2. Lila
CHAPTER 2
Lila
There have been plenty of times when I’ve questioned my decisions—having a kid to raise didn’t help in that department—but today I found I was questioning if I’d lost my mind completely.
After a week of job hunting: checking out the general store, bookstore turned coffee shop (which was just a little table with a coffee pot and some creamers set up in the corner of the store), an actual coffee shop, and the steak house located along the highway, I finally gave up trying to avoid the very thing I’d been dreading.
Standing in front of the old red brick building, I fought an internal war to not turn on my heel and run. I knew I couldn’t do that no matter how much I questioned this choice driven by sheer desperation.
I had a kid to look after, and he was counting on me to be the mature, capable adult that my age said I was supposed to be. Using that as the necessary force to drive my courage forward, I walked right up to the black door and stopped abruptly before my hand could so much as graze the faded metal door handle. I caught my reflection in the tinted glass, half of my face obscured by the window decal of a cracked pint glass oozing golden liquid I assumed was beer. The white bold letters beneath it read THE RUSTY PINT .
Shaking my head at myself, I said under my breath, “You can do this.”
The Rusty Pint had been completely changed since I last stepped foot in the bar. It was nearly unrecognizable. In fact, I think the only thing that remained the same was the building it was built in sometime in the 1980s.
Last I remembered, The Rusty Pint had been just an old dive bar with neon signs, vintage décor, and an array of photographs, all of which were still on the walls, if only rearranged. Some photos were from the annual rodeos that took place in town, and some were signed by country singers who stopped by at one point in time. Back then, The Rusty Pint used to be owned by an older couple in town before they sold it, and they never turned down a customer. Including Irene.
When I was younger, all I wanted was to blame someone for my mother’s addiction. To blame my grandfather for not being there for her when she needed help. To blame her.
However, after doing some research of my own over the years, I knew addiction wasn’t a scale between nature or nurture. The only thing that could make a difference was if an addict ultimately made the choice to get help. To try.
It was easier said than done, I suppose. But my mother did neither. Not really.
My mother was still very much alive, but there were times when I’d grieved her loss as if she truly had died. The lack of her—her constant absence in my life—that left a hollow feeling in my chest where her love was supposed to inhabit. I still wasn’t sure how to navigate around it, probably because I never allowed myself to when I’d made River my number one priority. Because he needed me, and I wasn’t going to let him down.
Today was no exception—no matter how I felt.
The dim lighting coming from the sconces along the mahogany walls gave a warm inviting ambiance to the surprisingly quiet establishment. Bottles of liquor and clean crystal glasses lined up against the mirrored wall behind the bar were practically sparkling under the lights.
Despite the complete remodel the bar underwent, there wasn’t a soul in sight. Which I’d consider a good thing seeing as it was twelve in the afternoon on a Monday.
The moment I reached the bar top, one of the metal doors to my left swung wide open and Desi wandered out, holding a tray of clean wine glasses. She stopped short the moment she spotted me before a wide grin pinched her cheeks.
“Not a word,” I said before she could start her gloating.
Desi put her tray down on the bar top and made a zipping motion across her lips before hurrying around the bar to wrap me up in a bone crushing hug. She was a good three inches taller than me even with her bright red Chucks, all five-foot-eight of her put my average height to shame.
“It’s going to be great, I just know it,” she said before kissing the top of my head.
I accepted her hug with a smile. Lately, the only person who hugged me regularly was River, and while he was the most affectionate kid I knew, I could admit it was nice to get some human contact without being covered in cheese puff dust or chocolate afterward.
Despite my not wanting to come work here at first, I knew Desi loved working at The Rusty Pint. She’d been a manager here for a few years and I never heard her complain once about it. She also sang with the local band that played on the weekends, widely known as Willow Vale’s very own rising star.
Desi and I had been accepted into the same university in Laramie after we graduated from high school. We always talked about the dreams we had, where we saw ourselves working after we graduated, what we wanted to do with our lives. The plan had been to live together after we graduated with our degrees…
I was headed into my senior year when I got the call that Irene had gone into labor. In the blink of an eye, it all came down to who was going to take River when she decided to bail as soon as she was released from the hospital. At twenty-one, I had a newborn to take care of with absolutely no idea where to start. Luckily, my grandfather showed up for me. He convinced Irene to sign over her parental rights, and he was there to help me raise River for the first few years until his health took a drastic dive. He hadn’t always been there, but he’d tried his best to help me when I made the decision to raise River.
“Are you sure about this because I can?—”
“Oh, absolutely. But I may have forgotten to tell you one teensy thing.” Desi laughed a little awkwardly with a slight wince. The sound of footsteps trudging down the hall to our left interrupted her before either of us could say anything else.
“Hey, Desi! Where’s the spreadsheet for last week’s sales? I can’t find anything on that damned computer. I swear you rearrange something every week,” a deep, irritated voice asked. The footsteps grew closer until he came into view, his head low as he ran a hand through the unruly strands of his chocolate-brown hair.
He was taller than I remembered him being. Dressed in a black Henley with one hand tucked in the back pocket of a pair of faded black jeans. His hair was a messy shag that suited him, oddly enough. There was also an annoyed expression—that suited him 110 percent— on his face, perfectly highlighting the dark scruff on his jaw.
One thing that hadn’t changed about Travis Adler: he looked both put together and yet, not at all. Somehow it worked for him.
I wasn’t a jealous person, but there was something about seeing a guy looking ten times better than me that really woke up the green one-eyed monster within me. It didn’t help that it was Travis who awoke said monster.
When he looked up, his gaze swept over me toward Desi, before doing a double take. That’s when he stopped walking. Stopped…moving.
Neither of us said a word.
In fact, I wasn’t sure we were even breathing the same air at the moment.
All we did was stare at each other, our gazes met and locked into place like a couple of magnets. One being affected by the proximity of the other. A fundamental inevitability neither could fight against.
His blue eyes were sharp, and he took me in as if he almost didn’t recognize me. “Delilah,” he rasped.
“Hey, Travis,” I managed to respond through gritted my teeth before I forced a small smile.
Travis knew I hated my name. He knew I preferred to go by Lila, but ever since we were kids, he refused to call me anything else no matter how many times I told him to stop. Hearing him say my name like that brought up memories that I really didn’t want to relive. Yet another reason why I didn’t want to come here in the first place.
A long time ago, I had told myself I was going to be immune to the memory of him— of us —every single part of him. But my traitorous heart started pounding in my chest the second he said my name like it still meant something to him, and I knew my attempt to erase traces of him from me had been useless in the end.
Especially when Travis crossed his arms and regarded me for a long second before finally saying, “Long time no see, darlin’.”