Something had caught his eye and he turned away abruptly. “Oh, hey, I’ve gotta run,” he said.
“No problem,” she replied as she watched him take off like a shot toward the exit. His sudden departure didn’t bother her in the least, because good-looking guys in a bar were a dime a dozen, and besides, Layla wasn’t interested in starting a relationship with anyone. At twenty-three, she could have her pick but was having too much fun to care about finding another boy who she would later find out was only masquerading as a man. She was tired of the beer-can pyramids in their apartments, their filthy disgusting bathrooms that seldom had any toilet paper, and their obsession with video games.
“Who will you take to weddings as your plus-one?” her friend Christine had asked one Sunday morning when they’d met for brunch. It was the height of wedding season in their friend group, and every weekend seemed to be filled with a wedding shower, a bachelorette party, or the wedding itself. Christine’s own wedding had occurred three months before, and she had not stopped espousing the benefits since. Layla liked Christine’s husband well enough, but being married mostly sounded like Christine never had to worry about whose name she’d write down for the emergency contact on her medical forms, or who would take her to the airport when she was flying solo. Christine was a couple of years older than Layla, and it had seemed like she’d been in an awfully big hurry to settle down, which Layla found perplexing. What was the rush? Weren’t people supposed to be marrying later now?
“When is the last time you actually saw me at a wedding?” Layla said. She had, unfortunately, missed a lot of the weddings—although not Christine’s—because the band was almost always booked on Saturday nights. “I’d rather be playing weddings than attending them on the arm of some guy who’ll probably worry that a wedding will put ideas into my head and have me pining for a ring for my own finger. Please.”
“Famous last words,” her friend Noelle said. “Everyone knows that the minute you swear off men, you’ll meet the love of your life. That’s how it works.”
Layla laughed. “That sounds like total bullshit to me. Besides, I only have eyes for my music. It never lets me down.”
Christine and Noelle laughed then, too—whether with her or at her, she didn’t know and didn’t really care.
The truth was that, although her music had never let her down, Layla wanted to break into the Minneapolis bar scene so bad she could taste it, and a boyfriend would more than likely complicate things. They were “paying their dues” and would conquer Minneapolis “in due time,” according to their manager, a guy named Scotty who was short on personality but some kind of shark when it came to keeping them booked on a regular basis. A boyfriend would be distracting, and besides, she was having the time of her life and it certainly wasn’t due to the presence of a guy. Layla was an artist, a musician. For her, performing was as necessary as oxygen. If she had no one to play for, was she even really playing?
As much as Layla wanted to expand their reach, there was something to be said about being at the top of their game, even if the only reason they were big fish at all was because the pond known as Rochester was really quite small.
chapter 4
Josh
Kimmy brought Sasha back to Josh’s house on Saturday at noon. “She slept in this morning,” Kimmy said. “I think kindergarten tired her out.”
“Maybe she’ll start sleeping in regularly,” Josh said.
“Well, we can hope.”
At thirty-seven, Kimmy barely resembled the girl he’d met in detention his senior year. It wasn’t unheard-of to fall madly in love in high school, but it was less likely that two eighteen-year-old kids would take it all the way to the altar. That was probably why his parents hadn’t worried about their relationship too much. They often joked that Josh was their fourth boy and they were tired.
Trying to explain to people why he and Kimmy decided to separate had been the most difficult part of the process. They’d beaten the odds, everyone said. Why throw in the towel now? His parents had grown to love Kimmy and she’d become the daughter they never had. Sitting his mom and dad down to break the news of their split had been one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do.
But staying together wasn’t that easy, and no one could understand that unless they’d been there from the very beginning, the way he and Kimmy had all those years ago. He just wished Sasha hadn’t been the collateral damage, especially when he shared equal responsibility for causing it.
* * *
The only good thing Josh could say about February of 1999 was that it was a short month. The news was filled with doomsday predictions about the havoc Y2K would cause the following year, but Josh and his buddies were too busy setting their sights on May, when they would collect their diplomas and finally be free from the shackles of high school. No more books, no more homework, no more sitting in a classroom. Josh might not have had a good sense of what he wanted for the future, but he was crystal clear on the things he wanted to leave behind. When he thought back to those late-winter days right before he met Kimmy, “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys always popped into his head. Back then, he couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing them, which annoyed him, because the Goo Goo Dolls and Matchbox Twenty were more his style. He spent more time than he should have playing video games on his PlayStation and searching for anything that would excite him during those gray days when it seemed like the sun would never shine again.
Back then, his dark, messy hair almost always needed a trim, but his skin was clear, and several female heads had turned when he entered the room where detention was held. He was wearing a flannel shirt—unbuttoned and untucked—a T-shirt, and faded jeans. None of those preppy button-down shirts some of the senior nerds wore. Or worse, any pants other than jeans.
The minutes dragged and he fidgeted constantly—tapping his pen, bouncing his leg up and down, shifting his position every thirty seconds. He spoke to no one but made two trips to the wastepaper basket in the corner of the room, balling up a sheet of notebook paper each time as if engineering a valid reason to get up. Taking the long way back to his seat, he folded his lanky body into his chair and resumed fidgeting.
There was a girl, a blonde in a pink sweater, and she looked every bit as bored as the rest of them. When she turned around to talk to the girl sitting behind her, she glanced in Josh’s direction and a mischievous smile appeared on her face. That girl looks like fun, he thought.
When the bell finally rang to signify their release, he shot out of his chair and was halfway down the hall before the other kids had even picked up their backpacks.
* * *