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Chapter Twenty


Nick

“This feels really familiar,” Lauren commented. It was two days before the wedding and we were sitting in traffic at LAX, waiting for our turn to get to the arrivals curb. She looked at me with one eyebrow cocked.

“I know,” I said apologetically, “But he promised he’d be out by wedding night.”

Lauren sighed, “If he isn’t, I’ll personally carry him out to the curb, I swear it.”

“Well I mean, would it be so terrible if he was? We could use a house sitter for the wee--” I paused mid-sentence at the look she was giving me. “Don’t worry, babe, he’ll be out by wedding night. No worries. I promise. I’ll make sure.”

She nodded, but I could tell she didn’t believe I’d ever put my foot down about the time limit. Which she was right so I was pretty much just praying the big plan worked and Kevin would be invited back in his own house by the end of the week.

He’d called and asked us to pick him up at the airport again, and asked if he could stay with us again, just long enough for him to get the song to Kristin’s ears. He’d told me about his meltdown over the divorce papers, how he’d been at the house alone after Andrew had left, and his choice to not sign the papers until he’d been given his fair chance to sing the song he’d written to Kristin. “It’s going to be okay once I get those words out of me,” he said eagerly. “I just can’t give up hope without one last chance.” And then he’d asked me to let him stay with me so he wouldn’t have to be alone.

Only an asshole would’ve said no at that point.

“There he is,” I said, pointing. Kevin was standing at the very edge of the arrivals platform, his duffel bag on his shoulder, looking around over the plethora of cars swarming around. I unrolled my window. “Kev!” I shouted as Lauren came to a stop a couple car lengths away. I waved and he waved back and jogged, dodging between cars, and tossed himself into our backseat. “Hey,” I said as he pulled the door shut.

“Hey guys, thanks for picking me up.” He looked up at Lauren as he added, “And letting me stay with you again. I promise it’ll be brief. I’ll stay out of your hair. I’ll help out with whatever you need for the wedding.”

“No problem,” I said quickly.

Lauren smiled in the rearview mirror as she pulled away from the arrivals curb.

“So… you wrote the song,” I said.

“I wrote the song,” he confirmed.

“Think it’s a hit?” I asked, turning against my seatbelt to look at Kev.

“I hope so,” he answered. “God, I hope so.”

“When are you going to play it for her?” Lauren asked.

Kevin’s voice was nervous, “As soon as she’ll give me the time to.”




That afternoon, I had a fitting on my new tuxedo. In all the hub-bub of traveling from the wedding to the house to the hotel to Kentucky I’d somehow managed to misplace my original suit somewhere, so I’d had to go through the process of tailored suit fitting all over again, which had been a torture the first time but far worse the second as my size had increased since I’d been there last. Kevin decided to come with me, sitting on the bench and watching as the tailor stuck pins all over me to mark where the suit needed to be customized. We talked small talk, stupid stuff, just about the latest stuff on the radio and the time Kev had spent writing with Andrew and everything.

At least until my tailor, Johnathan, left the room.

“Nick,” Kevin said suddenly, “I need to talk about something, but… I need you not to judge me for it.”

I had been told to stay very still while the tailor went to get some stuff to finish up the process. I had pins literally threatening to stab me in the back and sides and legs and arms if I didn’t obey the command to stay still. I tried to shuffle ever so slightly to one side, trying to see Kev in the mirror. I couldn’t see him, though. “Uh… okay?” I said.

“I saw Caroline while I was gone.”

“Did’ja invite her to the wedding?” I shuffled more. A pin stabbed me in my thigh. I froze. I was gonna have to settle for staring at myself in the mirror and not making eye contact with Kev at all during this conversation.

“Yeah. I told her to come. She probably won’t, though, Nick, she’s not a traveller.”

“Well, I hope she does,” I answered.

Kev was quiet a second.

“Why would I judge you for seeing Caroline?” I asked. He didn’t answer immediately. “Kev?”

“Nick… I’m… I think I’m still in love with her.”

Fuck the needles. I turned around. A thousand little pin pricks stabbed me at once and I tripped on a pant leg that had come loose, falling to one side and only just catching myself before I went down. Johnathan was gonna kill me, all kinds of pins had fallen out in a scatter on the floor. “What?”

Kevin stared up at me, his face almost scared looking. I dunno if he was more scared of my reaction, the flying pins, or the stuff he was feeling. He rubbed his hands together nervously. “I was at my momma’s house and I just really wanted to see her and I couldn’t really feel why, just that I did, and I made all these excuses to go and I got there and momma’s hired someone else to take care of the property while Caroline’s up in Louisville for the weekend because she was gettin’ her therapist certificate and I was so damn proud of her… So I went and I spent the whole weekend - the whole weekend, Nick - getting together all these things to surprise her. I got her a sign for the camp and the money for the graphic design work and the 501.c.3 she needs to start the camp and a bottle of champagne and I go and wait for her to come home and I’m pacin’ around and I realize I’m imagining her coming home and wrapping her arms around me and kissing me to thank me. I realized it wasn’t just about Congratulations, it was more than that. It was pride in someone you love. And then I go before she gets back, I ran. Again. I ran away. I go to Nashville and I was freakin’ out and kept tellin’ myself I had to write a song, had to write a song for Kristin, except I kept thinkin’ Caroline’s name instead and I get to Nashville and I can’t think of any of the words I needed to say to Kristin. Alls I can think is Caroline’s name. Alls I can think about is the smell of her skin and the way her hair falls on her shoulders.” Kev put his face in his hands.

“So wait, you didn’t actually see her?” I’m confused.

“She came to Nashville,” Kevin’s voice is muffled.

“She what?”

“She saw the stuff I did. I left it all there at the house. She knew it was me. My momma told her where I went and she came to Nashville. Came right to your house. Andrew thought she was the one I was writing the song for.”

I stared at him, flabbergasted.

“She was there when the divorce papers came,” Kevin confessed.

“You said you were alone.”

Kevin looked up. “I was with Caroline Watson. She stayed the night.”

I felt dizzy.

“Did you…?”

“No.”

“Jesus.” I ran my hands through my hair. A couple more pins fell from my arm. “Jesus.”

Kevin stared up at me like he was waiting for words of Yoda-like wisdom to come from my mouth. I didn’t even know what to think, what to say. I wobbled my jaw, trying to think, but there was nothin’ coming to mind. “What’d she say about the papers?” I asked.

He looked deflated by the question. “She told me not to sign’em. She told me to come back home and sing her the song and fight for my marriage. She said I had to try.”

“She’s right, Kev,” I said. “I’m glad she said that.”

He nodded.

“Did you tell her that you… you know, are still…?” Saying Kevin was in love with anyone who wasn’t Kristin felt too weird to do. I’d literally never seen the guy with another woman. Ever. In my entire time of being around him. It’d always been Kev and Kris. I mean I got it that, technically, Caroline came first, but… I couldn’t imagine it, the idea seemed too foreign.

“No,” Kevin replied. Then, “Well. Maybe. I don’t know. She asked me if she was a danger to my marriage and I said yes.”

If I hadn’t known how to respond before, I definitely didn’t know how to respond now. I stared at Kev, words refusing to come. My brain couldn’t even form a coherent sentence at that point, it just kept spewing out random, disjointed thoughts that seemed to be spinning from a tornado of possible reactions.

Johnathan came back in the room, “Okay, let’s get you finished up and out of ---” he came to a stop. “What in the hell happened in here?” he asked, aghast, looking around at the pins that glittered all over the floor around my feet.

“Uhh..”

“I told you not to move,” he snapped. He put down the box of tools and things he’d gone to get and knelt, picking up the pins from the floor with an annoyed sigh.

“I’m sorry, lemme help you pick them up,” I said, and I started to bend down to help.

“No! Don’t bend --” he started, but he didn’t start quick enough, I was already in the motion of bending and there was a tremendous tearing sound and a rush of cool air to the backside and my hands hovered over the floor by a few inches. I stood still, not daring to move. “---over,” Johnathan finished.

Kevin cleared his throat, “Nick, could you, uh… the mirror.”

I looked back. I was mooning the mirror. I stood up quick, ripping out another couple pins that bounced off Johnathan’s back as I grabbed the seams at my ass and held them shut. “Shit,” I mumbled.

Johnathan stood up, abandoning the pursuit of all the pins on the floor, and I could tell by the look on his face he wasn’t very happy with me.




I threw the box with a nice off-the-rack suit in the backseat and climbed in. Kevin had bought one, too, and he tossed that back there, too, as he got in. He looked over at me, “I’m sorry. That was kind of my fault.”

I didn’t answer. I gripped the wheel without turning the car on, my head leaning against the headrest. I closed my eyes. “Fuck,” I whispered. “Do you think Lauren will notice?”

“The difference between off-the-rack and custom tailored?” Kev asked, “Yeah. Probably.”

I sighed.

“You looked good in the one you got, though, so she won’t have much to complain about,” he added.

I turned on the car and started heading to our next stop to pick up Lauren’s dress from the dry cleaners, where it had been sent to get the hems cleaned because she’d worn it outside chasing after me. I thought about that for a minute, about Lauren, running out of the church after me. I wondered if Caroline had chased after Kevin.

If maybe she still was in a way.

I turned to glance at Kevin. “What’d Caroline say when you told her she was a danger to your marriage?”

He cleared his throat. “Well, we stood there a couple seconds in silence, then she said she wasn’t that kind of girl, and, for a twist in fate, she started to run away, but then I stopped her, and Andrew came in with the servicer.”

“So she still loves you.”

“What?”

“She still loves you.”

“How do you figure?”

“Because if she ain’t that kinda girl to be a danger to the marriage, then there’s a reason she’s a danger.”

“Because I love her,” Kevin replied.

“Well yeah, but if she didn’t love you back she couldda just been like I don’t love you or I moved on or whatever, she couldda just squashed it then, rather than being like, I’m not that kinda girl and running away,” I pointed out. “She couldda just ended the possibility. She was basically saying she was a danger. She was agreeing with you. Whatever you were saying by saying she was a danger, she was agreeing with that.”

Kevin stared at me, his jaw dropped.

I pulled up to the dry cleaner’s. “I’ll be right out,” I said, and I got out and went inside the store to get the dress, leaving Kevin sitting there thinking about what I’d just said.

When I came back out he was stroking the hair on his chin with one hand, a faraway look on his face. I put Lauren’s dress in the back - it took up almost the entire seat - and got into the front. “You okay?” I asked him.

“Yeah,” he answered, but his voice was hollow, a stock answer while he was thinking.

I drove home in silence. He didn’t say anything until we were turning onto the street that brought us down to the house.

“Nick,” he said, “If she loves me, why would she tell me to go back to my wife?”

“Because,” I answered, “She’s not that kind of girl. She was doing the right thing.” I pulled up behind Lauren’s car and cut the engine.

“Well… what do I do?” Kevin asked me, his voice desperate.

“What the hell do you mean what do you do?” I demanded, “Kev… you’re married, you have kids, you love your wife, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then you fucking tell her so,” I answered. “You can’t give up on her because you got some butterflies for some chick you haven’t seen in twenty years.”

Kevin looked like I’d just smacked him. “It’s more complicated than all that,” he said.

“Is it?” I asked. “Really?”

“Nick, Caroline and I go back with roots deeper than you can imagine. I’ve known Caroline longer than you’ve been alive!”

“But do you love Kristin?”

“Yes I love Kristin, but that’s not the point, the point is --”

“Why are you even questioning this?”

“Because!” He shouted, “I don’t know what I want!”

We sat there in silence for several moments. I shook my head, “Well you better make up your mind,” I snapped, and I got out, pulling open the back door and getting Lauren’s dress and the box with my tux in it out. Kevin made a frustrated sound and grabbed he tux he’d got out of the back, too, and slammed the passenger door.

Lauren was sitting on the couch as we came in. She tilted her head back to see us through the living room doorway, “Hey fellas,” she called.

Kevin rushed past me, headed up the stairs to the guest room. I went into the living room and put the tuxedo box and her dress on a chair and threw myself at the far end of the couch she was sitting on. I pulled her feet into my lap and started absentmindedly rubbing them gently.

“Everything okay?” she asked, lowering her glasses to look at me.

I stared at her feet, “I guess so. I dunno. Sure.”

Her eyebrow raised.

“All I ever wanted all my life was for the guys to, like, confide stuff in me, and now that Kev’s doing it, I ain’t so sure I like it,” I said, looking over at Lauren as I kept rubbing her feet.

“Hmm,” she murmured, twisting her lips in thoughtfulness. “It can be hard really knowing somebody.”

“Yeah.”

“But the only way to show someone you love them unconditionally is to know everything about them, even the dark stuff,” she added. She reached over and ran her hand down my shoulder.

I sighed. “I should go talk to him.”

“Yup.”

“Okay.”

“And later on we’ll, uh, finish this massage, of course?” she asked.

I smiled and lifted one of her feet to kiss the tip of her toe. “Of course. And other things, too.”

Lauren’s eyes twinkled.




I knocked on the guest bedroom door. “Knock, knock,” I called, “I’m just a simple asshole requesting permission to speak to you.”

“You aren’t an asshole,” Kevin called back. I assumed that was good enough of an invitation to enter, so I pushed the door open. He was laying on the bed, his fingers woven together over his chest, eyes kinda sad looking.

I shrugged, “I was kinda an asshole. I mean, instead of like actually being unobjective about everything I kinda just snapped at you.”

“You snapped at me? I’m the one that was shouting like a bastard down there.”

“You did kinda get loud,” I conceded.

“It’s really hard to tell if I feel what I feel because I’m scared, because deep down I knew those papers had to be coming at some point, or if it’s because that week we spent at the cabins reawakened something in me that’s been dormant for years and years.” Kevin shook his head.

“I dunno,” I answered. I leaned against the window sill, my arms crossed. “I can’t make a choice for you, either, but you gotta make a choice before you do anything ‘cos… Kev, you can’t end up with either of ‘em out of default, you gotta end up with them because they’re the one you want to be with deep inside you. You can’t just default to Kris if you don’t really wnt her most anymore, and you can’t try it with Kris and default to Caroline because she’s what’s left, either.”

Kevin slid his fingers into his hair. “I know.”

“And you can’t default to Kris because you think that’s what I want, either. I’m gonna stand by you whatever you decide, Kev.”

He nodded, “Thanks man.”

“Yeah.” I stood up and started for the door.

“Thanks for listening, Nick.”

“Thanks for talkin’ to me,” I replied.

Kevin stood up, “You’re better at it than I expected,” he laughed, and he came over and crushed me into a hug. “You’re a good friend.”

I patted his back.




Lauren lowered her glasses again when I returned to the living room. “Well?”

“We’re cool,” I answered, sitting back down beside her.

“So… what happened at the tailor?” she asked.

I realized she’d opened the box and found my suit. It was folded back in the box, but the lid was off. I looked at her, “There were pins flying everywhere, it as a pin-pocalypse. Like in the movies when there’s a person with a machine gun and there’s bullets flying every which way.”

“Sounds very dramatic,” she commented.

“It was. Johnathan made me buy off the rack ‘cos he couldn’t handle it anymore,” I said.

Lauren shook her head, but she seemed amused enough. “And is Kevin okay?”

“Yeah, he’s okay. I guess.” I chewed my lip a moment. “He’s still in love with Caroline.”

Lauren’s face registered surprise, “Oh?”

“Yeah. And Kristin, too, of course.”

“So what’s he gonna do?”

I shrugged. “I dunno.”

“He better decide,” she said.

“That’s what I told him.”

“Well I mean he better decide quick,” she amended, “Since they’re both going to be at the wedding and all.”