Chapter 34
Life became almost mundane. Every morning, Aberlour would wake up in his new digs—a dinky thing that reeked of cigarette smoke and was situated on the poor side of town—and he’d put away the gun he slept with before jumping in the shower and heading off to the fair.
Most mornings, Bart would greet him with a smile and hand him a cup of hot black coffee, yapping about his latest adventure or the latest gossip.
Aberlour would listen, grateful for something to fill his perpetually silent world, as the fairground came to life around them.
Then, for the next eight hours, he’d hustle people into trying their hand at winning a prize from his booth.
No one succeeded in shooting all eight balloons, which he found tremendously gratifying, since each pop made him flinch and elicited unwanted memories.
Too close to the sound of a gun being fired, each one of those goddamned pops made him edgy.
Then the fair would close, Aberlour would bid Bart good evening, and head to the same bar where he’d hustled people at darts with Betsy’s old owner. There, he’d shoot a few rounds by himself, nurse a scotch or a beer, and head home a couple of hours later.
And so it went.
It was mundane. Boring, pathetic, even, but it was better than endless sorrow and grief, so he took it and held onto it with everything he had.
If his voicemail sometimes flashed with a new message from Oliver, Aberlour quickly cleared it from his phone. He’d found an equilibrium. A routine, though boring, that he could live with. At least for now. Letting Oliver back in would only drudge up the past.
So it went.
But Oliver Darling would not be ignored.
On a hot Wednesday afternoon in September, nearly a year since he’d last spoken to Oliver, Aberlour was counting the hours until he could close up the booth. He watched Bart fan himself desultorily as he entertained customers at his booth.
“Better luck next time,” Aberlour told the young man who’d just failed to win his date a teddy bear.
He looked dejected. He should. He’d only managed to pop one balloon.
The brunette on his arm laughed and told him it was alright.
They kissed, and Aberlour had to resist the urge to roll his eyes at the display.
They walked away holding hands.
Aberlour shook his head and went about replacing the single popped balloon. He didn’t always reset the board, but leaving an empty space for that one balloon made his game appear too hard. He was nearly done when he heard someone behind him clear their throat.
“Gavin Aberlour?”
Abe spun around, searching for the owner of the unfamiliar voice.
The man standing there frowning at Aberlour was about 5’3”, with a thick mustache, sweating profusely in the hot sun.
“Are you Gavin Aberlour?” he asked, reaching back to pull something from his back pocket. For a single moment, Abe though he might be armed. He didn’t flinch away. If he was about to get gunned down in the middle of a fair, then so be it.
“I am,” he answered with a firm nod.
The man extended a pink envelope towards Abe.
Aberlour stared at it in surprise but didn’t take it.
The man leaned closer and thrust it at Abe.
Aberlour finally relented and plucked the envelope from his sweaty hand.
It had an almost glossy feel. Pale pink, with a gold seal. He stared at it like it might bite him.
“Sign here?” The guy showed him where to sign on his tablet.
Aberlour took the stylus and signed his name.
The man took the tablet and stylus back and then promptly disappeared into the late afternoon crowd.
Aberlour stared down at the envelope. He itched to open it, curiosity eating away at him. But there was a part of him that suspected he wasn’t going to like the contents of the envelope.
He set it aside to deal with after work. Surely, it was best to handle the damned thing with a drink in his hand.
He’d barely made it to five o’clock when Bart came over and knocked his cane against the side of Aberlour’s booth. Looking smug, he grinned in Aberlour’s general direction.
“Did you get served with a subpoena?” Bart asked him, looking genuinely amused.
“No,” Aberlour replied, as he worked on closing down for the day. The pink envelope was still setting on the ledge where he’d left it earlier.
“Ohhhh, a lover then—” Bart said, even more amused.
Aberlour rolled his eyes and shook his head, even though his reaction was wasted on Bart.
“An invitation, I think,” Aberlour muttered as an idea about exactly what was in that envelope came to mind. One that tightened his gut uncomfortably.
Bart’s smile quickly faded, like he suddenly regretted asking about it in the first place.
“Why don’t you open it then.” Not really a question as much as it was an invitation, as if Bart just wanted to help in some way. The thought was absurd, but for some reason—
Leaning against the ledge, Aberlour reached for the letter and ran his finger over the top of the seal.
“High quality paper. Someone’s got money,” Bart commented.
“How’d you know?” It never ceased to amaze Aberlour how much Bart could ascertain from his surroundings despite his blindness.
“I can tell by the sound when you touched it,” he shrugged. “Thick and soft, with a high cotton content.”
Aberlour hummed and ran his thumb under the folded edge, splitting the seal quickly.
There was a single white card inside. It was embossed with gold and Aberlour read it before he could think better of it.
Ms. Abigail Dudson & Mr. Oliver Darling cordially invite you to attend their engagement party on October 15, 2016, at 6:00 p.m., at the Whiplash Lounge in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
“Well?” Bart asked impatiently.
Aberlour looked up, having momentarily forgotten that he was not alone. That the outside world still existed—even if his had just come to a screeching halt.
“An invitation to an engagement party,” Aberlour replied tersely, doing his very best to swallow down his anger.
“It smells like roses,” Bart said, wrinkling his nose like he disapproved.
Aberlour brought the letter up to his nose, and took a quiet whiff, shocked to find that it did in fact smell like fucking roses.
“Are you going to go?”
“No,” Aberlour said, shaking his head. He looked down at it and began to read the fine print at the bottom of the card about RSVPs, the event location, and reserved parking.
“Could be fun. I could go as your date, and cause a real scene,” Bart suggested with a chuckle.
Aberlour entertained the thought for a single moment. It would cause a scene, and Oliver would most likely stare daggers at him the entire time. If only to have the chance to see his reaction, Aberlour considered attending. In the end, he shook his head.
“Not my kind of crowd. I’m not going,” he said with a determined shake of his head.
Bart gave a deep sigh like he found Aberlour incredibly trying. Changing the subject, he invited Abe to join him for a beer at a local bar, which Abe politely declined.
His mind lost in souvenirs and possibilities, and his hand holding onto that blasted stinking envelope, he went home instead.
He wasn’t surprised to receive the announcement.
Not at all. He’d seen the ring, after all.
But he was surprised to see it had taken Oliver so long to pop the question.
He briefly wondered why, and because Aberlour was a masochist at heart, he let his mind ponder whether Oli might have been uncertain about proposing—maybe he had doubts. Maybe he still thought of Aberlour.
He shouldn’t have let himself wonder. He should have shut everything down, as he had everything else connected to Oli.
But, dammit, it was too late. There was an itch there now in the form of a question that he needed to scratch.
As a result, when he got home and saw a new voicemail notification on his phone, he wasn’t strong enough to resist listening to it.
“Hey, Gavin. I know you won’t call me back, but the courier confirmed the delivery and I figured I’d try just one more time.
I’d really like to see you there. I miss you, and I could really use a beer with you.
Just—” Oliver halted and sighed, the sound so achingly familiar, it felt like warm fingers at the back of his neck.
“Feels like forever. Please. I’d like to see you.
” There was a long pause. “Alright. See you soon, I hope.”
Then the machine clicked off. Aberlour stood there and stared at it blindly as Oli’s words came back to him with painful clarity.
I miss you.
What if—what if Oli had at least one critical doubt about this engagement. What if this was his way of reaching out to Aberlour one last time.
It shouldn’t have mattered. God only knew he’d fucked Aberlour’s life up enough. Oli didn’t need to be saved. And if he did, Aberlour sure as hell wasn’t volunteering for the job.
He wasn’t.
He wouldn’t go.