In Your Dreams (Falling #4)(67)
“Just bought it about an hour ago,” he says, pressing his palms into his eyes. “I was supposed to go to my parents…”
His head falls to the side in his hands, his hat on the ground between his knees and his eyes land on me, the focus struggling a little, but the light still on behind. “I was going there…to be the good son.”
My expression falls at his words. I can’t help it.
“Casey,” I breathe.
He leans into me until I feel his head against my shoulder. My arm muscles tense automatically, but he doesn’t seem to notice, his hand coming up to curl around my bicep while he leans against me with more of his weight, cupping my arm and holding on to me as if I were a pillow.
“I wanted to hear about your day instead,” he says, his voice weaker, eyelids heavier. This is not the confident boy who can make people feel anything they want. This is the shell left behind circumstances. “But my sisters kept calling…”
His sleepy eyes grow pained as he lets gravity take over and pull his body to the ground, his head rolling to my lap. I tuck my hands under my legs at first, not sure what to do. Unable to look down into his deep brown sorrow, my eyes instead dart from left to right, waiting for my parents’ car to pull up with Lane and ice cream and questions.
“Casey, you can’t drive like this…let me take you home,” I decide, making mental excuses to tell my family as quickly as my brain will allow for reasons his car is here and I’m gone, driving him half an hour away to his apartment.
“I’m sorry I stole your spot,” Casey says. I glance down at him with my brow bunched. The whiskey is hitting him hard and fast—he’s not making sense any more. I parked where I always park. He didn’t steal anything.
“It’s okay,” I smile, my hand hovering over his hairline, my fingers twitching, nervous to touch him. I give in and let my hand slide into his silky soft hair, and the feel of it is just as I thought it would be. His eyes soften on my touch and the intensity makes me swallow and have to look away again.
I have to get him up.
“We just need to get to my car. Do you think you can walk?” I ask.
“It’s not okay,” he says. He’s not even hearing me.
“Casey—my car,” I say, slowing the words down and speaking more loudly. My hand rests against his face. I look into his eyes, trying to determine how much focus is left in them, when they lock to mine, and his hand comes up to hold my wrist, his touch soft and almost afraid as each finger closes around my skin one at a time and he holds me still.
“It’s not okay that I stole your spot, Murphy. I made you wait. It should have been you on that stage. You just needed someone to help you over that hurdle, and instead, I threw more in your way…” he trails off, his head rolling just enough to the side that my hand becomes pinned between his cheek and my leg. His eyes fall shut slowly as he lies in my hold, and he looks broken and overwrought with regret.
“Casey, I’m sorry, but I…I have no idea what…” I begin, the words falling away, but finishing in my head—you’re talking about. I don’t finish my sentence because clarity comes. And I can’t help but laugh. “Oh my god,” I whisper, my gaze coming up to look out at my quiet street, my eyes wide with irony.
Casey Coffield honestly believes that song is about him—that I’ve harbored some sort of resentment toward him since I was…what…fourteen?
“Casey, look,” I start, but he’s too lost in his own delusion. I need to let it play out.
“I saw it—your yearbook,” he says, his voice coming from my lap. “When I was here the other day. I saw what I wrote, and then it all just came back to me. And I just wanted you to know—I was a prick.”
I laugh loud and hard at the way his drunken voice delivers that last word. Shaking my head, I let my eyes close for a moment, and I remember it all. Casey wasn’t the only one who laughed when I stuttered on stage. He wasn’t even the loudest. He was just the one who always stuck out in my mind—like the leader of everything just out of my reach. But I meant what I said when he first walked into Paul’s to ask me about the song and recording—that song isn’t about him. Or at least, it wasn’t before, but now that the studio made me change it…
“Casey,” I sigh, my chin falling to my chest and my hands both falling to either side of his face. He’s handsome when he’s sorry; I’ll give him that.
I chuckle and shake my head, staring into his deep round eyes that are slanted in their begging for forgiveness. I part my lips, ready to tell him the story of how it really went—how I knew I wasn’t ready, how my mom promised me fifty bucks for trying out for the talent show, and that was all that really mattered to me—she paid me for just getting on the stage. Then, the memory of Casey’s now infamous signature comes to mind. I handed my yearbook to Houston to sign on the last day of our senior year, and he passed it down the line of people instead of just handing it back, forcing me to chase it as it was passed along unsigned from popular girl to it boy and so on until it landed in Casey’s hands. I could read what he wrote upside down, and then he looked up with a smug smirk and told his friend he didn’t even know who the chick who owned the book was. It passed through several more hands before someone tossed it on a table and I rescued it. I started to scribble out unwanted messages, and almost took my pen to his, when I decided f*ck him—and I left it.