Chapter Seven
Truett
I t was raining. Why the fuck wouldn’t it be? Karma had really pulled out all the stops for me over the last few weeks. Closing The Grille, having Gwen buy it, what next? Sink hole under my house? Gangrene in the hand I jerked off with? The options were limitless. With the way my life worked, I should have been grateful it was only a little rain and I hadn’t been struck by lightning yet.
Though the day wasn’t over. Still plenty of time for the universe to fry my ass.
I was well aware that I looked like a fool sitting on that bench as the clouds emptied around me. Hell, even cockroaches were smart enough to hide during a storm.
Not me though.
Not on a Wednesday.
After a lifetime of chaos and agony, predictability was the only thing that kept me sane—if you could even call me that.
I thrived on routine—every minute having a purpose. A therapist had once told me it was about control. He couldn’t have been more wrong. It was about survival.
I could handle the days. Wake up, workout, eat, work. Easy enough. It was the freedom in evenings that I struggled with the most.
Mondays were straightforward. I’d fire up the grill in my backyard, the aroma of sizzling chicken breasts filling my senses —a practical and completely mundane start to the week. Post-grilling, I’d meal-prep lunches for the next few days and then settle into the corner of my tattered couch until Netflix lulled me to sleep.
Tuesdays had their own elements of excitement. The night would highlight Chinese delivery while I’d distracted myself by spinning online slots on my phone—the hum of ESPN in the background giving me the illusion of company.
The rest of the week was a series of slightly tweaked redundancy.
But Wednesdays were different. They were sacred. The Grille was my last remaining anchor to the real world. Each week, when I took that first step out of my house, I’d feel a flicker of hope—however misguided as it might have been.
Don’t get me wrong. I hated my weekly outings with the intensity of a thousand suns, but it was a predictable torture and therefore comfortable agony.
I didn’t know how to function without Wednesday nights. Would Thursdays even exist without them?
Would I?
I told myself not to go. To respect Gwen’s wishes and stay away. But call it obsession, habit, or muscle memory, at six p.m. on the dot, fueled by nothing more than a mixture of dread and necessity, I walked to a restaurant where I was no longer welcome.
Desperation gave me a delusional tunnel vision. I’d honest-to-God convinced myself that when I arrived everything would be as it should.
The Grille would be open.
My booth and a club sandwich would be waiting for me.
And the confrontation with Gwen had been nothing but a nightmare fabricated by my self-loathing subconscious.
But reality, as always, had a different script.
Hell-bent and determined, I fought the urge to knock on the door and attempt to convince her to let me inside. It would have no doubt turned into a rerun of the week before, but it was worth a try. Wednesdays were always worth a try.
But at what cost? At whose cost?
I watched her through the window as she paced back and forth, her phone pressed to her ear. With her forehead crinkled and her lips pursed, she was downright pissed. It was an expression I recognized well. When we were younger, I’d all but permanently painted it on her face.
Pained memories tore through me. What the fuck was I doing? How could I be such a selfish prick? Gwen had put up with enough of my bullshit to last a lifetime. But there I was, literally and figuratively dragging it right back to her doorstep.
How was that fair to anyone but me?
Despite my every waking moment saying otherwise, I wasn’t living in a nightmare.
The Grille wasn’t open.
No booth awaited me, no sandwich—just the cold, unyielding rain echoing my failures.
With my tail tucked, I dodged puddles as I walked across the street, hoping and praying she wouldn’t see me. She could go about her life, and I could go about mine. Though I had no fucking idea what that looked like without Wednesdays.
So there I was, sitting on the bench, staring at what used to be my weekly sanctuary, the bitter taste of nostalgia souring my stomach, when I heard footsteps approaching.
My gaze flicked up and I found Gwen trotting toward me, a plastic cafeteria-style tray held over her head, shielding her from the elements.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her tone surprisingly gentle, if not resigned.
I shifted uncomfortably, wishing I’d taken the time to prepare a lie. “Just hanging out.”
She slanted her head. “Right. Who could resist such a beautiful evening?”
A reluctant smile tipped my lips—the absurdity of the situation not lost on me. “It’s perfect if you need to, say, test a new water-resistant jacket.”
“Oh, okay, then. That makes total sense. For a second there, I thought you were stalking me.”
I swallowed hard and avoided her gaze. “I just…needed to be here, but I didn’t want to bother you.”
She barked a laugh. “Yeah, making me feel bad while you sit out here getting soaked is so much less invasive.”
My back shot straight. “I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad. I was actually trying to avoid being the asshole for once. Staying out of your way seemed like the way to go.”
“Not coming would have been the way to go.”
Feeling like a scolded child, I peered up at her and shrugged. “I don’t know how to not be here.”
“Why? What’s so special about this place? I knew you used to like their burgers when we were growing up, but the food has been shit for a while. You avoided this place like the plague after…” She paused and peered down at her pink sneakers. Her gorgeous brown eyes came back to me, begging for answers in the most heartbreakingly familiar way. “I just don’t get it. Help me understand.”
I clenched my fist, tension running through my body. That was the one thing I’d never be able to give her.
I didn’t want her to understand.
I didn’t want her to know.
I didn’t want her anywhere near the shitshow that lived inside my head.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled like the fucking coward I was.
Her humorless laugh was filled with frustration. “Right. Of course not. How silly of me to even ask the question.”
“Gwen, I—”
“So what, then? Every Wednesday, you’re just going to sit out here, rain, sleet, or snow, acting like the town’s newest statue until I reopen the restaurant?”
Pulling my hands from the pockets of my jacket, I reached under the hood and scratched the back of my neck. “Well, I’m hoping it doesn’t snow in March, but honestly, I don’t know. I haven’t made it that far.” That was the truth. I had no idea if it would even feel like The Grille when she reopened. That was a whole mental breakdown I was saving for a different day. “Look, go back inside. You shouldn’t have to deal with this. I just couldn’t stay at home tonight.”
“You shouldn’t be in that house any night,” she shot back so fast I barely understood her. A groan rumbled in her throat as she aimed her gaze anywhere but at me. “Get up. Let’s go.”
“I’m fine. Seriously.”
“You’re not fine, Truett,” she snapped, frustration bubbling over. “You’re sopping wet and on the verge of catching pneumonia. I don’t have anything to make a club sandwich, but I can at least get you dry and out of the rain.”
I stared at her, the weight of her invitation sinking in more slowly than the cold had seeped into my bones. A surge of hope pulsed inside me as I tried to make heads or tails of her offer.
On one hand, it was exactly what I needed.
On the other, I was right back to that whole at-what-cost debate.
“Are you sure you’re okay with that?” I asked.
“Nope. But I don’t know what else to do with you.”
Funny. I didn’t know, either. “I’m—” I started to say sorry but managed to stop myself. “I apologize. This isn’t your problem.”
She once again interrupted me. “Unfortunately, that’s not true. You’re here. You’re wet. You aren’t leaving, are you?”
I shook my head, water dripping from my beard.
“Right. Then that apology is worth about as much as me wasting my breath telling you to go home. You usually stay until seven, right?”
I nodded.
“Okay. Well, it’s getting late. So let’s get this over with.” With that, she turned on a toe, lowered the tray, and jogged across the street.
I stood there for several beats, watching her, wondering if following her was the right thing to do.
It was for me. I knew that to the core of my soul.
But for her…
“Let’s go, True!” she called over her shoulder as she pulled the door open. “This offer expires in ten, nine, eight…”
She didn’t make it to seven before I sprinted after her.
“Here,” Gwen said, offering me a stack of towels. “Don’t mind the stains. They’re clean, I swear. Give me your jacket and I’ll hang it up in front of the hand blower in the bathroom. It probably won’t dry in time, but you won’t be dripping all over the place, either.”
With an eerie awe, my gaze trailed around the empty restaurant. The Grille had never been crowded, but with the absence of the clatter from the kitchen, waitresses wandering about, and the scent of grease filling the air, it felt stagnant and unsettling. The booths still lined the walls, but the tables had been pushed to the side, chairs stacked on top, giving the space the illusion of being bigger.
It was odd the way everything felt so right yet so damn wrong.
“True,” Gwen said, snapping her fingers in front of my face. “Did you hear me?”
“Yeah, sorry.” I made quick work of removing my jacket, and then I traded her for the threadbare towels that either needed a bottle of fabric softener or a firepit STAT.
She pointed to the corner booth. “That one’s yours, right?”
A lump formed in my throat as I nodded.
“Go sit down. Do whatever it is that you do.” She offered me a tight smile. “You need a drink or anything? I’ve got some coffee in the back. It’s not a club sandwich, but it might help warm you up.”
I walked over to the booth and dragged the tips of my fingers across the top of the laminate table. The way my pulse spiked and dread pooled in my stomach comforted me immediately. “That’d be great,” I rasped, barely able to get the words out.
She eyed me curiously—a million questions poised on the tip of her tongue. To her credit, she asked none of them. And, as if I didn’t already owe her a massive debt of gratitude, for that alone, it grew.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, disappearing down the hallway.
While she was gone, I did my best to dry off, but it was like trying to drain the ocean with a spoon. Eventually I gave up and spread the towels out across the booth’s bench seat with hopes that I could at least avoid leaving a puddle.
And then, like Sisyphus, I took my position behind my boulder.
My body trembled as I slid into the booth. On contact, the flames of the past engulfed me. Frantic, I gasped for air, but my lungs no longer seemed to be able to process oxygen. That was okay. I didn’t deserve it anyway. A vise cranked down on my ribs, agony tearing through my soul in a way that made my bones feel like they were being shattered, one by one.
The weight of my failures crushed me.
The pain was so great the room spun, so I closed my eyes to keep the nausea at bay. It was the wrong move. So fucking wrong. Without my sight, I couldn’t anchor myself. The sound of gunfire assaulted me. I sucked in a sharp breath, wishing the bullets would finally hit me and release me from this perpetual hell once and for all.
And suddenly, like a ding as the elevator arrived at its floor, everything just…
Stopped.
“You still take your coffee black?” she called from the distance.
Gwen.
Gwen.
Dear God…Gwen.
My eyes popped open. The flames of my hell suddenly extinguished as though they had been doused by a sudden downpour.
How did she do that?
Why did she do that?
I looked at my watch. I still had thirty minutes to go. I hadn’t paid my dues yet.
I wasn’t done.
I wasn’t—
My traitorous heart slowed as I watched her round the corner holding two Styrofoam cups of steaming coffee.
Usually, my pain was a relentless force, clinging to me long after I’d left The Grille. But now, it was gone. Had she fucking stolen it?
I thought back to when I’d run into her a few weeks earlier. Sure, I’d been shocked to see her and gotten distracted. Running into a gorgeous woman did that to a man. But it wasn’t like this. Was it?
Shit, was it?
I swallowed hard, the most confusing mixture of anger and elation swirling inside me. I had a penitence to pay, but as a chill spread across my skin, it was a welcome—albeit undeserved—reprieve from the searing heat of the flames.
I tracked her every step as she approached the booth.
“Black?” she repeated.
“Yeah,” I rumbled, my voice filled with gravel.
She placed a cup on the table. I didn’t immediately reach for it, knowing my hands would still be shaking. Or would they? I glanced down at my lap.
Shit.
They were as still as a brain surgeon’s. Which was exactly who I was going to need to see after this mindfuck. A lobotomy had never sounded so good.
I drew in a deep breath, and fuck me sideways, it was slow, even, and steady.
It was wrong.
All fucking wrong.
I shot to my feet, a different kind of panic slamming into me. “I have to go.”
Her lips twisted to the side. “It’s not seven yet.”
That was exactly the problem. I needed to get home and figure out what the hell was going on. I couldn’t think with her so close. I couldn’t do anything with her there.
My anxiety skyrocketed as long purposeful strides carried me to the door. I had to get the fuck out of there. I fumbled with the lock, trying to get it open so I could make my escape. Dear God, I’d spent two weeks trying to get inside, and now, I couldn’t get out.
Gwen appeared at my side. “Hey, relax. Let me get it.”
It opened with the flip of her wrist, and I was like an Olympic sprinter in the blocks, ready to bolt. Her palm landed on my forearm, stopping me dead in my tracks. Jesus. My own fucking legs wouldn’t operate around her.
“Are you okay?” she asked, worry etched in her face. I hated myself that much more for carving it there.
“Yeah,” I lied. “Thanks for letting me come in.”
She shook her head, completely unconvinced. “Truett, I—”
I covered her hand with my own and gave it a squeeze. “Really. I’m good.”
She didn’t believe me. Or understand. Or know how to help. And I loathed the fact that I’d seen those expressions from her so often that, even after all this time, I still recognized them.
I also recognized the moment she resigned herself to the reality that there was nothing more she could do.
Slowly, as if trying to delay the inevitable, her hand slid from under mine. “Okay. Have a good night.”
“You too.” With that, I shoved the door wide open and took off through the rain.