Chapter Thirteen
Sam
By the time I get upstairs after close, Autumn is somewhere over the Atlantic.
That didn't stop me from checking the time all fucking day or staying behind the bar until there was nothing left to invent.
Tony caught me restocking a garnish tray that was already full.
Later I tightened a screw under the service station that has probably been loose for months without bothering anybody.
The apartment is dark when I finally go upstairs. The blanket is folded over the back of the couch the way Autumn leaves it, and her gray socks are still bunched under the coffee table. I get a beer, sit down and spend five minutes staring at them.
Then her voice comes back from the night in my apartment. Tell me what this is. What am I to you?
Girlfriend. The word has been sitting in my head since she left, simple enough to make me feel sick.
I could've said girlfriend. It feels strange, but not wrong.
I could've told her I didn't know what came after it, that I had no fucking idea what I was doing, but she hadn't imagined the last few months.
Instead I gave her every reason to leave with the question still open.
I reach down and pick up her socks. They barely fill my hand. For a second I think about taking them into the bedroom with the charger and everything else she left here. Instead I slide them back under the coffee table. Not tonight.
After Elise, I got good at staying busy. Do something until you're tired. Sleep. Get up. Find something else. It worked eventually. I tell myself this is the same thing, then spend half the night awake anyway.
The next afternoon, Bex drops the weekend schedule onto my desk hard enough that it slides into the liquor invoice.
"Tonight's act is asking for another dressing room."
I pull the schedule closer and scan the changes. None of it is complicated. "They can use my office during the show."
"That's what I figured."
She makes a note on her copy, but when I turn the page, she doesn't leave. Bex is usually halfway back to whatever she was doing before a conversation is technically over, so I make it through maybe three lines before I look up again.
"What?"
"Have you heard from Autumn?"
The question irritates me faster than it should. "No."
Bex stays where she is, one hand still wrapped around the schedule. I wait a second, then set mine down. "You clearly have another question."
"I asked the one I had."
"Right."
Her mouth tightens, but she doesn't bite. That makes it worse. Since Autumn walked out of my apartment, Bex has mostly left the subject alone. She watched me stand behind the same bar and do absolutely nothing about it. I don't need her to point that out.
"She didn't even say goodbye," I say.
Bex goes still. "What?"
"You heard me."
"I heard the words. I'm trying to figure out how you got there."
I lean back in the chair, already pissed enough that stopping now would feel like backing down from an argument she hasn't even made yet.
"She had nine days, Bex. Nine. She packed her apartment, saw Summer, saw Marisol and Lucia, got everything handled for London.
She had time to do all of that and never came to see me. "
Bex stares at me long enough that I can feel how stupid it sounds without her helping. I keep going anyway.
"She didn't call either. I sent her a message and got nothing back."
"What did you send?"
I rub my thumb along the edge of the schedule. "I asked her how the tour stuff was going."
For the first time, Bex looks genuinely offended on Autumn's behalf.
"That's what you sent?"
"I know it was shitty."
"Do you?"
"Yes, Bex." I push the schedule away from me. "I know I could've done more. I know I should've gone to her. I'm not sitting here pretending I handled this well."
"Then what exactly are you mad about?"
"That she didn't come either."
The complaint is out before I have time to make it sound any better.
Bex opens her mouth, but I don't let her have it yet.
"I'm not saying this is all on her, but she is the one who left. She had nine days. She knew where I was every night. She knew what time I came downstairs, where I'd be behind the bar, everything. At some point she could've walked in and said something."
"She did."
I stop.
Bex goes quiet, and whatever replaced the irritation in her face makes me straighten.
"What?"
"What happened when Autumn came up to your apartment?"
I frown. "What do you mean? You know she came to talk to me."
"I know that part."
"Then what are you asking?"
Bex watches me, then some of the color leaves her face.
"Did Autumn ever tell you she overheard us?"
It takes me a second to understand what she's asking. "Overheard us when?"
Bex closes her eyes. "Fuck."
My chair scrapes against the floor when I stand. Whatever irritation I was carrying into this conversation disappears. "Bex, what the hell are you talking about?"
"Before she came back to talk to you. You and I were in the storeroom talking about her."
I know the conversation immediately. Bex asking me what Autumn was to me, what I thought would happen if she wanted more. Me giving her every reason I had for why things worked exactly as they were.
My hand closes around the back of the chair. "Autumn was here for that?"
"She came in sometime before we opened. I didn't know she was there while we were talking.
" Bex sets the schedule down on the corner of my desk and looks at me.
"I only realized that she was there afterward.
I came out and saw the front door moving.
I went to the window and she was outside propped up against the wall. "
I picture Autumn against the wall outside, alone with what I'd said.
"How much did she hear?"
"I don't know when she came in, Sam, but I'm certain that she heard enough."
I look away, but Bex keeps going.
"She heard you call it casual. No strings, no labels. She heard you say you weren't serious." Her voice drops before she adds, "And she heard what you said when I asked what would happen if she wanted more."
I already know which part she means. My hands flatten against the desk as I stare down at the paperwork spread across it.
"You don't have to say it."
"I think I do."
"I know what I fucking said, Bex."
For a few seconds she lets me stand there with it. The club keeps moving outside the closed door, music coming through the wall beneath the clink of glass and voices from the bar, while the whole conversation starts replaying in my head with Autumn somewhere on the other side of it.
When Bex finally speaks, she doesn't soften it.
"She heard you say it wasn't that deep."
I drop my head.
I'd known the words were bad. I sure as hell knew it afterward. What I hadn't known was that Autumn heard them from my own lips, standing inside my office while I talked about the two of us like she wasn't part of the conversation.
After a moment I look back at Bex. "You knew she'd heard all that?"
"I knew she'd heard enough to hurt her. I didn't know exactly where she'd started listening, and by the time I got outside she was already trying to pull herself together."
"Then why didn't you tell me?"
Regret pulls at Bex's mouth. "Because days later she came back."
I don't say anything.
"Think about it, Sam. She walked into Vibes, asked to talk to you and went upstairs with you. I assumed she was going to tell you what she'd heard and the two of you were finally going to have the conversation we'd just spent months pretending you weren't having."
"But she didn't tell me."
"I know that now." Bex rubs a hand over the back of her neck.
"At the time, you told me afterward that you'd talked.
I wasn't here when she left, and you didn't exactly give me a play-by-play.
I thought she'd confronted you, you knew what she'd heard, and whatever happened between you after that was between the two of you. "
I stare at her, the night Autumn came upstairs already starting to look completely different.
Bex lets out a breath. "I thought you knew."
The night Autumn came to confront me rearranges itself in my head. She kept her coat on, hands buried in the pockets even though she'd spent enough nights upstairs to know exactly where she would've dropped it if she planned on staying.
Tell me what this is. What am I to you?
I thought she was asking for information. Instead she'd walked in already carrying every safe answer I'd given Bex and waited to see whether I'd give her something different to her face.
I sit on the edge of the desk because standing still suddenly takes more concentration than it should.
"She wasn't asking because she didn't know."
Bex doesn't answer.
"She wanted me to say something different."
"Yeah."
Then the rest of that night comes back with it.
Autumn asked me to treat her differently downstairs.
Not privately. Not in my apartment where nobody could see us.
In Vibes, in the middle of people who had known what we were before I was willing to say it.
Then she asked me for one true thing about myself that she hadn't learned from someone else.
I gave her nothing.
I remember her standing across the room from me, waiting while I reached for every safe answer I had.
Do you want this?
Do you want me?
My chest goes tight. I had an answer. I still let her walk out without it.
"Christ."
Bex stays quiet.
Since she left, I've been carrying around this stupid fucking grievance that Autumn had nine days and never came through the door. I've been telling myself she knew where I was, that she could've sat at the end of the bar and made me deal with her one more time.
She already had.
She walked back into Vibes after hearing me reduce months of us to something casual and easy. She went upstairs with me, stood in my apartment and asked me directly for what she needed.
Then I told her I couldn't do it. I drag both hands over my face.
"And after that I sent her a text about the tour."
Bex makes a sound somewhere between a sigh and a curse.
"Fuck."
This time neither of us says anything for a while.
The club keeps moving outside the office. Somebody opens a bottle. A laugh cuts through the music. Five minutes ago all of that felt like something I needed to deal with.
I keep seeing Autumn upstairs with her coat on, giving me the chance to say something different to her face. I didn't.