Chapter 4
ANGIE
“Go home,” Hannah tells me when she finds me in the kitchen.
I look up at her with furrowed brows from where I’m cutting up limes and lemons for the bar. I break our eye contact and pick the knife back up to continue slicing, but she places her hand over top of mine, effectively stopping me.
“No. Angie, stop. You’ve worked doubles all week. Plus, you just had a ten-top leave.” She carefully takes the knife from my hand and nudges me out of the way. “Go. Home.”
I drop my eyes to the stack of cut fruit and cutting board, willing myself not to cry, then turn away from Hannah to head back to the front of the house to clock out and grab my things.
I don’t say goodbye to anyone as I push out of the front door, but I keep my head down as I walk down the street to the parking lot that’s designated to us.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m finally a bartender, and it’s everything I thought it would be.
School is out for the summer, which has never been an issue for me.
I love summer and being on a break from school, but unfortunately, I haven’t had much interest in piano lessons.
So maybe that’s it. I’ve been stuck and I’m frustrated because I don’t know how to get unstuck.
That’s the thing about depression. It hangs onto you like a hair that’s stuck on your shirt and you’ve tried everything to get it off.
Digging my keys out of my purse, I find them and unlock my car, but my steps falter when I see a familiar figure leaning against my driver’s side door.
“I’m not in the mood for whatever mind games you want to play with me,” I tell him wearily as I get within earshot.
It feels foreign that these are the first words I’ve ever spoken to him in the two decades of our families knowing each other.
But Brandon and I have never had any reason to speak to or with each other—that could be the ten-year age gap between us talking.
One of my first memories of knowing about him was that he was my brother’s best friend's older brother.
Brandon and I are on different ends of the life experience spectrum, so those fifteen words feel like such an odd thing to say to someone for the first time.
While we may know of each other, we’re strangers in every other way.
Everyone in the Philadelphia area knows the Hayes and Taylor families were a packaged deal.
Any sort of celebration that was held together: birthdays, anniversaries, graduations; you name it, and our families did it together as the biggest, loudest group, making friends with the owners of wherever we ended up, so they were comfortable the next time we came around.
But it feels like another lifetime ago because I can’t remember the last time anything was celebrated or worth celebrating.
Like the first time he came into the TapHouse, I felt so exposed in my work outfit compared to his.
My black cotton mini skirt, black restaurant-issued baby doll tee that shows a sliver of my midriff, and black Doc Martens have become my accepted work attire.
As long as we’re wearing black and our restaurant shirt, Hannah is accepting of it.
I’m comfortable in my body, and anything I wear becomes an extension of me.
But Brandon, in his tan jeans and long-sleeved, forest green, button-down shirt that’s untucked and with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, makes me feel more underdressed and fully exposed than if I were in my birthday suit.
In the fading daylight, I can just make out the closely shaven facial hair on his square jaw.
It adds a ruggedness to his put-together outfit.
His brown hair is neatly styled and his normally hazel eyes are dark under his furrowed brows.
Brandon is obscenely attractive, but with the way he’s been around me these last two times, I can’t ignore that there’s an ugliness hiding in there.
With a groan, I move toward my car door but he still doesn’t move. So, I unlock the car again hoping that he gets the hint.
“Move, please,” I order and I hate that my voice betrayed me by coming out shaky while the familiar feeling of tears begins welling up in my eyes.
I hate when my depressive episodes hit me out of nowhere.
I’m usually fine with burying myself in work until my depression takes over and it’s too hard to function.
Like today. Work was a struggle to get through when all I wanted to do was escape to the industrial-sized freezer and let the cold consume me.
I finally look up at him and see his furrowed brows scrunched together and his eyes roaming over my face. Like I’m a puzzle he’s trying to solve, only I’m so far from being a puzzle. I’m basically an unsolvable math equation.
“I might’ve been wrong about you,” he says.
My confusion and shock must be written all over my face.
I’m about to respond when he’s the one who shocks me by grabbing my face and fusing our mouths together in the hottest kiss I’ve ever received.
I feel my bag drop off my shoulder and to the ground as I mistake him for someone not tied to my family and relax in his hold, giving in and kissing him back.
Only for a moment. But then I remember the cold looks he’s given me the couple of times that he’s come to just sit at the bar and I push him away.
“What the hell?” I ask, and bring my hand up to my lips.
Brandon must realize what he did as he stands there with his kiss-bruised lips and a whispered, “I’m sorry,” falling from his lips before he whips around back to his car, where he speeds off before it’s barely even on.
I clench my jaw and the first tear slides down my face as I watch his taillights fade in the distance.
“What the hell do I do, Liam?” I ask as I look up to the now darkening sky and feel more tears slide down the side of my face and into my ears.
I bend down to pick up my bag that fell on the ground when Brandon kissed me and finally hop in my car. I have another pity party before I start up and head home.
The drive home isn’t bad. We’re about thirty minutes outside of the city in a suburban neighborhood. Although calling it suburban, like we’re some modern family when these houses are easily over four-thousand-square-feet, is putting it lightly.
When I park in the driveway and get out, I look across the street at the Rawlins home.
When we lost the Hayes family, we also lost the Rawlins family.
I think Kamryn, my brother’s girlfriend at the time, felt guilty for not saving him.
As a teenager who wasn’t privy to the ins and outs of their relationship, I went through phases of blaming her one day and understanding where she was coming from the next.
I was in an exhaustive back-and-forth with myself, and I now put the blame on Liam.
My brother doing what he did set off a domino effect in everyone’s lives, changing their direction.
I don’t know exactly what was going on in his life that week and those days leading up to the accident.
But I do know that he was extremely distant.
He broke family plans and disappeared completely from us.
But the second I saw his truck on the news, everything added up.
Sometimes I wonder what our lives would look like if he were man enough to talk to someone instead of getting behind the wheel.
Would he and Kamryn have gotten married?
Would they still live here? Would my brother have eventually gotten drafted to the major league?
These are all the things I wonder about.
Walking into the house, it’s quiet. Really, it’s been quiet for the last two years.
With a sigh, I slip my keys on the hook that’s by the front door and walk down the short hallway that leads to the living room and kitchen.
Empty. Although I know my parents have been here.
I think they keep this house solely for me, because when Liam died, it’s like I stopped existing to my parents.
I could never measure up to him, so it’s no surprise they were devastated when he passed. But, me? I’m still here.
I grab a quick bite to eat in the form of some Easy Mac before heading back down the hall and stopping at the front room that has the piano.
I’ve barely touched it in two years, so it likely needs tuning.
But in my depressive state, I’ve had this melody stuck in my head for the last few weeks that if I don’t sit down and play just to get it out, it’s going to drive me insane.
I run up to my room to grab a tripod for my phone and camera and slip a Philly football sweatshirt over my head to hide the logo of the bar.
Jogging back down the stairs, I set up my phone and digital camera so that the piano keys are the only things in view, and I light a couple of candles, placing them on the lid and bathing the room in a soft glow.
Getting situated on the bench and fiddling with the keys to loosen up my fingers, the melody that’s been taunting me comes back with a force that knocks the breath from my lungs, and I get lost in the movement and music for the next few hours.
My fingers move over the keys like I never stopped playing.
I flow through classical pieces, trending songs, and even try my hand at more original pieces.
It’s no secret that the reason I’m finally playing after months of nothing has to do with what transpired a mere hour ago.
Am I ready to acknowledge it? No. But I am happy that I’m able to lose myself in the music and play until the candles begin to burn out and night turns to early morning.
The sun shining through my windows the next morning is an unwelcome visitor.
After the candles burned out, I kept playing until the sky began to turn a soft lavender.
At that point, I knew I needed sleep. I was playing to work myself out of a bad mood.
But now that it’s the next day, my crappy mood is still present.
Leaning over, I grab my phone off the nightstand, I flop back down on my pillows, and push my blonde hair out of my face.
I see a text from Hannah telling me to take the rest of the week off with no room for discussion.
My brows furrow and I blink my eyes fast to stave off the tears.
That job is my lifeline and she knows it.
I think that’s why she lets me work so much.
But she knows me better than my parents, so that’s likely why she’s forcing me to take this week off.
Switching to my social media apps, I open mine to see notifications from past videos making their round again.
But instead of acknowledging them or the comments from people asking for more, I scroll through to see what my former friends are up to.
I may have been a wallflower throughout school, but I had no shortage of friends.
Or people I thought were friends. Now they’re just people I have fond memories with, as I stopped putting in the effort to maintain those friendships after the accident.
Wiping at my eyes, I quickly open up my Photos app to cut down the clip of me playing last night to something that’ll capture the attention of anyone who finds it.
I’ll have to put the other footage on my computer to edit that.
But this is me attempting to find the joy in things again.
And piano had always been that thing for me.
Finding the section of the piece I want, I edit it down to thirty seconds and reopen my social media app.
Titling the caption for those with sorrowful hearts, your secret is safe with me.
, I share the video and decide to get on with my day.