Page 6 of A Night to Remember

A friendly voice jerks me out of my shelving snit. Despite my gloomy ruminations about the futility of romance, I can’t help but return Allison’s good cheer. She’s the one who got me the job here when I came back to town. After getting a degree in library science, she moved back to Kentwood a little before I did, but is having amuchbetter time.

“Hey,” I reply.

“Why so serious? Thinking about making a fresh start in a small town? Finding love where you least expect it?” she jokes, looking at the book in my hand.

“Definitely not,” I sigh. “Though Kentwood is definitely the place I least expect it.”

“Don’t give up so quickly,” she quips. “What are you doing tonight?”

“I’m working the dinner shift at the café,” I say, wondering if my ponytail still smells like grease from this morning’s shift. Ping-ponging between the library and diner—now café—was a feature of high school life too.

“I mean after that. Do you want to go dancing at Mickey’s? Jason’s friend is DJing. I’m expecting hard dance, a little Krautrock, maybe Falco if I play my cards right. Did you know that I know all the words to ‘Der Kommissar’?”

“I did. And I’d love to hear you sing every one of them, but Meg needs help closing tonight. I won’t be done until 11:00 or so.”

“So come at 11:00! I’ll loan you a dress,” she adds mischievously.

I try not to roll my eyes. We’ve been over this many times in the course of our friendship. I love Allison, but style-wise, we are polar opposites: she loves anything bright, shiny, and glittery, all of which looks adorable on her petite frame. Tall and lanky as I am, I am much more comfortable in jeans than a party dress.

“First of all, no,” I say. “Second of all...”

“But how are you going to catch the eye of the local carpenter? Or a brooding single dad with a heart of gold?” Allison plows on cheerfully.

“Sorry,” I say, and mean it. I hate to disappoint her. And while I don’t like party dresses—orromance clichés—Idolove dancing. I love it when the music is so loud that it seems to fill every part of me. Moving my body makes me forget who I am,whereI am, even if it’s just for a song. But it’s not in the cards tonight.

“I’ve got to take Mom to a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, and if I stay out too late, I’ll be worthless in the morning.”

Allison’s smile dims slightly. “How is your mom?” she asks gently.

“Same,” I sigh. “Or better, maybe. The doctors think she’s going to be fine, ultimately. It’s more the money issues that are worrying us now. We’ve missed a lot of mortgage payments to cover her medical bills, and of course I have my student loans. Hence the two jobs.” I raise a reproachful eyebrow, which makes Allison burst out laughing.

“Don’t do that! It makes you look like Tom!” Tom is Allison’s romance-novel hero, a brooding professor (though not a single dad) who swept her off her feet last year. They met and fell in love right here in the library. It was appallingly sweet, and it almost made me reconsider my crabby skepticism regarding tall, dark, and handsome strangers. Almost.

Meanwhile my mother and I are in the mess we’re in because she had to remortgage the house after my father left us when I was a kid. Mom is a talented painter, but she’d put her art on the back burner when I was born and instead worked as a receptionist at the local middle school while I was growing up. She’d had to quit when she got sick a year and a half ago. So now I have to work hard, pay the bills, and maybe, just maybe, if I can dig us out of this hole, if Mom can go back to work, I can pick upwhat’s left of my life and start over. I spend any free time I have working on my writing and doing little freelance proofreading jobs just to keep a foot in the world I want to be in. Allison may have found love where she least expected it, but for me, any local carpenter would only be a distraction.

Allison squeezes my hand. “You do need a break sometime.”

“I know.” I force a smile. “Next time, I promise.”

She nods. I can tell she’s disappointed, but I also know she’ll have a great time without me. Allison is one librarian who knows how to party. I hear her heels click over to the front desk, and I go back to re-shelving romance.

3

Gabe

Drivingdown Main Street in my Lincoln Navigator, I feel like I’ve slipped through a wormhole back to high school. I haven’t been back to Kentwood much since graduation. Gretchen preferred to spend holidays in more exotic places, and I’ve worked or traveled most summers. Everything is both familiar and disconcertingly different—shabbier, shinier, a tree missing here, a building torn down there. In high school, my friends and I would cruise down this street, blasting Drake and drinking whiskey out of water bottles. I was usually the designated driver;someonehad to keep those guys from wrapping their cars around trees, and for whatever reason I felt like it should be me.

As a rich kid, I really had no choice but to hang out with other members of Kentwood’s upper class. They expected it. My parents expected it. Would I have rather been at home, sorting my rock collection? Yes. But at the time, I reasoned that it wasbetter to have friends, even if they weren’t my favorite people, than be alone.

I’m alone now, though. Listening to sadcore and feeling, admittedly, a little like Jack Lemmon as I watch the storefronts pass by. There’s the appliance store that can’t hope to compete with the Lowe’s on the other side of town, the furniture store I have never seen anyone enter, and the sewing machine repair shop that I’m pretty sure is a front for something. Things get a little more picturesque as you get closer to downtown, but from here Kentwood looks downright depressing.

I tell myself that things could be a lot worse. That even though I have to come back to Kentwood to work as a paralegal for the city attorney, I still have a job. I’ll miss living in Chicago, but with the exception of Paul, I won’t miss my life there.

I’m telling myself that coming home isn’t a defeat, it’s a strategic retreat. I’ll lick my wounds, regroup, and come out of this experience stronger. I might even find out something about The (thoroughly un-Google-able) Girl, though that thought is simultaneously so tantalizing and terrifying that I usually repress it immediately.

I slow the car down as I cross the intersection leading to slightly-more-bustling downtown Kentwood. To my left are the spires of several churches: First Baptist, First Methodist, First Presbyterian, and several more whose names I can’t remember. To my right, I can see the top of the courthouse, an imposing structure of rustic stone that dominates the town square. I’ll report to work there in a few days, but first I have to go to the bank to meet my father for lunch. He told me he has “something” he wants to “discuss” with me. I already know it won’t be a discussion at all, but another lecture about how I’ve failed to live up to the expectations of my illustrious family, who first settled in this area 150 years ago.

I can practically hear my father now.

---