Chapter 19
NINETEEN
Davis
I love this bar. I don’t think in the eighteen years I’ve been coming here, the owners have replaced a single piece of furniture or so much as a patch of carpet, and you can tell with the poorly-covered stink that hangs faintly in the air.
We started coming here because I was only nineteen and they never carded, but now, these people are my family. I stop in every now and again to check in on them, drop off shit for their kids’ birthdays and graduations, or for nights like tonight.
“What’ll it be tonight, boys?”
I don’t think Lynn ever takes a day off from this place – she’s here every time I come in, and when Colt and I tuck back into our usual booth for a long night, like we are tonight, she’s always around to take care of us out the entire time we’re here.
She’s kind of stuck in the early two thousands; her short hair is teased up high on her head, the ends flicking up in an outward curl, she wears a cropped tank top that show off the boobs she got done probably twenty years ago, and a pair of low-rising bell bottom jeans hug her hips.
I’ve thought about it. Never did anything about it, but…I’ve definitely thought about it.
Thought about her eldest daughter, too, but Colt would have me strung up by my ankles for that one.
“What the hell,” Colt shrugs. “How about a sazerac? We’re celebrating, tonight.”
“Damn straight we are, rat bastard!” I reach over the table to smack him in the arm. “Bring us a couple glasses and a bottle of something strong, darlin’.”
Today was probably one of our biggest investing wins in recent months, and I’m fucking stoked on it. We’ve been babysitting this one for four years, waiting for the exact perfect moment to sell, and today that patience paid off – twenty-five million a piece, in fact. It was a good fucking day.
Pouring each of us a few fingers of single malt, I ask, “Your wife gonna kick my ass if we black out?”
“Yes,” my best friend laughs as he pulls his glass toward himself.
I reach for my phone and pull up a florist’s website, quickly placing an order to be delivered ASAP with some flowers that look like the ones she has their bedroom decorated with.
“Our apology is on its way.”
It takes us all of thirty minutes to down our first three rounds of drinks, clinking our glasses together and cheering every time that we take a drink, like a couple of fucking high schoolers stealing from Dad’s liquor cabinet on a Friday night.
“It has been a damn good year, all things considered,” Colt says, clinking his glass against mine before downing drink number four.
“Brother, you have no fucking idea.” I throw my own drink down my throat and slam the emptied glass back onto the table. Stretching over the back of the booth, I ask, “My room still set up?”
“Your room will always be set up,” he chuckles. “Rowan washes the sheets every week, just in case you crash at home.”
“I love that woman.”
I could tell him about finding Noelle. I want to tell him.
But if I do, it’ll be one of two reactions: either he flips out like his wife did, thinking it’s rainbows and puppies that shit glitter, or he realizes where she works and the two of us wind up in prison for killing the only untouchable fucking guy in the city.
So instead, I bite my tongue and sip on my drink.
·
I stumble into the house behind Colt, headed in a beeline for the kitchen. The flowers I sent at the start of the night sit perched on the kitchen island, with a note sitting in front of them written on some fancy, cutesy stationery. Colt moves toward the counter to pick it up, reading it out loud.
“Nice try, boys,” he slurs. “Tylenol is on your bedside tables. Take it with some Gatorade. XO.” He presses the note to his chest, and I cackle. “I’m going to go upstairs and see my beautiful, amazing wife,” he tells me.
“Emmett still here?” He nods, bending down to try and get his shoes off quietly, but he can barely fucking stand. Lightweight. “Awesome. I’m eating his food.”
While Colt wobbles his way toward the stairs, using the banister for support, I move to the freezer and dig out the box of chicken nuggets calling my name. I throw about thirty of them into the air fryer and grab a bottle of water from the fridge, chugging it while I wait.
They keep their house so goddamn quiet at night, I don’t know how they stand it.
Taking my food down the hall, past the girls’ rooms, I kick open the door at the end of the hall and walk into my room.
The smell of fresh laundry hangs in the air, like Rowan came in here and put fresh sheets on the bed while we were out because she knew I would be coming home.
I drop onto the bed and grab the remote sitting next to the bottle of Tylenol on the nightstand, clicking on the TV, and I scroll through Hulu until I land on a show that’ll work for background noise.
Bill and Martina adopted me as a kid, but Colt and Rowan have adopted me as an adult. I’ve always had my own room in Colt’s houses, since the day I moved out here; but his wife has me set up in here like I’m another one of their kids.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like it.