The Case for Us

Chapter 1

Kelsi

The bass from a passing car rattled the windows of her apartment as it drove by, its screaming occupants likely headed toward the beach.

It had finally risen above seventy degrees, and the locals were out enjoying the clear, warm spring day before Virginia Beach was overwhelmed by tourists. All except Kelsi, it seemed.

Instead of lying on the sand or swimming in the Atlantic water that was too cold to even pretend to enjoy, Kelsi was stuck inside her apartment.

Wrapped in her comfiest joggers and a ratty sweatshirt from her undergraduate days, she was spending her Saturday packing all of her belongings into neat cardboard boxes she had paid way too much money for at the local hardware store.

Frankly, she was amazed at how so much of her life could fit in such a small space.

Maybe it was a sad metaphor for how her life had gone.

She’d had such high expectations for herself and so many things she wanted to accomplish by the time she turned thirty, but here she was—less than a year away from that deadline, with nothing to show for it aside from a bruised ego and fewer than twenty cardboard boxes.

Her phone rang loudly from where it was perched on a bedside table, and she smiled as she answered. “Do you think I’m overreacting?” Kelsi asked, putting her phone on speaker and setting it on her dresser as she wandered around her room, half-heartedly tossing knickknacks into the open boxes.

“No. If anything, I think you’re underreacting,” her best friend, Abby Lewis, replied with a snort. “If I were you, I’d be throwing stuff—mainly my fists—screaming, cussing, maybe glitter-bombing his car.”

“Glitter-what?”

“Glitter-bombing his car. You know, dump gallons of glitter all over the inside of it. It’s impossible to get out. I had a client do it once and it wasn’t pretty. I’ve always wanted to try it.”

“I’m not doing anything illegal to get back at him, Abby. I’m a prosecutor; I can’t go around breaking the laws I’m trying to enforce. Plus, he’s also a prosecutor, in case you forgot.”

“Okay, way to be a stick in the mud. It’s not like I’d get caught or anything.”

Kelsi shook her head with reluctant amusement. If anyone could get away with doing something criminal and completely cover their tracks, it was her private investigator best friend.

“I don’t think not wanting to commit property damage against my ex makes me a stick in the mud.”

“What’s a little property damage between a girl and the fiancé who cheated on her with their coworker?”

“Abby,” Kelsi said firmly, though she had a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

“Okay, fine, I’ll be by in twenty to help you pack. I have to stop at Michael’s. Apparently the ten pounds of hot-pink glitter I bought was a waste.”

Kelsi lost her battle against her laughter, and it spilled out of her, echoing around the empty walls of her apartment. “You’re ridiculous. I’ll see you soon.”

“Byeeee,” Abby trilled before hanging up.

In the silence that followed, Kelsi paced around what little furniture was left in her bedroom.

She paused at her dresser to sweep some of the photos she had displayed on its surface into a box she dragged closer to her across the floor.

She hesitated at the fifth frame, staring down at it in her hand.

It was a small gold picture frame containing what looked like a happy couple enjoying a beautiful summer day on the beach.

There was Kelsi, with her long, straight red hair floating slightly from a soft breeze passing by, mouth caught mid-laugh, toes squished into the sand, green eyes crinkled at their corners.

She was in the arms of Tom, his blond hair tucked underneath a Nationals hat, smiling down at her with brown eyes that were filled with so much love.

She tried to recall the feeling she had in that moment, but so much had happened since that photo had been taken; it felt like it was another person, another life.

The picture had been taken on Labor Day the previous year, celebrating the last day of summer.

How could such a short amount of time change so much of what she thought was forever?

She never saw his infidelity coming. One night three weeks ago, he came to her with tears in his eyes. He said he hadn’t meant for it to happen, that one thing led to another while he was working long hours with their coworker, and their feelings grew over time.

“I love you, but I love her more.” That’s what he said to her. He confessed everything, ending their engagement instead of letting her do it. That had stung. She wished she could have been the one to do the dumping, as though somehow that would earn her some self-respect.

Afterward, Tom didn’t even wait a respectable period before announcing their relationship to the rest of the office.

So, for the past few weeks, whispers followed her everywhere she went in the courthouse.

“Did you hear?” and “poor thing” were heard around every corner.

She couldn’t take it anymore. Not the pity, not the self-doubt, not the awkward shuffle apart Tom and his new girlfriend did when she walked in on them kissing over the copy machine.

Luckily for Kelsi, her mom’s friend, Christine “Banksy” Banks, was the lead commonwealth’s attorney for Jefferson County back in her hometown.

Her mom let her know that they were hiring, so she sent in her application and her resignation on the same day, determined to get a clean break and start over back at home.

A knock on the door pulled Kelsi out of her head.

One knock, a pause, then two fast knocks, a telltale sign of who it was.

She tossed the picture in the box with the rest and walked to the door.

Sure enough, on the other side was Abby, holding the recognizable takeout bag from their favorite hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant.

They’d stumbled upon it by accident one night in a random strip mall when Abby was so intensely hangry that she had been close to committing vehicular manslaughter.

Abby also held a bottle of red wine and two pints of ice cream.

“Men are trash, with the exception of my lovers Ben and Jerry. They know how to treat a girl right,” Abby said with a smile as she barged in, platinum-blonde curls surrounding her head in a halo that made her appear deceptively innocent.

“I figured we would enjoy one last girls’ night before you abandon me. ”

“Abby,” Kelsi said, chuckling, “you know I’m only moving two hours away.”

“Yeah, but you may as well be leaving forever, because you’ll be too far to drop everything and come over immediately when I have a crisis.”

Abby and Kelsi had become fast friends at college, meeting outside one of the sorority houses prior to a recruitment event and bonding over how horrible the whole experience was.

Talking to hundreds of girls and trying to look and feel your best the full eight hours of recruitment day, all in one-hundred-degree heat?

Not for the faint of heart. They’d been friends ever since, despite ending up in different sororities, and Abby had moved to Virginia Beach after they graduated.

It was only an hour from Kelsi’s law school on the rare days there was no traffic, and Kelsi had joined her there, Tom in tow, after finishing her degree.

“Kels,” Abby began softly while settling on the couch, her chopsticks in her container of orange chicken. “How are you doing?”

“I’ve been better.” Kelsi gave a faint shrug of her right shoulder and opened her own dinner, winding the lo mein noodles around her chopsticks.

“I know you’ve been struggling since Tom broke it off, but it’s nothing compared to when the incident happened. I was there to help you drag yourself up from your bedroom floor, and you’re dealing better now than you did when—”

“No,” Kelsi said firmly. “We aren’t going there.” It hurts too much to think about it. Kelsi had never fully told Abby what happened, and they had been skirting around the subject, referring to what happened as “the incident,” for the last few years.

“But Kelsi, you have to be thinking about him. I mean, you’re moving back, and—”

“Abby,” Kelsi interrupted again, closing her eyes tightly.

It took everything she had in her, even now, to not fall apart over him.

Even though it had happened over four years ago.

“Can we please just drink cheap wine, eat questionable Chinese food, and watch Nicholas Sparks movies? The shit with Tom is already more than enough for me at the moment. Besides, last I heard, he was still stationed in Germany.” She said this softly.

Abby knew how much pain Kelsi still held inside over what happened.

Abby had, after all, been the one to pick up the pieces of her broken heart and single-handedly superglue them back together until Tom had entered the picture.

That reminder made Kelsi reach for the wine, because Tom was gone now, too.

“Yeah, of course.” She sighed and reached for the remote as Kelsi grabbed a bowl of popcorn.

“So, do we start with The Choice or The Best of Me today? Ooo, or The Lucky One?”

“Lucky One,” Kelsi chose while laughing and throwing a popcorn kernel at her friend.

Abby impressively caught it in her mouth and pumped her fists in the air to celebrate.

“Only because I know you want to watch it for the Zac Efron shower scene,” Kelsi continued, “and that you’re too impatient to save that for movie number two in the lineup.” She dug into her meal while queuing the movie for them.

Abby rolled her eyes in amusement, sticking her tongue out at Kelsi, and said, “Don’t lie, that’s why you love this movie too.”

“Oh, one hundred percent.”

Later, as the end credits for The Lucky One played, Kelsi leaned her head back on the couch cushion, staring at the popcorn ceiling and the fan overhead slowly circling.

“Do you think I’m crazy for buying the house and moving?” Kelsi whispered.

“Crazy? I mean, the usual response to a breakup is changing your hair, not spending thousands of dollars on a down payment—thank God you didn’t, by the way; your hair is too beautiful to mess with. But I don’t think you’re crazy at all. Do you think you’re crazy?”

“I mean, a little. It feels right, though. Once I decided to move home, it felt like something fell into place, ya know?”

“I don’t know,” Abby stated bluntly, before she reached over with a foot and lightly tapped Kelsi’s thigh. “Just don’t forget about me, okay?”

“Never,” Kelsi promised. She smiled, but inside she was still thinking about him. Now that she was moving back to Oyster Shoals, would she run into him? And what would she do if she saw him? Her stomach twisted, the wine and food not mixing well with her multiple existential crises.

She took a large sip of wine, forcing the thoughts away. He’s still in the military, she repeated to herself, as if it were a mantra. If she said it enough times, she could manifest it into existence. He couldn’t be home.

There was no way she would see him anytime soon.