Chapter 21
Casey Joe
“You always did like watching the sun come up at the ass-crack of dawn,” my best friend said as he shuffled his boot-clad feet through the dewy grass.
Summer hadn’t completely given up yet, but she’d been sharing the day with crisp, cold mornings for a week or so now. It wouldn’t be long before she was gone completely, replaced by frosted grass and the need for a sweatshirt all day long.
“Not my fault the sun wants to rise at the ass-crack of dawn.” I gestured toward the ombre colors just beginning to paint the sky. “At least it’s later now than in the middle of summer.”
Lance eyed the beer bottle in my hand, but he said nothing as he took the seat next to me. With our boots stretched out on the fire pit, our pajama pants, and sweatshirts, I was sure we made quite an early morning image.
“You wanna tell me why you’re drinking at sunrise?” Lance asked, somehow managing to make the question completely non-judgmental.
“You wanna tell me why you’re railin’ my kid so damn hard the whole fuckin’ town can hear it?” I shot back.
Lance snorted. “Who says I was the one doing the railin?”
I tipped the beer bottle his way. “Touchy,” I quipped, doing my best to bite back the grin.
Lance snorted at the joke.
Way back when we were teens, we’d seen the word touché in a book we had to read for homework.
We’d pronounced it touchy, and it wasn’t until class the next day that we heard the teacher pronounce it correctly.
Lance and I had nearly pissed ourselves laughing over our mispronunciation, but we’d kept using it for years after.
The word was always sure to bring a bit of levity to a moment.
And fuck if that moment didn’t need some levity.
“Been a while since I seen you with a beer,” Lance tried again.
“Been a while since I had one.” I held it out to him. “I’ve got plenty.”
Lance shook his head. “Nah, Hudson was fixing breakfast when I left.”
We sat in silence for a moment.
“What’s going on?” Lance asked.
“Not a damn thing,” I drawled, rolling the beer bottle from one hand to the next.
“What’s got you thinking about drinking?”
“Who the fuck says I’m thinkin’ about drinkin’?”
“You gonna drink that?” Lance didn’t look at me, just stared straight ahead at his breath crystalizing on the cold, still air.
“Maybe.” God, I wanted to. Wanted to slice open a vein and just pour the whole damn six-pack right in. Lose myself to the numbness.
“You want me to go buy you a pack of smokes too? Fuck it all in one fell swoop?”
“Fuck off.” Truth was, the smokes had been the hardest to break, but they were the ones I wanted to turn to the least. The constant fullness in my chest, the congestion, the low throbbing in my head, all of that had cleared up without the smokes.
Taking a run didn’t send pain screaming through my lungs anymore.
My clothes didn’t smell like smoke. Even my damn teeth looked better.
“Maybe you hand that over and go home.” Lance still wasn’t looking my way, but I knew he was there one hundred percent. My rock, my friend, my support even after all these years.
“This is my fuckin’ home,” I bit out, but I handed the bottle to him.
Lance twisted the cap and poured the amber liquid into a frothy mess in the grass.
I snorted. “Damn mother fucker, wastin’ my beer.” Grabbing another from the six-pack, I twisted it open and held it under my nose. Breathing in deeply, I let it transport me back to all the times I’d lost myself to drinking.
“What’s up, Case?” Lance’s words were quiet on the crisp air.
“Used to be so easy,” I said, my eyes trained on the gorgeous colors filling the horizon beyond the orchard.
Lance took the bottle from me and poured it out.
With a third beer rolling from hand to hand, I recalled the wash of nothingness that would take over when I’d worked my way through a six-pack—sometimes even nine or ten. No more hurt, no more shame, no more anger, just oblivion.
When the bottle slipped from my hands and thunked in the frosty grass, Lance picked it up and emptied that one too.
“I’ve got more,” I said, grabbing the fourth bottle. I hadn’t had a drink in a while. I could probably bury it all with just three beers.
“Where’s Bryce?” Lance asked.
“Fuck off.”
Lance just hummed in response.
“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, chucking the beer bottle at his head.
The fucker caught it.
Fuck.
Lance smiled. “You know it doesn’t matter to any of us.”
I didn’t answer.
“We don’t care if you find someone or stay perpetually single, bemoaning the one who got away for the rest of your life,” Lance said like he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Fuck off. Missy wasn’t the one who got away.”
Lance cocked a brow my way. “Who said I was talking about Missy?”
I spit and picked up the fifth bottle of beer.
“Stay single, date women, date men, fall in love with Bryce…none of it matters to us,” Lance continued. “We love you just the way you are. The only thing we care about is that you’re happy and healthy. We want you here with us for the long haul.”
My chest ached like a fist squeezed my heart in a tight grip.
I twisted the cap off the beer and sniffed it again. “Bryce is in bed,” I said. “My bed.”
Lance hummed again.
We sat silently.
“Is that what has you wanting to drink?”
“I don’t want to drink,” I answered as I poured the beer to the ground.
“Then what’s going on?” Lance asked.
“Sometimes feelin’ all this shit is a bunch of shit.”
Lance chuckled. “Agreed. But what’s the alternative? Numbing yourself to within an inch of your life and missing out on truly living?”
“Being numb is a lot easier.”
“Is it?”
I picked up the sixth and final beer bottle. “Do you know how many years I missed?”
“Do you know how many years you still have left?” Lance asked. He held his hand out for the beer, but I didn’t give it up.
“I think there’s somethin’ I need to do,” I said. “Don’t wanna fuckin’ do it. Don’t even wanna fuckin’ talk about it.”
“Sometimes we have to do shit we don’t want to do if it means making things better.
” Lance knocked his boot against mine. “You didn’t want to give up smoking and drinking, but you did it because it was for the best. Didn’t want to start exercising, but you did it because your health was on the line. ”
He let those words sink in.
“Hell, I think there were some times way back then you didn’t even want to keep on keepin’ on, but you did it for your boys no matter how bad it hurt.”
The noise I made was supposed to be more of a scoff and less of a sob, but I figured Lance got the idea all the same.
I opened the beer and took another long, deep breath. One beer wouldn’t hurt. Hell, even my doctor had said I didn’t have to cut out alcohol completely. I could just take a few swigs.
But it wasn’t about the beer.
It was the longing for the numbness.
The desperation to avoid everything and just bury it all.
It was about not having the right tools to deal with the feelings bombarding me.
Not knowing how to come to terms with what I’d missed all these years.
Knowing what I wanted but not knowing how to handle the influx of emotions without masking the pain with chemicals.
Not everything was raw and painful. I had my boys, Jack, Lance, and Bryce. Everything with the most important people in my life was good.
Really good.
But I’d quickly learned it was nearly impossible to let the good shit in without having to deal with the bad shit too.
I wanted nothing more than to look forward to all the good that came next, but I knew deep down I couldn’t take that step if I didn’t fix myself first.
I had to learn how to deal with the bad if I ever wanted to be free to live the good.
“You okay?” Lance asked.
“I will be.”
It was maybe the scariest truth I’d ever spoken.
After the sun cleared the horizon, Lance stood and stretched.
With a hand on my shoulder—I guess he figured I wouldn’t get in too much trouble with just one beer left—he said, “Do what you have to do, bud. Your family? We’re here, not going anywhere.
” He made it a few paces back toward his and Hudson’s place before he paused and turned back to me.
“I’m counting Bryce in that too. Pretty sure he isn’t going anywhere either.
Whatever you two decide you’ve got going, I think he’s here for the long haul. ”
The sun was higher in the sky when the beer bottle being taken from my hands jerked me awake. Bryce smirked but didn’t say a word as he tossed the bottle to the grass on the other side of the fire pit and handed me a flannel shirt.
We still hadn’t spoken when he moved the second chair closer and took a seat next to me. He reached over, spread the flannel over me like I was damn fuckin’ toddler, and then took my hand in his under the material.
And still we sat quietly.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it.
“Hey,” I mumbled.
“Hey,” Bryce said. I didn’t need to look at him to see his soft smile.
“Sorry I left.”
He shrugged. “It’s okay. Probably still be sleeping if Henry hadn’t tried to knock my damn door down.”
Then I did look at him. “What? Why? What’s wrong?”
“Lance and Hudson saw you over here and woke up Henry and Jack to see if they knew what was going on. When they didn’t have an answer, Lance headed over here and Henry came to my place.”
I winced. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s all good.”
Silence fell over us again.
It wasn’t uncomfortable. Sitting with Bryce had always been easy whether we talked until we ran out of words or we just took up space.
“I told Dizzy we weren’t really dating.” Bryce rolled his head on the back of his chair to look my way.
“Why?” Did I want to know the answer?
He shrugged again. “Just always felt wrong to lie. Wanted to clear the air.” He gave my hand a squeeze. “So, I guess we aren’t fake dating anymore.”
And there it was.
My opening.
I took too long, and Bryce breathed in deeply. “This is the part of the day after amazing sex with your friend and roommate where you say you’re glad we aren’t fake dating anymore because you want us to date for real.”
I chuckled. “Oh, really? Is that what I’m fuckin’ supposed to say?” I returned the squeeze.
“Only if it’s what you want,” he whispered. “If not, I’m being one hundred percent honest that I can make do with just being friends. I love you, I love your family, I love this town. If you don’t feel the same about me, I’ll take you in whatever way I can get you.”
I leaned over the arm of my chair and hooked my hand around the back of his neck to pull him close.
With my forehead resting against his, I rubbed my nose to his.
“That’s a fuckin’ nice sentiment, but it’s a bunch of bullshit and no way to live.
You should either have every single part of the man you love or tell him to fuck right off.
None of this we can just be friends shit.
” I pressed a hard kiss to Bryce’s mouth.
“’Cause I gotta tell you, I feel a whole fuckin’ lot different toward you than I feel toward Lance.
He’s my best friend, but you’re my—” I took a deep shuddering breath to cover the way my voice cracked.
“I don’t think I can be just friends with you, and I sure as fuck don’t wanna try it. ”
Bryce’s lips opened on a whimper as I took his mouth. The warm, comforting kiss full of promise, but laced with the unknown.
When we broke for air, Bryce’s eyes met mine. “Okay, so what pulled you from bed? What has you up here with a six-pack?” He closed his eyes for a long moment. “What does all of it mean for us?”