3. Sutton
— ? —
Sutton
Present Day
The bourbon was my third, and I had stopped tasting it an hour ago.
The bar was one I didn’t know, which was the point. Downtown, below street level, the kind of place where no one looked up when you walked in. I had been coming here every Thursday for three months. Same stool. Same drink. Same bartender who had learned not to ask questions.
Thursday was the day our marriage ended. I never said that out loud. I never marked it on a calendar or told anyone why Thursdays were the days I couldn’t sit in my apartment staring at the walls. But my body knew. Every Thursday, I ended up here.
“Get you another?” the bartender asked, nodding at my empty glass.
“Yeah,” I said.
He poured without measuring. I watched the amber liquid fill the glass and thought about nothing. That was the goal. Think about nothing. Feel nothing. Be the kind of man who sits alone in a bar and doesn’t fall apart.
“Rough one?” he asked, sliding the drink toward me.
“Something like that,” I said.
He moved down the bar. I picked up the glass and caught my reflection in the mirror behind the bottles. I looked like shit. I knew I looked like shit. I had stopped caring about that somewhere around month three.
I looked away.
A year and a half since Charlotte walked out of our marriage and never looked back.
And then she married him. Or I assumed she had.
The wedding announcement had run in the paper weeks before the date.
Charlotte Waltham and Reynolds Smith, the church, the time.
I never let myself check whether she’d actually gone through with it.
Reading the details would have made it real.
I closed the page after five seconds and never looked again.
I didn’t call anyone who might know. I didn’t check social media. I didn’t drive by her parents’ house or ask mutual friends or do any of the things a normal person might do when the woman they loved married someone else.
Because knowing for certain would mean feeling it. And not-knowing let me keep it at arm’s length. Not-knowing let me sit on this stool every Thursday and drink bourbon I couldn’t taste and tell myself I was fine.
The anger was always there, just under the surface. Anger at myself for being the kind of husband who let work come first, who forgot to call, who kept saying I would do better and never did.
Anger at her for not fighting harder, for giving up on us, for choosing Reynolds fucking Smith the second the ink was dry. Anger at the whole situation, at the fact that I had married the one person I wanted to keep and I had driven her away with my own negligence.
“Third Thursday in a row at this place.”
Vivienne’s voice came from my left. I didn’t turn around. I had learned the sound of her heels months ago.
“You’re getting predictable,” she said.
“And you’re tracking my car again,” I said.
“It’s my job to know where you are.” She slid onto the stool beside me. Her posture was perfect, her expression neutral. She was still in her work clothes, which meant she had come straight from the office. “How else am I supposed to keep your life running?”
“Maybe I don’t need my life running right now,” I said.
“That’s obvious,” she said. She flagged the bartender and ordered before I could stop her. “Water for him. Nothing for me.”
The bartender set a glass of water in front of me. I didn’t touch it.
“The Bass Group called again,” Vivienne said, pulling out her phone. “I told them you were traveling.”
“I’m not traveling,” I said.
“You’re not returning their calls either,” she said. “So I had to tell them something.”
My phone buzzed on the bar. Vivienne reached for it automatically, answered before I could react.
“Sutton Lynch’s office,” she said, her voice smooth and professional. “He’s in a meeting. Can I take a message?” She listened, nodded, typed something into her phone. “I’ll let him know. Thank you.”
She hung up and set my phone back on the bar, face-down.
“Who was that?” I asked.
“No one important,” she said. “Just the Henley account following up on the proposal you were supposed to send last week.”
“I’ll send it tomorrow,” I said.
“I already sent it,” she said. “Three days ago. I forged your signature on the cover letter.”
I took a drink of bourbon and didn’t respond. This was what my life had become.
Vivienne handling everything, standing between me and the world, managing every piece of information that reached me. I should have been grateful. Instead, I just felt tired.
“Five months, Sutton,” Vivienne said. “She’s been married five months. She’s not coming back.”
My hand tightened on the glass. “I know that.”
“Do you?” she asked. “Because you’re still sitting here every Thursday like she might walk through that door. Like if you just keep punishing yourself long enough, she’ll feel sorry for you and come running back.”
“Drop it, Vivienne.”
“She married him,” Vivienne said. Her voice was flat, clinical, delivering facts the way she delivered everything else.
“She divorced you and picked the safe choice. The family-approved choice. She’s living in some mansion right now not thinking about you at all, and you’re here.
Alone. Drinking yourself into the ground over a woman who already left you once. ”
“I said drop it.”
“She wasn’t worth this,” Vivienne said. “A woman who would pick Reynolds Smith over you?”
“Don’t.”
The word came out hard and cold. I turned to look at her for the first time since she sat down. My jaw was tight. My hands were clenched. I could feel the anger rising in my chest, hot and sharp.
“Don’t talk about her,” I said. “I mean it. Not ever.”
Vivienne held my gaze. I watched her calculate, watched her decide whether to push further or back off. The silence stretched between us, thick with everything I wasn’t saying.
“Fine,” she said finally. She looked down at her phone and started scrolling. “The Singapore contracts need your signature by Monday. Legal flagged three clauses. And your mother called twice asking about the charity gala.”
“Tell her no,” I said.
“I’ll tell her you’re considering it,” she said. “That buys us two weeks.”
She reached across the bar and slid my phone toward herself, turning it face-down on the wood. Her fingers were quick and certain.
My phone buzzed again. Vivienne’s hand moved toward it, but I grabbed it first.
Spencer Moore.
I answered.
“Jesus Christ, Lynch,” Spencer said. “Where the hell have you been? My office has been trying to reach you for three days.”
“I’ve been around,” I said.
“Around where? You’re not returning calls. You’re not answering emails. I had to track down your assistant’s assistant just to confirm you were still breathing.”
“I’ve been busy,” I said.
“Look, I’m not going to ask what’s going on. That’s not how we do things. But I’ve got something in Newport that needs your attention, and I need you on a plane in three weeks.”
“What kind of something?” I asked.
“The kind that makes money,” Spencer said. “Waterfront properties, off-market, priced to move. I need a partner who can spot problems before they get expensive.”
“Spencer…”
“Three weeks,” he said. “Get out of whatever hole you’ve crawled into and come look at this deal. If you hate it, fine. But at least do something other than whatever this is.”
“Yeah,” I said. “All right. I’ll come.”
“Good,” Spencer said. “I’ll send the details. Try to sound like a human being by the time you get here.”
He hung up.
I set the phone on the bar. Vivienne was already typing on her own phone.
“Newport,” she said. “I’ll clear your calendar.”
“I haven’t even…”
“Three weeks,” she said, not looking up. “I heard. I’ll move the Singapore call. What else?”
“Nothing,” I said. “That’s it.”
She kept typing, her fingers moving across the screen. She had already noted it in my calendar. She had already started rearranging my life around this decision I had barely finished making.
“Guess I’m going to Newport,” I said.