19. Trina
TRINA
I don’t think I’ve ever seen Casey so scared in the entire time I’ve known him.
His wide eyes as he turned to me, his phone pressed to his ear with a hand that was shaking slightly…
it tore my heart open. My chest still aches for him.
It’s almost hard to breathe knowing he’s usually the stoic one, the one who has everything under control.
He makes me feel in control. I don’t like being the level-headed one, as if I’m the one with answers.
I don’t have any. I’m not even sure what’s going on.
We get into my car. My hands are shaking too, so it takes two tries to get the keys into the ignition. If Casey notices, he doesn’t let on. He’s somewhere else, his knee bouncing quickly and his gaze fixed on something unseen beyond the dashboard.
Pulling away from the curb, it feels like something has irrevocably changed.
The last time I had this feeling, I was in the back seat, not the front.
My mom hadn’t come home. Turns out she had been arrested.
Two men from Child Protective Services came to get me, and the next thing I knew, I was on my way to Phoenix.
My aunt’s house. It was a beautiful, sunny day just like this.
Maybe not quite as hot, but the sky was a piercing blue.
Even when I was that young, I had the sense that it was all wrong.
Bad things are supposed to happen on rainy days.
At night. In the dark. Not while you’re driving in an unfamiliar car, passing families laughing and playing in the park.
I inhale sharply. I can’t flash back to that now. Not with Casey next to me, distressed and in need of someone to carry some of the worry for him. He’s been that for me without knowing it. I can be that for him.
Reaching across the center console and taking his hand in mine, I thread our fingers together and squeeze. Slowly, with a glassiness to his eyes, he turns his head to look at our hands intertwined. For a brief second, I hope he sees what I see—we fit together, just like this.
“Sometimes two things that shouldn’t go together actually blend pretty well.”
It was a pointed statement when he made it, but I didn’t understand what he was getting at as I ate pasta and let the anticipation of heat and sex and our bodies coming together build in my core.
But I can’t help but think that maybe he was talking about us—the agent and editor.
Anxiety-ridden mess and strong, capable success story.
Woman with no roots and man so rooted to Chicago he wouldn’t dare dream of a promotion elsewhere.
Breathing out slowly through pursed lips, I try to settle my racing heart. There are too many things going on. Too many emotions. Too many reminders for me, who has made a second career out of not looking back.
I have to say something, but I don’t want to pry. “You don’t have to tell me anything.” I hope that’s reassuring enough without sounding nosy.
Casey shakes his head, still not looking at me, but his knee stops bouncing. “I have a brother, a few years younger than me. I don’t know if you saw him at the funeral? He…” He swallows hard. “The whole thing was a lot for him. He wasn’t in the room with us for very long.”
I rack my brain for any memory of another man aside from Casey’s father, but I come up blank. It doesn’t seem to matter though, because Casey keeps talking.
“Anyway, he has a cognitive disability. He can do most things any adult can—he has a job, does basic chores. After Mom died, he and Dad had a hard time living together. Dad wasn’t really equipped to be a caregiver, you know?”
He looks at me then, his eyebrows raised in question. The truth is that I don’t have any knowledge of family dynamics like this. I don’t know anything about fathers or caregiving. I’m lucky to be able to take care of myself, but it seems important to him that I understand, so I nod.
“A spot opened up for a group home. They’re notoriously hard to get into because once you get in, you don’t leave.
It’s too good. Robert can live on his own there…
well, with roommates…and he has help. There’s staff, and they’re wonderful.
They taught him how to get to and from his job, how to handle his money…
” Casey’s voice goes soft, and his hand tenses in mine.
“It sounds really amazing,” I offer.
“Yeah, it is. He has a lot of freedom to live his life. He’s been thriving.”
“Not anymore?” I guess after some silence.
“No, he’s been doing great. I see him every Sunday for lunch, and then we go back to his place and watch a game or a movie or whatever he wants to do. He’s always seemed happy. But one of the staff members called me, and he’s gone. He came back from work, but now they don’t know where he is.”
“Is this something that happens a lot?”
“Never. They taught him how to use public transit. Got all the housemates Ventra cards, practiced with them just in case they ever needed to use it. One of his roommates takes the bus to work. Robert can walk to his job, though. And I always go to him when I see him.” Casey’s voice cracks, and I squeeze his hand a little tighter.
“He didn’t tell anyone where he was going?” I ask as we pull up to the curb outside his condo.
Casey shakes his head, and before the car has fully stopped, he opens the door and jumps out. As if on an afterthought, he turns around. “Thanks, Trina. I’ll…um…call you later.”
And with that, he slams the car door and runs inside his building.
I should leave. That whole conversation was clearly more than he wanted to have with me.
Idly, I wonder how long he would have gone before mentioning his brother at all.
Forever, probably. I could definitely keep up our professional and physical relationship without ever mentioning my aunt or my mother.
They just don’t fit in either of those bubbles.
But I can’t unknow anything he’s said. There’s a third, more personal bubble now. There’s no way to unsee it. I have to make sure it doesn’t pop or else things are going to get messy.
What I should do is take his clear hint and go back to my place, turn my fireplace back on just the way I like it—as is my right as a childfree woman in my thirties who lives alone and does what she wants—and go about my life.
Casey will call me if he needs me. Which he won’t, because he doesn’t.
This is his family, and I don’t have anything to do with it.
And yet, that big memory of being nine years old in the back of a CPS car on a hot, sunny day lingers. There were two of them in the front seat. They talked to each other but never to me. It was lonely. I was alone.
No one deserves to be alone when they’re dealing with something stressful.
With a heavy sigh, I swing my car into a parking spot not too far away and walk quickly to Casey’s building, my sandals scuffing rhythmically against the hot sidewalk.
Gone is the high from the other night. It’s been replaced by a type of anxiety I don’t recognize—not for me, but for him—and a burning desire to take it away, to fix it, even though I know I can’t.
This isn’t the type of thing sex can repair.
I run up the stairs to find his condo door cracked open.
Pushing it open slowly and peeking inside, I see him with his phone pressed to his ear, pacing with his other hand on his hip.
He turns and sees me there, but his face doesn’t give anything away.
After a moment, he motions me inside and paces away from me.
After I close the door softly behind me, I start to feel like an idiot for rushing up after him. What am I supposed to do now? What good am I to him? He doesn’t even seem to need me here.
“Yeah, I get he might still come here, but what are we going to do? You’re there waiting for him, and I’m supposed to stay here and do the same?” He pauses, listening. “No, I can’t think of anywhere he might be.” Another pause. “Erick is driving around? Okay. Yeah, okay. Sure. Bye.”
Casey hangs up, then tosses his phone on the kitchen counter and buries his head in his hands. “He left his phone on his dresser. He knows he’s not supposed to go anywhere without his phone.”
“Did something happen? Was he upset about something, maybe?” I try.
He shakes his head, dragging his hands down to his cheeks. “His roommate didn’t notice anything. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t. But he’d have called me. He always calls me—” Casey’s voice breaks. He coughs to cover it up, but it’s unmistakable.
Fuck. I don’t know how to help him. I haven’t felt this helpless in a long time, and I hate it.
So I do the one thing I’ve always been able to do. I close the distance between us and cover his hands with my own. Squeezing to apply just a little pressure is enough to force his gaze to meet mine.
“This is not your fault. I don’t know if you’re blaming yourself, but you need to hear that. He’s an adult, right?”
Casey nods as best he can, but I can already see him coming back into himself.
“And he knows how to use public transit?”
Another nod.
“You said he’s never done this before. Does he wander off though? Go anywhere aimlessly? Take walks?”
This time, Casey shakes his head. “No. Never.”
“Okay…” I chew on my bottom lip, thinking, and take a step back so my hands drop from Casey’s face.
Once when I was fifteen, I wanted to climb out of my own skin.
I don’t remember why exactly, but I do remember wondering whether or not anyone would miss me if I just disappeared.
So I did. I walked to the local library, found a book and a comfy bean bag chair in the corner of the kid’s section, and read for hours.
No one came for me. No one even let on if they had noticed my absence when I got home.
But I felt better. I guess, in the end, that’s what mattered.
I’ve always gone to libraries for any reason—happy, sad, stressed. When I need to think or when I don’t want to think about anything at all, the library is my go-to, in any city, any time. Maybe…
“Does he have a happy place?”