Chapter Three
The bar was exactly as old as Landon was—a fact Landon usually found comforting and today felt like a punch in the stomach.
The thirty-three-year-old leather on the hard barstools looked as faded and worn as he felt, the oak bar top dated and unappealing, the signed photographs on the walls framing faces that mocked and taunted him.
Even so, he was glad to be there. He was glad to be anywhere that wasn’t at home, alone with his thoughts.
That morning, he’d gone to check the mail.
He allowed himself to check the mail three times a day, no more and no less.
The letter he’d been waiting for was there, her name bold and clear on the left-hand side in the event it needed to be returned to sender.
Landon fought the impulse to rip into it like a hound at the mailbox and instead brought it into the kitchen to use the antique letter opener only Rose knew he had, a gift from his grandfather just before he passed.
He wanted the cut clean so he could save the letter in its original packaging.
Landon pulled the single sheet out of the envelope with reverence and read.
Dear Landon,
In the spirit of full disclosure, I did not open your letter.
Rose’s intention for me was to start fresh, so our story—long or short as it may have been—is now archived.
I’m sorry not to be writing with better news, but I do hope this at least provides a sense of closure.
If we were friends, please remember the old me fondly.
If we caused each other pain, you have my permission to live unburdened from the hurt. I do not remember it, anyway.
Sincerely,
Rose Martin
Landon stood at the kitchen island reading and rereading the letter, pinballing from anger to regret to grief.
They’d talked about the pill, of course.
Everybody had. He would never forget what Rose said the first time she heard such a thing existed: “We need to face our life head-on. The good and bad. That’s what makes us human. ”
On a hard barstool, hours after he’d had his heart ripped out at the kitchen island, Landon pulled the letter from his breast pocket and did his body the disservice of reading it one more time.
There was so much to mourn in each of the two short paragraphs, but what hurt the most, he found, was the inclusion of her last name.
In all the letters he had sent to her over the years she had never been Rose Martin, or later, once they’d married, Rose Calloway.
She had always been just Rose, and he just Landon. They were really, truly strangers now.
Landon didn’t hear Conor come in and only noted his presence when he clapped Landon on the back, a bit too hard for Landon’s taste. “I’m so glad you called,” Conor said.
Landon folded the letter neatly and slipped it into his breast pocket, only barely fighting the urge to scrunch the letter into a ball. “I’m not.”
“You know what I mean.” Conor lowered his imposing body into the battered bar chair and squared his shoulders. “I’m just glad you’re not alone.”
“I try not to drink alone anymore.”
“Yeah,” said Conor, his eyes as bright and pleading as they’d been when Landon was at his very lowest, unsure if he’d ever crawl out. “I’m glad for that.”
When Landon first met Conor freshman year, he’d thought very little of him.
They’d both had the same bright idea to sign up for Introduction to Photography to preemptively pad their GPAs, and Landon assumed he would have nothing in common with the loud, large hockey player beyond that.
But through the mediocre photography that earned them both Bs, Landon learned that Conor was far more emotionally attuned than anyone gave him credit for.
He saw the beauty in small things: the stalk of a dandelion, birds scattering in the fields behind the science center, sand slipping through the cracks in his thick fingers.
The instant Landon committed to getting to know the man who saw the world with such tenderness, Conor became a constant in his life—a stabilizing presence through the worst turbulence.
When Rose finally said yes, it was Conor who Landon asked to stand by his side.
He’d coached Landon through at least two of the hardest moments of his life and was now quietly preparing to walk him through the third.
“I’m buying, obviously,” Conor said, slapping his credit card on the counter. “Actually, Bill is buying, and I’ll get away with it as long as they don’t card me, so feel free to order a ridiculous cocktail. Something on fire, perhaps?”
Landon locked eyes with the bartender. “I’ll take whatever pilsner you have on tap,” he said.
“And if you could go ahead and light it on fire, that would be great,” Conor added, winking. “An old-fashioned for me, thanks.”
Landon fiddled with the distressed wedding band he and Rose had finally settled on after months of searching and wondered if she’d taken hers off before she’d taken the pill or after. He wasn’t sure which made him feel worse. “She wrote me back.”
Conor turned to face him, both hands on the bar. “And?”
“I wish you’d never given me her address.”
“You’re burying the lede.”
“She didn’t just move halfway across the world. She got her hands on one.”
Conor’s kind eyes widened. “A pill?”
Landon swallowed hard. “I was too late,” he said. “Too late by a mile.”
“Oh God,” Conor said, running a hand through his hair. “But when Poppy gave me the address, she didn’t tell me—”
“Of course Poppy didn’t tell you,” Landon said with a laugh that hurt as it shook loose. “Poppy would be the first to tell anyone who asked that she doesn’t owe me anything.”
The bartender placed a light beer in a tall glass in front of Landon and an elegant cocktail with a smoking cinnamon stick in front of Conor.
“That was the best I could do.” She shrugged.
“We had an unfortunate incident with a scorpion bowl last fall, and my boss still hasn’t let me hear the end of it. ”
“You’re a gem,” said Conor, swirling the drink.
“Truly.” She smiled sweetly, perhaps thinking he was flirting—a trap Conor had fallen into so many times Landon finally worked up the nerve one boozy night not long after graduation to ask if he’d ever thought about giving women a try.
“Oh God no,” he’d said with a chuckle. “But I can still admire beautiful things, can’t I? ”
Landon drank half the pilsner in one gulp. “I think I’m in shock,” he said. “My chest hurts, and I feel like I’m made of plastic.”
“I can tell you with certainty that you are not in shock,” said Conor.
“I’m not sure you should be diagnosing until you’re a full doctor.”
“Fellows are doctors.” Conor cracked his knuckles. “And the only thing I would diagnose you with is a severe case of delusion. I love you, Landon. I do. But be serious. Are you really surprised that she took it?”
Landon took another long sip. “I really am.”
“I mean, even after—”
Landon’s arm cut through the space between them like a knife. “Don’t,” he said. “Please. The day could still get worse, but I’d rather not help it along.”
Landon’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and he clicked the side button without looking.
That would be his sister, Jess, calling for what had to be the hundredth time in a seven-day span, hoping to get him to talk long enough to unravel so she could begin the work of piecing him back together.
He wouldn’t take the bait, well-meaning as it was.
Not when he’d descended to even further lows since they last spoke.
Conor leaned back in his chair. “Can I tell you what I really think?” he asked. “Or have you not had enough to drink yet?”
Landon waved at the bartender, who nodded at his nearly empty glass. “If I say no, will that stop you?”
“Not in the long run.”
“Then shoot.”
“This could be a good thing.”
“Jesus,” Landon said, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. “Next you’re going to tell me this was all preordained and there’s nothing I could have done to stop it.”
“There is nothing you could have done to stop it,” said Conor.
“I’ll tell you that as many times as you need to hear it.
” When Landon didn’t push back like he must have assumed he would, Conor pressed forward.
“This could be a fresh start for you. If she hadn’t taken that pill, you always would have wondered.
Now you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that it’s over—that you two are done.
There are some things you just can’t work through, Landon. Some things you don’t come back from.”
“A fresh start,” Landon repeated, not having heard a thing since. The more he turned it over, the more enticing it became. Landon looked down at the full glass the bartender slid in front of him and suddenly had no interest in it.
“You’ve been through so much, and you never, never ask for help.
And I know you can hold your own, but I worry.
This could be just what you need to get back out there and start living again.
You could turn it all around. Don’t you feel like you’ve just been holding your breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop?
Well, here it is!” Conor slapped his hand on the bar.
“Here’s the shoe. Now that it’s dropped, we can work with it. ”
Landon closed his eyes and reached for the image that steadied and tortured him on the nights when everything felt like it was coming apart: Rose in that absurd and beautiful black dress, in white Keds, with red lipstick on her teeth.
Their romance had been improbable from the start—everybody said so.
She was the girl you admired from a safe distance.
But he’d done it. He had won the heart of the beautiful girl in the black dress. She’d picked him, once.
“A blank slate,” Conor said, but Landon was only half listening. “That’s what this is. I’ll help you.”
“I’ve got to go,” Landon said, nearly tripping over himself to pull his jacket off the back of the barstool. “Tell Bill thanks for the drinks.”
“Landon!” Conor yelled. “Where the hell are you going?”
Landon didn’t hear him through the pounding of blood in his ears, his pulse fast as a drummer in the punk rock bands he and Rose had listened to through shared headphones in Rose’s twin bed all those years ago, before the world had chewed them up and spat them out.
For the first time in a long time, Landon felt the telltale stirrings of hope.
It was as good as any drug he’d ever tried.
Because if Landon could win her heart once, he could win it again. He was sure of it.