Goodbye Earl(32)

“Yo,” Caro said, swishing her red ponytail out and peeping around the corner.

“Come and tell us more about dancing with the devil,” Rosemarie said. Ada was buzzed, not drunk, and so was Rosemarie. She could always tell from Rosemarie’s voice first, how it crackled like a sparkler.

“Trey Foxberry,” Kasey clarified.

“I knew who she meant,” Caro said. She walked into the living room with her right hand spread wide, five raspberries stuck on the tips. She sat on the rug in front of them and ate the one off her thumb. “I don’t know why he asked me to dance. Maybe it was a dare.”

“Oh, please! Why are you doing that? No one has to be dared to dance with you! Quit it,” Ada said.

“I’m sorry! I mean, I never talk to him. Right place, right time, I guess. Or wrong place, right time. Or right place, wrong time,” Caroline said.

“Or wrong place, wrong time,” Rosemarie and Ada said together.

They’d already talked about it as soon as they got to the lake house, but that was hours ago and now it was late enough to begin going over everything again in joyful, painstaking detail.

When they were finished, they came to the consensus that yes, absolutely, it was undeniable, and their years and years of research proved it—Trey Foxberry was indeed a colossal dick.





2019


9





Kasey


Kasey had spent the past few days having breakfast at Caroline’s and lunch at Rosemarie’s and dinner at either Ada’s or Plum Eats. Caro always brought sweet treats to Rosemarie’s, and Ada never showed up at Caro’s place without something delicious.

Last night after stopping by Duke’s house to visit and have cherry pie with him and his wife, Kasey caved and spent the night with Caro in the mansion because Trey was out of town and Caro begged her to. Even though her ridiculously overpriced hotel room was going to sit empty for a night, Kasey couldn’t say no. Caro seemed like such a little girl in that moment, pleading in the same way she used to beg Grandma Mimi to ask Kasey’s mom if Kasey could stay one more night when she’d already stayed two. Rosemarie had slept over at Caro’s too, and Ada had hung around until she could barely keep awake.

Caro fell asleep first. Rosemarie and Kasey took the bottle of wine outside to continue their conversation, and Rosemarie told her how she peeked at Trey’s texts on Caroline’s phone. She talked about Caro mentioning that he could stay mad for days over the littlest thing. Kasey talked about how it bugged her that she didn’t know more about Trey. The longest amount of time she’d spent with him was those fifteen minutes he was out on the dance floor with them at prom. She hadn’t laid eyes on him since she’d been back in town.

Kasey had no place questioning Caroline’s marriage or what Trey was like. Kasey had kept so much from everyone she had no choice but to believe that everyone had a right to their secrets. She hated when the girls got pushy with her, so she wasn’t going to get pushy with Caro.

At least, not yet.

Rosemarie said she was only allowing herself to worry about Caro quietly for now, and Kasey said that was what she’d do too. They finished the rest of the wine by candlelight, sitting on the side of the pool with their feet glowing in the water.

*



It was the middle of Taylor’s wedding week when Kasey finally worked up the nerve to go to the farmhouse. She hadn’t been there since the night she graduated from high school, the night of the big party they threw in Ada’s backyard. She called Devon from the car. She had the windows down and was wearing her dad’s old, threadbare Gremlins T-shirt with her cutoffs. She’d been leaning into her Goldie wardrobe all week—humid, Southern summer and nostalgia.

“I hate thinking you’re doing this alone. I know you’re getting tired of hearing it from me. Am I getting on your nerves?” Devon asked with the same plunge of tenderness in his voice he always had when he was being patient with her. She pictured the face she knew he was making—his amber eyes, his rosy bottom lip in a straight line. He was by far the prettiest man she’d ever dated, somehow both pretty and handsome. Leonine. She’d been attracted to him immediately, leaving no wondering on that front. After discovering that he was intensely smart and kind too and that their personalities coalesced, staying together had been so easy. Staying together forever and dreaming of buying a brownstone in Brooklyn one day and having kids and making French toast on Saturday mornings in a Nancy Meyers–esque kitchen made the most sense.

“No, no,” Kasey lied. “You’re being very sweet and it’s not like I want to do this alone, Dev. I have to do this alone.” She let him know (again) that she could ask any one of her girlfriends to come with her and they’d do it in an instant.

“I miss you,” he said.

“I miss you too.” Her blood tingled cool when she made the last turn before the farmhouse driveway. She timed it so she would get there while the sun was up, get inside before it went down. She told Rosemarie, Ada, and Caro where she was going and left them chatting at the table at Plum Eats, where they’d eaten dinner together.

“I saw a Shih Tzu on my walk home this afternoon. Black and white. He was barking at the pigeons, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it,” Devon said with his gentle heh heh of a laugh that Kasey loved so much.