Bel Loc Diner (Credit: Rick Mahoney)
Allison Graves
Now Playing: “alife” by Slowdive
I hadn’t quite considered what I would say when I saw Casey again. I wasn’t even certain that I’d make my way over to him at the diner, but I realized I couldn’t dodge it any longer. So I did the most dramatic thing possible, because if you’re making an entrance, you might as well make it memorable.
The Normandie’s interior has been burned into my mind for well over a decade after all the late nights in high school spent doing homework and goofing off at one of its booths. Sitting across from a dumbfounded Casey Adams brings me right back to the old days. It’s like nothing has changed.
“Allison,” he whispers in disbelief. The clinking of dishes being collected, the dull din of the denizens of the dark, and the seventies rock hits on the jukebox melt away, and I hear every breath he takes. I flash a warm smile to put him at ease, and I could swear he blushes a slight bit.
I’ve been both dreading and anticipating this moment since I decided to come back to town. Casey and I didn’t exactly leave things off on the best of terms. He was too hurt, and I was too proud to message or call, so eventually we became people who used to be friends.
When I heard he was in a band and they were playing tonight, I knew I had to catch the show. He’s even better than he was when we were in high school. He has his mother’s intensity when he’s playing, as if every note needs to be perfect. I think music is the only thing he cares about to this extent.
“You absolutely killed it tonight.” The intense stare with which I fix him hopefully makes my intentions clear: I am not complimenting the band, though they all deserve it, but I am complimenting him.
“Allison, what the fuck are you doing here?” He stammers, waving his hands in disbelief like his grandmother used to do. I can’t help but feel a warmth in my chest at the sight, and I know my face betrays it. I’m grateful to return home after all these years to find some things are the same as they always were. Makes me feel as though I haven’t lost everything.
“I moved back.”
He flops back in his seat, stunned. His brow furrows in confusion and he opens his mouth three or four times to say something but cannot muster the words. It’s actually kind of endearing and adorable. His face has an intensity he lacked when we were younger, but the brief flashes in the eyes or the excitement in a glimpse of a smile make him seem as though he’s newly eighteen and ready to take on the world again. The same boy I left. How characteristically sweet of him to still be here when I got back.
“When?” The warmth is gone from him, and those flashes have been choked from his eyes. I’m met with a cold stare, and steel in his voice. The eyes are hostile, the words are pointed, and the tone, accusatory. He leans forward. It’s intimidating, and I shrink back myself slightly without realizing it. Am I scared of him?
“Three days ago.” I feel small under the withering glare from my best friend. Suddenly, Grantchester feels like a haunted house I entered knowing the risks and still being shocked to feel the ghosts crawling up my back.
He repeats my words in a whisper, making a thud against the bench as he plops back once more. His attention turns to the road outside the window, tracking cars as they pass. Chapped lips mouth fragments of sentences I cannot begin to decipher, and his left eye twitches sightly. One deep breath later and he has me fixed in his gaze once more. The eyes are softer, a commanding inquisition rather than an outright accusation.
“You didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t know how. I’ve been toying with what to say for months.”
He relaxes a little more. He exhales a deep breath and the rigidity which has taken hold since I sat down finally relaxes itself. I can’t read his thoughts as easily as I used to. I should be able to, I know him better than anyone. Maybe even better than himself.
“I’m going to need some time to process things, so in the meantime, I’ll say, it’s really good to see you again.” Despite his best efforts, a smile worms its way onto his face.
We spend the better part of an hour catching up. Effortlessly talking like we used to in the old days. I tell him about life in Seattle. About the concerts I saw, the whale watching, the weather, hiking around Mount Rainier National Park, the best fish and chips I’ve ever eaten at a restaurant right next to Pike’s Place Market, the painted beauty of the sunset over the Puget Sound, and the absolute crushing loneliness I felt the entire time I was away from home.
In return, he tells me of his college years spent barely passing classes and putting in hours working on the band, which broke up as soon as everyone graduated. I got to hear about life working at the radio station, how Martin took up his lifelong dream of fixing cars. The disastrous summer festival two years ago which led to a townwide ban on parade floats. The continued work on the bakery.
It’s the bags under his eyes and the slight slur to his words which tell me he’s exhausted. And he should be. He worked all day today and then played a show, then got him with the emotional equivalent of a tsunami.
“You should get home and get some sleep,” I bid him. “But, I’d love to see you tomorrow and hang out in earnest.”
“Yes, absolutely. Man, Martin is going to get a kick out of hearing you’re back.” He gets up to go, and then turns to look at me. The fatigue has softened his eyes. I meet his with my own, and I swear my heart beats a hair faster and his face gets a hair redder. “I missed you.”
He gestures me to get up as well for a hug hello and goodbye. I oblige. Getting a Casey hug makes everything feel like it’s gone back to the way it should. I almost don’t want to let him go, but I relent.
“Get some rest, okay rockstar?”
“Yeah, you too. Good night, Allison.”
The way he says my name almost makes me melt.
“Good night, Casey.” I rather like the sound of his name on my lips too.
The last of my strawberry milkshake fills my heart with another dose of warm gold. Everything I’ve missed about home feels so perfect now that I’m back.
My phone buzzes with a message from Martin.
‘We need to talk. Meet me at the Wolf’s Den. Now.’
The Martin that I knew would never be so demanding. But I’ll humor him. I’m still on West Coast time, so this does not feel like a late night for me yet. I make my way out of the diner and into another Grantchester night, wishing I would have brought something a bit heavier for the cold in the absence of having my car. Our houses were so close to almost everything in town, and I spent so much time on the road in the last week. I missed living somewhere I could walk most everywhere I wanted to go.
In some ways Grantchester hasn’t changed. Sure, on Market Street, there have been a few storefronts with different signs above the doorways, and maybe a few new developments towards the outskirts of town, but the core of this little slice of coastline has remained virtually unchanged since I left.
Maybe I was foolish to think that the people had remained unchanged too. Five years is a long time.
The Wolf’s Den is less familiar territory than the diner. Being too young to hang out in bars when I left, this place was only an occasional lunch spot for me and my parents. I recall the food being pretty good, but the inside felt a tad seedy. Since my time in Seattle, seedy establishments are no longer terra incognita to me, but the Wolf’s Den has a level of worn, lived, grimy charm which only an east coast working town could have. It’s actually a bit off putting. I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, as if to remind me that I do not belong here. Maybe I still have Seattle clinging to my soul.
“Everlong” by the Foo Fighters starts as soon as I walk in the place and am hit with the low din of the late night crowd and the smell of several different types of spilled beer. It’s fine, I was planning on throwing these clothes into the laundry anyways. Definitely will need a hot shower once I get home.
Martin’s messy brown hair is impossible to miss from behind. I stride through the remaining drunks and slide into the booth opposite him. His eyes, which normally radiated a light, happy indifference are dark and stormy. The only thing darker is the liquor in his glass.
“Hey man, it’s been a while!” I open with a smile and charm. “I guess you got Casey’s message at the-”
“I knew already. Casey didn’t tell me shit,” Martin cuts me off with a look that could punch a hole through titanium steel. His icy demeanor causes me to drop my own pleasant air. Which is a bit gratifying on account of how goddamned tired I am. “I saw you at the diner. It’s why I needed to meet with you.”
“Couldn’t have stayed and hung with me and Casey both? Reunite the power trio?”
“I don’t want him to know I know yet.” Martin’s normally so carefree. This is like hitting a brick wall. I’m actually shocked. Who is he?
“Why the dramatics?”
“Because Casey’s in the middle of some shit. Honestly, I didn’t believe it was you when I saw you just off campus before the show, next to the convenience store.”
“Those white chocolate Reese’s cups?” I ask without a second thought. Martin nods in affirmation, and the tight scowl loosens a hair. Reassuring that I still know him so well even after all this time. “I didn’t want to be a big deal, but I saw you guys were playing and I had to come out. I missed my boys.”
“Allison, I need you to understand that you leaving followed by total radio silence almost killed him. Then his mother disappeared.”
What the fuck? Melanie is missing? I press Martin for more details almost immediately and he tells me what he knows. A few months after I moved out west, Casey’s mom basically disappeared. Just gone one Sunday morning. His parents had just met Reilly’s boyfriend the night before. It’s been five years and they don’t know anything about where she went or what happened to her, only that she’s alive. A periodic letter to her brother in Philly, that’s pretty much it. No clues, no plans, no nothing.
I sink down in the booth. Casey has been barely keeping it together and I wasn’t there for him. No matter what I think, things have changed. How dumb and selfish am I for thinking we could pick back up where we left off?
“There’s one more thing you should know,” Martin cuts through my musings. “Casey is seeing someone. Her name is Jordan, she’s a senior at Bishop, plays volleyball, they’ve been dating since May. I know you two were in a longtime ‘maybe’ thing for years before you left.” Martin’s eyes demand mine lift to meet them, and he still tries to burn a hole right through my skull. “Do not fuck this up for him.”
I swear, Martin leaves out a threat for grievous bodily harm on me, but I know it’s hanging off the end of his sentence, like an invisible knife to my throat. Far cry from that kid with the crooked smile who loved fast cars and faster jets when we were kids.
“Since when did you get so protective and dark?”
“Since I was here while he cried himself to sleep every night for three months. He acts like he’s doing okay and has stabilized. He is deeply unhappy and has been living in stasis for the last few years. So let me be absolutely clear. You need to be extremely careful with how you deal with him. Don’t mess with his head. This is going to be an adjustment period for all of us, so take it slow.”
Martin’s words course their way through my brain. He’s right. I know he’s right. Casey is fragile. I am too. There are bound to be some reentry problems. Hell, the shock alone is probably going to cause a lot of sleepless nights and a monumental amount of self-consciousness for the foreseeable future. I should be worried about all the ways this can go wrong, and if I can keep myself from making a gigantic fool of myself. But my stupid brain is just firing on all cylinders that I’m home and I have Casey and Martin back in my life.
“Okay.” I try to sell the seriousness I know he wants to see out of me. The way he repeats the word and visibly relaxes tells me that I succeeded. I study his face for a moment and notice that the spark of his normal self comes back. Like all of us, he’s tired though. He finishes the rest of his drink, and his arm practically falls away from lifting the glass to his mouth. I thought he might have cracked it with the force it hit the table, but we got off lucky. No frantic trips to the emergency room tonight, it would seem.
“So, how have you been?”
“Not tonight.” Martin lays down some cash from his shirt pocket and stands up. “I don’t want Casey to know we talked. I don’t want him to know I know you’re back. Tonight isn’t the night for the catching up, and I don’t feel like having to react to everything then as if I haven’t heard it before.”
Damn. I’ll try not to take that so personally. “Okay. Good night, Martin. It’s good to see you again.” My words come out stilted and awkward. Ugh, why am I so bad at this? Oh yeah, because he just dropped bombshell after bombshell on me coupled with some implicit threats while I’m practically running through a sunflower field. That’ll do it.
“Good night, Allison.” He turns to leave, stops mid-step, and turns over his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re back.” Then he leaves.
I sit at the booth for a moment, tapping my fingers on the edge of the table. I don’t need to be here. I need to just listen to the ocean for a few minutes. The crisp night air is euphoric after the smell of stale beer and grime inside the Wolf’s Den. Maybe someday I’ll grow to have the same affection the boys have for it, but that night is not tonight. Familiar brick sidewalks lead me back home, 14 Siren Road, Grantchester, Massachusetts. But I can’t go inside quite yet.
Instead, I find my way around back, out to the sand. I don’t bother kicking my sneakers off tonight, too distracted. I simply step carefully to avoid tracking too much sand inside them. I don’t anticipate being out here for too long, but I’ve stood and stared at the ocean for a long time too frequently.
It’s truly a thing of beauty.
Growing up next to the ocean, I always wondered about it. In my mind, it was filled with the fantastical creatures we heard about in fairytales and fantasy movies. Mermaids from Atlantis hung just off the coast, basking on the rocks far out, watching us. Wondering about the mysteries of our world as we wondered about the mysteries of theirs.
I think that’s at least part of the reason why people are so enamored with the ocean. Present company included. It’s a blank canvas, upon which we can paint our deepest desires. It’s been ages since I picked up a brush. I always found words easier, but I do miss painting occasionally. Maybe that’s another thing to return to, now that I’m back home and diving back into my past with reckless abandon.
Just like I’m a teenager again. Nothing in the world can touch me.
The ocean is my favorite therapist. People have this tendency to talk more to fill the silence. Silence makes us nervous. The ocean never speaks back, never asks the questions, it forces us to do all the talking when we want to speak to it. So in addition to being a blank canvas, it’s also a mirror which forces introspection.
Perhaps the third big reason I can come up with tonight is its duality. Beautiful and terrifying, with the secrets to life on earth and the power to kill us a thousand times over. In many ways, it represents humans that way. It resonates. And occasionally, within those complexities, it holds some answers.
Tonight, I’m asking why coming home is so hard and yet so easy. Why Casey pulls me in with a magnetism I can’t even begin to understand. Why I am begging to step back into a past despite how disgusted I would be with my old self. How I’m supposed to navigate all of this.
Maybe it’s ego that I think I’m important enough to have changed while everyone else should have remained the same. I think I need to be careful and cautious and heed Martin’s advice tonight, because there is so much that I’ve missed, and even more I don’t know. But Casey is the piece I cannot figure out. I tell myself that it’s because he was my best friend since we were old enough to know what that means, and my life and heart have both had massive holes in them since I left. I’m too afraid to admit it’s anything else.
I love the sea because it forces me to confront the shards of my mind which I keep tightly wrapped in cloth and buried in the recesses of boxes I’d rather not open from utter shame. I love it because it wraps me in a cloud of salt air which I can taste on my tongue and fills my nose with the memories of so many fond nights spent on the back porch or at a bonfire by the waterline or walking parallel to the waves just because I can. It’s home in a contradiction of its vastness and mystery and danger. I love the sea because it’s the perfect place for me to question everything I need to question for the sake of my sanity.
Sadly, the lapping of the waves on the shore are devoid of answers for me tonight.
Ark of the Lost Angels 
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