdam. He didn’t need to add the rest— just like your mother . That was the last thing Kyle wanted for Casey, for them , so he held out for a few weeks. But the fight was lost one night when she surprised him in his bedroom while Dad was sleeping at the firehouse. She climbed into bed with him, told him she’d been on the pill for a month, and she was done waiting. He was only human.
“You gonna drink that?”
Missy had moved to the stool next to his. She was pointing to the shot Doug had poured him. “Eventually,” he said, glancing over to the two empty wineglasses she’d left sitting on the bar in front of her old seat.
She called out to Doug, asked for another glass of wine and a shot of whatever he’d given Kyle. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “But you look miserable, and I figure misery loves company.”
He didn’t respond, just sipped his beer and checked his watch again, almost seven thirty. Certainly Casey had found the letter by now. She would have started wondering where he was twenty minutes ago, eventually wandering to the front porch to look over at his house, see if his Jeep was there. That’s when she would have found the letter and read it, which wouldn’t take long. He’d kept it short; he didn’t have much time to put it together.
Even before she left the garage that afternoon a sense of dread had shoved its way into his consciousness and only grown stronger. Casey had always talked about going to college, but Kyle had been living in the moment, happy to put off worrying about next year—it was so far away. It wasn’t until he heard about Dartmouth that he really thought about what their future would look like. Some people were destined to leave Potsdam for broader horizons, but Kyle had never wished for that. It wasn’t always an easy place to live. The lack of jobs, community resources, and privacy got old. Diversity was in short supply, and some people had lived here so long they had a suspicious view of the world beyond, or forgot it was even there. Not to mention the winters. Last January the whole town had lost power for more than ten days due to an unexpected ice storm. A state of emergency was declared while everyone figured out how to survive in freezing temperatures with no electricity and impassable roads.
But the whole North Country pulled together to get through it—neighbors fed each other and the line crews, there were firewood exchanges, doctors made house calls, and Dad’s firehouse became a hub for relief efforts. That was the flip side of small town living, a fierce loyalty and pride came with it. Kyle’s hockey and work friends were here, his job. He had a hard time seeing himself living anywhere else, and Casey seemed set on leaving. That thought helped him decide what he needed to do. And once the decision was made he just wanted it over with.
Sitting there on the barstool right then though, he was realizing how much he didn’t say to her in that letter. He didn’t tell her she was the best thing that ever happened to him, that he felt more passionate about her than he ever had about hockey, and the last two years had been, by far, the happiest of his life. That he was a goner the day she cleaned his wound in her bathroom, asked him thoughtful questions, and thanked him for being different, and he’d fallen deeply in love with her since then. He would never forget how she saw something in him, something nobody else saw, not even him. He’d said none of that in the letter, just told her they needed to face the reality of their situation and go their separate ways. After two years and everything she meant to him, he’d gone home after work to sit at his bedroom desk, drenched in a cold sweat, and thrown down that pathetic letter in less than ten minutes.
“Here’s to misery,” Missy said, holding up her shot glass.
He clinked her glass but didn’t drink the shot, just put it down on the bar while she threw hers back.
It had been so clear to him when he wrote it, had made so much sense. Though Casey would be back to visit, she would never really come back. Not to Potsdam, and not to him. He’d gone with her to check out Dartmouth and never felt more out of place in his life, wearing his Abbott’s Auto Shop cap, covering his tattoos and grease-lined fingernails with a hoodie that was too warm for the day. Casey, on the other hand, fit right in. She looked right, sounded right, talked and joked with their tour guide and other applicants like she belonged there. Which she did. And he was not going to be the guy pining away at home and holding her back, then becoming all bitter when she inevitably dropped him for a brighter future. He was not going to be like his father.
“What’s this one?” Missy asked, still blinking and wincing from the shot. She was touching a tattoo above his left elbow: a thick infinity sign with a date— 12/10/97 —etched within one of the loops.
Kyle shifted his arm slightly, enough to break contact. “Just an important date.”
“Why do you need the tattoo? If the date’s so important it’s not like you’re gonna forget it.”
No, he could never forget it, even if he wanted to. It was their first date, the night he’d taken Casey out to the Dam Diner after his game. He hadn’t played well that night; Coach Geiger had even chewed him out at one point, asking where the hell his head was at. Kyle didn’t answer, but his head was up in the last row where Casey sat with her brother. They’d dropped Wyatt home after the game that night, gone to the diner, and talked until it closed. Then they talked in his Jeep for another hour, until she told him she had to get home so her mom didn’t worry. She was always careful about that, not causing her mom or brother any concern. Kyle had learned that about the Higgins family pretty quickly. After losing her dad the way they did, they all kept close tabs on each other.
Missy was still looking at him, waiting for a response.
“I didn’t get the tattoo because I was going to forget,” Kyle told her. “I got it to mark the best day of my life.”
Her eyebrows arched at that. “Well, maybe you should get today’s date put in the other loop. Since it kind of looks like you’re having the worst day of your life.”
She was right, and he hadn’t seen it coming. When Kyle woke up that morning life had been good. The job was going well—he was learning a ton, and Mr. Abbott had just given him a decent raise. He was making enough to chip in for household expenses and save toward his own place. Best of all, he had a girlfriend he was crazy about and couldn’t get enough of. What the hell had happened in the last twelve hours? Casey had gotten into Dartmouth, that’s what happened.
Missy brushed against his chest as she reached across him to grab a bowl of pretzels.
He leaned way back until she was in her seat again.
“You gonna do that shot?” she asked him for the second time.
He was too busy realizing something to answer her. That’s all that had happened today. Casey had been accepted to her dream school. And the first thing she did when she found out was find him, so she could share her news and tell him how excited she was to cook him dinner and spend the night with him.
“I’m just asking,” Missy said. “If you’re not—”
“Take it.” Kyle slid the shot over to her.
Oh my God. What the fuck had he done? He’d not only single-handedly turned this into the worst day of his life, he’d also utterly ruined what had to be one of the best days of Casey’s life. All because he’d assumed the worst. Talk about jumping the gun…
“Hey, Kyle.” Doug stood before him, arms braced against the bar. “I’m sorry, but your girlfriend can’t be in here, man. She could get us shut down, you know?” He threw his chin over Kyle’s shoulder.
Kyle turned to see Casey standing across the room. The first thing he noticed was that she was wearing his favorite dress, a short fitted floral number that showed off her legs. She knew he loved her in it, and she’d no doubt worn it for their dinner. The next thing he noticed was how out of place she was here, in this dingy bar, with her smooth wavy hair and little white sneakers. But that all took a back seat when he watched some guy in a Clarkson University sweatshirt approach her. Instead of searching for Kyle—with tears in her eyes and his letter in her hands, like he might have imagined, maybe even hoped for—Casey started talking to the guy. Then she smiled at something he said.
Kyle jumped off his stool so fast it almost toppled. He took four quick strides across the room. “What are you doing here, Casey?”
She flicked her red-rimmed gaze his way. She’d been crying. “I got stood up for dinner,” she said. “I thought I’d come have a drink, maybe find another date.” She turned back to the guy she’d been talking to.
Kyle stepped so close to him their noses were almost touching. “Walk. The fuck. Away.”
The guy was big but appeared a little soft in his khakis and boat shoes. He raised a brow, looked from Kyle to Casey and back.
Part of Kyle really wanted this guy to take a swing or push him, wanted the excuse to lash out physically and unleash some of the rage he felt in that moment. But it probably wouldn’t have helped much. The person Kyle was angriest at was himself.
Maybe the guy read some of that in Kyle’s face. He tossed a shoulder like none of this was worth his time and headed for the bar.
Kyle took Casey by the arm and pulled her toward the door. “You don’t belong here,” he said.
She yanked her arm away. Then she took her time looking around, at the grungy floor, the sticky bar, the sad sparse crowd in there. “No, I guess I don’t,” she said, her stare lingering on Missy Heeler. “I really just came here to tell you something, Kyle.” She stepped close, raised her face to his, and drilled him with those eyes that flared emerald when she was good and mad. “You’re a fucking coward.”
It felt so much like a fist to the gut he was surprised he was still upright. And all he could do was watch as she spun on her heel, threw open the door, and left him standing there.
Less than ten minutes later he pulled up to her house. About three seconds after she left the Lounge he’d retrieved his keys from Doug, thrown cash on the bar, and run outside after her. But she was already gone. Kyle didn’t pray or go to any church, but he spent the whole drive to River Road asking God to help make this right with her.
He jumped out of his truck and ran up the stairs to the back door. Through the window to the right of the door he could see her in the kitchen, clearing the table she’d taken the time to set with place mats and cloth napkins and candles. He knocked on the window.
She ignored him, just set the dishes back in the cabinet.
He knocked again. “Casey, please.”
Nothing. She put the place mats and napkins back in a drawer, laid the silverware in its tray.
He tried the doorknob, but it was locked, so he went back to the window.
She lifted a platter covered in foil from the counter, presumably dinner, and stuck it in the fridge.
“C’mon, Casey.” He knocked on the window again. “I need to talk to you.” He watched her walk over to the table and pick up a dish of chocolate chip cookies. His favorites. “ Please , Casey.”
She dumped the cookies in the trash.
It was when he stepped back to consider his next move that he noticed the Foleys sitting on their porch next door, enjoying ringside seats to this whole show. He offered them a weak wave. Mrs. Foley stood and shook her head at Kyle before going inside, a flat look of disapproval on her face, like she knew he had royally fucked up. Mr. Foley stayed behind for a moment though, watching Kyle with his lips pressed together in sympathy, which made Kyle think maybe he’d been in this position before. Then Mr. Foley tipped his chin toward the Higgins house—as if to say Go get her —before following his wife inside.
Kyle went back to the window and raised his voice. “I’m coming in there, Casey, one way or the other.”
Still no response. She flipped the lights off and headed down the hall toward the stairs.
He didn’t really think about it before he pulled his jacket sleeve over his hand and punched through one of the small panes in the window. Then he reached inside to flip the lock under the doorknob.
Casey was halfway down the hall when she turned back, her mouth open in shock. “Seriously?”
After a quick glance down at the broken glass around his boots, he said, “I’ll clean it up, and I can fix it tomorrow. I told you I was getting in one way or the other.”
“Go tell it to your new girlfriend,” she said, turning for the stairs.
He slid past her and took her by the shoulders. “Wait, I need to talk to you—”
“ Don’t touch me.”
He held his hands up. “I’m sorry. But please hear me out.”
She thrust her face toward his. “Why should I listen to anything you have to say?” He could see raw pain in her eyes, and he knew he’d hurt her in the worst way. Casey lived in fear of losing the people she loved, and Kyle had essentially left her.
“Because you’re right, I’m a fucking coward,” he said. “I’m afraid I’m going to lose you when you go to Dartmouth next year.”
She pulled her head back, and a wrinkle appeared between her brows.
“You don’t see it that way right now,” he said, bringing his fingertips to his chest. “But I know better. I know how special you are, how bright your light is. I saw you on that campus, talking to those people. You fit there. And you deserve it, Case. All of it. You’re bigger and better than this town. Bigger and better than me.”
“That’s why you wrote that letter?” she asked.
He nodded. “But I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean any of it.”
She studied him for what felt like a very long time before her shoulders sank and she shook her head. “The only way you’re going to lose me, Kyle, is by pulling stupid shit like you did tonight.”
He dropped his head in shame.
“Don’t you understand,” she said, gripping the front of his jacket. “I’m not going to college to leave you, I’m going for us . I want to get a good job so we have options. I also want to help my mom out, but you and I are going to be able to travel and see some of the world. I want to help you get your garage wherever we choose to live. It’ll be our decision—we’ll have control over our future.” She gave him a shake. “Kyle, we’re a team, and I am never going to leave you.”
He put his hands over hers on his chest. “Okay.”
“You believe me, don’t you?”
He believed she meant it with her whole heart right then, but he also knew she would go to that school and her world would open up. As it should. One day he wouldn’t be enough for her, just like his dad wasn’t enough for his mom. But he decided then and there that he would take as much time with her as he could get, and he’d let her make the call when it was time to end things. It was far better than hurting her. So he squeezed her hands and lied to her. “I believe you.”
She nodded, even while her eyes watered and her chin quivered. “But you can’t ever do that to me again—you can’t bail when things get hard, or scary. When I read that letter… I felt like I was going to die.”
“I’m so sorry, I panicked. I’m such an idiot.” He touched his forehead to hers. “I promise you, I will never hurt you again.”
She exhaled in relief, but then pulled back and narrowed her eyes at him. “You didn’t do anything with her, did you?”
“Who? Missy? Casey, don’t you get it… You’re the only person I want to do anything with.” He took her face in his hands. “Do you know how much I love you?”
She waited.
“So much it scares the shit out of me.” They’d been saying “I love you” to each other for a long time, but not quite like that.
When she smiled her cheeks moved against his palms. “I love you so much it scares the shit out of me too.”
“You just remember who said it first.”
She laughed, and everything in his universe settled back into place.
The looming dread about her departure was still there after that, but he kept it to himself. When Mrs. H threw her a surprise congrats party the following week, Kyle helped her plan it. When Casey graduated as valedictorian of her class that June and they announced her plan to attend Dartmouth, he stood and cheered longer and louder than anyone else. When thirteen-year-old Wyatt wanted to buy her a special going-away gift that summer and asked Kyle for help, he spent most of a day driving him around and helping him pick out a new suitcase for her. And even though he felt like crying, he smiled and nodded and asked questions while she talked through which classes she was registering for that fall, and which country she might do a semester abroad in her junior year. He focused all his energy on making the time they had left together the best it could be.
One month before Casey was supposed to leave for Dartmouth she came home to find her mom passed out cold on their kitchen floor. She called 911 and then Kyle. He beat the paramedics to the house and knew right away it was too late. Mrs. H had died suddenly while putting groceries away after an undetected aneurysm ruptured in her brain. They said she likely experienced symptoms, but being a nurse, and being Mrs. H, she probably chalked up a bad headache or stiff neck to stress and told herself to get over it.
Dad tried his hardest to talk Casey into going ahead with Dartmouth, told her he’d help with the loans, Wyatt could come live with them while she was gone. Kyle echoed all that, encouraged her to go. Wyatt tried too, assured her he’d be fine. But Kyle recognized the guilty relief in Wyatt’s face when she said absolutely not, she was staying home, end of discussion, because Kyle experienced the same guilty relief.
And not only was Casey staying home, but she also needed him more than ever. She needed his help making funeral arrangements, and managing the responsibilities abruptly thrust upon her as the adult in the house—dealing with her mom’s insurance company, sorting through their finances and taking over the bills, figuring out how to pay all those bills, and find health coverage for her and Wyatt. She needed Kyle’s help taking care of the house and property, and making sure Wyatt was doing okay. When the loss hit her all over again in quiet moments she needed him to hold her while she cried and tell her everything would be all right. She needed him so much he moved into the house by the end of the summer, despite his dad’s disapproval. Kyle dedicated every fiber of his being to taking care of her, predicting what she needed or wanted before she knew it herself.
People around town told him what a great guy he was to be such a rock for the Higginses, but he didn’t feel like a great guy. Amid his own deep grief over losing Mrs. H, and while watching Casey and Wyatt stumble through those first awful weeks under the weight of such pain, there was a small, incredibly selfish part of Kyle that had never been happier.