I'm the Only One Going in Blind novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Three Years

Dustin told it in the hall with his back against the wall and his eyes on the carpet.

It was July, three years ago, at a bar in Vermilion after a friend's wedding.

Lacey had been twenty-five, a hygienist on a night out, in a green dress, and she had picked him out across the room.

He had been twenty-one and drunk and lonely.

They went back to her place.

He woke up at six and knew at once that he did not want to be there, and he told her so, kindly, and left.

She texted him forty-two times that week.

Then she stopped.

A year later I brought home a girlfriend named Lacey and said, "Mom, meet her."

"She looked at me across the table," Dustin said. "She smiled, and she never said a word about it. I thought, okay, she's moved on. I thought, thank God."

"How long before she told you what she'd done?"

"The first Christmas. In the kitchen, with the water running. She said she picked you on purpose. She said you were the best way into my life that I couldn't say no to."

I stood up.

I didn't mean to.

I walked to the front door and opened it and stood on the porch with the cold on my face.

Behind me I heard Simone say quietly, "Give him a minute."

I looked at the street where I'd learned to ride a bike.

I thought about two years of Sunday dinners.

I thought about Lacey's hand on the back of my neck every time my brother looked at the floor, and what that hand had been telling him.

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