CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Then
Andrew
It began on a February afternoon in Andrew’s final college semester. He’d returned from class to a particular stillness in the apartment. Maybe Kathryn and Nick were both out. Maybe one or both were reading or napping. There was nothing to alert him anything had changed, and he let his bag slide down his arm to the floor. He spotted the brass key where it rested on the woodgrain of the table, and collected it, puzzled. Kathryn had streaked red nail polish across the metal so she’d know which one opened the apartment door. Now it was orphaned from her cluttered key ring.
Nothing in the kitchen was different, and the living room was in its usual state, so it took Andrew a second to feel the weight of the key in his hand. Then it registered in his mind, jarring, like an alarm.
In his closet, beside Andrew’s selection of T-shirts, the rail was lined with bare hangers, though the space smelled like Kathryn. He yanked his dresser drawers open to find they were vacant. His stomach dropped, and he darted to the bathroom, where the vanity was nearly empty, home to just his toothbrush and a curled tube of toothpaste, squeezed from the top no matter how many times Kathryn had scolded him for it. He threw the shower door aside, and his fears were compounded by the soap-scum rings left behind by a half dozen bottles he’d never understood. Andrew sank to the floor, something tearing inside him, like the time he’d ripped apart a baseball, the tough material resistant, strings snapping, never to be whole again.
At twenty-one, Andrew had little experience with which to compare his first heartbreak. He’d walked the line; his grades had set him in his teachers’ good graces. Everything he did made his parents beam. For as long as he could remember, he’d dutifully followed the path laid out for him, believing it would be the key to everything he’d wanted for his future, which, over his last year with Kathryn, had been a vivid picture. He convinced himself he’d overridden the faulty wiring, his drunk father’s only legacy.
“Did she say anything to you?” Andrew demanded of Nick in the kitchen when he came home that evening. “Did she say where she was going?”
“She said she had to go home for a few days.” Nick dodged his gaze.
“Then why is all of her shit gone?”
“I don’t know, Drew.” Nick pulled a Hot Pocket from the microwave.
“Her phone is disconnected or something. Let me try with yours.”
There was a flicker in Nick’s face. A pause. “No. She obviously wants to be left alone.” He ducked into his bedroom, shutting the door.
That night Andrew unscrewed a half-empty bottle of rum and tossed back three shots. Warmth crept through his body; then the anesthetic sensation set in, leaving a detached, comfortable numbness. He dialed Kathryn’s parents’ house repeatedly, heavy apprehension in her mother’s voice when she told him Kathryn wasn’t home. He downed the remainder of the rum. The acute agony of his heartbreak was still present, just at a manageable distance.
The next morning Andrew woke to the cold tile and harsh reality of his bathroom floor. He’d vomited during the night. His head throbbed, and his body ached worse than it had when he’d had the flu. The shattered picture of his life came into focus.
He drove to the liquor store.
The days passed in a blur. Sometimes Kathryn’s avoidance felt cruel and calculating, other times entirely his fault. He called her best friend, Harper, to no avail. If Harper knew where Kathryn was—which Andrew suspected she did—her well-mannered, evasive voice told him she’d never betray her friend.
The school year culminated while Andrew teetered on the edge of functionality. Every night he drank until he blacked out, and he dialed Kathryn’s parents’ house until her mother took the phone off the hook, but as the semester wound down, his squeaky-clean reputation meant none of his professors noticed his tardiness, or the decline in the quality of his papers. He told himself he was hardly the first student to come to class hungover the last few weeks before graduation. He was skidding fast, and when the semester culminated, free from the restraints of any responsibility, Andrew let himself slip beneath the surface of the raging sea, preferring to watch the storm from below, where everything around him fell silent. There was something poetic about it, he thought in a haze. He’d finally found a single thing in common with his real father.
As the year wore on, his tolerance for alcohol soared, and Andrew discovered liquor was more effective on an empty stomach. His breakfast consisted of eggs and dry toast, but the rest of the day, in lieu of a meal, he tossed back a few shots. When he was hungry or felt the taunting stab of heartbreak, he did another shot. By the end of the summer, his ribs jutted from his sides, and his clothes hung on his frame.
“You look like shit, dude,” Nick mumbled one night as they crossed paths in the hallway.
Andrew balled his fist. He itched to smash Nick’s face into the wall, but Nick disappeared into his room. Instead, Andrew stepped on the bathroom scale. At the beginning of the school year, he’d weighed 190 pounds. Now, between his bony toes, the number read 162.
Andrew avoided visiting his family until their requests grew insistent, and he gave in on Thanksgiving, carefully rolling shooters into the T-shirts in his bag. When his mother, Lily, fretted about his weight, he explained he’d recently battled the flu, and she said she’d fatten him up and went back to her chardonnay. By the time they sat down to dinner, everyone was tipsy, and nobody noticed Andrew’s trips to the bathroom to drain the liquid from a tiny plastic bottle. Andrew watched his mother, seated beside Craig. They were a pair. Well matched. Dull. There was no flame that roared between them like there had been for him and Kathryn.
Every evening before Nick returned home from his training at the police academy, Andrew hauled the trash, clanking with glass bottles, to the recycle bin.
The scale read 143.
It was like driving down a twisting road with his eyes closed and his hands off the wheel. It was only a matter of time until he crashed and everything went dark. A fantasy he welcomed.
He was nothing. Would never amount to anything. Just a privileged boy from a chilly family. If he vanished from the world, it would be the best thing for everyone. Andrew’s parents would mourn their idea of him, but they didn’t know him, and they had another son. Craig’s real son. They’d move on. Nick might be sad, especially if he was the one to find him, but having a dead best friend might be the kind of tragic backstory girls would swoon over. When Kathryn heard ... Andrew doubted she’d give it a second thought. But he was too chickenshit to do the deed himself. Instead, he punished his body, starved it, drowned it with poison. It was only a matter of time until one of his organs failed, and each time he drifted off in a haze, he hoped, when everything faded to black, it would be the last time.
One evening Nick came home late. The shades were drawn, the room bathed in the pallid light of the TV. Andrew had been drinking since late morning, since his eyes had fallen on the date on his phone. It had been one year since Kathryn left. She’d been gone longer than they’d been together. It was absurd, Andrew told himself. Their relationship had been a summer romance, and though it had blazed white-hot through the fall and winter, it had ended, as relationships do. He got blackout drunk by noon.
The jab of Nick’s finger woke him. “Get up.”
“Get the fuck out of here.” Andrew moaned.
“No,” Nick snapped. “Get up.” Something was different in Nick’s tone, and Andrew jerked upright. They locked eyes. “Enough of this shit,” Nick spat. “You need to forget about Kat. She’s not coming back. She’s obviously happier wherever she is than with you—”
Andrew lunged, a move so unexpected neither of them saw it coming, and his fist met Nick’s face with a sickening crunch. Nick stumbled, his hand searching his cheek, where a red wound, like a smashed piece of fruit, oozed with blood, and for a second the two men froze. Then something blazed in Nick’s eyes, a sharp narrowing Andrew didn’t recognize. In a flash of motion, Nick’s head slammed into Andrew’s torso, sending the two of them to the ground, and beneath the haze of drunkenness, for a moment Andrew was convinced he was dying, unable to draw a breath. His back was pinned to the hard floor and the room whirled. Nick lifted his fist, rage still flashing in his eyes as blood dripped down his face. The image of Nick hovering over him, heaving ragged breaths, would be frozen into Andrew’s memory for the rest of his life. A side of his friend he’d never met.
“Get your shit together, Drew, or get the fuck out of my life,” Nick panted.
They held each other’s gaze for a second that melted into an eternity. The energy drained from the room as quickly as it had erupted, and Nick climbed off Andrew and rose to his feet. He stormed from the apartment, rattling the walls as he slammed the door. Andrew dragged himself onto the couch and stared at the ceiling until his hammering heartbeat slowed.
Long hours passed with the intermittent lucidity of a bad dream. Andrew drifted off, only to be jolted awake by a determined pounding at the door, dredging his consciousness to the surface. His sweaty body ached when he dragged himself from the couch to open the door. The intense morning light seared his eyes, and it took him a moment to focus on the two figures at his doorstep. When Lily and Craig entered his apartment, they crossed the line between their polished, controlled life and the reality their son was living.
A weight, pregnant with disappointment, drowned the room as his parents packed his belongings and cleaned the apartment. The clanking sound of empty bottles and cans collected into a trash bin roiled Andrew’s stomach more than his hangover. He was buckled into the back seat of their car like a child, every available inch of space taken by the trash bags used to hastily transport his things.
Back home, Andrew’s parents arranged a counselor for him. He attended meetings. Was matched with a sponsor. His parents monitored his every move, painstakingly concealing his secrets along with their shame. It seemed his hometown was teeming with high school classmates and his parents’ friends, so Andrew shut himself in the house. When his brother called, he passed the phone to Lily; the last thing he needed was for Timmy to remind him he’d turned out to be the good one, that Andrew had surprised no one by becoming the fuckup of the family.
Andrew had always been social and wasn’t prepared for isolation to become his sole companion, but when he itched to call Nick, biting resentment chased away the thought. Nick was a traitor who got him trapped in his parents’ house like a prisoner.
Andrew’s first panic attack ambushed him on Lily’s fiftieth birthday. It was an uneventful dinner at a white-tablecloth steakhouse, a twinge of anxiety behind his parents’ smiles as they chatted with their sons. Andrew’s mouth was dry, and he sucked down three iced teas. While Craig retrieved the car from the valet, Andrew dipped into the men’s room, then accepted a mint from the hostess and stepped out the door. He scanned the lot for Craig’s car. Or Craig. Or Lily. Or Timmy. But none of the faces in his line of sight were familiar. It was fast, merciless, his breath locked in his chest, his heart drumming in his rib cage, a strange, tearing sensation gripping his diaphragm. Andrew dropped to his knees, certain he was going to die right there on the worn red carpet in front of horrified patrons.
Panic attacks. Triggered by a sense of abandonment, a psychiatrist dryly declared the following afternoon, and sent Andrew on his way with two scripts to curb the worst of the symptoms.
Two weeks later, Andrew rose early. He’d scoured the internet for remedies for his panic attacks. A crowded gym was out of the question, so Andrew laced his sneakers and broke into a sprint on the deserted street. The first week, his body ached in protest, and he pushed on until he was panting for breath. But each day, it got easier.
Andrew ran each morning at dawn when it was unlikely he’d bump into anyone he knew, offering fellow runners only a polite nod. He loathed the idea of being lumped in with the kinds of people who trained for marathons: the pushy types who tried to make him feel like whatever he was doing wasn’t good enough. Andrew had encountered these people when he’d joined the gym in college; they’d wanted to know what his fitness goals were and were fiercely insecure and competitive, their brows furrowed in frustration when he’d explained he didn’t have any goals.
What are my goals? he thought as the pavement passed beneath his feet. To never pick up a drink again. To never again see the disappointment in my parents’ eyes when they realized the child they’d loved and supported and given absolutely everything to is an alcoholic.
He was just running. Unless he was sick or stayed up too late the night before, Andrew ran every morning. This new addiction overtook him, a healthy one this time. He found his thoughts of Kathryn softened around the edges, to the point where he could examine them, and he could remember the love he’d given—a lifetime’s worth—without feeling like it had been wasted.
One year after Andrew’s parents had intervened and, Andrew had to admit, saved his life, Craig arranged a job interview with a business acquaintance in West Palm Beach. Though the offer Andrew received felt sticky with nepotism, it also offered atonement to Lily and Craig, and he accepted. A glimmer of hope for his future. He made the drive from South Carolina down to Florida, and moved into an apartment downtown, where he basked in his freedom for the first few weeks, running the streets at dawn each day. But as the weeks wore on, Andrew realized that as a sober man in his midtwenties, his social life had vanished. When his coworkers jaunted off to happy hours, Andrew found himself alone in his apartment, a depressing box of macaroni for dinner.
A seed formed; he needed to feed himself and was tired of pasta and frozen pizza. Andrew scoured culinary websites and each evening taught himself a new recipe, taking on more-complicated techniques. His weekends were filled with excursions to gourmet grocery stores, and he savored his creations on his balcony, watching the sunset fall behind the skyline.
Having no one in his life morphed his perspective when it came to Nick. Maybe his having reached out to Andrew’s parents wasn’t an act of betrayal, but a last resort, to save Andrew’s life. Nick had been a victim in the fallout of Andrew’s relationship with Kathryn, he realized. He called Nick and invited him to spend the weekend in West Palm. When he arrived, their conversation was cautious, but in Nick’s voice, Andrew could hear relief, knowing their friendship hadn’t been destroyed. The two men stayed up talking late, their conversation finding the connection they’d once had. Nick was navigating a breakup, he said; he was searching for a job. Andrew suggested he apply nearby. Maybe they could be roommates again. A fresh start.
Nick agreed, seemingly sensing Andrew’s isolation. When he moved in, Nick made the perfect guinea pig for Andrew’s culinary experiments, offering an honest opinion and, sometimes, a helping hand.
I’m here, Nick’s presence said without words. This will get better . Andrew was indebted to Nick for saving him, for guiding him through loneliness. Nick julienned carrots while Andrew whisked a roux beside him. And, in a silent pact, it seemed they agreed to avoid the subject of Kathryn Moretti forever.
Saturday, March 27
Andrew knew what a hangover looked like. At their Saturday lunch, Nick was in the grips of the head-pounding kind, the kind that left him answering questions with grunts between sips of coffee. But greasy Cuban sandwiches and caffeine seemed to satiate his friend, and Nick donned his sunglasses as the two walked to his rumbling Mustang, to-go cups in hand.
“Where’s your cruiser?” Andrew asked.
Another grunt from Nick. “In the shop.” Liquor seeped from Nick’s breath and body, twisted Andrew’s stomach, the smell dredging up vivid snippets of vomit splashing a toilet basin. A ragged shudder passed through him.
They rolled with the traffic through downtown Delray. Storms were slated to swoop in that afternoon, and though the day was still bright, the wind made the treetops dance, and a rushed energy emanated from the lunch crowd. There wasn’t an empty table in sight. At the railroad crossing, Nick glided to a stop, and the wooden arm dropped a few inches beyond the hood of the car.
“What are you doing later?” Andrew asked. His excitement tickled at the thought of another evening with Kathryn. Apparently Max was out for the evening, and she’d invited Andrew to collect her. Each day they weaved their lives closer together.
“I gotta shower. Have a nap. I have plans tonight.”
“Plans?”
Nick’s brows narrowed above his sunglasses. “Plans.” He didn’t elaborate. “Your kid has a new girlfriend, you know.”
“Max?”
Nick nodded. He was strange, the way he kept some information close when he was loose with other details. But this news was a surprise to Andrew. “Kathryn’s never mentioned a girlfriend.”
Nick paused, then gave a dismissive shrug. “She’s staying with Kat. They’re all over each other in his car. They’re especially fond of the public beach lot.”
Andrew’s thoughts spun to sort this new information, and a flash broke into his mind of the girl’s perplexed eyes in his car that rainy evening. The girl who lived with Kathryn and Max. Andrew was certain Kathryn didn’t know what was going on between the two, and a tickle of amusement rose when he realized he knew something about his son that she didn’t. “Huh.”
Another shrug from Nick. “I know you see her. A lot.”
It took Andrew a moment to realize Nick meant Kathryn. Warning bells chimed, and minutes slipped past as the train rolled by, rattling the car. Andrew looked at his best friend, at his shadowy expression. After actively avoiding the topic of Kathryn for nearly two decades, the moment she’d appeared in their lives again, rumbles of a storm had crept back in between them. He shoved it down deep. If he and Kathryn grew closer, he’d reach a tipping point where no one could come between them again.
The train rattled off, and the gate rose. Nick broke free of the downtown traffic and sailed over the bridge, the car vibrating as they drove across the grates, invisible at their speed, like they were flying over the waterway. Andrew’s phone vibrated against his thigh. A spark of excitement. Andrew swore he saw Nick’s face shift at the sound. No, he was being paranoid.
On Ocean Avenue, Nick made a sharp turn into Andrew’s driveway. “Well, have a good night,” Andrew said as he swung open his door. Outside, the air was heavy, salty. Unsettled.
“Yeah.” Nick nodded. “You too.”
Andrew shut the door. Slate-gray clouds peeked over the treetops, palm branches whipping in a violent gust. He darted up the steps to his house, rushed to duck for cover before the storm rolled in.