Chapter Thirty-Five
? Holly ?
I woke to the sound of his cane tapping once against the bedroom wall and the soft scrape of a mug on the counter.
Sunlight striped the floor. The apartment smelled like coffee and the citrus candle I forgotten to blow out last night.
For a minute I let myself sink into it—the ordinary hum I’d prayed for. Just the two of us breathing.
He was at the stove when I walked in, hair rumpled, T-shirt crooked on one shoulder. He glanced back and smiled like the sun had finally done its job.
“Morning Malibu,” he said.
“Barely,” I said. “That clock has to be lying.”
He poured coffee into my mug and slid it across the counter.
When I reached for the creamer, I watched him reach for the little bar cart I kept in the corner of the kitchen, mostly for shits and giggles because I wasn’t much of a drinker.
He uncapped the small flask we had kept from some gift basket and tipped a bit into his mug.
The sound was nothing—no louder than a drip from a faucet.
But the movement was almost familiar. Like he had done this before, and I somehow hadn’t noticed. My heart changed tempo.
He saw me looking and raised a brow. “Breakfast of champions.”
“Classy,” I said, too light. My laugh came out bright and hollow. “You gonna garnish it with a cherry, too?”
He grinned, then took a sip. “Don’t tempt me.”
It was nothing. People did this all the time. A splash after a long night, a nightcap after a long week, a champagne toast at a wedding didn’t make anyone a villain. I told myself that once, then again. It’s fine. A drink every now and again is fine.
We sat at the table with our mugs and our separate to-do lists.
I circled a few names for Willows Harbor.
He drew a little wrench next to the name of an old man who swore his carburetor was possessed.
I watched his hand while he wrote; the knuckles were still rough.
I liked the look of those hands around a mug.
The strong veins that ran along the back.
My eyes slid back to the bar cart anyway.
It’s fine.
He left a glass half-full on the counter when he headed for the garage. I put it in the sink, rinsed it, ran the water until the smell was gone. A normal morning. Nothing to see here but a woman washing a glass that didn’t belong on the counter.
We got through the day. We got through the next. The house kept doing what houses do while I moved in quiet circles, picking up after us both like I could tidy the air, like control was the same thing as safety.
On Thursday I cleaned the bookcase, dusted the frames on the dresser. The picture of me, Mom, and Hannah was a little crooked. I straightened it. I opened the drawer where I kept my coin and shut it again without touching it.
In the living room I found a second glass on the coffee table. Not half full. Empty. I took it to the sink, washed it, and set it beside the first one. Two empty mouths facing up. No sound but the careful clink of glass on porcelain. It’s fine. People have drinks.
On Friday, I emptied the small trash can we kept by the bar cart. The bag was heavier than I expected.
It happened the way a body moved when it was hot and the stove was near—you didn’t think about not touching it.
You just didn’t. It was late, and I was cleaning up after dinner.
He went to the bathroom, the whiskey and Cokes he’d had running through him.
One second, I was eyeing the bottle of Jack on the counter.
The next, the bottle was in my hand. I froze, and when I twisted the cap, the little click sounded exactly like a the pop of a pill bottle opening.
The whiskey hit the basin in a steady brown line and smelled like somebody else’s idea of comfort. My mouth tasted metallic, like I’d bitten my tongue and didn’t want to check for blood.
“What are you doing?” His voice came from the hall. I didn’t turn around, just kept pouring. The stream thinned. I tipped the bottle higher. “Hey.” Closer now, confused, already wounded. “That’s mine.”
“Not anymore.” The words were flat, automatic. I set the empty bottle beside the sink like evidence. “I don’t want alcohol in my house anymore.” The word hung there like I’d thrown it. I wanted to catch it and shove it back in my mouth before it hit him. He blinked once like I’d actually done it.
“Got it,” he said, voice low. “Your house.”
“That’s not—Jackson, that’s not what I meant.”
“Sure,” he said, but the sure wasn’t agreement. It was a door closing.
He walked past me and the smell of whiskey and motor oil trailed after him.
He shut himself in the bedroom like a polite guest who didn’t know where else to go.
I stayed in the kitchen with an empty bottle in the sink and the certainty that I had both saved and ruined something in the same breath.
Then I emptied every bottle on that damn cart.
A few nights later, we sat on the couch with the news talking to itself in the corner.
Rain tapped the balcony rail. He leaned back the way he always did, head tipped, eyes half-closed, and his body looked like it had finally found a shape that didn’t hurt.
My foot rested against his leg. The space between us felt lived-in. I almost relaxed.
The news anchor smiled that anchor smile and shifted to a local story about a ceremony downtown. Something about honoring service members. Neither of us were paying attention.
Then the man said his name.
I heard it as sound first, not meaning. Then his name was followed by other names. Quick, efficient, like reading groceries, and all at once the air got thin.
Jackson’s eyes flew open. I watched the muscle in his jaw go taut and stay there.
The anchor kept talking, the chyron kept rolling, and the room became a tunnel.
Bryan Johnson. Miles Hale. Kyle Patterson.
Ryley Donato. A few others that I missed because I was watching him.
The way a piece of him visibly fractured right in front of me with each name.
When the channel went to commercial, at first neither one of us moved.
“That’s not how it happened,” he said, and his voice didn’t sound like his voice. It sounded like a radio that couldn’t find the station.
“Jackson—” I reached for him.
He stood up too fast. The glass fell off the couch arm and shattered, sharp and clean. He didn’t look down. The door opened and closed. No slam. The quiet kind of exit that meant it was already too late.
I picked up the pieces with my fingers wrapped in a dish towel and bled anyway. It was a small cut. I kept pressure on it and watched the door like it could explain itself.
The next week dissolved. Dinners went cold on the stove. His boots multiplied near the door like he was coming home and taking a different pair off each time. The laundry gathered itself into careless little shrines around the hamper. My coffee mug gathered a permanent ring I could not scrub out.
He answered when I called, until he didn’t.
He said he’d be home by nine, until ten arrived and it was eleven.
Sometimes his voice sounded like he was standing in a field with no buildings around.
Sometimes it sounded like a bathroom. Sometimes like a bar.
I asked how his leg was. He said fine. I asked if he’d eaten.
He made a joke about the world’s worst diner and changed the subject.
I laughed, because that’s what you do when the person you love hands you a lighter while you’re standing in a gas station.
I hid the other bottles. He found two, didn’t find three, brought home replacements that didn’t hide.
I told myself: if he cut back by the weekend, it was fine.
If he ate dinner twice this week, it was fine.
If he slept, it was fine. If I can smell coffee on his breath in the morning, not bourbon, it was fine.
I called Dalton at the garage and pretended I had a reason. “Sally,” I said. “She’s making that sound again.”
“What sound?” he asked.
“The one like it’s making a sound.”
“Blondie,” he said softly. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.”
“He won’t talk to me.”
“Me either.”
I cornered Diego behind the shop and asked him not to let Jackson drive if he looked wrong. Diego’s eyes were the only kind of gentle that didn’t make me want to scream. “I’ll try,” he said.
Trying didn’t latch a seatbelt. Trying didn’t pour a bottle down a sink. Trying didn’t hide the keys.
It was a Tuesday night when trying stopped being enough. It started with a phone call I didn’t want to answer and ended with me standing under a flickering neon sign that said “Cold Beer, Hot Wings.”
Jackson was exactly where I didn’t want him to be—at the bar, a glass in front of him and a girl hanging off his arm like she’d claimed a prize. Her laughter was too high-pitched, too eager. The kind of sound that made my teeth hurt.
I didn’t say a word. I just walked up, placed my hand on his shoulder, and gave her a look that could have burned a hole through drywall. She went pale and vanished without protest.
He looked up, bleary-eyed, that crooked grin trying to save him. “Malibu,” he said, all slow vowels and whiskey breath. “You came.”
“Yeah,” I said, voice flat. “Guess I did.”
He tried to stand. His barstool wobbled. He caught himself on my arm, muttered something about driving, and I almost laughed. Almost. I hooked his arm over my shoulder and half dragged him toward the door, ignoring the bartender’s look.
Outside, the night air hit him, and the last bit of strength he had went out like a bad lightbulb. He slumped against me, heavy and useless.
Sally sat a few spaces away. Her custom leather interior that was cleaner than sin. My girl. My one constant. I stared at her and muttered, “If you throw up in my car, I might leave you on the side of the highway.”
He mumbled something unintelligible, leaning heavier into me. I caught a whiff of whiskey and cheap perfume. My stomach turned.