Page 5 of A Night to Remember

“Also a sad sack. Maybe you’re actually perfect for each other! Like Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine inThe Apartment.”

“Please don’t compare me to Jack Lemmon,” I groan as my hangover pounds through my skull. “Besides, I’m leaving today. I have to go back home with my tail between my legs.”

I can see Paul consider making a dirty joke, then think better of it.

“Well, there are girls in Kentwood too, right? And you’re still tall. You’re still rich. That’s got to count for something.”

“My father’s rich,” I reply. “Not me.” I sink onto a bar stool and rest my forehead on the kitchen island. The next few—weeks? months? God,years?—are going to be absolute misery. A crappy paralegal job my father scrounged up for me, a disappointed family, and I’m leaving the only friend I can talk to back in Chicago. A wave of nausea sweeps over me. Why did I agree to go home? Homestead or no homestead, I really should just start over somewhere else, learn a trade, become a mechanic, an HVAC guy, anything. But my family is expecting me, and I certainly don’t want to disappoint themmore.

“Trust me,” I say, forcing myself upright to take a swig of coffee, “there’s nothing and no one for me in Kentwood.”

2

Kayla

“Independently wealthy,”I mutter, placing the book on the shelf a little more forcefully than necessary. “Investment-broker husband,” I say to the next one. “No debt.” I slam down a third.

I’m shelving a cache of romance novels recently returned by someveryhorny library patron. Shelving has become one of my least favorite library clerk duties. Not because it’s dull, but because each book reminds me how far I am from being where I want to be. Every name I see on a spine fills me with envy.

That could beme.

Itshouldbe me.

It’s not just that I’m jealous. It’s that I never thought I’d be backhere. Not in this library. Not in this town.

I haven’t lived here since high school. And working my old high school job just puts me back into the high school mindset. Only worse, because in high school I was full of potential. I imagined that my life would be a smooth upward trajectory: English degree, publishing job, short stories in respectedmagazines, impressive debut novel, maybe a Hugo Award somewhere down the line. But instead I’m stuck sorting the accomplishments of other writers whose lives seemed to have moved in a satisfyingly straight line.

Not that I want to write romance, which I consider even more fantastical than speculative fiction. A woman gets captured by pirates and is rescued by a tall, dark, and handsome stranger (sometimes after having lots of sex with the pirates—arguably the only parts of the book worth reading). A woman’s car breaks down and then is repaired by a tall, dark, and handsome stranger. A woman’s scientific research is sabotaged and then redeemed by a tall, dark, and handsome stranger. But where’s the book about the tall, dark, and handsome stranger who just createsnewproblems?

Once, I actuallywasrescued by a tall, dark, and handsome almost-stranger, who I now mentally refer to as The Boy Who Must Not Be Named. I was in high school, trying to squeeze in a run between the last bell and the start of my shift at the local diner. As I jogged along the shoulder of the wooded back road that led to my house, it began to rain, hard. My workout gear and cheap running shoes were instantly soaked. After a few minutes of stoic, runnerly suffering, I heard a car come up behind me. I moved into the grass to allow it to pass, but then slipped on the wet embankment and tumbled into a ditch. I struggled to right myself, only to realize that I couldn’t put weight on my right ankle. Blinded by rain and my own disheveled hair, I was trying to press myself out of the ditch on my elbows when I felt a strong arm slip around my shoulders. I didn’t even have time to be scared as I was lifted out of the ditch and placed in the front seat of a car.

“You’re not going to kill me, are you?” I’d asked my rescuer, who was standing in front of me on the shoulder, examining my ankle. He’d looked up at me with a smile, one of those amiable,face-transforming grins that make an ordinarily serious person suddenly seem like your new best friend. I couldn’t help but smile back as I recognized the extremely cute boy I’d recently met at school.

“Not today,” he quipped. “Does this hurt?” He rotated my ankle gently.

“YES! STOP THAT!” I tried to yank my foot away, but that hurt too, of course. He let go of me at once and looked at me with concern.

“I think you should see a doctor,” he said.

“No, no, I’ll just ice it. Thanks for your help. I can make it home.” I wanted to get away from him immediately. I’d never been vain about my looks, but I couldn’t stand to have this teenage heartthrob, with his tousled brown hair and broad shoulders, study me like that when I knew I was covered in mud and whatever other horrors lurk in Missouri roadside ditches. I tried to hop out of the car, hoping to demonstrate how capable I was of hobbling the mile back to my house, and instantly fell over into his arms. The rain had soaked him now too, plastering his thin track-and-field t-shirt to what was clearly a very muscular chest. He smelled incredible—like sweat and Arm & Hammer andboy—and I was so befuddled that all I could do for about half a minute was feel his grip on my upper arms and try not to pass out.

“Johnson,” he said seriously, though I could hear a note of laughter in his voice, “let me at least drive you home so your mom can take you to urgent care.” His mouth was about an inch from my ear.

“My mom’s at work,” I managed to reply. I remember very clearly how much I wanted to sink into him and let him take care of me. Even at the time it seemed like a dangerous impulse.

“ThenI’lltake you to urgent care, and we’ll call her from there.” This was obviously the most logical solution, but thethought of being in his debt brought me back to my senses. I straightened up slightly, trying to find a flaw in this plan.

“You must have been on your way somewhere.”

“Just a family dinner. It can wait. C’mon.” And he lifted me back into the car, wrapped me in the dress shirt that he was clearly going to put on before the Family Dinner, and drove me to urgent care. He waited politely until my mom arrived, and then, bright and early the next morning, appeared at my doorstep to drive me to school. He was one of Kentwood’s rich kids, who must have lived either in a beautiful historic home or a sprawling mansion in the country. I was mortified that he should see my shabby house—how did he even know where I lived?—but The Boy Who Must Not Be Named always treated me like a queen. He took me to and from school and work until my ankle healed. He carried my books. When I was with him, I never touched a door handle. I never pulled out a chair. My jacket would miraculously find its way from my back to a hook without my intervention. And he did it all so matter-of-factly, so subtly, that I never had an opportunity to protest. Later, when I called urgent care to ask why we hadn’t been sent a bill, I was simply told that it had been taken care of. The Boy Who Must Not Be Named had only shrugged when I’d pressed him about it.

And he wascute, God, he was cute. When he smiled that new-best-friend smile, his amber eyes scrunched up and I would know that I was seconds away from a deep rumbly laugh. But he turned out to be a crushing disappointment, which just goes to show that you’re more likely to find love with a sentient robot than a tall, dark, and handsome stranger.

Though I still have his dumb shirt.

I push aside his memory and reach for the next book on the cart. Roberts, Nora. I knowshe’snot shelving books anymore. If she ever did.

“Hey!”

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