Chapter 28
Jackson
I was halfway through the whiskey shelf when I pulled out my phone.
Not to call Kevin. I’d been not-calling Kevin since Wednesday night. This was the bar’s Instagram, the same dumb check I did every morning while I counted bottles. I almost didn’t open it.
Usually it was the same shit every time. Sixty, maybe seventy likes on the drink special. Four comments, all from regulars.
But the numbers were wrong.
Engagement up three hundred percent overnight.
Forty-two new followers since Saturday. I scrolled, the comments loaded, and I knew every one of these people.
Cindy Kowalski drank the same chardonnay every Thursday and asked how business was going like she actually cared.
Mark and Diane Peretti had their anniversary dinner here last month, and I comped their dessert.
Now they were all in my comments talking about my life under a picture of a goddamn whiskey sour.
Cindy Kowalski: Hope Kevin’s doing okay.
I closed the app and set the phone facedown on the bar.
I picked the clipboard back up and kept counting bottles.
Maker’s Mark three-quarters full. Bulleit a little over half.
I wrote Bulleit down twice and skipped Jameson completely.
I stared at the page until I noticed it.
I knew these bottles by weight. Didn’t even need to look.
Still looked anyway, because if I stopped moving for one second, I was gonna see her on my bar again.
So I didn’t let it get going. Moved to the vodka shelf. Tito’s full. Grey Goose two-thirds. Ketel One needed reordering.
Then I tried to push it down, but it came anyway.
You ruin everything.
My old man. Right on time. I pressed so hard writing over one of the numbers that the pen tore through the paper.
It had been showing up every few hours since Saturday, regular as a goddamn timer.
Worst part was, I never had anything to say back.
Eight years I’d spent proving him wrong.
Eight years of 5:30 alarms and running this bar like it mattered.
Because it did matter. It meant I wasn’t him.
Wasn’t the guy who wrecked everything he touched and stood there blaming everybody else.
Then Kevin went to Chicago for five days, and I fucked his girlfriend on my bar. Shame rushed straight up my neck the second it flashed back. Didn’t stop anything.
I kept telling myself she wasn’t officially his, but it sounded like bullshit every time.
Hell, I didn’t even know what she was to him.
But I knew what Kevin was to me. Twenty-five years.
The only one who stayed after Melissa, after my dad, after all of it.
And I looked at twenty-five years of that and thought, yeah, burn it down for a woman I met two months ago.
You always want what you can’t have. That’s why you’ll never be satisfied.
My handwriting was going to hell. When the handwriting went, my hands went next, and I needed them busy before I put one through the wall. I grabbed a rag and started wiping down the bar.
Then my hand hit that spot by the register where the ring stain used to be, and I locked up with the rag mashed into the wood.
I could still see the way her skirt rode up against the edge of the bar.
Shame hit every time it came back. Didn’t stop it from coming.
Wednesday night. Her bourbon glass sweating on the wood with no coaster under it.
I’d reached over, slid one beneath it, and our fingers touched.
She looked up at me, and that was it. I couldn’t talk myself out of wanting her.
I could still see the look she gave me after.
Mouth a little open. Not pulling away. Knowing exactly what was gonna happen.
I clenched my hand around the rag. My whole damn arm remembered too much.
I scrubbed that spot Thursday morning before Kevin got back. Kept at it longer than I needed to.
I made myself keep going. Ran the rag the full length of the bar.
Into the corners. Around the taps. Straightened the stools.
Checked the taps. Opened the same drawer twice.
The place was already clean. I’d cleaned it at six that morning, same as always.
I’d clean it again before open, and none of it was gonna do a thing about the fact that I was still a piece of shit. Didn’t matter how clean I got it.
The phone was still facedown on the wood. I flipped it over and pulled up Kevin’s number. Just stared at it. Kevin’s name on the screen, Lauren still stuck in my head, and every way I looked at it left me feeling like shit.
I should’ve called. That’s what you do. That’s what Kevin would do, because Kevin’s the guy who shows up.
Shows up with coffee you didn’t ask for.
Fixes the shelf you’ve been meaning to get to for three weeks.
Drives forty minutes on his day off to help you move a keg cooler.
That’s him. He’d answer if I called. He’d answer, and I’d hear it the second he knew.
And I’m the asshole who took twenty-five years of that and struck a match because I couldn’t keep my hands off his girl for five goddamn days.
My thumb sat over the call button. I knew the sentence.
Knew the exact sentence that would split this thing wide open, and I still couldn’t make myself be the one who said it.
Because calling Kevin meant hearing him.
Hearing him meant wanting to fix it. And wanting anything at all felt like standing on the wrong side of a line I’d already crossed. My thumb wouldn’t press down.
I flipped the phone facedown again and went back to wiping the bar.
Lauren
I stared at the casserole through the Saran wrap and called Kevin for the sixth time.
Four rings, then voicemail. Same four rings every damn time.
Same calm, professional Kevin voice telling me to leave a message like I was calling a doctor’s office about a refill.
I’d already left three yesterday. He hadn’t listened to any of them.
He wasn’t going to pick up. My texts all said delivered, not read, which felt worse than getting blocked, because at least getting blocked would mean he made a choice.
The fridge hummed behind me. I leaned back against the counter in Kevin’s kitchen, wearing his shirt from two days ago and the shorts I slept in, my hair twisted up any which way because I couldn’t make myself care about it.
The shirt still smelled clean. Still smelled like his laundry detergent.
I yanked the hem down and tried not to think about that.
He’d left the good mug out by the coffeemaker for me again, still there with the handle turned out.
The casserole sat on the middle shelf between his meal-prep containers with the neat little day-of-the-week labels.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. He had planned his whole week before Chicago, color-coded Pyrex and all, but he wasn’t here to eat any of it.
He’d made room for me in here without acting like he was doing me some huge favor.
Every time I looked at the plastic wrap I could still see my fingerprints from Sunday, pressed into it while I smoothed it down and thought about how happy he’d be.
I hit redial. Four rings, then voicemail.
I hung up before the beep, yanked open the fridge, and pulled the casserole out.
Chicken and rice with cream of mushroom, the TikTok recipe he’d gone back for seconds on.
He’d stood right at this counter eating it off the spoon and grinning at me between bites.
Two days ago this was me trying to look like I belonged here.
Now I was shoveling it down cold over the sink because sitting at his table felt wrong.
Every scrape of the fork against the glass sounded so loud in that dead kitchen I wanted to throw the dish straight through the wall.
I should’ve left. I’d done it before. Stuffed everything I owned into trash bags, pointed my car toward a highway, vanished on an entire zip code.
That’s my move. That’s always been my move.
LA to Fairview was supposed to be the version where I quit doing that, and look at me now, standing in his kitchen with cold casserole in my mouth while he sends me to voicemail.
But if I left, Tommy was right. Mrs. Henderson was right.
Every asshole in this town who looked at me once and thought gone by spring got to cash in.
And Kevin, who gave me his basement, his fridge, seventy-two on the thermostat because I mentioned one time that I run cold, would spend the rest of his life thinking I didn’t care enough to stay.
I put the casserole back. Rinsed the fork.
Checked my phone because I’m apparently a glutton for punishment and also a complete idiot, but there was nothing.
He was going quiet on her — no calls back, no texts read.
And I was still checking anyway. Kevin’s contact photo was the one I took three weeks ago when he was laughing at something Jackson said, his whole face open, no guard up anywhere.
Saturday was its own problem, separate from everything else, and I hadn’t figured out what to do with it yet.
A silver Buick rolled past the front window.
Mrs. Henderson’s Buick. I knew it the second I saw it.
My stomach dropped hard. She was behind the wheel doing fifteen in a twenty-five, head turned toward the house, toward me standing there behind the glass looking like a mugshot in Kevin’s shirt.
She didn’t stop. Didn’t wave. Just slowed down to stare, then picked back up and took the corner.
My phone buzzed on the counter. Unknown number. Fairview area code.