Cas stood in front of the Band House with the pack hanging from his shoulder. He had come on an impulse originating from no known source two days ago after a chance meeting with Nikki on the street the week before and a casual invitation she probably forgot about three seconds after it was out of her mouth. It was just now dawning on him, as he stood on the road in front of the house, that an open-handed welcome was far from certain.
He hadn’t really known Nikki in high school. It was more like he’d known of her. They ran in different circles, Nikki with the freaks and Cas in his own, solitary, one-man merry-go-round. She hadn’t even recognized him the other day, he saw now as he thought back on it, and her invitation to visit was more carelessly thrown off than the typical “We must get together one of these days” you get from a Charleston Junior Leaguer who would drop dead of shock if you actually showed up. Of course she hadn’t meant it. What made him think she had?
Another monumentally asinine decision. As if he hadn’t made enough of those for four or five normal lifetimes. Was he going for a record?
He was just about to shoulder his pack and start back down the mountain when three new thoughts struck him: it would be dark soon, he was fifteen miles from the nearest motel and a hundred from his apartment, and he didn’t have any money.
“Oh, shit,” he said, stabbing a toe in the sand next to the road. His friends would think he was crazy.
If he had friends.
If they could think.
Frozen with embarrassment and confusion, he might have stood there all night for lack of a viable option but he was saved when the front door opened and Nikki appeared behind the screen.
“Cas?”
She was the most beautiful girl he had ever almost sort-of known, and even with a screen in front of her she was like something out of a Victoria’s Secret catalogue. Shortish, blonde, with a charmingly pug nose and a body built for comfort and soft in all the right places without over-doing it, Nikki was the kind you dreamed about when you really dared to dream big.
“Cas? That you?” She swung open the screen door and stepped out onto the front porch. “I’ll be damned. Well, don’t just stand there, come on in.”
Gripping his heart in a hammerlock, he did.
And so it began.
