14
Ava
He doesn’t text me.
And I, like a fool, keep sending him a pile of messages he’s probably not even reading, suggestions we meet up again. I’m ashamed of the number of times I think about just sending him a photo of my tits, because he’s bound to respond to that, right?
After a day or two of utter radio silence from Logan, the message started setting in. We were done. Or he was done with me, and he couldn’t be bothered to actually tell me about it.
It’s hard not to wonder if I scared him off with all my daydreaming aloud about running away together. Then again, maybe I’d gotten too comfortable with him, and he’d never wanted anything more with me.
No, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to beat myself up and wonder what I should have done differently.
If he was done with me, well, I was fucking done with him, then.
I don’t care. I’m not about to be all broken up over him.
We weren’t even dating, really. There was nothing there.
I don’t want to be all strung out over a guy I said I didn’t want something more with.
I mean, I’m not. I don’t know.
And just like that, I’m blubbering at work again. Fuck.
Of course, it’s immediately after getting ghosted that I have another delivery for Aconite Ales.
This time, I drive right around back without stopping in the front like I did before.
The truck’s tires crunch along the gravel lot, and I try not to think about the possibility of running into Logan again.
Just being here makes my throat tighten, the sensation of being on the brink of crying hovering just behind my nose.
Whatever. Whatever! I don’t care.
I hop out of the truck, wave to one of the loading bay workers.
We chitchat the usual hellos and comments about the weather as I hand over the clipboard for a signature, but every word of it I’m keeping an eye out for Logan.
He’s working in his office, I imagine, but I also can’t help imagining him coming downstairs, out here.
I’m not sure if I’m worried that he will, or if I’m hoping for it.
I guess I could just stomp back up there and yell at him for not even properly breaking things off with me and then awkwardly leave.
Forget that. I don’t need answers from him. I don’t want them either. As soon as the clipboard forms are signed I start helping unload the crates from the back of the truck.
Considering the heavy scent of lavender, I wonder if they’re planning some lavender and honey ale for this summer, like they did a couple years back. Sometimes they repeat seasonal flavors.
I didn’t pack this order, but I recognize the plastic-lined packaging in one of the crates. It’s so no oils pass through and hurt whoever handles the order. I read the label: dried wolfsbane buds.
Hang on.
For a moment I frown. This is like, super poisonous. I know we occasionally sell it to pharmacies and licensed herbalists, but not really in this large of an amount.
Oh, aconite, duh. Like the name of the brewery.
I roll my eyes, then frown again a second later. That didn’t actually explain anything, I don’t think.
They’re not going to make a drink with this, right? I know they do different floral ales, but they’re usually all edible flowers. Lavender, rose, jasmine, all that. Why would they need something so poisonous?
I groan out loud, tossing the package back in and hefting the crate up, passing it off to one of the other workers in the loading bay. I’m not going to waste another thought on anything to do with the whole Hayes family.
Driving to the Thirsty Turtle after work isn’t so much a decision as it is rote memory carrying me there, like walking over to my bed and melting into my mattress. Sophie pokes her head out of the back storage room just as I’m settling into my usual spot at the bar.
“Mozzarella sticks, Soph,” I mumble, before burying my head in my arms. “And whatever you’ve got that isn’t fucking Aconite.”
Sophie’s brow knits together sympathetically, a silent, “I told you so,” even if she doesn’t say anything at all. She pops the top off a different ale brand and slides it down the bar to me, before she disappears into the back.
“Jeez,” some guy sitting at the bar a couple chairs down laughs. “You got a personal vendetta, or something?”
“Just sick of that shit,” I grumble, unwilling to start from the beginning of my list of grievances with the label, the family, or that guy who works in distribution.
I sit, staring absently at the mirrored barback behind the cluster of spirits and hard liquors that line it. My eye draws to the empty chair at one of the tables behind me, where Logan had been sitting when I’d decided I’d had enough of his pouty bullshit.
Maybe that should have been my first red flag.
Maybe I was ignoring them every step of the way, and I should have known I’d end up back here.
Even when I was sitting on his desk, looking at that photo of his ex-fiancée, I was staring directly at a red flag and choosing to ignore it because I thought Logan and I had something.
Of course he dropped me like I’m nothing.
She was gorgeous and clearly had some kind of a degree, and well, who was I to compete with that? I didn’t have that kind of pedigree.
I bite the inside of my cheek, feeling pricks in my throat, in my nose, a tightening sensation as the waterworks start to rise.
Even if he came crawling back to me, with some perfectly explanatory excuse, that he’d been trapped under a landslide and his phone was crushed to smithereens, I’ve decided I wouldn’t care. Not that I could picture him crawling.
I can feel the eyes of the guy a couple chairs down the bar still on me, and when I turn my head, he’s leaning toward me a little. He’s blond with a bristled mustache and a plaid shirt.
He’s not really my type, but he’s friendly and smiles wide when I push the barstool next to me out with my foot, eagerly taking the seat next to me.
He supplies most of the conversation as I work through my mozzarella sticks, and it doesn’t seem to matter that I don’t have anything to contribute except the occasional hum.
Sophie raises an eyebrow when I pay my bill, glancing between me and whatever the guy said his name was. John or something.
I avoid her stare as if that’ll spare me from her judgment, rake a hand through the bangs that hover on the edge of poking me in the eye, the way they have all day. I don’t care. I’ll get out of these feelings the way I got into them.
Jerking my chin to follow, John falls in step beside me, following me outside with a too-friendly arm around my shoulders. I stop short on the stairs of the Thirsty Turtle, locking eyes with Laura on her way in. My stomach drops.
“Ava! I saw your truck and—” Laura starts to say, clocking the man in tow. I don’t stick around to watch her expression go through the various stages of realization.
“I’ve got somewhere to be, I’ll catch up with you later,” I say, shrugging her off and continuing on past her.
Laura whirls around. “No. What the fuck, girl?”
Of fucking course, now she wants to talk to me. I dig in my pocket, toss Maybe John my keys. “I’m gonna be a minute. It’s the white truck with the big dent in the side.”
He clearly senses the tension in the air. He shoots Laura an apologetic look and quietly excuses himself to go wait in my truck.
“You broke up with Logan?”
“We weren’t together.”
“Does he know that?”
I can’t contain the colossal eyeroll at that question. Of course he knew that; I all but put it on a blimp to fly over Mystic Falls and inform everyone that we weren’t a couple.
It’s a bitter twist of the knife, one that I’ve already been over a dozen times, wondering if we’d still be stupidly lovey-dovey together if I hadn’t spent the last three weeks holding him at arm’s length. Or maybe I would have just gotten the courtesy of an actual breakup.
“Clearly he knows and he’s fine with that, ’cause he ghosted me.”
When Laura doesn’t immediately tell me that no, he’s incapacitated in a hospital bed with ten broken fingers, just looking back at me with surprise and confusion, I press on.
“And that’s fine, I’m just going to move on,” I say, maybe a little too angrily to sound fine about it. “You don’t need to worry about me sleeping with any more of your cousins.”
Laura’s expression drops into something wounded. “Come on, Ava. I didn’t mean that. It was just a surprise, that’s all. Really.”
“Yeah, well, doesn’t matter now. But you could have given me a heads up that he was the sort to drop me like I’m nothing.”
She glances up at the sky like she’s looking for answers, shaking her hands out like this issue affects her at all. For a moment I thought maybe she was going to be on my side in this, she was supposed to be my friend. But I guess she’s related to him first.
“Look, you know I’m the first person to tell you to forget him, but Logan . . . he’s been going through a lot lately, you know, his fiancée dumped him right before he met you—”
I’m not interested in hearing her defend him, and so I start across the parking lot, brushing past her. I say over my shoulder, “Yeah, I know, I was his rebound. And that’s fine, I was doing the same thing to him. So, you can tell him he didn’t mean anything to me either.”
“Ava, wait. Listen to me.”
I whirl around on her. “No! I’m done listening. I’m done!”
“Just let me talk to him—”
“I don’t want you to! I’m done with all of this. If anything, you can tell Logan that I don’t want anything else to do with him.”
Laura doesn’t answer that, so I take her silence as an opportunity to get in my truck and slam the door behind me. I say, more to my dashboard full of idiot lights than to John, “Sorry you had to see that.”
“Everything alright, back there?”