Chapter 30
Seventeen years ago
Nick wiped a sweaty palm on his button-down shirt and stared at Aubrey’s front door. He squeezed the bouquet of flowers so
hard the stems oozed.
He should just press the damn doorbell already, instead of standing out here like an idiot. He knew this house better than
his own. But he’d only ever climbed through the window when Aubrey’s father’s silver SUV sat in the driveway, as it did now.
He glanced down at the slacks he’d bought from the Gap. Were they overkill? Probably, but it was too late to change. And this
wasn’t getting any easier. He squared his shoulders and jabbed the bell. Chimes rang inside the house.
Silence. Then thumping. Nick’s heart took up the rhythm of brisk footsteps. Sweat dampened his forehead.
The door swung inward. Green eyes, set beneath bushy red brows, considered him through the screen.
“Mr. MacLean,” Nick stammered. “Hi. It’s good to see you again. I came to see if Aubrey was—”
“She’s gone.”
“Oh.” He realized he’d offered the flowers and lowered his arm again. Stupid. “Okay. I can come back later.”
“No, I mean she’s gone. To New York.”
The wheels inside Nick’s mind ground. Afternoon sunlight slanted beneath the portico, searing his cheek. “What? But she said
she’d be back today.”
“She would’ve been, but the time away cleared her head. We packed her up last night. She left for NYU this morning.”
“She . . . did?” The buzz of Nick’s voice reached him like a distant hive of bees.
Mr. MacLean’s caterpillar eyebrows crooked. A show of . . . compassion, Nick’s brain spit out, as if reading the word from a dictionary. A dictionary about ten thousand miles removed from this
moment.
“I’m sorry,” Mr. MacLean said. “She thought it would be easier this way, without a goodbye. I’m sure you understand.”
Nick nodded, then wondered why, because he absolutely did not understand. How could Aubrey just . . . leave, without a word?
Yet as he contemplated, a slumbering dread awakened in his gut. It cracked open a sleepy eye and smiled, its teeth like a
row of knives.
Because he’d known, hadn’t he? All this time. From the moment he’d first kissed Aubrey, he’d seen this coming. He’d gone hurtling
off the cliff without any attempt to check himself, and the fall had gone on for so long he’d almost begun to trust it, yet
here it was at last, the ground rushing up to meet him, the crashing end that would splinter his bones to pulp.
He looked up. Shit, was it his turn to say something? And where had his flowers gone? He glanced down. Torn petals dotted
his shiny black shoes, like fallen tears.
“Do you want to come in?” Aubrey’s father pushed open the screen. “I realize this must be hard.”
The offer zapped through Nick like a bullet, lethal. Final. He would never be invited inside if Aubrey hadn’t actually left. “She’s not waiting for me, in New York?” a small voice said. His. “It’s over?”
“I’m afraid so, son.”
Son. His own father didn’t even call him that. The word seemed significant—one last brushstroke on the heartbreaking tableau of
this conversation, the cruelest one of his life. “I . . . I don’t want to come in.”
“I understand.” The screen slapped shut. “And I’m sorry, again. But it’s best if you don’t contact her. Better for everyone
to make a clean break.”
Acid scorched the back of Nick’s throat. Clean? Right. This was about as clean as having a leg hacked off with a rusty spoon.
“Yes, sir,” he said, and walked away.
His shoes thunked hollowly down the steps. When he reached the cul-de-sac, he kept walking, and then he walked some more,
each footfall another link in the chain leading him forward, a lifeline dragging him away from the house that would forever
contain the bloody wreckage of his ruptured heart.
He walked. And walked. He didn’t stop until gravel crunched under his feet. When he looked down, mud caked his brand-new shoes.
When had he walked through mud? He didn’t remember.
He glanced around. An unpaved lot flanked the highway he now stood beside. The sky had dimmed to a mocking peach while crickets
jeered from the shadows. The swaying trees hissed recriminations. In the middle of it all, a neon sign blinked.
Wish You Were Beer.
The bar. The one where all the guys from the mill drank after work. Nick had never been invited, because everyone knew he
was underage, but who gave a shit right now?
He crossed the parking lot. Inside, dark paper blacked out the windows. Stale smoke and gloom swallowed him up.
Perfect.
At the counter, he asked for the first thing that came to mind. “An old-fashioned.”
He had no idea what the fuck that even was. Just that he needed one. And he needed it now, before his next breath could knife
its way free of his chest and splatter blood all over the counter.
The bartender raised a brow. “You got an ID?”
Nick took the guy’s measure. He knew him from work. What was his name? Tom? Todd? He was a part-timer, but they’d crossed
paths once or twice. “You don’t recognize me?”
Tom-Todd cocked his head. “Oh, yeah. You that kid who slings scrap? The new one, from Baltimore?”
“Yeah.”
Tom-Todd grunted, friendly. “Well, kid, you look like you got hit by a Mack truck.”
“Yeah. Feels that way.”
Tom-Todd crossed his arms and pondered. After a long minute, he waved to a stool. Nick tried to sit, but it turned into more
of a collapse. His bones caved in, too brittle to prop up his leaden body.
“If anyone asks,” Tom-Todd said, “you weren’t here, and I didn’t serve you, all right?”
Nick bobbed his head.
“I’ll hold you to that.” Tom-Todd performed some kind of alcoholic alchemy and set a mean-looking drink on the polished wood.
Nick downed it in two gulps.
And gagged. Apparently, an old-fashioned consisted of a solid punch to the face, somehow delivered via glass.
Exactly what he needed. “Another.”
“Damn, kid. You lose your girl, or something?”
He ignored that. “Please.”
Tom-Todd hesitated. “How bad do you need it?”
“Pretend like my life depends on it.”
“Okay. Shit. But this is a onetime deal, you got it?”
“Yep.”
After that, Tom-Todd left him alone, except for the steady supply of old-fashioneds he kept up.
Nick drank until the floor heaved. He halfway expected his stool to slide down the bar and dump him against the wall. Or was
all this movement inside his head? Whatever. Either physics had broken down, or he had. Fifty-fifty chance, either way.
At some point, he paid the tab. Aubrey would be disappointed that he’d dipped into the New York savings for booze, but . . .
No. No, she wouldn’t. She’d left him. He could drink himself into the ground with that money, if he wanted.
Fuck.
He stumbled out into the balmy night, then picked a direction and started walking. Cars whizzed by, a roaring river of light.
Long grass snatched at his ankles. A few times, he fell, but lying on his back was intolerable. The stars wheeled madly overhead,
so he got up and walked again, just to hold them still.
His head didn’t work right. Thoughts slid over one another, too slippery to catch hold of. Except for one. He should make
sure Aubrey was really gone. Check to see if Mr. MacLean had told the truth.
Nick laughed, a violent bark. Pathetic. Of course Mr. MacLean had told the truth. Of course Aubrey had left him.
Still, after a minute or an hour or a century, he found himself in front of her house, more by luck than any real sense of
reckoning. The journey around back to her bedroom felt different this time, like mounting the gallows instead of ascending
to paradise.
Sure enough, her window offered no light, no movement. He pressed his face to the glass. The bed was neatly made. And empty.
He didn’t remember leaving. But somehow, he was on the road again, or maybe in the road, and what time was it, but it didn’t
matter, nothing mattered, and where was he going, no, who the fuck cared about that, either.
Damn, he needed another drink.
A car pulled up beside him. Nick kept plodding forward, the only direction available to him.
A window whirred. “Hey. New kid.”
He glanced down, faintly surprised that someone had acknowledged him. And that the someone looked vaguely familiar. Why had
this girl parked here? No, wait, he was moving. Did that mean she was driving?
“You know you’re walking on the yellow line, right?”
“Who’re you?” he said thickly, then startled. That wasn’t his voice.
The girl laughed. “Wow, you are absolutely shitfaced. I’m Tansy. You don’t remember?”
He sped up. No, he didn’t remember, and he didn’t care.
“I saw you kissing Aubrey MacLean outside the basketball game, over the winter.”
Aubrey. The name exploded in his gut like dynamite. “She left me,” he mumbled.
The girl made a sound he didn’t know how to interpret. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
She said nothing for a moment. Her car crept along, keeping pace. Lights zoomed out of the darkness, brightening in his face.
A hand closed around his arm and yanked. Nick fell sideways, his body thunking across the sash of Tansy’s window. The oncoming car swerved and rushed off into the night, horn blaring.
“You’re gonna get yourself killed,” she said.
He hissed and pawed his way free of her grip. Then realized she had a point. The double-yellow line glittered beneath his
shoes.
“Get in,” Tansy said.
He did, even though doing so assaulted him with memories of what had happened the last time a girl had convinced him to get in her car. Another dagger joined the array of weaponry already bristling from his guts.
Tansy watched as he puddled bonelessly into the passenger seat. “Put your seat belt on.”
“Why? Where’re we going?”
“Where do you want to go?”
His head flopped toward her. He left it there. She was . . . pretty, maybe. Sort of. Blond hair, blue eyes, unassuming features
that all agreed, like repeated examples of the word pleasant.
“You’re nice,” he said.
She laughed, with an edge. “Not really.”
“Oh.”
“You want me to take you home?”