Astor Hill

Chapter 7

7

Olivia

I make my way from the parking lot to the wooden structure that barely passes for a bar. While McKinley’s attempt at having a collegiate air was valiant, the overwhelming sense of debauchery couldn’t be masked. The silhouette of a lion, the Astor Mascot, plagues the establishment— from the signage outside to the pint glasses my fellow students are holding to their lips. I reach for the door handle, the stickiness hugging each crevice of my palm. I grimace, ducking into the dimly lit bar while rubbing my hand on the side of my mini dress.

Almost immediately, I’m flanked with massive biceps and a chest that engulfs me. I let myself be swallowed by Grant’s hug, the safety oozing through my body. I wasn’t lying when I told Ben that Grant was one of my favorite people. He has a way of making me feel like everything will be okay.

“Olivia, how are you doing?” I feel him murmuring into my hair.

“I’m fine. This week’s been hard but it always is this time of year,” I say, giving Grant a sad smile. It’s odd how I never feel uncomfortable being vulnerable around him. He gives me a solemn nod, knowing he’s one of the few people who still remember the anniversary of Lily's death.

“So I did something and I really hope it’s not crossing a line. The last thing I want to do is upset you.” His tone is serious and kind. I can’t imagine a single thing Grant could do that would make me feel upset.

“I’m sure whatever you did will make me anything but sad.” I look up at him, my eyes feeling glassy and tired.

He spins me around, softly gripping my shoulders. He pushes me toward the bar where I’m met with the most beautiful sign. Surprising, considering the atmosphere.

The Lily:

One part gin

Two parts tonic

Garnished with a Lily

I chuckle with the realization that the bar essentially is just making gin and tonics but even with my laughter I feel the tears that have been missing all week fall onto my cheeks. I wipe my face with my palms and playfully push Grant.

“You’re amazing, you know that?”

“Now what are you doing calling another man amazing when your handsome boyfriend is right here?”

I feel Will’s long arms wrap around my waist, his lips pressing into my neck.

“Don’t be slutty at my party, Liv,” he whispers, his breath reeking of alcohol.

Grant’s eyes go cold in front of me, his lips forming a straight line as he puts his hands in his pockets to hide the fact that his fists are clenched. Behind me, the door creaks open and in walks Ben, his 6 '4” frame towering over everyone, and his gaze immediately finds mine. I feel my stomach turn and suddenly feel hot, the way I did when his thigh pressed against mine at the game.

“Well, look who it is! My older brother,” Will slurs, his tone friendly but his eyes something else entirely.

“You’re drunk, Will,” Ben retorts, without emotion. Annoyingly, his unaffected demeanor when it comes to Will’s childish behavior turns me on even more than his perfect physique.

“I just don’t want Big Foot over here killing everyone’s vibe. The anniversary of Lily’s death is over— why do we need to keep dwelling on this?” Will’s voice has the familiar lilt it gets when he’s trying to piss me off and it works. I feel my face falter at the public humiliation that comes along with your boyfriend disrespecting your best friend's death in the middle of a crowded college bar.

I see Gen approach Will and lightly grab his arm as if to pull him away.

“Let’s get a drink.” Fucking Genevieve . I pluck her hand off of him and she drops it to her side, her expression a mixture of disgusted and confused.

“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary,” I say, giving her a steely glance. “If you're going to be drinking anything, let it be water. You’re not an attractive drunk, Will.” I can see the visible rage in his eyes, the embarrassment when he notices how many people are watching, his fists tight balls at his sides.

Surprisingly Ben reaches for him, pulling him by the shoulder. “Let’s get some air.” Even more shocking, Will lets Ben drag him out. Something about Ben’s commanding demeanor makes my spine tingle in a probably not so appropriate way.

“Hmm, saved by the older brother, huh, Livy?” Gen’s slithering tone fills the silence of their absence immediately. Grant’s gaze slides to the interloper. “Hello, Grant,” she offers with a tight smile before quickly dismissing him.

“Gen,” Grant begrudgingly acknowledges her. Not even Grant can extend his good graces to a girl like her.

“Genevieve, I’m shocked to see you here.” I muster as much sincerity in my voice as I can, given how embarrassed I am by the scene that just unfolded.

Gen looks at me suspiciously, flashing a saccharine smile. “I’ve been everywhere, Livy. I know my way around.”

“Particularly places you’re not wanted, it seems,” I retort.

“Wanted…. unwanted… guess it depends on who you ask,” Gen taunts, batting her eyelashes. If I didn’t have two unfortunate years of experience with her, I’d assume her audacious comments were an act. But I knew better.

I rub my fingertips together to warm them up, hearing Lily’s voice in my head, “Don’t be mean to her Liv, she’s sad, like your dad says— sad people tend to prey on the happy.”

I push her out of my mind. “If you’re trying to imply that my boyfriend wants you here— I don’t know if you noticed, but he completely ignored your offer to get a drink and went outside with his brother. I know you may just be immune to his constant rejection to your advances by now, but watching it in real time is truly mortifying for everyone involved.” We square off, both shooting each other venomous looks before she shakes her head at me, raising her eyebrows slightly, as if I know nothing, as if I’m missing some sort of key piece of information, and when it comes to their relationship I probably am.

I try to ignore the women clamoring for their chance to be a part of Will’s life, but when it comes to him and Gen, how close they are, how she seems to know everything before I do when it comes to Will, it becomes difficult to fight off all of my insecurities. Especially when the alarm bells are ringing in my head that the rumors swirling about the two of them just might be true.

Grant gingerly puts his hand on my shoulder. “C’mon Liv, she’s not worth it.” He stares bullets at Gen and something in her face shifts. It’s almost indistinguishable, but I can tell those words from Grant meant something to her as he pulls me away.

“I’ll take a Lily.” I’m thankful for the heavy pour the bartenders here seem prone to. Grant stepped outside saying there was something he needed to take care of, and I assume it was related to a girl considering the complete lack of context he gave me. Alone at the bar, I take the drink, picking the lily out of the glass and rolling it between my fingertips in an attempt to warm them up.

“Can I just get an IPA?” A deep voice behind me finally inspires me to look up. I’m met with Ben’s heated brown eyes, the darkness of them mysterious in all the right ways. I feel the pulse in my throat quicken.

To be frank, Ben is handsome in a way Will can’t measure up to. Although Will’s boyishness is charming, flutter inducing even, Ben has a darkness to him that draws something deep inside of me. His devilish, molten gaze is so intense you might not be able to find your way out of it. His coolness starkly contrasts the warmth that rolls off him, enveloping me like a wave in the middle of July.

I sense his broad chest crowd the space behind me as he reaches over me to grab his beer, feeling his breath blow in steady streams against the back of head. My shoulders brush against his hard chest as he moves to sit next to me, and a breath hitches in my throat. The coolness that emerges behind my back is quickly replaced by his persistent warmth at my side as he takes the seat next to me. His eyes flicker with worry as I stare back, too lost in all that he is to speak.

I swallow the lump that’s been lodged in my throat from the moment he sat down.

“Do you think anyone realized that drink is basically just a gin and tonic,” he asks, taking a long sip from his beer. I smile into my drink feeling his dark eyes assessing me.

“How’s Will doing?” I ask, staring straight ahead at the liquor lined shelves of the bar, knowing if I meet his eyes the warmth of the liquor and his molten gaze will make it impossible to hide the heat from my face. He sighs and I feel him shift in the seat beside me.

“Well, he’s definitely drunk,” he glances over in Will’s direction and we both spot him making small talk with a blonde girl in a shirt barely covering her chest. I roll my eyes and shake my head, not even surprised, feeling my face burn with shame, a knot forming in my throat.

Ben rests one arm on the bar, his muscled forearm making me feel lightheaded. I shouldn’t be looking at him like this, but there is something about the alcohol flowing through my system, and knowing my boyfriend is talking up a girl across the bar, that makes me feel less guilty about checking Ben out. The short sleeves of his heathered, forest green t-shirt cut right beneath the slight swell of his bicep, his muscles subtly twining down the length of his arm. I instantly feel his closeness, his scent perfectly capturing the humidity right before it rains. Leaves, dirt, air— a smell that only the earth could concoct. His hand lightly laying beside his glass, begging to be held, causes me to shift a bit in my seat.

“So is the bar remembrance thing a yearly thing— or?” We both know he’s trying to change the subject and I’m glad he’s picked up on the fact that I don’t want to acknowledge Will’s whereabouts.

“No,” I sigh, a frown stealing its way on my face and I bite my lip. “Grant put this together. Silly that I hadn’t thought of it before… it’s exactly the kind of thing she would’ve liked.” My mind drifts to the night Lily and I stumbled into a happy hour in the Hamptons. We were high school juniors, but Lily was able to twist her tiny frame and bat her eyes enough to earn us a few drinks on the house. Before rounding the block to make the wobbly walk back to the house, she spotted a bunch of wildflowers, ripped them out of the ground, and ran back to shove them at our gracious bartender.

“When did you guys meet?” His voice has softened, the only hint of any shyness on his behalf. I try to ignore the fact that Will tends to avoid conversations about my best friend and her sudden death. I justify it by the thought that Will was there when everything happened— he went to Lily’s funeral with me, he held my hand. Ben’s kindness in this moment is disarming, and I have never been disarmed.

“Aren’t I supposed to be the one interviewing you?” I say, cracking a smile that I hope conceals my sadness, and suddenly I feel the tears brimming in my eyes. I quickly blink them away while fixing my eyes back toward the liquor bottles.

What is going on with me? Since when am I emotionally disarmed by a complete stranger. Sure— a handsome stranger, a stranger who happens to be the brother of my boyfriend of two years, the boyfriend who is currently flirting with some random girl at my best friend's pseudo memorial— but still, this isn’t like me.

“I assume you were friends for a long time.” He says again hesitantly, as if he realizes his questions may have overstepped my boundaries.

A few tears fall from my eyes, I wipe them off before Ben can get a good look at a girl who’s apparently crumbling before him. “You could say that.”

I suddenly have the intrusive thought to lay my head on his shoulder, burying my face into his neck. He seems like he would feel soft yet firm. I straighten in my seat trying to shake off all the emotions flowing through me about Lily and apparently now Ben.

“I’m sorry Will is…” he trails off, adeptly changing the subject.

“A dick?” I laugh, and he reaches out, wiping a tear off my right cheek as if we’ve known each other for years and didn’t just meet a few days earlier. What's stranger is that I let him. My face flushes against his warmth and I feel a hum of electricity engulfing us as if there is some magnetic field pulling me toward him.

Our closeness registers as I take in the crowded bar with all of our peers and I sit myself firmly on my stool, careful to subtly correct the way I’d been leaning into Ben.

“Yeah, I guess you know him better than I do these days.” I glimpse a hint of sadness, but he quickly ushers it away.

“Ha,” I literally say as I scoff, “I know him so well that in the two years we’ve been together, this week was the first time I’ve met a single family member. The Chapmans are always too busy for me…” That’s how it seemed. Almost like they went out of their way to avoid me.

His eyebrows pull together, then relax in resignation. “Well, lucky for you, I’m not a Chapman. You don’t want to know them anyway.” His soft smile buffers whatever sadness dwells just beneath the surface of those words and I can’t help but offer a sympathetic one back.

“Don’t look at me like that, Beckett,” he distracts me with a flirtatious tone.

“Hmph,” I hum, squinting at him in the dark corner of this bar. “Well, Chapman or not, I’m glad you came back.”

His eyebrows shoot up in mock surprise. “Really? I’ve been upgraded from vigilante this quickly?”

My eyes roll without my express permission and I can’t help but grin at him. “If you hold everything I say in the heat of the moment against me, you’re going to have a hard time being my friend, Cabot.”

“I think I’m going to have a hard time being your friend, regardless.” He says more to himself than me as his gaze heats just enough for me to notice before it cools, as if he realizes that maybe he crossed a line by flirting with me so brazenly. He pushes back from his stool clearing his throat. “I should, uh, probably go find Will.” I feel a weird sense of disappointment knowing this conversation is over. I glance around the bar realizing him and Grant are the only people here who I currently want to talk to and Grant seems to have disappeared.

“Yeah… Thank you. I don’t have the capacity to deal with drunk Will right now,” I say, pushing up from my own stool. “Can you let him know I walked home? I have an early day tomorrow.”

He hesitates, concern flickering over his face. “Let me walk with you,” he says, shifting directions toward the front door rather than the back one Will walked out of.

“I’m starting to think you have a death wish, Cabot.”

His smile reaches the corners of his eyes as they twinkle with mischief. “I can handle my little brother, Olivia.”

“Who said anything about Will?” I wink, and as I do, I notice that my eyes are no longer damp.

I feel Ben’s gaze on my back as I approach the front door, but when I turn around for a final wave goodbye, he’s already gone. I wonder if I imagined the attention he paid me the last half hour, but I’m not delusional enough to imagine the way I felt. I shouldn't feel this way, right? Maybe it’s not weird that I find Ben’s company nice, or comforting, or oddly familiar, because I am dating his brother. Or I’m rationalizing because being near him makes me feel warm and safe, and the way he looks at me heats me in places I should definitely not be heated for anyone but Will. I take a deep, cleansing breath, deciding not to let the guilt bother me as I finally spot Will, the blonde girl leaning so far over the bar table you can now completely see down her shirt.

Barring our unfortunate meeting, my time with Ben has been an unexpected pocket of joy in the usually dark, never ending pit of grief this week brings. And I don’t think I need to intellectualize that.

The thick coolness of the evening August breeze reminds me of my last night with Lily. Normally, this would have thrown me through my third spiral of the day, but it’s about to rain, and the air is filled with more than fragments of the past.