Gabriel - Jessie Cooke Page 0,1

in the arts; her dreams were much bigger than that. Unbeknownst to her parents, she had applied to Louisiana State University, to the pre-med program. Kasey wanted to be a doctor, and knowing her parents wouldn’t approve, she’d kept it from them as long as she could. It was a week after her high school graduation when she’d gone to her father’s office, armed with the acceptance letter and all the courage she could muster, and brought her parents’ dreams crashing down around them.

Those first few months after were tense. Her mother had cried a lot and her father had tried to bully her into following the path they had mapped out for her even before she was born. It was tough, since she’d never gone against them before, but Kasey stood her ground. She had a trust fund set up for her by her grandfather, who had been a tobacco farmer back in the day, and she told her father if he didn’t want to pay for her college at LSU, she’d use that...and find a roommate and live off campus. They had been completely okay with her moving to Mississippi and living in a sorority house, but the idea of her living in an apartment with one of her young friends, or worse yet, a stranger...that was too much. Her father gave in first, but not because of her original plan. She’d had a back-up plan, one that she hadn’t wanted to use...but they forced her into it. Nobody wants to blackmail their own father, but she didn’t feel like they left her any choice. This was her life, and she was determined to live it on her own terms.

The “blackmail” worked, but of course her relationship with her parents was strained from then on. Trying to get back into their good graces, Kasey brought a young man she’d met home for Sunday dinner. His name was Tom and he was a third-year medical student that had given a lecture in one of her classes. He was a “good southern boy” and just the type that Kasey’s mother would have picked for her herself. Kasey suspected her mother hoped that after dating Tom for a while, Kasey would give up on the career thing and happily settle for someday being Tom’s wife and the mother to his children. Kasey never saw Tom that way however, and when they broke up at the beginning of her sophomore year of college, her mother was the only one who had shed any tears, and another dent was made in their already irreparable relationship.

Kasey’s mother made sure to keep tabs on Tom and let her daughter know that the good southern doctor met and married the daughter of a pastor. Now three years later he was married with two kids and practicing medicine in New Orleans, and Kasey was once again breaking her parents’ hearts with talk of attending medical school in California. Kasey didn’t miss having a boyfriend. Being single had given her much more time for her studies. But since she wasn’t a virgin any longer, she did miss the intimacy. So, for the past two years, she’d done her best to get out of her mother’s sight for one night a month and find a place where she could be completely anonymous while getting her needs met. She never went to the same place twice, and she never used her real name. She wore more makeup than usual and made sure her waist-length, straight-as-a-board hair was tightly curled. Lastly, just in case she ran into someone who had seen one of her father’s rallies on television, she wore brown contact lenses to hide the deep blue of her own. Kasey wanted to live her own life, but there was still that big part of her that didn’t want to break her parents’ hearts; even after everything they’d been through, she still held out hopes that someday they’d think of her as their little girl again. The idea of one of her nights out becoming the topic of conversation over coffee and cinnamon buns on the Cormier front porch sent a shudder down her spine. So far, they hadn’t completely washed their hands of her, but that would absolutely do it.

That night was the first time that she’d ever been to that particular bar. It was a ramshackle-looking place out on the far edge of the city, in a neighborhood that was light years away from her own. The neon