They made her promise to stop after one of the pricks went too far.
“I was thinking of going to the Lincoln to get in a drink before it closed, and there you were,” she told him. “Small world, huh?” Fifty-six hadn’t said anything since he got in the car. She had to begin the conversation somewhere. “I was in town tonight picking some stuff up from my parents’ storage locker and figured I’d see if anyone was out. How ’bout you?”
“Just getting on after work.” He sounded tired, so worn out. She wondered how much he’d had to drink. “You still over by the Indiana line?”
“Yep. Van Wert.”
“Huh.”
She waited for him to say more, but he only nodded. He seemed very far away, which rubbed her wrong. Her left heel jackhammered the car’s carpet. “I’m thinking I might want to get into trouble tonight.” He looked over at her, and she flashed a bright grin. “I mean, the kind of trouble we used to get into.”
A shy smile finally lit into his face, the one she recognized from high schooclass="underline" half a lip curling up—only gone was the confidence, the daring. She saw the stainless steel ball-chain necklace, but he now wore the dog tags tucked into his shirt.
“Yeah?”
She shrugged. “If you don’t mind.”
Approaching a red light, she braked and reached into the small compartment in the driver’s side door. She pulled out two airplane bottles. One Jack and one Jim. “Start with a little whiskey? You want?”
He slapped his thighs and lurched forward. “Not at all how I saw this night going.”
She unscrewed the cap on the Jack, his preferred brand, handed it to him. “Cheers.”
The glass necks made a small tink, and they both tipped the bottles back. The whiskey struggled down the thin neck. Air bubbles replaced the liquid, gurgling up. She wasn’t much of a whiskey drinker and couldn’t help but cough at the burn. He swallowed in three bobs of his throat and dropped the bottle to the floor.
“Where we going?” he asked. The light turned green and she eased forward.
“I don’t know. Figured we could just drive out to Stillwater. We used to hang out there sometimes, remember?”
He rubbed the red-blond stubble of his cheek and directed his gaze out the window. “Of course. Had us some fun for a while, didn’t we.”
She forced a smile to prove it had been fun.
“Who were you at the Lincoln with?” she asked to change the subject.
“Just a buddy from Cattawa. Him, me, and Strow were at Honey Buckets earlier, but Strow had to go on duty for the late shift. He’s a deputy now, you know.”
“He drinks before work?”
“Ha, just a couple. Then ran into Hansen at the Lincoln and a couple of dudes from around your year. Like they were having a reunion thing. Of course it led to trouble.” He snorted. “Always does, I guess.”
Now that she was sitting beside him, hearing the smooth boom of his voice, breathing his tangy musk of sweat and dirt, she sensed something different about him that she’d never been able to put her finger on while watching him from afar. He sounded exhausted and much older than his twenty-nine years. She knew things hadn’t worked out the way he’d hoped. He’d gotten into some kind of trouble and lost his scholarship to OSU before he even took a class. After signing on at Mount Union, he’d redshirted, had a lackluster two seasons where he had to keep sitting out due to injury, and then tore his meniscus his junior year. Each time she heard of yet another one of his setbacks, she thought of him after he bombed the SATs or after the one time she’d asked where his father was: that hideous, hurt scowl. His certainty that he’d get to the NFL (which became her certainty) was matched only by the panic that he’d never get out of New Canaan.
He was laughing about how Jonah Hansen had gotten in a fight. “Not much of a fight. Jonah got his nose busted and ran off. But Jonah’s got that coming to him and then some. Acts like he owns the town ’cause of his last name, but I’ll tell you— Wanna hear a secret?”
“Sure.”
“The Hansens—Burt and Jonah and all of them—they near about lost it all in the crash. The reason they’re still making money is they’re cooking crank and running pills in some of their properties.”
“Really?” The Jonah she’d known in high school was self-assured but bland. Preppy and swagger-loaded. The idea of his straitlaced father cooking meth sounded ludicrous, and yet it had been a rough few years. People hung on any way they could.
He gave her a knowing look. “From what I hear they got two or three houses—send it all over the state. Then Jonah acts like he’s some whiz kid with money. Like what? You think what you’re doing’s any better than the Mexicans selling black tar? Prick.”
“That’s nuts.”
“Yep.”
She took a left onto Stillwater Road. The gaps between the houses grew. The lights of New Canaan receded. The dark country spread before them, lush farmland and summer-green forest awash in night.
“You still see a lot of people from school?”
“Not really. I guess anyone who stayed around. Strow and Jonah. Jess and… and Kaylyn. This place—man, what a shithole it’s got to being. Jess’s mom works for a dentist, and she says people come in and get teeth pulled just to get the Oxy scrip. If they can’t get that they’ll buy heroin. Nigger bullshit you can’t get away from. I was hanging out at Fallen Farms for a while, but had to cut that out.”
“Fallen what?”
“Amos and Frankie and their cousin Kirk and all them? Their grandma owns the place, and she’s totally deaf and blind, so they have parties and we go shooting sometimes. Those guys are turning into friggin psychopaths. Getting loaded and stocking up for World War III out there. And this one time, we were shooting at bottles and Amos missed with a whole clip, didn’t land a single round, and so he tosses the gun down and Kirk just—” He made a quick motion with his hand, drawing a two-fingered pistol and using his other hand to mime chambering a round. “He just puts his Glock right to Amos’s forehead, screaming at him about throwing a gun.”
“Oh my god.”
“I ain’t been back since that little incident. Don’t even like seeing those guys at the bars anymore.”
He looked at his thumbnails, one of which had an enormous blood blister, like the surface of a deep purple marble. Tina interrupted him. “Can I ask…” All that time on her drive to think about what she’d say and here she was, mouth as dry as the drought that summer. He looked at her expectantly, tenderly. She thought of sitting in the stands wearing the T-shirt with his name and number. Decorated with glitter glue and stars you could iron on. “Do you ever think of me?”
He snorted a laugh, and the sound made her ache.
“We had fun. It was high school, though. You were what? Fifteen when we started? That’s not, like, true love, Tina. That’s high school.”
“I was fourteen,” she whispered.
“How come…” Whatever tenderness she thought she’d seen was gone. His eyelids had fallen. They hovered halfway open, fluttering. “I’m sorry, but high school was high school, Tina. Nothing more.”
“It was more than that to me.”
“Jesus.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry if you thought that.”
A lump formed in her throat. “For a year I did whatever you wanted. Everything you asked.”
“What you want me to say?” His eyes, red and engorged, shimmered. “Lotta shit didn’t go as planned. Or didn’t you notice?” His speech slurred. Din you.