(Credit: Author)
Allison Graves
Now Playing: “Stay” by Airiel
Tomorrow is the big day. Our first real road trip as friends. Throughout our lengthy history, the furthest Casey and I ever traveled together was out to Northampton for a concert at Smith College the summer between junior and senior years. We seldom ventured too far from home in the scant years we could drive before I left. Grantchester felt like it had everything we needed, and while restlessness may have draped itself around him, I have never felt like home lacked anything the rest of the world could give me.
In many ways, our friendship was contained entirely in this wonderful little town by the ocean. Grantchester was our whole world for so long. I carried it with me when I left. Seattle never felt like home, but once I came back here, the world felt right again. Grantchester was a prison I carried with me in many ways. The idea that I may never be able to truly leave my hometown because nowhere else feels quite like it is not exactly a new story. Maybe in some dark corner of my mind, I’m disturbed by the idea of never escaping here again, but my heart is still joyful at my return.
Many of our contemporaries never got the chance to leave. I know Casey would have wanted to leave at some point if he did not feel as though he needed to stay here because his mother was gone. Here he is, at our diner booth, with a paper roadmap in front of him, a strawberry milkshake, and some fries he’s still nibbling on. There is a melancholy cloud which hangs over my head to think some things haven’t changed for the better in all this time.
Perhaps we’re still trapped in old cycles.
“Okay, I think I found a solid route that minimizes tolls but doesn’t kill us on time.” There’s an adorable intensity to his stare at the map, tracing the route in red pen. I haven’t seen anyone do this since my parents took my sister and I up to Bar Harbor when we were really young.
“I have an E-ZPass in my car,” I assure him. The little transponder is a relatively recent addition which I picked up over the weekend once we decided I would be driving. I want this to be as smooth as possible for him.
Truth be told, I loved his mother like my own. I know our parents were never the closest of friends, but they were warm with each other since Casey and I have always been so close. His mother was a rockstar, literally, and she felt like it. In addition to being Melanie Winters, badass musician, she was also Melanie Winters, supermom extraordinaire. I could not have imagined how much it has been killing me since I came home to find out Melanie has been in the wind for the whole time I was gone.
Part of me wants this for Casey because I hate seeing him hurt. Part of me wants it because I want him to find peaceful resolutions to focus on rebuilding what we had. It’s stupid and selfish and it causes a well of anger to bubble up in my core, threatening to drown me from within. I cannot help it.
We hash out a few of the details over the last of our milkshakes before deciding to take advantage of a warm late October day and heading for Merrick Park. It’s a short drive, and we pass it in silence with the windows down. The wind carries the smell of trees as they lose their leaves for the fall. I have never been able to decide on my favorite time of year, but Casey firmly loves the colder months. I remember when he used to feel more vibrant come autumn, with school football games and cool days with his guitar on the porch listening to the ocean. Fall colors and shorter days always suited him.
Merrick Park sits near the center of town, acres of beautiful greenery, trees, and a lovely little lake in which ducks, geese, and swans often make appearances. The park was named for Peter Merrick, the town’s founder, and there’s a statue of him by the main entrance, underneath the decorative archway we pass before taking our favorite trail. My mother is an amateur photographer, and she loved this park when we were younger. My father, ever the dork, used to give lectures on the town’s history.
Peter Merrick was born in Grantchester, Cambridgeshire in England, and came to the new world to found a new town which bore the name of his birthplace in 1677. It was built as a coastal retreat and a hub for fishermen before starting on the path towards the arts haven it became once Bishop College was founded in 1792 as the Massachusetts Coastal Conservatory. It was believed that music students would be more focused on their studies without the distractions of Boston proper, only for the town to become a haven for the arts all its own. The fishermen appreciated having access to quality entertainment, and the town grew rapidly in the 19th century. Its historic charm remained ever since.
Casey has been quiet since we stepped into the crisp air of late October and enjoy the warm kaleidoscope of trees and the smell of the pond. The dark circles under his eyes have only gotten worse in the few days since we decided we’d make this trip. I didn’t realize how intensely he was burning his candle at both ends: between the radio station, the band, and this search for his mother, I doubt the boy has gotten much sleep in the last several weeks.
Since I came back home. I cannot help but feel partially responsible for some of his anguish. His angry remarks wouldn’t have stung so bad if I hadn’t known he was right. But I still think he doesn’t know how hard this all has been on me for the last five years either.
Casey remarks upon our plan as being solid once we confirm all of our details. I follow up with an authoritative declaration that I will handle all of the snacks, with a fun grin on my face. His own sours.
“Is this your usual overcompensation?” The barbed comment is accompanied by a yawn. I know he’s tired and still processing. I should just let it go. But I’m being petty today.
I curtly explain that his current state of exhaustion and distraction mean that I wanted to do something nice to make our upcoming road trip easier. My face dips further and further into a scowl to match his own, and my tone reads more and more of disgust. I add, with a bit of spit and spite, that I wouldn’t have been so nice to volunteer if I knew he’d take it out on me like this. I turn over the coin in my head. On one side is pity and sympathy and on the other is the spite and rage at being his punching bag for all the annoyance at his life. I do not even bother mentally flipping it. I simply opt to indulge the rage.
“Do you realize how much shit you’ve been giving me after I voluntarily turned my own life upside down?”
Casey’s teeth are grinding behind closed, chapped lips. His left eye does a slight twitch, and every breath is fathoms deep. “You came back with barely a word. Surprise, drop into my life, moaning about how difficult it was for you without any thought about what I’ve had to build in the meantime.” I hear the same argument down to the words he used on me after our disastrous picnic by the lighthouse.
“Why are we running in circles with this argument? Why can’t we just get the fuck over it?”
“Because I needed you!”
His eyes lock with mine. I never knew cerulean could look angry and pained and desperate and sorrowful the way his eyes look, but the rush of emotions to his eyes pour onto his face.
My voice softens. “Casey, I-”
“I needed you. I’ve always needed you. You were my best friend in the world and I was lost without you.” His voice cracks, then shatters. His lips pucker and his eyes shut, as though he had just eaten that sour blackberry at Sentinel’s Point again. I know he is literally biting his tongue in an attempt to circumvent – or justify – tears I know are welling up on his face.
He takes a shaky breath and clenches his left fist. Left fist always meant he was struggling with grief and sadness. When he clenches his right fist is when he’s mad. I’ve been around for enough Casey cry sessions when we were younger to know. Like in high school when he asked Gabby Nichols to homecoming and she mocked him in front of her friends. I was the only person he ever cried in front of.
Casey calmly lays out his annoyances and frustrations with me. Leaving without saying a word and then going radio silent for five years was painful for him. I willingly admit that I was awful for doing so, and I offer no excuses. I have none, and if I conjured any to placate him, he would see right through them. There’s a peculiar comfort to the way I know he’s lying, and he knows I’m lying.
I know that I am at fault. I hate admitting it because it means for all my bluster about doing the right thing and trying to protect Casey from the tragedy of my own circumstances, I just made myself out to be a filthy goddamned coward.
“Casey, I am sorry for the way that I handled, well, everything. I was trying to be stupid and selfish and not cause more trouble for myself, and I never thought about you.” My first lie of the day. I thought about him all the time. I wanted to reach out and was too chickenshit to do so.
“It’s okay. I could have tried to text you too. Or call. Or write. Well, not write. We know my handwriting is so indecipherable it might as well be text from an alien civilization.” A small spark in a slight smile on his face is contagious, and I let slip a slight giggle. This time when our eyes meet, there’s warmth in them. I breathe a hair easier. There’s nothing we ever have said to each other that has ever permanently strained this friendship.
I grab him into a tight hug, which he returns just as tightly. “I’m sorry for coming back and dropping a massive bomb on you before I ever even asked how you were doing or figured out anything about your life in the time I was gone. It was shitty.”
“It was,” he whispers in my ear, sending electricity throughout my skeleton. “But I was shitty too. Therefore, I am sorry for being an utter jackass. You and mom leaving led me to date Paige Carson that fall. Since we broke up junior year, I haven’t trusted my own instincts on anything.”
We break the hug, and I scoff at him. I question him on Paige Carson. Paige was a high school classmate of ours, a cheerleader and ace of the quiz bowl team. From my memories of the end of high school and social media once I left, I gathered that Paige was a bit directionless after graduation. She stayed here at home while so many of our classmates followed my path and left town for college or other opportunities. Paige was pleasant enough back in the day, but she carried herself with a haughtiness which I never liked. She acted as though she was more important than most people gave her credit for. There was a chip on her shoulder, and she took it out on almost everyone outside of her social circles.
Casey, being one of the resident slacker musicians of our high school, did not endear himself unto her. I was cool by being smart enough, until she realized I was close to Casey, and then I became ‘wasted potential’ or some shit. I question Casey on their relationship. He blushes and looks away to the pond where a small group of ducks paddle their way through the water as some local children look and giggle.
Casey states that the familiarity of being hometown kids in a sea of new faces drew them together. Things became comfortable, and they stayed together through most of college. “In some ways, Paige was my way of stopping the death spiral I was in when you and mom vanished.”
I laugh and press him on whether that’s all it was. Casey finally cops to the small crush he had on her from her cheerleading days, and I laugh harder. He grits his teeth and socks me in the arm lightly in annoyance. My smile falls as away as quickly as it appeared. “I wouldn’t waste too much time regretting Paige or letting her haunt you. She never truly loved you.”
“I know. I know she never cared about me in high school, and I was just a familiar face in college so she wasn’t alone. That’s why it still bothers me.”
I remain unsure of a greater implication with his statement, however, my mind finds one regardless. If Paige never cared beyond the surface level, but she stayed and loved him for a time anyways, does that mean he’s wrong about the people who truly did love him? Does that mean he was wrong about me?
“Paige Carson is not worth a single second of lost sleep, Casey Adams.” I playfully ruffle his hair in an attempt to be friendly, but the gentle way he looks at me afterwards feels strangely intimate.
“I know, but it bothers me that if I was wrong about Paige, then maybe I’m wrong about Jordan.”
This raises an eyebrow. We have hung out a bunch since I got back, even if we never got to the bottom of our repeated arguments until today. Somehow, Jordan seldom comes up. The rational part of me draws the conclusion that after my little outburst at Sentinel’s Point, Casey does not want to give me any information on his girlfriend because he’s defensive. The delusional part of my brain thinks it’s because he isn’t entirely in love with her.
I’m already in it, so I might as well keep going. I press him about Jordan. He starts getting defensive before taking a deep breath and calming down. He admits that Paige messed him up, and Jordan was very sweet and forward and pulled him out of the comfortable misery he stayed in at the tail end of college. I gently reassure him that he is doing nothing wrong. He says I’m right, but the fact that he refuses to meet my eyes tells me he believes otherwise.
I take a deep breath before my next admission. “I think the reason my little crush on you has stayed around for so long isn’t because of you, necessarily. You’re home. I didn’t want to leave, and coming back sparked so many weird feelings. I wanted things to have not changed between us because I didn’t want to come back and have you be a stranger.”
Now it’s his turn to hug me. “I told you years ago that there’s nothing you could do that would make me leave you.”
“I know, I was being stupid. I waited for you all these years. I didn’t imagine a chapter of my life that wasn’t Grantchester, and everything I did while I was away felt like I was just wasting time on a distraction.” It’s my next lie of the day. I didn’t exactly wait, but my time in Seattle was filled with lots of messes I’d rather not relive right now. They never went anywhere because nobody compared to Casey. And to home.
He breaks the hug and pierces my eyes again with his own. I never made such intense eye contact in my life until I came home a few weeks ago, and now I feel like it’s all I do. “Allison, if you had the opportunity right now, would you want to be with me?”
Of course I would, you idiot. It’s not just an idle crush. We know each other so well. I laugh harder, smile wider, and feel lighter whenever I’m around him. Listening to him play music inspires me. I don’t question whether or not it’s smart to do something which will make him happy, I just do it. I am supporting his search for his mother wholeheartedly because to do otherwise literally does not matter. I get his jokes. I think he’s cute. There is nothing in the world that makes me doubt this. And I pray to whatever gods there ever were or may be that he feels the same about me, deep down.
“No.” My answer is sharp, definitive, and is accompanied by a straight face while I stare directly into his eyes. There’s a twinge of maybe disappointment or regret or perhaps it’s self-criticism over the blunt way I handled it. I would have laid myself bare had I spoken past that single syllable.
And it’s my biggest lie of the day. Not because I want to lie to my best friend. Not because I haven’t thought it over and there are a million reasons why we’d be a good match. But because I refuse to repeat my pattern of destructive behavior for short term gratification. Every instinct in me wants to kiss him right now. But he and Martin and Jess and Kat are all right: I am still a mess.
A mess who loves him.
Who loves him too much to fuck up what we have right now, and what may possibly be in the future. A mess who wouldn’t dare try to actively steal him away from his girlfriend because that is not the person I want to be now. And I hate myself for hating Jordan, which isn’t even her fault. She’s just a convenient out because I can’t be mad at him. I don’t want to be mad at him, and I know I’m still mad at myself. It’s not fair to either of us. I promised Casey and myself I wouldn’t lie any more, and I have to break that promise. In lying to him, I am able to finally accept the truth which I have so long denied.
Now is not the time for what I want, however. Now is the time we must keep focused on his search for his mother. The easy way we begin chatting again once he accepts my answer fills me with confidence. Tomorrow will come, and I will reckon with this white lie down the line. While it is not my proudest hour, sometimes I think loving someone means knowing when to lie to them. I’ve come to the point where I would rather sacrifice my own happiness than someone else’s.
All my justifications still won’t make it easier to sleep at night.
Ark of the Lost Angels 
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