Page 2 of What We May Be

Caught in a web of grief and wishful thinking, Sean’s training faltered once more, and he missed the shift of the parting crowd. Missed moving out of view of a pair of hazel eyes that stared across the distance at him. Sean held the piercing gaze, not bothering to hide the regret and guilt that threatened to gut him. Trevor had always been able to read him too, better than anyone.

* * *

Sean sat in his parked rental, staring out the windshield at the For Sale sign in the front yard of the place he used to call home. His chest ached, quite a feat after the beating his heart had taken on his drive through town after leaving the cemetery. Hanover, North Carolina, had changed over the past ten years. The red-brick station house and the cluster of matching government buildings remained intact, but they’d been expanded with multiple annexes. Crowds still lingered outside the downtown barbecue joint and the dive bar by the pier, but so many of the other local places he used to frequent were gone, their storefronts either empty or replaced by national retailers. None of those heartbreaks, however, compared to the parking deck on campus where his beloved baseball diamond used to stand. A shiny new ballpark had been built in the shiny new sports complex across campus. Maybe there weren’t any vestiges of #10 left for Officer Sylvan to find. Once the gray-and-white clapboard house was sold, would there be any evidence left of the best five years of Sean’s life?

Charlie and Cal had inherited the beach house when their mother, Alice, had died in a car accident their senior year of high school. Mitch, then deputy chief, had moved into town to be closer to the station and to Annie’s middle school. But Charlie hadn’t wanted to part with her childhood home. The summer after their sophomore year at HU, Charlie had moved back in, bringing Trevor and Sean with her and making the house their home. Three years later, Sean had abandoned that home—and their future.

He worried what it said now that Charlie was selling the house. Their history aside, she had cherished the house because it kept Alice close, even after her passing. Had Charlie learned the truth about the night her mother died? The truth Sean had stayed away to help keep buried? Knowing it, were the memories—the lies—too painful for Charlie to bear? Or was she simply moving on, leaving the last vestige of their lost future behind?

Sean wondered if Trevor had made a pitch to keep the house or if he was ready to move on too. Trevor had already tried to move on once and failed—a marriage to and recent divorce from a nurse in town. Maybe Trevor, like Charlie, needed to cut all the ties to their past in order to have any chance at a different future. Or maybe Trevor and Charlie were finally moving on together. That’s what Sean had hoped. It had devastated him to learn his hope had been for naught. Or God help them all, were Charlie and Trevor, lifelong best friends, also going their separate ways? Sean didn’t think that was possible, not for two people so in sync and not after what he’d seen at the cemetery that afternoon, but he hadn’t thought Charlie would ever sell the beach house either.

He swallowed down the upset the swirling worst-case scenarios caused and focused instead on the vintage Mustang parked next to an F-350 truck under the house between the stilts. The former was familiar, Charlie’s cherry-red ride all through college. In a way, so was the latter, a mega-sized version of the beat-up truck Trevor used to drive. After a day like today, Charlie and Trevor were as helpless as he was to resist the call of this place.

Shoving open the car door, Sean angled his long legs out of the too-small rental and planted his feet on the sand and gravel driveway. He kicked the door shut behind him and leaned back against it, rolling up his shirtsleeves, closing his eyes, and inhaling the heavy, summer sea breeze. Working at The Hague, living in an apartment near the North Sea, he’d frequently catch whiffs of salt-tinged air, but it was never as strong as it was here on the North Carolina coast. He’d found it oppressive at first, but over time he’d come to appreciate the enveloping nature of it, the warmth and comfort it offered. In a way, it represented everything good about his life in Hanover before he’d deserted it.

“Mr. Anderson.”

Sean smiled at the use of his rarely spoken first name. He shied away from it—the memories of his namesake painful—but Trevor teasing him with it in a faux-Matrix voice had always made him laugh, had eased the pain.

“Saw you at the cemetery,” Trevor continued, speaking normally. “Thought you were a figment of my imagination.”

Sean savored the richness of Trevor’s accent. Another clue that Officer Sylvan from the cemetery wasn’t local. He lacked the low country accent that was a unique blend of Southern drawl and Elizabethan-era English, totally unlike anything Sean had ever heard outside the coastal counties.

He opened his eyes and looked up at the house, drinking in the sight of the teammate and roommate he’d fallen for all those years ago. Trevor stood with a muscled shoulder propped against a porch pillar. In the hours since the funeral, he’d traded his dark suit for cargo shorts and a faded HU tee that hugged his broad chest and cut upper arms, and he’d untied his hair, the long strands tangling with each breeze that lifted it around his angular face, made more so by the sharp lines of his beard.

His hazel eyes were hard, though, as was his expression. “You shouldn’t be here.” He looked like one of the Smiths, ready to vault over the rail, miraculously land the jump, and beat the shit out of him. He’d only ever seen Trevor throw that look at opposing teams, never at him. Trevor had always been the romantic of their trio, the English lit nerd who spent his days studying sonnets, poems, and plays. Trevor had also been Charlie’s fiercest ally. The protector was pummeling the romantic today.

Sean couldn’t blame him one bit. “I just wanted to pay my respects.”

“You should’ve sent flowers. Anonymously.”

“Trev—”

“No!” The splintering crack of that one word was like a well-hit line drive off Trevor’s bat. Sean didn’t doubt that if he were in reach, Trevor’s fist would have connected with his face, same as his ball often had the bat. “She’s hurting enough.”

“Damage is done,” Charlie interjected. She appeared at Trevor’s side and leaned a hip against the wraparound deck’s railing. She was similarly dressed down in a pair of cut-off denim shorts and a black lacy tank top. Her hair was down too, the same shoulder length she’d always worn it, the same dark brown that was nearly as black as her eyes, as far as possible from Trevor’s every-color hazel. They were a perfect complement, the two of them impossibly more beautiful at thirty-three than they had been at twenty-three.

“I already saw him at the cemetery.” She laid a hand on Trevor’s forearm, then slid it down, curling her fingers over Trevor’s white-knuckled fist. The tension in his frame eased a measure under her touch, but his expression remained furious.

Sean regretted his decisions. So many of them. “I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

“You loved them too,” Charlie said, her accent the same as Trevor’s. “And you’re not the one responsible for today’s damage,” she added, letting him off the hook for today’s pain at least. “And fuck flowers. If you’re here to pay your respects, you better have brought a bottle of scotch. The stronger the better. I don’t want to feel anything.”

She turned on her heel and strolled out of sight, disappearing around the corner of the house. Trevor held Sean’s gaze as if he were trying to determine how much more pain Sean was likely to cause Charlie.

Sean raised his hands, palms out. “It’s your call, Trev.”

“Not really.” He pushed off the pillar and turned to follow Charlie. Then stopped and glared over his shoulder. “Though let me be clear. If you hurt her and are dumb enough to come back here again, I won’t be so deferential.” Meaning he’d beat the shit out of him, like he wanted to do now, just as Sean suspected. Trevor didn’t wait for his response. He continued in the direction Charlie had left, his flip-flops smacking the deck, the tread achingly familiar.

Sean was as powerless to resist the pull now as he had been when they’d first been roommates on campus at HU. As he still was in his dreams. He circled to the back of the car, popped the trunk, and grabbed the bottle of Ardbeg from where he’d wrapped it in his discarded tie and suit coat. Bottle under his arm, he climbed the exterior stairs that ran up the side of the house, his fingers coasting along the wide, flat railing, over the dates and initials carved into the weathered wood. Memorials of important occasions in the lives of its inhabitants.

Alice and Mitch’s wedding date.

Charlie and Cal’s birth date, then five years later, Annie’s.

High school graduation dates.

The date, their junior year at HU, when he, Cal, and Trevor had won the College World Series.

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