Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Brayden
Several Hours Earlier…
Savannah only glances back once as she slides out of the booth and cuts a path through the crowd as she leaves the bar: long enough to catch me staring at the proud set of her shoulders, the curling ends of her hair.
Go after her, everything in me screams. I want to pull her back to me. To hear the smoky sound of her laughter. To kiss her in the middle of the dance floor and leave no doubt who she belongs with. I want—
A drink.
I call over the waitress. She smiles at me, candy-sweet enough to make my teeth ache. At me or at the matte black of my credit card. It doesn’t matter which. The whiskey she brings will taste the same. “Your friend leave already?” she asks.
“My wife, you mean.” But I put in my order.
The waitress moves to collect the glass on the table, still bearing the smudge of Savannah’s lipstick, the overlap of where I put my mouth against the rim.
“Leave that,” I say, harsher than I should, but she sets the glass back where it was.
Soon enough, she returns with a drink, and I down it in one go, then order another.
Sometime later—a few minutes? an hour?—I find myself at the bar, phone in hand.
People swirl around me. A few bros who clap me on the shoulder with a good game even if it wasn’t really.
Women press themselves against my arms, hope brightening their eyes.
Lights pulse, music drums. Everything is too loud. Too much.
I take out my phone, fumble open our texts thread.
Mostly it’s boring shit—logistics. Marriage is a lot of logistics, it turns out.
A few messages with various decorations Sav’s thinking about getting.
I should have pictures of her, right? A husband thing to have.
But I don’t. No fixing that now, especially not with how she left.
Brayden: next time I’ll warn you before we go out
Brayden: next time we’ll dance
Brayden: next time I won’t pull away
None of which I can say. She’s using me for my money, but at least she’s honest about it. Sav has dreams and she agreed to help me with my image to get to what she wants—which isn’t me. Even drunk, I can remember that. She’s not really my wife, no matter how much—
No matter what.
So I erase those messages, and I type that I’m going to be out late. Or I try to. My fingers stumble over the keys. I’ll have one more drink and go home. One more—there’s always one more. One more and I’ll finally have had enough.
I wave to the bartender, the one who always seems to be working when I’m in here. He’s got dark eyes, dark hair, a scowl half-hidden beneath his beard. He reminds me of—
I motion for another drink. The action almost tips me off the barstool.
The bartender snags a glass, pulls something from the tap, shoves in a wedge of lime. Sloshes it in front of me. “On the house.”
I take a sip. Bubbles without that familiar alcohol burn. “This is fucking club soda.”
He snorts. “No, it’s tonic water.”
“I wanted a drink.”
“I know.”
He stares at me with enough force I almost look away. I won’t be embarrassed for drinking at a bar. I won’t even be embarrassed for being drunk at a bar. But I gulp down the stupid fucking water—it fizzes across my tongue, finishes bitter—then tap the glass back down.
The bartender refills the glass and thrusts it forward. “You’re here a lot. Do you want to be?”
“Where am I supposed to—” I start, then cut myself off. I told myself before we came here that I didn’t want to drink. That I’d be fine not drinking. The whiskey sloshes in my stomach. The bartender’s still looking at me.
I drink the stupid water. My head clears momentarily.
Savannah is probably asleep on the other side of the wall between our bedrooms—with a door that locks on her side of it.
Some nights, when the AC isn’t blowing, I can hear her breathing, her soft murmurs to herself in her sleep.
Suddenly, I want to be anywhere but this barstool.
I pull out my wallet. Drop two twenties on the damp surface of the bar. Wave to the bartender. “Thanks for the drinks.”
“You driving?” he asks.
I hold up my phone. “Uber.”
He nods. “Someone waiting for you at home?”
The one woman I can’t have—the one who’s just out of reach. “My wife.” Something in my face feels weird as I say it.
“Yeah, go home and smile at her like that.” And he collects his twenties and points me toward the exit.
When the Uber drops me off, there’s a car sitting directly out front of our house.
Who the fuck parks like that if they don’t live there?
Worse, it’s a new hybrid, the kind with a little green leaf logo on the back that brags about its gas mileage.
The kind I didn’t get because, when I wanted something more fuel efficient than my old truck, Brad had things to say about men who drive those kinds of vehicles. So I just got another truck.
Around me, the neighborhood is quiet, the houses all asleep. A single window beams light onto the street. Savannah’s room.
Maybe she’s waiting up for me. From the way she left, that seems unlikely.
Still, I imagine her outline against the window.
Her cute little matching pajamas she sometimes wears around the house.
She was embarrassed to be out in sweats, worried that people were staring.
I can’t take my eyes off you, I wanted to say. But I didn’t.
If she’s still awake, it’s not because of me.
So I let myself in the house, opening and closing the door quickly so I don’t wake her. Above me, the floorboards creak like someone’s moving around. Maybe just the house settling.
The tonic water sobered me up enough that I’m in that strange in-between stage: drunk enough to be unsteady, sober enough to realize it.
I should go to bed. I can’t sleep with her in the next room, thirty feet and an infinite distance away.
Not when I’m getting the urge to knock on our shared door and say—what?
Of all the things I’ve screwed up in my life, the worst is asking the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met to marry me—and agreeing not to touch her.
Instead, I go to the kitchen. The cabinet is already open. I pour a drink. Whiskey should go down easy. But I raise the glass to my lips without drinking. What’d that bartender ask? If I was there because I wanted to be—or because something inside me needs to be?
I put the glass down, undrunk. No, that won’t work. I dump most of it out in the sink, run water to get rid of the smell. Better.
Now that I’m not focused on a drink, something about the room seems…strange. Savannah’s wedding ring was left on the counter, glinting in the ambient light from the window. There’s the thump of the washing machine coming from up the hall. A metal bat on the countertop.
I examine it. It’s not one of mine, I don’t think. I have a small indoor batting cage down next to the home gym with a few metal and wooden bats. This one is longer than I’d use normally. For someone taller.
Maybe it’s a present for me. No, the bat looks too dinged up, the grip-tape bearing the faint impression of someone’s hands. Does Savannah play softball? I can’t remember and I can’t remember if I ever knew in the first place.
I should go ask her. No, I kick that thought away. What she doesn’t need is me waking her up in the middle of the night to bother her. What she doesn’t need is me at all.
I should stay away from her for both our sakes.
Two years. Of touching in public and pulling away in private.
Go slow, I told her when I asked her to explain what she’s studying.
We only have two years together, and it’s already going by too damn fast. A strange feeling works its way into my throat, an ache I can’t fix right now.
For now, I climb the kitchen stairs up toward our bedrooms, hoping that when I wake up tomorrow, I can be someone different. Someone who Savannah won’t walk away from as easily.