Chapter 1
1
Eight Years Later
Gabe
For about the millionth time, I nervously pat the inside pocket of my jacket. I had been crazy to bring something so valuable to a sports bar, but when I saw the innocuous-looking padded mailer on the kitchen counter, I had stuffed it out of sight as quickly as I could before heading out the door.
“We should’ve sold it before we came,” my roommate, Paul, shouts to me over the noise of office workers blowing off steam after COB. “It’s platinum, right? How many carats? We could’ve spent it on booze and matching ‘I hate Gretchen’ tattoos.”
“Tempting,” I reply, making an effort to keep my voice light. “But it was my father’s money that paid for it. Technically it should go back to him.”
I’ll see him tomorrow, but I don’t know when I’ll work up the courage to hand over my ex-fiancée’s engagement ring. When I’d told my parents that she and I had broken up, Mom had at least mustered some sympathy, but I could tell Dad blamed me.
“She’s seeing someone else, Dad,” I told him delicately. The fact was that she’d been screwing some junior partner from the law firm she interned with the previous summer. It had been going on behind my back for almost seven months, but I’d been clueless until I caught them in the act.
“Women only cheat when we neglect them, son,” he replied. “I think you’d better examine your conscience.”
I’d defended myself at the time, but he was right: my conscience is far from clear. I would never cheat on anyone, yet for the past eight years—including the five I spent with Gretchen—I’ve been unable to shake the memory of another woman, someone I’ve never mentioned to Paul or discussed with my parents, let alone Gretchen. I can’t help but feel partly responsible for the way our engagement ended. And thanks to the greasy tangle of guilt and anger that took up permanent residence in my chest, my grades tanked during my last semester of law school, ruining my job prospects.
After a very tense Christmas—every carol was punctuated by demands that I “get my act together” and “stop wasting my potential”—I finally let my parents persuade me to come back to my hometown in the new year. I leave tomorrow.
Sensing that I’m starting to brood, Paul shouts, “What about her?” and gestures to a curvy brunette in tight jeans. As I watch her cross the room, I realize that I have no idea what I’m doing. Gretchen and I had been together for five years, and we practically grew up together. I dated a few women after her—pretty much everyone in my year knew what happened, and a couple of classmates had tried, on different occasions, to cheer me up—but they had come on to me . I haven’t tried to approach a woman in a bar since my sophomore year of college.
“What do I even say?” I ask Paul. “Hi, how are you, do you want to have sex later?”
“That usually works for me.” Paul grins at me and shrugs.
“Yeah, well, guys are different. I’m not sure women even like being approached by strangers in bars.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. You’re rich. You’re tall. It’s not as hard as you think.”
I hope he’s right. Obviously I can’t start dating anyone since I’m leaving Chicago in the morning, but I wouldn’t mind some company tonight. The curvy woman having walked into the arms of a square-jawed guy in a suit, I scan the room for someone else. My heart stops when I think I see her out of the corner of my eye. A tall woman with thick straight hair falling past her shoulders, full lips, and a simple black sweater that hugs her lithe figure. I do an actual double take before I realize that no, it’s not her. This woman is a redhead, for one thing. I run a shaky hand through my hair. This happens to me all the time—at stores, restaurants, or even, in the past, on dates with Gretchen. Either The Girl has hundreds of doppelgangers in the Chicago area, or I’ve got a serious problem.
“What’s wrong, man? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Paul says with concern.
“I’m fine,” I reply with my best attempt at a smile. “Let’s go talk to those women over there.” I gesture toward the redhead and the curly-haired woman sitting across from her.
“Sure thing.” Paul starts to saunter over. I walk a little too fast to catch up. My palms are sweating and my heart is pounding, and I know it has nothing to do with the charms of the redhead or her friend.
“So are you guys Chiefs fans?” is the only thing I can think of to say when we reach their table. I nod towards the TVs, where the Kansas City Chiefs are facing off against the Denver Broncos. Both women look startled for a second, as if they’d forgotten that this is, in fact, a sports bar, then the curly-haired friend gives me a big smile.
“We can be. Are you?” she says flirtatiously. I can sense Paul giving me an “I told you so” eyebrow raise.
“Well, sure,” I reply earnestly. “I mean, they’ve won the Super Bowl twice in the past five years, and Patrick Mahomes?—”
“—is smoking hot. So what’s your name?” Now she’s twisting her hair around her finger. The redhead is more my type, but this woman is making things awfully easy. As her eyes travel from my face to my chest, I begin to feel more self-assured.
“Gabe,” I reply, with a big smile of my own. “And this is Paul.”
“I’m Alyssa. This is Lauren,” she says, gesturing to the redhead, who looks like she’d rather be anywhere but here. She glances my way reluctantly at the mention of her name. Alyssa gives her a sharp jab to the ribs.
“What do you guys do for a living?” she asks, trying to rally.
The confidence Alyssa’s interest has given me instantly dissolves. I feel like I’ve taken a quick punch to the gut. I stammer, “I, uh, well, I went to law school, but…” But I’ve been doing home repairs and heavy lifting for Task Rabbit for the past ten months? I really need to rehearse an answer to this question. Luckily Paul comes to the rescue.
“You’ll have to forgive my buddy here. His last year of law school was rough. He’s a small-town boy, and his big-city fiancée dumped him for another guy.” I shoot him a “What the hell?” look, but his words have an immediate effect.
“Oooh, you poor baby ,” Alyssa coos, laying a hand on my arm. “The same thing happened to Lauren.”
“’Lyssa, hush ,” Lauren hisses. She gives her friend a look like the one I just gave Paul and turns bright red. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” she says, looking up at me shyly.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” I reply, and mean it. She may not be The Girl, but she’s awfully pretty, and already I’d like to give the guy who broke her heart a piece of my mind.
“Thank you,” she replies with a small smile. “It’s nice to know I’m not alone.” She glances at the stool next to her, which I take as an invitation to sit down. The gesture endears her to me. Alyssa gives her a huge grin and draws Paul slightly away from us.
“I just felt like such an idiot, you know?” she continues. “Like I should have seen all the signs, but was just too blinded by love.” She rolls her eyes.
“What, did he start taking better care of himself, bring you flowers more often, things like that?”
She laughs. “Yes! It was such a cliché! I mean, he couldn’t even be creative about it!”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I had no idea either. I came home early from classes one day and found my fiancée and her coworker making out topless in our kitchen.”
“Oh my gosh, that’s awful .”
“It was. He was even drinking out of the Frozen coffee mug my niece gave me for Christmas last year.”
“The nerve! I hope Elsa freezes his heart.”
“I think it’s already frozen,” I chuckle. “Sometimes I wish mine was.”
“Isn’t that the worst part?” she muses. “My ex is with that woman now. He seems to have moved on without a second thought. Whereas I feel like I’m walking around with this big open wound, you know?”
“Yup, I sure do.” I take a swig of my beer. It’s nice to commiserate, but this conversation is getting kind of heavy. Particularly since I don’t feel exactly innocent.
Lauren seems to read my thoughts. “I hope our friends over there aren’t going down the same path,” she says lightly. “’Lyssa should probably tell him she’s married.”
“Paul should probably tell her he’s gay.”
We both laugh. She’s very cute, but...
“You can probably guess that I’m not really looking to get involved with anyone, right?” Lauren turns to me with a kind smile.
“I’m not either,” I reply honestly. “Paul keeps pushing me to get back out there?—”
“—but you’re just not ready. Me neither. But I’m happy to hang out for a bit. As long as we can change the subject from cheating exes. What do you think the Chiefs’ chances are this year?”
I chat with Lauren for another half hour or so, then treat myself to a bag of Doritos and my own personal bottle of whiskey. This proves to be a huge mistake. I wake up the next morning with a spectacular headache and such a bad taste in my mouth that I wonder if a small animal died in there overnight. The only thing worse than going back home is going back home with a raging hangover. I briefly but seriously consider moving to a homestead somewhere in rural Missouri. I could repair tractors. Adopt some dogs. Trade in the Lincoln Navigator my father bought me in high school for the Chevy Silverado I really wanted.
Lauren had been sweet, though I’m glad I hadn’t tried to sleep with her just because she reminded me of The Girl. She had invited me to sit next to her in twelfth grade calculus with the same shy smile, though I quickly discovered that she was funny and fierce, with a delightfully mischievous streak. I had been tangentially aware of her as one of the smart, pretty girls who had always been at the top of every grade, but had never spoken to her until Mrs. Bergman’s class. Then one day, when we were supposed to be working together to solve a differential equation, she had raised one eyebrow, checked that Mrs. Bergman was busy with someone else, and whispered, “Can I tell you a secret?”
“Absolutely,” I had replied, instantly intrigued. She lowered her voice even more, forcing me to lean in. I had never been that close to her. I could smell the faint floral scent of her shampoo as her thick ponytail—light brown, with natural blond highlights—swept forward over her shoulder. I was mesmerized by her gray eyes. They were truly gray, not blue, like agate tumbled up from a riverbed. Teenager that I was, I tried my best to focus on them to avoid openly admiring her breasts.
She whispered even more quietly, “Mrs. Bergman’s husband checks out bodice-rippers from the public library. Like the silliest, filthiest grocery-store fiction you can imagine.”
“No, he doesn’t,” I had fired back incredulously. This was shocking information. Mr. Bergman was a balding, dour-looking man who headed up our local Rotary Club. He once volunteered to read to our third grade class and put us all immediately to sleep by droning on about the construction of the St. Louis arch. Did you know that the Gateway Arch is Missouri’s tallest accessible structure? I do, thanks to the dullest man I have ever encountered.
“His latest was called Purity’s Ecstasy, ” she said with a smile, biting her full bottom lip.
“What does that even mean?” I shot back.
“The main character’s name is Purity. There are pirates. And, I would imagine, ecstasy.”
“None of this is true,” I hissed.
“It is. I work at the library.”
“Isn’t his borrowing history private? Like HIPAA, but with books?”
“Probably.” She shrugged.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I can’t calculate rates of change without wondering which of them plays Purity and which plays the pirate. I needed someone to share my suffering.” She’d given me one more playful smile, then turned back to her work. The whole interaction had lasted maybe thirty seconds, but major damage had been done. I’d had a burning crush on her ever since (would she let me play the pirate?) and spent the rest of my senior year desperate to ask her out but too terrified to make a move.
I came close only once. Steven O’Connor, who I barely knew, invited the whole graduating class to a party at his house in the country. He’d set up some speakers outside and turned his patio and the surrounding woods into a kind of impromptu club. The Girl and I had just danced, nothing more, but she had moved her hips against me in a way that still drives me wild to this day. But I must have done something to offend her, because she slipped away from me at the party and has ghosted me ever since.
Lying on my crappy futon in Paul’s spare room, I give in to the memory of that night for a moment, recalling the feeling of her hands on my shoulders, her breasts brushing against my chest, that mischievous little smile playing on her lips. Then I force myself back into reality.
“What happened to you last night?” Paul asks, impossibly chipper as he pours me a cup of coffee in the kitchen. “I got those girls’ numbers for you,” he continues. “That Alyssa seemed like a good time. Sorry you got stuck with the sad-sack friend.”
“If she’s a sad sack, what does that make me?”
“Also a sad sack. Maybe you’re actually perfect for each other! Like Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment .”
“Please don’t compare me to Jack Lemmon,” I groan as my hangover pounds through my skull. “Besides, I’m leaving today. I have to go back home with my tail between my legs.”
I can see Paul consider making a dirty joke, then think better of it.
“Well, there are girls in Kentwood too, right? And you’re still tall. You’re still rich. That’s got to count for something.”
“My father’s rich,” I reply. “Not me.” I sink onto a bar stool and rest my forehead on the kitchen island. The next few—weeks? months? God, years ?—are going to be absolute misery. A crappy paralegal job my father scrounged up for me, a disappointed family, and I’m leaving the only friend I can talk to back in Chicago. A wave of nausea sweeps over me. Why did I agree to go home? Homestead or no homestead, I really should just start over somewhere else, learn a trade, become a mechanic, an HVAC guy, anything. But my family is expecting me, and I certainly don’t want to disappoint them more .
“Trust me,” I say, forcing myself upright to take a swig of coffee, “there’s nothing and no one for me in Kentwood.”