Chapter 28. Cait
CAIT
Cait and Luke grabbed stools at the long wooden bar, and he ordered them IPAs from Montauk.
The younger crowd had dispersed, but the dive was filled with old-time locals with hoarse voices and raucous laughs.
Not much about the place had changed since Cait started going there as a college student home on break: the wooden plank floors, the smell of greasy burgers and beer, and the walls adorned with neon signs, yellowed newspaper clippings about Port Haven, and vinyl album covers.
She recognized one of Topher’s old buddies slumped at the bar, but thankfully, he didn’t seem to recognize them.
“To us,” Luke said, and they clinked their glasses.
Cait took a sip, but the beer tasted sour. “I bet Topher never got to come here,” she said. She didn’t have to explain why. By the time he was old enough to get in with a fake ID, he’d dropped out of college and rarely came home, even for the holidays.
“Well, Daniel certainly never did,” Luke said. Then, “But I once had a beer here with Topher.”
“You did? When?”
“I think he was back for Alice’s wedding. I was in town visiting my mom. We ran into each other at 7-Eleven.”
“Did he tell you about the fight we’d gotten into?” Cait could see Topher standing in her studio apartment that cold morning, stunned as she screamed at him to get out.
“He mentioned seeing you in the city and you being pissed about something. He was kind of joking about it, though.”
Of course he was.
Luke guided her chin toward him. “Hey, you all right?”
Cait straightened. “Yeah, sorry.”
“He was wasted,” Luke continued. “We both ended up apologizing for everything that went down between us. I told him I didn’t blame him. I don’t.” After a moment, he continued. “He joked that sometimes he thought about driving his car into a ditch—” He stopped and wiped his cheeks. “Sorry.”
Cait reached for his hand and gave it a squeeze. “Don’t be. That sounds like something Topher would joke about.”
Luke cleared his throat. “Yeah,” he said.
“I didn’t take it seriously. I should have reached out to tell you.
I don’t know. Done something. But I just drove him back to the Folly.
Before he left, I told him to go talk to someone, and he laughed again and said he was fine and that he’d call me the next time he was in town. He never did, of course.”
“No,” Cait said.
“And you know why I never reached out to him again?”
“I don’t.”
“Because every time I was around him, I couldn’t forget that I was the one who spent that afternoon drinking with Danny.
I was the one who bought the beer. I was as guilty as Topher.
But that’s not how the world works. It’s not how my parents saw things, and it’s definitely not how I wanted to see things.
So I kept living my life.” He paused, then said, “Do you know the last thing I said to Danny?”
Cait shook her head.
“I called him a dipshit for—”
“The waves.”
Luke nodded. “He could be such a dipshit, though,” he said, and laughed. “Anyway, not exactly what I thought would be my last words to my brother.”
Cait wanted to laugh along, but she couldn’t shake the image of Daniel reversing the boat while high-fiving Topher.
The smell of the musty rope bracelet around Luke’s tanned wrist as he clutched the steering wheel.
The brassy notes of the trumpet off the lighthouse balcony.
The conversation she was already rehearsing in her mind to convince her parents to let her visit Luke in Boston.
Then the crash, ending all of that, and so much more.
“It was my fault Daniel drove Topher’s boat,” she said.
“It wasn’t.”
“You don’t get it,” she said, looking at him.
“You’d ignored me all day. It was my idea for Daniel to drive Topher’s boat, so you and I could be alone.
I threatened to tell our parents all about Marcus and how Topher bought the boat.
He didn’t even want to leave the party. If I hadn’t done that, Daniel would have gone home with you—”
Luke stopped her. “I know all of that,” he said.
“You do?”
“I saw you and Topher fighting, and I assumed.” Then he said, “But you’re not the only reason Danny ended up on that boat. We all let him drive. You said it before and you were right. We all could have stopped him.”
Cait tried to take in everything Luke was saying. It was the recognition she’d sought earlier in the cottage, had sought ever since they were teenagers and had made a stupid, stupid mistake.
“Topher and I never talked about it,” she said. “He never called me out on my part in the accident and I never apologized to him for the threats I made.”
“Speaking of apologies,” Luke said, “I was a dick to you that day. I know I was. I liked you, I did, but I didn’t want a girlfriend back home when I was going to college. And I felt guilty about that and didn’t know what to say when I saw you the next day.”
“You were a dick.”
They shared a smile, and Luke nudged her with his knee. “Well, I am sorry,” he said.
Cait took a sip of beer but could barely swallow. She felt hungover. Not just from the day of drinking but from the years of drinking. She pushed the glass away and turned to Luke. “I miss Topher,” she said.
“I do, too. And Daniel. I’m not sure that’ll ever change. Maybe it shouldn’t.”
“I guess not.”
They watched the bartender swirl a pint of Guinness to make a shamrock in the foam, and then Luke looked at her again and said, “It feels good to talk about all of this.”
“Does it?”
He laughed but continued. “I’ve been at my mom’s all week by myself going through everything. It’s been depressing.”
“I’m sure.”
“I was at a pretty low point when you showed up the other night and asked me to come to dinner. I’m not sure I would have said yes if I wasn’t feeling so… Not that I didn’t want to see you—”
“No, I get it.”
Luke nodded and took another sip of his beer, then noticed something over her shoulder. “Pool table’s open,” he said. “You still a shark?”
“Maybe? It’s been a while.”
Luke racked the balls into the triangle as Cait tried to snag a decent cue from the dismal selection. She finally picked one that wasn’t warped, then shot the white ball across the table on the break, nailing two stripes into corner pockets.
“I guess you are.” Luke laughed. He took his shot but missed. “And I am still not!”
Cait strategized her next shot while he deposited a handful of change into the jukebox and browsed the albums, and then Billy Joel’s “The Stranger” filled the bar.
As Cait chalked her cue, Luke approached her from behind, but his presence did not make her swoon the way it once had.
There had been so many times when she’d wanted to be the one to finally rebuff him—to punish him or to make him want her more.
But that was not the reason she took a step away as he nuzzled against her neck.
Maybe it was too little too late. Or maybe this was where they were headed all along.
Fresh out of a bad marriage and the mother of two high-spirited kids, she needed to find a job to support her family and keep her parents in their home.
Nobody was looking to take all that on. And that was okay.
More than okay. Her plate was full enough.
She had no place for Luke in her life right now, other than as a friend.
She nudged him with her hip, then turned back to the pool table to line up her shot.