9. Chapter Nine
Chapter Nine
F uck.
It was like being transported to summers at the lake, fresh water and flowers as wild as he always was. The pub was so busy I shouldn’t have been able to smell him from all the way over there, but I could. Fuck, Fuck, fuck.
“You okay there, Ax?” Milly asked. She was working the bar with me that night. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I feel like I’ve seen a ghost.
Dylan appeared to recover quicker than I did, taking a deep breath and squaring his shoulders before approaching the bar with his… Adam.
Great. So glad Adam is back on the scene.
“Long time no see, Axel,” Dylan said, his voice trembling slightly.
It took me a moment to form a response because I couldn’t stop staring at him. Dylan had always been objectively beautiful. He had the kind of face that people wanted to photograph, but where the last time I’d seen him, there were still remaining signs of boyish roundness to his face, he was all man now.
When his words finally registered, though, I bristled.
“Avoiding someone usually has that effect,” I replied.
So, clearly, I was a little mad at him.
Dylan gulped while Adam read the drinks menu as if it were a gripping crime thriller.
“What do you want?” I asked before he could reply.
“What do I want?” His eyebrows scrunched together, causing a little divot to appear. I had the strangest desire to smooth it out with my thumb.
“Yes… most people come to the pub to order a drink.”
“Right. Drinks. Um…” His eyes darted along the glass bottles of spirits lining the shelf behind me. “I’ll have a gin and tonic. Adam?”
“Just a pint of lager for me. Thanks.”
Clearly, the drinks menu hadn’t inspired him. I poured both their drinks and ran them up on the till.
“Want me to start a tab?” I asked, tapping on the screen.
Dylan nodded. His bright green eyes were wide, and his lips were parted in a small ‘o’, making him look like an anime character.
They took their drinks outside to find a seat in the small beer garden. There was only space for a handful of picnic benches but it was popular in the summer.
“Cover me for ten?” I asked Milly.
“Sure, hun.” She gave me a quizzical look but then was quickly distracted by a group of women who were responsible for the extensive selection of gins on offer in this pub.
I exited through the front door and made my way around to the side of the building where we kept the old kegs for collection, hidden away from patrons and curious eyes.
Crouching down against the wall, I tugged on my hair, groaning.
Dylan was back. Fucking Dylan was back.
I didn’t really know what had happened with us. The last time I saw him was almost three years ago, the day before he left for uni. We said goodbye, and everything was normal, but then he just didn’t come home again.
Cooper had been keeping me updated, telling me how Dylan was getting on with his course, that he’d made friends or that he had a new boyfriend. The latter I pretended to be one hundred percent cool about.
Then suddenly, the Christmas before last, the updates abruptly stopped. If I asked Cooper how Dylan was doing, I would get a ‘He’s fine.’ or ‘He’s doing good’. And nothing else. Nada. Like he’d become an intangible ghost overnight.
Cooper hadn’t even told me Dylan was back, and I’d seen him yesterday. Why wouldn’t he have told me? Anxiety that I’d repeatedly pushed down over the last two years reared its ugly head, convincing me I must have done something terrible but that nobody would tell me what it was.
Was Dylan just visiting, or was he back for good?
Gravel crunching underfoot alerted me to approaching footsteps. Dylan appeared from around the corner, hands stuffed awkwardly into his jeans pockets that were a little too tight to be functional.
“Milly told me I’d find you here.”
I was surprised he remembered her. She’s my cousin, but she grew up in a different town, and until she moved here a couple of years ago, she’d only visited sporadically.
“Consider me found.” I thunked my head against the brick wall behind me, enjoying the distraction of the slight biting pain it caused.
“Why… Why are you angry with me?” he asked.
It was a valid question. Only it didn’t have a reasonable answer. My irrational mind made me feel abandoned by Dylan. Despite it being entirely unfair of me to put that on him, rationality didn’t change how I felt. Because I did feel abandoned by him.
“Are you back for good, or is this a flying visit?” I asked, ignoring his question.
“Um… for the foreseeable future. Until I decide what I want to do next, anyway.”
“Are you going to avoid me the whole time?”
Dylan’s eyebrows shot up his forehead, followed by a pink blush that crept along his cheekbones. “I literally just sought you out. I’m not avoiding you,” he said, and I raised my eyebrow, calling him out on the lie. “... anymore.”
Well, at least he wasn’t continuing to pretend that not seeing me for three years was some unfortunate accident that was out of his hands.
“How come you’re working here? Have you stopped working for your dad?”
His words ripped at a wound that had barely begun healing.
“My dad died last year.” It was hard to swallow past the lump in my throat.
“What?”
“My dad—“
”—No, sorry. I heard you, I just… I didn’t know. Cooper never said. I’m so sorry.“ His big green eyes went glassy, and a single tear escaped and rolled down his cheek like he had taken some of my pain off me until I was strong enough to have it back.
“I’m guessing you haven’t heard anything about me for about as long as I haven’t heard anything about you, Dyl. Only I reckon you know why, and I don’t.”
Dylan opened and closed his mouth a few times but didn’t say anything. Speechless Dylan was certainly a first; maybe he had changed.
“I gotta go back to work,” I said without giving him the opportunity to even respond. As I brushed past him to get back inside, it was as if the heat from his exposed arm burned my skin. His scent clouded my ability to even think so I escaped quickly without glancing back at him.
When Adam came back to order their next round, Milly served him. It was shortly after nine pm when Cooper rocked up.
“Hey pal,” he said and waited for his usual. I poured him a pint of lager and left it on the bar top in front of him, not uttering a word because I’d been feeling petulant ever since my conversation outside with Dylan.
“What’s up with him?” Cooper asked Milly, gesturing at me with his chin.
“He’s been grouchy ever since—“
”—ever since I showed up,“ Dylan cut Milly off, and I whipped my head around. Cooper kept looking from Dylan to me and back again like he was seeing double, a slightly panicked expression taking over his face.
“Good catch-up, was it?” Cooper squeaked.
“I’ve got customers to serve,” I said before stalking off to the other end of the bar. When I turned back around, Cooper and Dylan appeared to be having a heated conversation in the doorway.
I spent the following hour keeping extremely busy and pretended not to notice when Dylan left. Coop still remained on his regular stool at the far end of the bar, looking like a scolded puppy. It was late, and most of the customers had left.
“Want another?” I asked.
“Please.”
I poured him his drink and placed it on top of a fresh beermat. Cooper immediately took a long pull from the glass before wiping a damp hand on his trouser leg.
“What’s going on, Coop?”
He raked a hand over his face, then picked up the soggy beermat and began picking at the corners—a nervous habit of his.
“You know how when we were kids, Dyl always had a bit of a crush on you?”
This wasn’t news. Dylan hadn’t been subtle, and Cooper used to frequently make jokes about it at his expense.
“Mhmm.”
“Well, when he last came home for Christmas, I could tell he was avoiding you, and I didn’t understand why. We actually had a real conversation for once, and I realised it wasn’t merely a kiddy crush, and it hadn’t gone away. I promised to stop pushing him to see you or talk to you. That turned into me just not bringing you up at all because, for a while there, I was worried he might never come home again.”
Well fuck. It hadn’t gone away?
My heart plummeted into my stomach at the realisation that Dylan had still had feelings for me only a couple of years ago, and once again, I’d fucking missed my shot.
Cooper continued, “Eventually, I could see he’d finally moved on, and I didn’t want to interfere with that.” He stared at the bar top the entire time he spoke, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth.
“Did he ask you not to tell me anything about his life?” I asked.
“No.” He shook his head. “It just didn’t feel right to tell you things when he’d chosen not to have you in his life anymore.”
And that . That was what broke my heart a little. Dylan had chosen not to have me in his life anymore, and his return to Foxwood Hollow didn’t mean that had changed. He hadn’t expected to run into me.
And, like Cooper said, Dylan had moved on.