6. Chapter Six
Chapter Six
Adrian
I t’s been 80 days since I found the ring Levi had kept hidden in his sock drawer, and I wonder when I’ll learn to stop counting. After a year? Five? Or will I still know how long it’s been on the day I take my last breath?
It’s been 109 days since Levi took his.
The small velvet box is stupidly heavy in my hand tonight, even when it weighs nearly nothing at all, empty and waiting just in case I figure out how to put the wedding band back where it belongs. It was never mine to wear when the promises Levi might’ve made proved impossible to keep, but I still don’t take it off when it’s easier to live some kind of lie. Our happily ever after, or at least something close.
With the box returned and the drawer slammed shut again, I brush a fingertip over the perfect curve of the metal around my finger, like maybe there’s a way to apologize to a piece of jewelry for all the things that went wrong, and then an ugly laugh gets pulled from my throat when I can’t find the tears to cry. I need to get out of our bedroom before I can’t find a way to breathe either, and most nights like this have me leaving for a late-night jog in the dark or driving up to Griffith Observatory just for the fuck of it.
But I’ve already decided to go a little further tonight, to a bar I never would’ve chosen on my own. Once upon a time, I felt a dozen different highs and lows there, and I’ve had trouble feeling much of anything since.
Maybe scraping the palms of my hands against a brick wall would be a good start.
Yee fucking haw.
The drive is too familiar for one I hadn’t planned to make again, and the half hour or so that it takes me to get to Trailhead is probably for the best, country music playing on the radio because I might as well acclimate myself to one thing or another. It’s fine, mostly, until the beat of something I don’t recognize has me tapping my hand against the steering wheel, and the clack of the ring I wear leaves me close to pulling over to throw up on the side of the road. I want to be over it by now—whatever it is—and I press a fist to my thigh to quell the burst of nausea. Whether it returns when I park in the same spot I’d left nearly three months ago is nobody’s business but my own.
I’m more than a little upside down, but I’m counting on whiskey to turn the world around again.
It’s a Saturday night and Trailhead is expectedly crowded and loud and warm, and there’s a moment when I glance to my side as though Levi’s smile will make us both confident enough to wade through it. He’s not there though—won’t be again—and I’m not sure why I thought to look for help from him anyway. After a deep breath, the boots I hate steer me clear of the dance floor, and when I recognize one bartender’s flawless body from a glimpse past a couple dozen cowboys, I make my way toward him, ignoring where Beau’s regular barstool has been taken by someone I don’t know.
I’m a little surprised to find that there’s an open seat anywhere else, but I suppose there are enough people shooting pool or riding the bull or two stepping or maybe braving the chilly November night in the beer garden, and I’m able to slide onto a stool without knocking into someone on either side.
Darren tosses me a coaster and a dimpled smile before he asks me whether I want the same as usual, and it’s a dangerous question when I might want so much more.
I say yes to the drink, and I’m grateful when Darren can’t stick around for a conversation about it.
With the cool glass in my hand, I quickly scan the room and note that the bar seems mostly full of rowdy groups tonight, the laughter loud when it’s both close and so far away. After I breathe a sigh of relief at the sight of people who don’t give a shit about me, I force myself to wash it down with my Jack and ginger a second later. There are a couple of faces I think are familiar from the moments I figured out how to look away from Levi and Beau, and Darren is working with Riley and the older woman I remember seeing a time or two. They leave me alone for a while, either because they’re busy or because they read me well, and I comb the hair back from my forehead before I take another few sips over another few minutes.
My head is turned toward the far end of the bar another few minutes after that.
“If you’re worried about him showing up tonight, don’t be. Relax and enjoy the rest of your drink.”
I shake my head to disguise the way I flinched at the sound of Darren’s voice, and I do us both the favor of not playing stupid enough to ask him who he’s referring to, bullshit not really my thing.
“I thought he was always here on Saturday nights.”
“He was always here a lot of nights,” Darren says. “Not so much anymore.”
“Did something happen? Have you talked to him?”
“Relax,” Darren repeats, the word doing nothing to calm me. “I talked to him—I don’t know, a week or so ago?”
I frown. “Okay, and when was the last time he was here?”
Darren glances at Riley, who’s moved close enough for their eyebrow piercing to catch one of the lights above my head when they pick up a stray bottle cap. I’m missing something, my heart thumping in an attempt to figure it out while it warns me—a little too late—that I should have kept my mouth shut.
“The night he was here with you.”
It’s perfectly gentle, the way Riley answers me, but maybe it doesn’t matter when I can’t hear anything but my own pulse anymore, guilt thick when it rolls through my veins. I’m not even sure where it begins or ends, my shame there to remind me that not only did I fuck another man a month after the death of my boyfriend or fiancé or whatever Levi was or might have been, but I also fucked Riley’s friend and Darren’s ex-husband as if anything like that could’ve been hidden in the dark.
Riley’s voice echoes. Here with you, here with you, here with you.
Yeah, there’s that too, the suggestion of something so far from true that I want to laugh, the idea even more ridiculous when there’s a stranger sitting on Beau’s barstool tonight, a betrayal of something I refuse to understand.
“I’m sorry,” I sigh, wondering whether a big enough tip will allow me to slip away without Darren holding a grudge for a very long time.
I drop my head and pick up my glass, swirling the last of my drink and watching the melting ice cubes knock together. I want a second one, but my thirst wars with my need to be anywhere else if the way I wanted to hurt myself doesn’t come here anymore. I’m no closer to asking for another round or saying my goodbyes when Darren crowds me there.
“I’m not mad. And if there’s something you think you need to apologize for, I’m gonna tell you right now that it has nothing to do with me.”
I swallow my whiskey and at least a few questions, Riley having disappeared before they could be expected to answer any more, and then I push my glass forward. “You’re really not?”
“He’s really not. ”
My eyes close at the sound of a voice that has no fucking right to make me shiver the way it does, especially not when it’s been weeks since I last heard it. Hell, I’d only heard it that one night and the following foggy morning—a few of my weakest moments in the middle of my most inexcusable dreams can’t possibly count—and I force myself to shake my head because I need to remember how to breathe. I can still feel Darren in front of me and now there’s an entire memory closing in from behind, and while that might’ve been my reason for walking through Trailhead’s heavy doors tonight, I’m suddenly worried I’ll lack the strength to get back out again.
“Welcome back, babe,” Darren hums somewhere over my head, his half smile falling to me by the time I open my eyes again. “What about you? This mean you’re staying for another one?”
It’s a drink offer that sounds a little like an accusation, but I’m not sure it matters when I want to say yes either way. I start to tell Darren as much, but that single syllable gets lost along the way, and I’m frustrated into silence by the nearness of the man sliding onto the stool next to me.
“You mind if this next round’s on me?”
“I don’t mind,” I say, too quietly maybe. I clear my throat before I look up at Darren. “He can take care of my second one and whatever he’s having. I’ll buy us shots of Jack.”
We’re both silent until the drinks have been left on the bar top, and then we pick up the shot glasses at the same time and turn, almost imperceptibly, toward each other.
“Adrian. ”
“Beau.”
We throw back the whiskey, and I let myself feel the burn of a couple of things I shouldn’t have wanted before and still might chase tonight. Beau’s cowboy hat is back, and while I’m grateful for the unexpected comfort that comes with it, I move to wrap my hand around my glass next, the chill of it already offering to douse one bad decision or another. It takes another minute before I bite my lip hard and attempt to find my voice again.
“I didn’t even ask if you like whiskey.”
“No, but Darren wouldn’t have poured it if he hadn’t known it was fine with me.”
“Right,” I nod. “Is he the one who told you I was here?”
Beau ignores me and looks down, his chuckle leaving him sounding so far from amused. “Unspoken vows are a hell of a thing, huh?”
I follow Beau’s stare and take another sip. The ring. Of course.
“You don’t think I owe him that much?” I whisper.
“I’m sorry. Am I allowed to have opinions about you now?”
It’s the sort of comment that could start a fight if I had the energy for it, but being arrested by grief has muted my temper, too. Besides, everyone else has had an opinion about my relationship with Levi—from family and friends to the owner of our favorite Thai place back home—and if they’ve all managed to be wrong, I think I want Beau to be the first to get it right. I’m wearing the wedding band and measuring the curious arch of Beau’s eyebrows, and swallowing the bile at the back of my throat comes naturally by now, so I set my glass back down on the bar and shrug.
“If there’s a line where you might’ve been given permission, I’m pretty sure we crossed it a few months ago.”
“Except we didn’t bother trying to stay on the other side,” Beau says.
It’s true, but it hurts more than I want it to. “Why don’t you come here anymore?”
Beau takes a long pull from his shitty beer and, just like that, I want to know what Beau is like when he gets drunk, this smart and gentle man who might be even more honest if given an excuse to drop the caution he’s never fully let go, even when pressed to a wall that cut him open. Asking for anything like it would be unfair on a few levels, and it’s probably enough that I can successfully self-sabotage without it, still looking for blame where Beau has none of it to give.
“How much did Levi tell you about me?” Beau asks.
I still don’t know what to do whenever Levi’s name falls from Beau’s tongue, and I let it land on the sawdust-covered floor. “You’re a massage therapist from Texas. You were married to Darren. You’re patient and a good dancer.”
“I am, I was, and I’d like to think so,” Beau says. “And I think maybe one of those things had me stuck on that barstool for too long.”
We both glance toward the end of the bar, as though that exact spot has anything to do with anything else—as though sitting next to me tonight could change something for Beau—but the whiskey makes it easy to ignore, and I turn back to Beau now .
“How long were you married?”
“Married for five years, divorced for four,” Beau says. “Next year it’ll even out and we can pretend none of it ever happened.”
I take a quick drink to wash away my hope and think some of it lingers regardless. “Is that how it works?”
“Not even a little bit.”
“And all the time you’ve spent here—is it because you miss him?”
Beau stares at Darren for quite a while. I stare at the beard I’d once felt pressed to my own unshaven skin. There’s a strong jaw just beneath it, but I’m not sure there’s anything about Beau that isn’t sturdy and rugged and unyielding in the best of ways, and if I itch to confirm that nothing has changed since my last memory of that night, the immediate slide of my hand against the denim of my jeans is my best attempt to forget it. If Beau were to ask whether that’s what I want now—more sturdiness and memories and the perfect scrape of his beard—I would deny it, but I could’ve gone to a hundred other bars for the same drink in front of me now, and the drive I made tonight is damning in about as many ways. I spare a glance over my shoulder at the dance floor Beau and Levi had shared, and then with a sigh I want to spit into my glass, I’m back to my whiskey again.
“I miss collecting stupid jokes that only belonged to us,” Beau starts, still not bothering to look at me—a good thing, maybe, while I scramble for some way to hate him again. The sensation had only ever lasted minutes at a time, but it was easier than whatever I’m feeling as he continues to answer a question I shouldn’t have asked. “The old ones aren’t going anywhere, but we don’t get to keep adding anything new. I miss the kind of touch you only get from someone who knows everything about you—or at least wants to learn it. The way that all the butterflies and shit gets quiet, and the hands on your body stay there anyway. I miss not being lonely at night or when I wake up in the morning or maybe all day, too. I’m tired of the times nothing is exactly wrong, but I feel like I’m supposed to fix it—and then remember it’s too late for that. I miss a specific kind of laughter and a specific kind of sex and those specific kinds of dreams two people can share.” He stops to frown at his beer for a moment, and then finally turns toward me again, his knee knocking into my thigh. “I miss a lot of pieces of a lot of things. I miss us . And yeah, I fuckin’ miss him, too. But the real kicker is that even when all of that is the godforsaken truth, ending our marriage was still the right thing to do.”
My eyes fall shut and open again before it matters, those last few words close to knocking the wind out of me, and I lift my glass toward the bottle in Beau’s hand, tapping it for a quiet toast that I wouldn’t have better words for even if I tried. I know I miss laughter and sex and dreams, but I’m not nearly far enough removed from my relationship with Levi to begin to wrap my head around the rest. It might be impossible when Levi isn’t the one laughing with a tipsy customer, Darren only a breath away if Beau decides to turn back time.
He won’t, and I know it somehow. I’m still painfully envious that he could .
Someone overhead is singing about love and loss, and it has me turning toward the dance floor again, Beau waiting for something he might know is coming.
“Are you going to ask me to dance?” I ask, careful when I find Beau’s brown eyes beneath the brim of his hat.
“You don’t dance.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Are you gonna offer me another chance to fight you outside?”
“Nope.”
“Are you gonna offer me another chance to—”
“Nope,” Beau interrupts, his gaze darker now.
“Because you don’t want to?”
Beau studies me for a minute. Looks down at my ring for too long. Comes close to finishing his beer. It’s all so quiet and loud, but maybe it’s worse than both when he answers.
“This is the longest conversation we’ve had, and I haven’t learned a goddamn thing about you tonight, but I do know you’re not that stupid.”
Guilt burns quick and hot, and because it’s still better than nothing, I keep going. “Then why not?”
“You’re a married man.”
“I’m absolutely not.”
I barely hiss it, and maybe our faces are schooled just enough that nobody can tell that we’re right back where we began almost three months ago. That four words from Beau was all it took to remind me of a misplaced apology and the way I’d hated him for it. I think we must be hiding it well because Darren is back, and he pushes another round across the bar like maybe it’ll be good for both of us to spend a little more time together, Beau’s leg still pressed to mine like he’s trying hard to find a way to agree.
At some point, it strikes me that I could be the one to ask Beau to dance with me or fight me or fuck me, if only I could manage to slip the ring from my finger first, but my anger feels as welcome as my guilt, and I cling to it. There should be callouses from that sort of thing, actually—years of being unable to let go even when it hurt more to hold on—but I don’t think my hands have anything to show for the trouble.
I know Beau’s don’t. Not anymore.
Our drinks disappear too slowly for people who don’t want to be close to each other, but we say almost nothing because words are almost certain to make things worse, and there’s been enough of that for a while. There’s some kind of soundtrack keeping us company, but the music and the conversation and the laughter aren't ours to enjoy, and eventually I try for something else.
“I don’t know how to take it back off,” I start, quietly enough that Beau can ignore me if he wants to. “I shouldn’t have put it on in the first place.”
“Because he never got the chance to ask you to,” Beau says.
Not ignoring, then.
Wrong, too, and I fight the disappointment that turns my stomach.
“It’s been almost four months.” 109 days .
Beau nods and spares me a look over his bottle. “And what? You should definitely be over it by now? No need to process anything when you can leave the grief behind as abruptly as Levi left you, right?”
“You know nothing.”
“So you’ve said.”
I roll my eyes, already tired of an argument we’ve barely had. “He and I should’ve been able to finish what we started. If he wanted to marry me, he should’ve been able to give me this himself. We should’ve done the bullshit wedding thing for our family and friends if he wanted that, too. We should’ve had a chance like you and Darren did.”
“And maybe you could’ve crashed and burned like we did.”
There’s more Beau wants to say and I’m ready to beg him for it, because Beau’s not that stupid either. Instead, I half laugh. “I make a lot of terrible choices. Pretty sure it would’ve been a guarantee.”
“And then it would’ve been easier to ditch the ring.”
“I think so, yeah,” I say. “It would’ve been over, and I—I mean, it’s supposed to be over now , but it doesn’t feel like it is. It doesn’t feel like anything.”
I chew on my lip again until I remember that I have a drink to finish—the only thing left between me and a polite goodbye. When I finally put the glass down one last time, Beau rubs his beard for no more than a second, but it draws my attention enough that I almost miss his question.
“You sure about that?”
In the end, I don’t miss it. I also don’t bother to answer, changing the subject back to Beau instead.
“So, you stopped coming here because you realized spending all your free time drinking in front of your ex-husband wasn’t all that healthy, your new dance partner died, and I used you in a misguided attempt to forget about how much I hated you and you hated me.”
“A couple of those sound right,” Beau huffs.
I nod. “Then why’d you come back tonight?”
“Got a text.”
“Who cares? I assume it was an FYI, not a demand.”
“Okay.”
“Come on, Beau. Why’d you come back?”
He’s precise when he reaches for his beer and empties the bottle, and just as careful when he sets it back down again. Darren’s already run a card he must have memorized by now, and Beau signs the receipt without looking at the total, fine with whatever ended up there by the end of the night. Then he pushes away from the bar and stands just behind my stool until I turn to look up at him, chasing the press of his leg after growing used to it sooner than should be allowed. And when his hand moves to tip his cowboy hat, I can’t handle how familiar the gesture feels when I’ve only ever seen it directed toward a man who didn’t get to appreciate it long enough.
I must have closed my eyes at some point, just to forget that too, because I’m far from ready when Beau’s mouth lands so fucking close to my ear.
“Come on, Adrian ,” Beau murmurs. “Why did you?”