29. Chapter 29
“Do you still love her?”
Lindsey punished herself with the memory from last September, too hungover and exhausted to push it away.
The party had been for a friend of Graham’s who was transferring to Australia for work. They hadn’t involved friends yet, not that Lindsey had any in Dayton beyond Charity, the bartender Graham knew well from her shifts at Smitty’s.
He’d been reluctant to go. She’d pulled out a slinky black dress and equally slinky thong.
And then the woman who might’ve always been the silent third wheel keeping their relationship from actually moving forward was revealed.
Graham had never been forthcoming about his dating history and wasn’t interested in hers.
It hadn’t bothered Lindsey until Graham started acting more like a boyfriend than the casual fling she took home after her shifts.
Asking for a key for her apartment, leaving a toothbrush and spare shorts in her bathroom, hiding joints for himself to find later—all pointed to Graham Young being her boyfriend, even if the words were never spoken and social media relationship statuses never updated.
The mere memory of Helen Elsburg stirred whispers and sent side-eyed attention at the new woman trying to keep up with Graham who had immediately beelined for the bar of the rented room at the back of a restaurant downtown.
The new woman who definitely didn’t feel like a girlfriend ordering her own drinks while Graham was cloistered with a group of men he’d barely introduced her to.
She was waiting for a much-needed refill of her pinot noir when she overheard the hushed and excited conversation taking place behind her.
“I can’t believe he’s actually here. What’s it been? A year?”
“Longer. I thought he moved.”
“Okay, so what do we think of the beard?”
“I’m digging it. Like, dude, you look hot without Helen.”
Lindsey’s ears perked up. Though there were plenty of beards in attendance, she had a sinking feeling the four women in a tight circle were talking about Graham.
If they were, then who the hell was Helen?
“You can’t blame her for wanting out of this dump.”
“I don’t, but I can totally blame her for leaving Graham a mess.”
“A hot mess.”
“Ruining him for the rest of us. Selfish bi—”
Lindsey glugged down her wine and set it out for another.
“Before you stick your thong in his pocket—and you know you will—remember, he came here with someone.”
“I’ve literally never seen him with anyone else. It’s weird, right?”
“About time.”
“Yeah, but, it’s not, like, serious.”
“Does anyone think he’s really over her?”
Later, at Graham’s apartment, the ensuing fight woke the neighbors at three a.m. She begged Graham to talk to her. He threw his tie across the kitchen and said it was just fucking gossip.
“Graham, I need to know. Do you still love her?”
Now, nine months later and with no more clarity, Lindsey put her face in the trash can and dry-heaved, her aching body desperate to squeeze every last drop of Bourbon Street from her pores.
Laying back, she rested her eyes, letting the patterns on the wagon’s plaid ceiling melt into the teal, yellow, and black fuzz of a nauseating, unfocused kaleidoscope.
“She messed me up, yeah,” he had finally admitted. “I gave three years of my life to her.”
Three years.
More questions he wouldn’t answer sprang up. Why didn’t they get married? Had they lived together? Why did they break up?
And the one he hadn’t, to this day, answered: whether or not he still loved the woman who lived dangerously close to the end of this map.
Lindsey had tried piecing together the answers for herself. The only social media Helen seemed to have was LinkedIn, and her profile picture was all business. No smile, her long black hair in well-kept waves, her blue eyes the same shade as the button-down shirt she wore underneath a lab coat.
Helen was a biologist at the University of Austin. Lindsey was a bartender at a dive in Dayton, Ohio, without a LinkedIn account.
She’d found other pictures from more than two years ago on Graham’s friends’ socials.
He had been softer around the edges and looked about a decade younger without the beard.
The biggest change? His smile. Lindsey had never seen it reach his eyes or spread from ear to ear.
He was glassy-eyed in a lot of the shots, either drunk or stoned, ridiculously happy, and often cheek-to-cheek with her.
It didn’t matter if Helen was smiling or not, she was always sidled up to Graham as if she belonged there, and she was so strikingly beautiful, it seemed unfair that Graham should have to spend the rest of his life comparing other women to her, knowing they would always fall short.
Three years.
At least Lindsey wouldn’t lose that much time to a relationship that was going to blow up in her face. She’d know in a day.
CALL ME.
Lindsey closed her eyes, fading into a dream about a time they ate ice cream in bed after sex, naked and happy.
Back when they were still just hooking up after her bar shifts, when things were almost great.