Mind shut off, and laying on his back, the hard and painful throb of his heart lulled him to a distant place near sleep. He dozed, set himself adrift paddling with the hope that this was all an illusion.
When he opened his eyes again, the pain had lessened. The day was brighter beyond the tent’s nylon, and there was the sound of voices outside now. He snorted, sat upright, grabbed at his neck again as fresh pain poked behind his eyes. First thing he did was look to where Kimmy should lay. The spot was still empty and it pinged in his head immediately that truth worked against his hope his dream was really just that: a dream.
Now he fell forward onto both elbows, examined with one squinted eye where he’d imagined Devlin had been. Kimmy’s sleeping bag was disturbed, but there was no obvious sign that jolted a recall to prove Devlin had ever been there. What was he looking for anyway?
“Ah, fuck,” he groaned, rubbed his face with one clawed hand. His breaths came hot and labored, his head throbbed. People were talking near the tent, but far enough he couldn’t make out what they said. Someone laughed; further away, a guy shouted out for someone’s attention. Face buried in his hands, he lingered, breathing through his fingers, gathering the strength to rise.
It had all been a dream. It just had to be. One: he wouldn’t ask Devlin to sleep with his wife. What the fuck was that? Why would his brain conjure that story? Solely to torture himself, he figured. it was the stuff of nightmares. Devlin and Kimmy together was a wildly frightening thought. Two: even if he’d asked Devlin to sleep with Kimmy (seriously, get the fuck out of here with that shit), what dream-Devlin had said would require Kimmy’s acquiescence. Not in a million years, sorry, Devlin. Unless he forced himself on Kimmy, pinned her down and (good Lord) raped her, the things dream-Devlin told him weren’t true. If dream-Devlin turned out to be real, then real Devlin only sought to fuck with old Josh like this was still high school. And that made sense; doing something like tricking a guy into believing he’d asked Devlin to fuck his wife was right in Devlin’s character.
Now he let out a satisfying groan, scratching nails over the back of his head, getting his neck tingling. It was ridiculous, and now as he came more awake, the details of the dream began to grow foggy. Fucking weird though, dreaming of Devlin coming in and saying all that shit, and even weirder, dreaming of Devlin showing him his massive erection. What the hell was that all about? You could chalk it up to the high school reunion, he figured. Being in the old school halls and around those familiar faces conjuring up some of the more frightening ghosts of his past. And what was more striking than entering puberty, forced into naked shower proximity with bigger boys, seeing the bigger boys’s bigger sexual organs, and them capitalizing on the revelation of your slower development. And Devlin was the epitome of the bully. And, yes, he had a big dick, fuck, everybody knew that—why he would dream of the guy hard like that was beyond him.
Bag unzipped, he slipped a leg out and the movement showed him he was worse off than he thought. His temples pounded anew, his eyes blossomed with faint white orbs; his stomach rolled over. “Oh fuck,” he sighed. He was still drunk too, he could feel it.
It was cold out of his sleeping bag, and he padded hands around, wincing and squinting, finding his sweatshirt and donning it. He pulled up the hood, located his jeans and put his legs in them, the whole while fighting with the queasy pounding effect of too much alcohol.
Now he was unzipping the tent, poking his head out into the morning. Campfire smoke hung heavy in the air. On his left a fog hovered on the flat surface of the lake. Morning was still and quiet except for the sound of a single songbird. Dotted in disarray around the campfire were overturned lawn chairs and empty beer bottles and Solo cups. There, behind his SUV, was the picnic table where dream-Devlin had said the two of them chatted. Ridiculous. The two of them would never chat, even ten years removed from high school. And on that picnic table there were beer bottles and the bottle of whiskey he’d been drinking last night. It was empty. That was another truth . . .
He broke from a crouch, tried to stand, ended up hunching over with his hands thrust in the pouch of his sweatshirt; he lurched up the grassy hill toward the log cottage that looked out over Birch Lake.
Lights shone in the kitchen, and he could see through the windows people were awake and moving. He checked his watch. It was seven now. Probably two hours since him and dream-Devlin had their exchange in the tent.
There were familiar faces strewn on the lawn, people with similar hangovers, proffering timid waves his way, some holding heads, some looking like they were going to heave their guts in the toilet if they could just make it into the house. Someone hadn’t even made it into the house or a tent. They lay on the grass, but some kind sole had put a pillow under their head and two blankets over top of them.
He mounted the back deck steps, leaned on the barbecue for a moment looking into the house through the sliding glass doors. Devlin Stone stood in there talking to Amy (another person he hadn’t seen since high school). Amy was telling Stone off about something. Arms folded across her chest, she scowled at him while he spoke. Stone’s back was to Josh so he couldn’t see his face, but he pictured it as smug and uncaring.
Once he had the strength, he heaved off the barbecue, made it to the back door and slid it open. There were girls on the other side of the kitchen he hadn’t seen because of the drapes—maybe a half dozen of them. Kimmy was one of them.
He was so glad to see her. But when she turned, she wasn’t glad to see him—or at least didn’t acknowledge seeing him. She was upset. Her black wavy hair hung heavy around her pretty face, her brow was lowered as if in a scold, but her eyes had the glassy shine of a person upset; on the verge of crying, or already having cried. Her face looked puffy, her meager makeup cleared from her face, just her natural beauty—as pinched as it was in a mask of vex. She still wore her oversized cotton cardigan—one with deer and moose in a broad stripe around the torso—belted around her waist; she was swimming in it. Her narrow shoulders barely peeped out from its broad shawl collar.
When their eyes met, pain went through Kimmy’s face, and her lips wriggled like she would cry. A girl she stood with registered Kimmy’s reaction and looked his way over her shoulder. Another girl moved to console Kimmy, putting an arm around her.
His heart made a funny sag, then committed to sinking. Was it possible Stone was real and he wasn’t lying?
He made the dozen steps past the kitchen table, put his elbows on the island, asked his wife, “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” the girl facing Kimmy said in a soothing tone, turning, putting up her placating hands, preventing him from coming around the island. “Nothing’s wrong, Josh, nothing’s wrong at all.”
He asked his wife anyway: “Kimmy, what’s wrong?”
The girls surrounded her protectively, and Kimmy’s voice came from behind them saying, “I’m fine, I’m fine . . . ” She’d dipped her head, now rubbed her brow with the heel of her hand.
One of the girls with Kimmy was her friend Karina. They’d stayed friends since high school, through college, and ever after. It was Karina’s stupid idea to go to the reunion, and even worse, it was her idea to come to Tiffany’s party, even though Kimmy expressed reservations. Karina was watching him, a look of worry on her face too, but when their eyes met, Karina mouthed: “It’s okay, Josh.”
He mouthed back: “Is it?” She nodded.
Karina and Kimmy shared the same set of freckled cheeks; Amy a Polish strawberry blonde with a short bob, Kimmy a half-Taiwanese beauty with a Betty Page. Two slender, well-behaved girls who cared for each other; Karina rubbed Kimmy’s shoulder while Kimmy still pressed hand-heel to forehead.
Josh turned, squinted against the light, watching Amy and Devlin talking still, Devlin casual, smug like he’d predicted, smiling. Amy still had important things to say, her posture showing some anger. Was this drama Devlin related or was this coincidental? No one else in the house seemed engaged in Kimmy’s emotions, no one else seemed engaged in Devlin and Amy’s kerfuffle. People lounged on couches, three girls (shit, women now, high school was a long time ago) sat in a circle on the floor cross-legged and going through their purses; Moe from the soccer team ate cereal from a bowl at the kitchen table. Most everyone oblivious to the living theater happening on two opposite sides of the house’s main floor. Devlin and Kimmy could have two separate problems . . .
Josh looked back to Karina, mouthed, “What’s going on?”
Karina shook her head, shrugged, turned up her nose. “Just girl stuff.”
He looked back to Stone again, now with his arms crossed, big hands tucked in arm pits, head cocked. Still smiling. Shit, he was wearing sweatpants, shorts, and a black T-shirt, just like dream-Devlin. Had he worn that last night? No, he didn’t think so. That was what the guy wore to crash in at bed time, it looked. Had he seen Devlin wearing that? He must have—if he didn’t, dream-Devlin was real. More likely, he’d seen Devlin wearing that outfit in his blackout drunk phase before he’d crashed in the tent (which he didn’t even remember doing).
An anger returned now, and Josh rubbed his face. If there was one guy on earth who deserved being taught a lesson it was Devlin Stone. But who would teach it to him? Even though he was an adult now, it wouldn’t be Josh. Stone still dangled power over everyone’s head. He was taller, more muscular; physically there wasn’t anything Josh could do. Devlin inherited a management position at Stone Custom Brokerage LLC (go figure, how did you get that job, Devlin?), and made incredible money; what way was there to put him in his place? But if something had occurred here between Kimmy and Devlin (not sex, Josh, come on already) and it was bad enough to upset Kimmy, shouldn’t he stand up to the bully? Wouldn’t he be compelled to march over there right now and confront the man? For Kimmy he would, despite the knowledge it wouldn’t go well. The fear of humiliation swelled up from somewhere inside him where it had hidden deep for the last ten years since high school. That nausea returned and he instantly knew he would soon throw up. His upper lip went sweaty, a prickly heat crawled his neck. Just the idea of going over to Devlin had him wilting and his balls retracting. Bourbon reminded him helpfully how weakened he was: Don’t do it, Josh, for God’s sake, even if you were at your best it would be an awful task . . . He wiped his mouth, looked away from Devlin and tried to push back the terrifying though of confronting his high school bully in front of all these former classmates.
Karina crossed to his side, leaned on the island’s counter, the two of them on their elbows facing each other. She asked him if he was all right.
“Mm,” he moaned, rubbing his neck, “not feeling so good.”
“You drank a lot.”
He sighed, bile in his stomach rising, a lurching fear he may barf right in front of Karina and all over Tiffany’s emerald tiled countertop—shit, how would he go to school on Monday? He chuckled to himself at the absurd thought, took long deep breaths to quell the noxious rising tide in his belly. The storm calmed, the queasiness appeased. With his eyes closed, he said to Karina, “What’s going on with Devlin?” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, rolled with his ribs against the island’s edge craned his hurting neck to look at Amy and Stone again; the room swayed drunkenly. He burped, groaned.
Behind him, Karina said, “It’s no big deal, Josh.”
Stone shrugged now, the motion exaggerated, his big shoulders up to his ears; he still showed Amy that arrogant expression. In a demanding tone, Amy said something, a firmer reiteration: “So just go, okay?”
Stone said, “I still don’t know what the big deal is.”
Amy said, “She wants you to.”
Over his shoulder now, he saw Kimmy trying to get away from her clutch of friends, weaving around them with her arms folded; they prevented it, putting hands on her. “No, come on, hold on, guys,” she said softly.
As she got nearer, Josh asked her again what was going on.
She looked his way but not in his eyes, instead at his chest and stomach. “Nothing’s wrong, Josh, it’s nothing . . . ”
“Kimmy, something’s wrong,” he said, moving to meet her at the end of the island, putting out a shaky hand to stop her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “can you just give me a minute—just one minute . . . ”
“One minute for what?”
“I’m dealing with something, Josh.”
“What’s been going on?”
Karina said again, “It’s just girl stuff, Josh, just give her a minute.” She rubbed Kimmy’s shoulder.
The words were just placation, it was obvious—not girl stuff at all because now we watched as Kimmy left the kitchen to enter the family room, headed to where Devlin stood by the leather loveseat that backed onto the high cathedral window looking out to the lake. Whatever the problem was it did involve Devlin and Kimmy. Amy saw Kimmy approach, crossed her arms, gave an uncomfortable smile to Kimmy and stepped backward.
Josh shook his head and closed his eyes. The girl stuff was between his wife and the guy who’d come into his dreams to tell him he’d fucked his wife. He watched intently, Amy entering the kitchen now, walking with her arms crossed, trying to avoid him, but he met her gaze and gave an expression that demanded answers. Amy came to the counter and leaned her back against it; he wanted to ask her what the fuck was going on, but watched his wife instead.
Kimmy got closer but kept her distance, Devlin watching her with restrained amusement. Kimmy had the same pose as all the women involved: arms crossed, mad, shocked maybe, shoulders slumped. All signs that while Josh’d slept off a bottle of bourbon something major had transpired. Kimmy still stood, her approach hesitant. She wore cut off jean shorts but you couldn’t see them under the long cardigan, so it looked like his wife was just standing there before Devlin in only a sweater, legs and feet bare.
Kimmy said something to Stone they couldn’t hear, and with her hair hanging down and blocking her face from this angle he couldn’t read her lips or her expression. Stone nodded his head to the right. They disappeared from view, heading toward the fireplace like they need a more private place to talk.
He asked Amy what the fuck was going on and Amy looked for an answer, her eyes going up and to the right where everyone sought to find the most appropriate lie. She returned with, “I think they just had a fight.”
“Just a fight?” He feared that it was far more than that. His hands tingled with dread. “What happened last night?”
Before she answered he slid himself farther along the island so he could see where they went. Kimmy and Stone stood at the mantle, a crossing timber through stacked fieldstone twenty feet high. Amy joined him, her movements hesitant.
She said, “You went to bed, you had some help . . . ”
“I was drunk.”
“You were,” Amy said tentatively, her voice slowing down as she sought time to manufacture a suitable story. “Yeah, you went to bed and a bunch of us stayed up. Things got, I guess . . . heated.”
“Is Kimmy okay?”
“She’s totally fine, they just got to work something out.”
“Kimmy and Devlin?” Amy nodded. They watched Devlin and his wife now talking by the fireplace. Around him, Amy and Karina watched, the other girls, too. Two faces were familiar, two may have been wives of guys who went to Dalton. Had all of them witnessed this heated event?
He leaned to Amy. “Did Devlin say something?”
“Yeah . . . ”
“What is it—is it really bad?”
Amy’s mouth went to one side as she frowned. “She’ll tell you . . . let her tell you.”
“Well . . . do I need to do something?” Like what, Josh, go fuck him up?
“No, let her deal with it. Kimmy’s a big girl.”
Now he watched his wife standing close with Devlin Stone who was a head taller than her. She looked small and slender next to his tall, lean build. Devlin put up a muscular arm on the timber mantle set in the stone fire place. They talk low, talked like two people settling something. Then whatever was needed to be said was done, Stone showed his palms, Kimmy shook her head no, rolled her eyes. Now she returned to them, padding bare feet silently across the polished maple floor littered with beer bottles. She came straight to him, and he received her with his open arms, a sudden relief and warmth flooding his heart. She lay her head in the hollow of his neck and he put his arms around her. He whispered, “Can you tell me what the hell is going on?”
“He’s just such an asshole,” she said.
“What did he say? Did he do anything? . . . ”
Kimmy rocked her head on his chest. “Can we just pack up and get the hell out of here, please?”
Everything was packed up in twenty minutes and loaded into their Qashgqai. Uncomfortable goodbyes were said, uncaring hugs were given. The reunion had been fun, but he was looking forward to not seeing the majority of these people again for another decade. Devlin Stone was nowhere to be seen, but as they drove out Tiffany’s tree-shaded gravel drive, they passed his black Mercedes Roadster gleaming in the sun. Kimmy clucked her tongue when she saw it.
He said, “Are you ready to tell me what happened now?”
“No,” she said.
He was in the passenger seat head pounding, next to his wife practically seeing double. He’d thrown up in the toilet in the middle of packing the tent, abandoning Kimmy to run into the house and get it done finally. It made him feel only marginally better. When he’d come back, Kimmy had taken the slack, kept working, the Nissan loaded with their gear and his wife looking to get the hell out of Harrowsmith.
Kimmy was behind the wheel in her big cardigan, Converse on now. He watched her bare legs on the leather seat because it was too bright to look out the window. He said, “Are you okay?”
“I am. Can I tell you about it some other time?”
“Just tell me what happened last night. With me . . . ”
She sighed, scratched her head, silver bangles singing on her skinny wrists. “Where do you remember up to?”
He hummed, head aching, stomach sloshing still, hugging his arms around himself. “I remember the barbecue, remember swimming, I remember drinking a lot of beer . . . ”
“Then the whisky came out,” she said, turning left onto a wider road, looking both ways, sitting more upright.
“Right . . . ”
She got the Nissan up to speed, the roadway desolate and devoid of traffic. “Then, I don’t know, we were all hanging around by the fire, everybody was just talking. You passed out . . . ”
“Where?”
“I don’t know, near the where the car was parked—”
“By the picnic table?”
“Yeah . . . Me and Amy helped you into the tent . . . actually you said you had to pee, and we took you in the bushes. I got your stuff off and I get you into your sleeping bag as best I could . . . ”
“You helped me pee?” Another wave of dread came over him; how fucking embarrassing.
“You said you had to pee, I didn’t want you to pee in your sleeping bag . . . ”
Shame rose up fast and he could feel his cheeks burning. How emasculating. So drunk his wife had to help him pee so he wouldn’t wet the bed like a little boy. “God, I’m so sorry . . . ”
“It’s fine, Josh, you know it’s fine,” she said.
“What do you mean you helped me pee?”
“What it sounds like,” she said in a way that made him understand she knew how shameful his drunkenness was.
“Really?” Now he could assume she’d taken his pants down or drew down his fly. Did she have to hold it for him? “Was Amy there?”
“We didn’t want you to fall.”
“So she was there.”
“Don’t worry, she wasn’t looking.”
“But she was there? . . . ” He buried his face in his hands and moaned into them. Amy had held him up so he wouldn’t fall over and his wife had held his dick to aim his pee. Jesus Christ. His stomach flinched with an awful thought. He croaked: “Was Devlin there too?”
Amy frowned. “Devlin? No.”
“Fuck, I’m so sorry, Kimmy.”
She patted his leg and it made him jump. His eyes popped open to see her hand on him. “It’s okay, baby.”
“It’s so embarrassing.”
Both hands on the wheel, she said, “Don’t worry. Everyone was in the bag. You didn’t embarrass yourself. I don’t think anyone saw . . . I got you to bed.”
“No one saw except you and Amy.”
“She loves you.”
He groaned again, unable to shake this tangible physical feeling of awesome regret. Why did he drink so much?
He said, “And you stayed up?”
“Yeah.”
Now it occurred to him she’d maybe never gone to bed. “Where did you sleep?” Don’t say the tent because I know you weren’t there, Kimmy, if you say the tent you’re a liar and Devlin Stone fucked you . . .
“I didn’t sleep,” she said, not a brag or a proclamation; Kimmy’s own regret and shame dripped from her words.
He bit his lip, rolled his head her way. “What did you do all night?”
Her mouth made an awkward movement and he didn’t like the beat it took her to answer. “We were up talking.”
“You and Devlin?”
She looked his way, troubled. “No, Josh. Devlin was up, yeah . . . Me and Amy and some of the others . . . Not everybody crashed.”
Kimmy barely drank. It wasn’t in her culture. Her Dad was hardcore Christian, her Taiwanese side of the family thought alcohol was a detour from life. “But Devlin was up with you guys?”
“He was around.”
“Well he must have been around . . . and you must have been talking for you guys to get in a fight.”
Kimmy’s jaw clenched, she grimaced, shook her head. A hand came up again to shake through her hair, bangles singing. “Can we just drop it? For now, Josh . . . ”
It was all too much for him to endure, anyway. His body pulsed with pain. The bourbon still punished him. Him mind throbbed, his thoughts were poisoned by a man that came to him in a dream. Right now it was clear everything pointed to Kimmy messing around with Devlin. Devlin’s visit was real. It wasn’t a dream. The only thing that made him think Kimmy had fucked Devlin was because Devlin had come into the tent to tell him that. Devlin and Kimmy got in a fight. Kimmy was no dummy. She might not be a VP of some shipping brokerage but she was a lawyer even if she wasn’t working right now. A spot she’d earned, not been gifted. Kimmy had smoked Devlin in some argument and Devlin said something nasty that hurt her feelings. Then that wicked asshole knew how to get back at her in the profoundest way possible: fuck with her husband’s head—her husband who he already abused and tormented since they were young. Maybe there was more to it, but right now logic was insurmountable. His body wanted to hibernate and his brain literally wanted to die. Trying to think his way out of this was like swimming in a straight jacket. One thing he knew: had he not been visited by Devlin and his huge erection in the middle of the night and instead woken fresh and untainted to the drama playing out in Tiffany’s cottage this morning the last thing he would have thought of his wife was that she’d cheated on him.
“Whatever,” he said, “it’s okay, Kimmy.” He ducked his head down, and Kimmy turned on the radio, tuned it to BBC news. They came to a stop and he looked around, the world around him swimming and uneven. The intersection was a five-way in a very small town; red brick buildings, white clapboard homes. Kimmy sighed, “Where the fuck?” She leaned close to the windshield trying to read the road signs. No other traffic rushed them, they were the only car. She tapped the Nissan’s display, got it to navigation, tapped again for the route home. She pointed out the window to a road that led sixty degrees south, saying to herself, “I guess it’s that one,” because he was of no help to her now. The car rolled through the intersection and now the nav showed they were on the right path, the car’s woman voice saying they would arrive home in one hour and fifty-nine minutes.
He rubbed his neck; Kimmy reached behind them between the seats, pulled through the gap a pillow and passed it to him. “Put that under your head,” she said.
“I have such a headache.”
“You took Tylenol?”
“I took a ton of Tylenol,” he said. “Moe had some.”
“You hungry—you want to stop soon, grab something to eat? I bet there’s a Timmy’s in Odessa . . . ”
“Maybe in an hour,” he said, nestled his head in the pillow and closed his eyes . . .