Chapter 30
CAIDEN
Amelia needed a day to herself so that she could process and recuperate. She would be going to her mother’s house today to collect anything she wanted to keep before it would be emptied out.
I dropped her off at her mom’s house, though I lingered for a few minutes to see if she would run back out. I wouldn’t want to leave her stranded.
She did not come back out, so I sped off and left her alone in that house filled with ghosts and sorrow.
I needed a fucking drink.
Being strong for Amelia was taking everything I had in me. Being back in this town was fucking suffocating, and all I wanted to do was scream or punch a hole in a wall.
I couldn’t.
I was not sure what possessed me at her funeral to hold her like that. I had seen her break down plenty of times in the past.
Like at graduation, or after Lillian died, or all the times she made a scene asking me why I was such an asshole. So, what was different about this time?
A little voice whispered in my ear, something I had been so afraid to admit.
I was falling for her. Hard.
Not just the way a guy falls for a girl, but the sick, obsessive way an addict craves a fix.
The more I tried to distance myself, the worse it got.
I could smell her on my skin after every hug, every accidental brush of her fingers against mine.
Her sadness had a gravity, and I orbited it, helpless.
This town didn’t make it any easier. Pathosbury had a way of peeling your layers back to the rawest parts, like it was the only thing it knew how to do.
I’d only been back a day, and already I’d seen three people from high school I never wanted to see again.
The kid I fought in seventh grade. The girl who I fucked behind the bar.
I went to the first bar I could find, a cinderblock dive with a neon Bud Light sign and a jukebox that hadn’t worked since the recession. I ordered a whiskey, straight, and the guy behind the counter poured it like he was doling out cough syrup.
I slammed it, let the burn uncoil in my stomach, then signaled for another. A TV flickered above the bar, some cable news channel screaming about a war nobody wanted to fight.
It was a sick joke. Me, the human trainwreck, the guy whose whole personality was built on pushing people away, suddenly realizing that the only thing I wanted to do was to hold Amelia so close she’d have to punch me to get free.
I could still picture how she looked on her knees at the grave, her hair tangled and her face wet, her hands shaking as if the world had finally won.
When I’d wrapped my arms around her, it felt like bracing against a tidal wave, one that was always building, always threatening, and now it was here, and I didn’t drown.
“Caiden? Is that you?”
A voice rang out through the near emptiness of the bar. I looked towards the voice to see a man with black hair walking out of the bathroom.
It didn’t take long for me to register who he was.
“Dante?” I whispered as if I had seen a ghost.
Dante, my ex best friend, stood in front of me with a smile on his face as if we didn’t have a terrible falling out in high school.
He wore a faded shirt over a body that had thickened with muscle. His forearms, neck, and shoulders, but his face was the same. Bright-eyed and intrigued.
For a second, I thought he’d come over to swing or at least get his words in before the bartender threw us both out. Instead, he clapped me on the back and slid onto the stool next to mine, like we’d just seen each other last week instead of seven years ago.
“Jesus, Baxter,” he grinned, “I thought you were in jail or dead.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Not for lack of trying.”
The bartender, sensing the drama, sidled over and set up a second glass. Dante lifted it, tapped it to mine. “To not being dead, then.”
“To being back in Pathosbury,” I said, and we both drank, though we never broke eye contact.
For a minute, it was almost like nothing had changed. The jukebox fizzled with a busted cassette, and the air around us thickened with smoke and the old, sweet stink of spilled beer. I could almost pretend we weren’t both ghosts, haunting the same bar out of habit because it was all we knew.
Dante leaned back, his gaze sliding over me. “You look good,” he said, but his mouth twisted like the words were sour. “What are you doing here?”
I wondered if I should tell the truth or lie like the liar that I was. A sour taste of jealousy caused the words to hesitate in my mouth. If he knew I was here with Amelia, he might want to see her, to reconnect with her.
She was mine.
He had his chance.
Ultimately, I told the truth, because this was a small town and I knew news would spread about Amelia and I being here together. Especially since the scene she made at her mother’s funeral.
“I’m here with Amelia. Her mom, Judy, died, and she needed somebody with her.” I kept my words short and swift.
He raised an eyebrow, and I clenched the glass a little too tightly when I saw the hint of interest in his eyes.
“I heard about Judy. I wasn’t sure if Amelia would come. I know how bad their relationship was. In fact, before Amelia left, we saw each other again, and she said she hoped that her mother would die alone with her mistakes.” Dante spoke as if he knew Amelia inside and out.
“You saw Amelia before she left?” I asked through gritted teeth.
His cheeks turned to a faint red as he nervously grinned. “Yeah. We hooked up a second time. Couldn’t resist it, man, I liked her a lot back then.”
Don’t punch him. Don’t do it.
I had to repeat that to myself. The thought of his hands on her made my blood boil in a dangerous way.
Instead, I avoided acknowledging that altogether. “She was pretty torn up about her mom’s death. I know how she must have felt years ago, but enough time has passed. Amelia just missed her mom for who she was.”
Dante nodded, taking another swig of his drink. "Yeah, I understand," he said. "I didn't mean to imply Amelia wouldn't care if she died; that's just all the information I had."
“No worries, man.”
We let that hang in the air, me and Dante working through the old rhythms, the way we always did. Neither of us ever apologizing, just lobbing stories back and forth until the weight of truth got too heavy to hold.
He was the only person I ever told everything to. The only one who understood how it was to grow up here, to watch your family rot from the inside out, but still feel obligated to defend them when the town started in. His dad was a mean drunk, too, though he never laid a hand on Dante.
Not the way mine did. Plus, his mom never left.
Still, pain recognized pain, and for a couple years, there it seemed like we were the only two people in Pathosbury who could stand each other.
He crossed his arms and leaned in; his elbows planted on the sticky bar counter. “So, you and Amelia. It’s real? Or is this some nostalgia trip the universe is putting you through?”
I rolled the glass between my palms, feeling the chill bite my skin.
“It’s not like that. I mean, I don’t even know how to fucking describe it.
She’s…She needs someone. I’m someone.” I dragged the whiskey down my throat until it stung.
“It’s complicated. We only ran into each other recently this year when my half-brother invited me to a wilderness retreat.
His fiancée’s best friend was Amelia fucking Langston. ”
Dante appeared surprised, and I remembered he had no idea that I had a half-brother. “You have a brother?”
I waved it off. “Yeah. Long story. My mom was pregnant when she left with another man. Neither of us knew about eachother until recently. I saw my mom at his wedding, but I won’t get into that.”
Dante watched me, his eyes narrowed. Thankfully, he changed the subject. “You remember eighth grade, when Amelia spent the whole spring walking around with that bandage on her wrist? You’d follow her home after school, like some stray. I used to think you were going to kill each other.”
He laughed, but it wasn’t mean, just sad. I remembered that year mostly in fragments, like a slideshow with half the slides burned. Me smoking behind the gym, watching her through the chain-link fence, wondering if I pushed her enough, maybe she’d finally just—
“You ever wonder,” Dante said, “what things woulda’ been like if you’d just let it go? If you’d let her go and never looked back?”
I picked at the edge of the label on my glass. “Not really. You?”
He shrugged, a rigid, practiced move that suggested he’d thought about it until it blurred into nothing. “I thought about her a lot, especially after she left. Sometimes, I thought that she was the one that got away. If things were different, maybe she and I could have been something.”
Our eyes met, and I saw that he wanted me to contest it, maybe even fight him for it. The old reflex flared in my gut—some muscle memory of scoring points, winning, always needing to win—but it passed almost as soon as it came.
I couldn’t let myself slip.
I turned away, feeling bitter, the bar suddenly too bright and the air too thick.
“She’s not what you remember,” I said. “She’s…
I don’t know. She’s built a whole world to keep out everything that ever touched her.
It’s like talking to someone through a wall of bulletproof glass.
I think the more anyone tries to be with her, the more she’ll find a way to run. ”
He nodded, not arguing. “And you? You still the same asshole you were in high school?”
I wanted to laugh, but it came out as a cough. “Worse. Now I actually know how much it hurts other people when I fuck up.”
This time, Dante did laugh. “That’s called growing up, man. Sucks, doesn’t it?”
I looked at him, and there he was, my best friend. The one who’d patched me up after my dad broke my nose, who’d split every sandwich with me even when he only had one. I never told him how much that meant. Maybe I thought I’d have more time.
Even through the sentiment I felt towards him, there was fury and the need to push him away.