24. Carly
CARLY
The door to Dee's bar stuck on the frame like it always did.
I gave it a shove with my hip and stepped inside, blinking against the change in light.
The afternoon sun followed me in through the windows, cutting across the floor in long strips that showed every scuff mark and nail head.
The place smelled like sawdust and something sharper underneath it—varnish, maybe, or wood stain.
Old beer and peanuts, the usual bar smells, but layered now with something that didn't belong.
A handful of regulars sat at the far end of the bar, nursing drinks and talking low.
One of them glanced up when I came in, then went back to his conversation.
The jukebox was quiet. It felt strange, walking in here in the middle of the afternoon when I wasn't scheduled to work. Like I was trespassing in my own space.
Dee looked up from wiping down glasses behind the bar. Her face shifted when she saw me, something careful sliding into place behind her eyes, and my stomach tightened in response. I knew that look. She was measuring what to say, how much to tell me.
"You're back," she said.
"Yeah." I let the door fall shut behind me and walked toward the bar, my boots sounding too loud against the old wooden floor. "Needed to pick up my schedule for next week."
She set the glass down with a soft clink and folded the towel over the edge of the sink, her movements deliberate and slow. "He's already gone."
I stopped walking. My hand tightened on the strap of my bag, leather biting into my palm. "What?"
"Boone." Dee leaned her hip against the counter, her voice even and careful. "He left about an hour ago."
My throat went tight. I forced myself to breathe normally, to keep my face blank and unreadable. "I wasn't—I didn't come here looking for him."
"I know." Dee crossed her arms, but her expression didn't change. "But I'm telling you anyway. He's been doing the work on the bar. With his own hands. And he keeps coming back."
The words landed like stones dropping into still water, each one sending ripples out before I could stop them. I felt my jaw tighten, felt the familiar defensiveness rising up in my chest. "He probably hired someone to do most of it."
"No." Dee's voice was flat, matter-of-fact. "He did it himself."
I shook my head, the movement almost involuntary. "He's got people for that kind of thing. Tuck could've sent someone, or he could've called a contractor. He doesn't—he doesn't do manual labor, Dee. That's not who he is."
"Carly." Dee didn't raise her voice. She didn't have to.
The way she said my name, steady and certain, made me stop talking.
"He's been here every day for the last two weeks.
Alone. I've watched him tear up that corner and put it back together with his own hands.
Then he moved on to the bar top, the stage trim, the tables. He keeps coming back."
I opened my mouth and closed it again. My chest felt too small, like I couldn't get enough air in. Like the walls were pressing closer and I needed to get out, to run, to be anywhere but here listening to Dee tell me things I didn't know how to hear. "That doesn't mean anything."
Dee studied me for a long moment. She didn't argue. She didn't tell me I was wrong or that I should give him a chance or any of the things I'd braced myself to hear. She just said, quiet and even, "He did it himself, Carly. And he keeps coming back."
I looked away. My eyes stung and I blinked hard, willing the feeling to go away before it could take hold.
God, I was so tired. Tired of holding onto anger like it was the only thing keeping me upright.
Tired of hoping he'd change and hating myself for hoping at all.
Tired of this weight in my chest that never seemed to ease no matter how far I ran or how long I stayed away.
"I need to grab my schedule," I said finally. My voice came out hoarse, scraped raw.
Dee nodded toward the office without another word. "It's on the desk."
I walked past her, keeping my shoulders straight and my eyes forward.
The office was barely more than a closet with a filing cabinet and a desk that had seen better days, its surface covered in the usual mess of invoices and order forms. My schedule sat on top of a stack of paperwork Dee never got around to organizing, clipped to a pile with a binder clip that had lost most of its spring.
I picked it up and stood there, staring at the shifts written out in Dee's blocky handwriting without really seeing them.
Two weeks. He'd been here for two weeks, working on the bar with his own hands. Doing the kind of labor he used to pay other people to do without a second thought. Coming back every day even though I wasn't here. Even though I'd made it clear I didn't want to see him.
My stomach twisted into a knot. I wanted to believe it meant something.
I wanted to believe he'd changed, that this wasn't just another performance, another way of convincing himself he was trying while he waited for me to come back and make everything easy again.
But wanting something didn't make it true, and I'd spent too many years believing what I wanted to believe instead of what was right in front of me.
I folded the schedule with hands that weren't quite steady and shoved it into my bag.
When I came back out, Dee was pouring a beer for one of the regulars.
She glanced at me but didn't say anything, didn't ask if I was okay or if I needed to talk.
I should've left. I should've walked straight out the door and gone back to my apartment and put this whole thing out of my mind.
Instead, I found myself standing there in the middle of the floor, looking at the far corner of the room.
Really looking at it, for the first time since I'd walked in.
The corner where the water damage had been.
The place Dee had been complaining about for months, where the baseboard had pulled away and the floor had warped and the drywall above had sagged yellow and soft.
I'd walked past it a hundred times without thinking about it.
Now it was fixed. Or something close to fixed.
The new floorboards didn't match the old ones.
The wood was lighter, the grain different, and the seams between them didn't line up right.
I could see where one board ended too short and the next one started with a gap that had been filled in with something that wasn't quite the right color.
The nails were driven in crooked, some of them bent at angles like they'd been hammered in by someone who'd missed half the time.
The baseboard sat against the wall, but it didn't sit flush—there was still a gap in places, a shadow where it pulled away.
Above it, the patched drywall was uneven, lumpy in some spots and too thin in others, painted over but not smooth.
It looked like someone who'd never done this kind of work had spent days trying to figure it out and still hadn't gotten it right.
My throat ached.
I walked closer, almost against my will, and crouched down to run my fingers along the edge of one of the floorboards.
The wood was rough under my palm, not sanded enough, and I could feel the places where the grain had splintered.
The nails were cold and crooked, their heads dented where the hammer had slipped.
But the floor was level now. The boards were down, even if they didn't match.
The corner was whole, even if it looked like hell.
He'd done it. God, he'd really done it.
I pulled my hand back like the wood had burned me.
"He didn't know how to pull up the old boards," Dee said quietly from behind me.
She was watching me now, her arms still crossed but her voice gentle.
"Cracked half of them trying. Took him two days just to get the floor stripped down to the joists.
He didn't know what he was doing. Still doesn't, really. But he kept at it."
I swallowed hard. "He doesn't know how to do this kind of work."
"No," Dee agreed. "He doesn't."
The words hung in the air between us. I stood up and turned away from the corner, my eyes catching on the bar top a few feet away.
The wood there was lighter too, stripped down and sanded smooth in some places, rough and uneven in others.
The finish didn't match, too dark here and too light there, like someone had applied stain without knowing how deep it would soak in.
Past that, the stage trim was new and pale, the nails driven in crooked just like the ones in the corner.
It was all the same—work done by someone who didn't know what he was doing, who'd had to learn as he went, who'd made a mess of it and kept going anyway.
My chest hurt.
I thought about Boone's hands. The way they moved over guitar strings like they were part of him, confident and sure.
The calluses he used to get from playing, the rough patches on his fingertips that I used to trace when we lay in bed together.
I thought about those same hands here, alone in this bar, gripping sandpaper and a hammer.
Sanding wood until his palms bled. Coming back day after day even though I wasn't here to see it.
Even though Dee had probably made it clear I didn't want him here at all.
He keeps coming back.
I pressed my palm against my breastbone, trying to ease the ache that had settled there like a stone.
It didn't help. Nothing helped. I wanted to believe this was real.
I wanted to believe he'd finally woken up and realized what he'd done, what he'd let happen to us.
I wanted to believe he was trying to fix it, that he was willing to do the hard, humiliating work of learning how to be the man I'd needed him to be all along.
But I'd believed him before. God, I'd believed him so many times.
I'd believed him when he said he'd make time for me, when he said he'd stand up to his family, when he said I mattered to him as much as his career did.
And every single time, he'd proven me wrong.
Every time, I'd been the one left holding the pieces while he moved on like nothing had happened, like my hurt didn't count because he hadn't meant it, because he'd been busy, because there was always something more important.
I couldn't do it again. I couldn't let myself hope just to have it ripped away when he decided the work was too hard or the cost was too high or Savannah needed him more than I did.
My hands were shaking. I shoved them into my pockets and forced myself to breathe, to get a grip on the feeling threatening to overwhelm me.
"Carly." Dee's voice was soft. Not pleading. Not pushing. Just my name, steady and certain, an anchor in the mess of my own thoughts.
I shook my head. I didn't trust myself to speak.
"He did the work," she said. "With his own hands. And he keeps coming back."
I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste copper.
My eyes burned and I blinked fast, refusing to let the tears fall.
I wanted to go to him. God, I wanted to walk out of this bar and drive to wherever he was and ask him if this was real, if he meant it, if he was finally ready to fight for me the way I'd been fighting for us all along.
I wanted to believe that the crooked nails and the uneven finish and the hours of work meant what I wanted them to mean—that he'd changed, that he understood now, that I wouldn't be invisible anymore.
But I couldn't. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Because wanting to believe someone had changed wasn't the same as believing it. And I'd spent ten years making excuses for him, convincing myself that next time would be different, that he'd finally see me. I couldn't go back to that. I wouldn't survive it.
I looked at the corner one more time. At the mismatched boards and the crooked nails and the gap where the baseboard still didn't sit flush.
At the stage with its pale new trim and the bar top with its uneven finish.
At all the evidence of hours spent doing work he didn't know how to do, making mistakes and starting over, coming back day after day to a place that wasn't his anymore because I'd asked him to stay away.
And he'd done it himself.
My chest ached so badly I could barely stand it. The feeling pressed against my ribs like something living, something that wanted out, and I wrapped my arms around myself to hold it in.
But wanting something didn't make it right, and I'd spent too long chasing after him while he walked away.
If he was really trying, if this was real, then he could keep trying.
He could keep coming back. He could keep learning how to do the work even when it was hard and humiliating and I wasn't there to see it.
And maybe, eventually, when I'd seen enough proof that this wasn't just another flash of guilt that would fade as soon as something shinier came along—maybe then I'd be ready to believe it.
But not today.
The bar was quiet around me. The regulars at the far end were still talking low over their drinks.
The jukebox was still silent. Dee had gone back to wiping down glasses, giving me space, not asking anything of me.
The afternoon sun still cut across the floor in long strips, catching on the mismatched boards in the corner and the pale new trim on the stage.
I stood there in the middle of it all, my vision blurring at the edges, my throat tight and aching.
I could leave. I could walk out the door and go back to my apartment and put this whole thing out of my mind.
Or I could stay, and let myself feel the weight of what he'd done, and try to figure out what it meant.
I didn't go to him.