Page 7 of A Night to Remember

“Gabe,” he’ll say, “I don’t understand what went wrong. You were on law review your first two years. Your grades were perfect. And thenthis.”

Then he’ll sigh and look out the window, like he’s just heard about the death of a beloved family member.

It might even feel that way to him. One minute I’m engaged to the pretty daughter of a prominent local family and at the top of my class at Northwestern, the next I’m doing gig work and refusing all calls and offers of help from home. I gave into the courthouse job out of sheer exhaustion. I can’t possibly explain what the past ten months have been like for me, or that I might not actually want the things hewantsme to want.

As I drive around the square, a scruffy dog suddenly runs out in front of the car. I brake hard.

No collar, no leash, and no owner anywhere in sight.

I shake my head. Typical Kentwood. People let their pets run wild here. I’ll never understand it. The last thing I want to do is kill some poor kid’s dog.

I briefly consider getting out of the car and trying to rescue the mutt. Maybe it can be the first of my homestead companions? But it runs off into the alley behind the former diner, now apparently the Kentwood Café, so I decide to let it go. There’s probably no way I’d be able to catch it anyway.

I put my foot back on the gas, only to stomp on the brake again a split-second later to avoid hitting a young woman. I wince as the tires squeal. She jumps back and I can’t help but notice that she’s strikingly pretty.

She’s also furious. Great. Kentwood’s most beautiful woman already hates me, and rightfully so.

We make brief eye contact. She mouths “What the fuck” and fixes me with steely gray eyes. Truly gray. River-stone gray.

I know this girl.

She looks away, shaking her head in disgust, her light brown ponytail switching back and forth as she strides into the café.

My hands slowly relax their death grip on the steering wheel as I realize who I just almost literally ran into.

Kayla. Kayla Johnson.A.k.a.The Girl, whose mere memory destroyed my chances of marriage, whose laughter and easy companionship I’ve missed every day for the past eight years, the star of every sexual fantasy I’ve had since I was seventeen.When I go to apologize, will every imagined tryst be written all over my face? Every touch, every caress, every time I thought about wrapping that ponytail around my fist and covering her mouth with mine?

Because of course I have to apologize. It’s the right thing to do. I pull into a parking space in front of the café and wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans. I feel like I’ve seen a ghost. And the thought of actuallyspeakingto said ghost makes me feel like I’m in one of those nightmares where you haven’t studied for the test and have also forgotten your pants. For the thousandth time, I wish I understood what happened with her. It’s true that I always felt like she was out of my league. She had seemed destined for greatness, the kind of girl who could run a company, or a country, with wisdom and integrity, whereas I was simply trying to stay in my lane and avoid disappointing my father.

For whatever reason, though, she seemed to like me well enough, at least for a while. In school, I was always scheming to spend more time with her—I’d ask her for help with my calculus homework, hang around the diner where she worked, coax her to sit down in a booth with me for a minute or two. She’d play with the ends of her ponytail and joke about the sleazy customers who hit on her, and I’d laugh while secretly wondering if there was a non-sleazy way for me to hit on her too.

Often I’d find her hanging around campus after school; she worked two jobs and her shifts didn’t start until four, whichdidn’t leave her enough time to go home. When it was warm enough, she liked to read under a big elm near the football field.

“So I take it you don’t share Mr. Bergman’s taste in literature?” I’d called to her one October afternoon. She was leaning against the trunk of the tree, her long legs stretched out in front of her. She would have been the perfect picture of serenity if she hadn’t been readingThe Roadby Cormac McCarthy with a mixture of horror and delight on her face. When she heard my voice, she tore her eyes away from the apocalypse unfolding on the page and smiled.

“I don’t mind the bodice ripping, it’s the happy endings I don’t like,” she replied.

“Then you’re going to be disappointed by the ending of that book.” She responded to this with such a look of despair that I laughed out loud.

“Noooo! How canThe Roadhave a happy ending?! This is a world where literally the only thing people have to eat are other people.”

“I wouldn’t call the endinghappy, just maybe not as bleak as you can possibly imagine.” She frowned at the book, pouting her full lips slightly. She looked so cute that I had to sit down next to her. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to consider my presence an intrusion. “What’s wrong with happy endings, anyway?” I’d asked.

“I just usually find them implausible,” she replied, turning towards me. She folded her legs so that her knees were almost touching mine.

“You find happiness implausible?”

She shrugged and looked away. “Kind of. Especially when someone’s happiness seems to depend on other people. I like characters who are self-sufficient. I don’t think you can ever really count on someone else.”

“Because they might eat you,” I quipped, gesturing toward the book.

“Exactly!” We both laughed, but her comments bothered me. I sensed that she was deeply, maybe even tragically wrong, but I didn’t want to argue with her. We chatted amiably about that book and others until she had to go to work. She seemed to take it for granted that I read as much as she did. For me, though, it was absolutely thrilling to talk to someone my age about topics other than past and future parties. She was as unpretentious as she was smart. I could have talked to her forever.

My so-called friends looked down on her, of course, because her family struggled like so many families here. I never figured out a way to see her socially, and she generally avoided me when my friends were around. Steven O’Connor’s graduation party was one of the only times she’d let me get close to her in public. And when she danced with me, I’d hoped, fleetingly, that she secretly liked me as much as I liked her. But I must have come on too strong. Maybe I acted like an arrogant asshole and repulsed her. Maybe I’m still that arrogant asshole, about to repulse her again.

I take a deep, shaky breath and remind myself that I almost hit her with my car. I need to apologize, just like I would to anybody else. It doesn’t matter if she hates me. She may not even remember me. I step out of the Navigator and force myself to go face Kayla Johnson for the first time in eight years.

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