The nights aren’t filled with potential enemies anymore, but the fear is forever burned into my brain, and my mind isn’t capable of handling the necessary reassurance that I'm safe, not when I can’t see beyond a wall of darkness.
It’s human instinct to close our eyes when afraid, but since lowering my lids means that I’m not aware of what’s going on around me, it always seems like a problem. I take my phone out of the cup holder and brighten the screen, offering myself a false sense of safety.
Then the heart attack comes.
Blinding lights flash through my window, I drop the phone as my eyes widen toward the speeding vehicle heading toward me at me at what looks like a hundred miles per hour. Just as quickly as the onset of panic hits me, abrupt darkness returns. My heart pounds, my hands clench the wheel, and sweat beads on the back of my neck as I watch one of Melody’s neighbors pull into their driveway down the street.
I shake my head as if I can toss away the thoughts that just tore my insides apart, but I have to pull it together and man up. The mild orange glow of the sconce hanging from the front overhang is bright enough to light up the front steps and might be a better place to wait out the half-hour I’ve allotted myself.
Once situated on the cement stairs, less than a minute passes when another vehicle turns down the street. The panic doesn’t hit me as bad this time since I’m beneath the porch light. I’m relieved to see Melody pull into the driveway, but I’m not sure she has noticed me sitting here yet.
After all this, I’ll end up scaring the shit out of her, which is the last thing I want to do.
I wonder about her thoughts as she steps out of her father’s truck she’s been driving around. With a glance over at my truck, then to me on the front steps, she finds me waiting and walks in my direction, or the direction of her front door. Maybe she’ll walk right by me. If I was her, I might be tempted to do so at this point of the day.
“Hey,” she says. She doesn’t sound unhappy to see me, but maybe she’s good at being nice.
As she approaches, I stand up and drop my phone into my pocket. “How are you doing?”
Melody stops before the front steps, and her gaze falls to her shaking hands as she scratches at her knuckle. “Do you want the truth or the answer I’d give a random, passing person on the street?” Her question is filled with a darkness I wasn’t expecting.
“How about, I know you’re not okay,” I reply.
Melody’s jaw grinds back and forth; her cheeks shift from side to side before looking up at me. “We’ll go with that response.” She pulls a key out of her pocket, then drops her hands down to her side. “Why are you here?”
Why am I here? To check on you. To talk to you. Is it selfish or selfless? I don’t even know. I want to help, but is it helping me more than her? No. No one was there for me when I lost Abby. No one. Unfortunately, it was common to lose people we knew who were on deployment, but Abby and I weren’t married or in a relationship, so the typical empathy and spousal check-ins weren’t a thing for me. Plus, I told everyone I was fine, and why shouldn’t they have believed me? I was good at lying. In reality, I was a mess and broken in every way from losing my best friend. It didn’t matter if I was in love with her or if she was a girlfriend, or what sounds like less, just a friend; I loved her like family, and losing her hurt like hell. What was worse was being able to imagine exactly what she went through in the moments leading up to her death because I had witnessed it before.
“I wish someone had been there for me back when I was going through a rough time and could have used a shoulder to cry on,” I explain. Melody doesn’t respond to my comment. Instead, she climbs up the steps, passes me, and unlocks the door where Benji greets her. “Want me to take him out for you?” I offer because it would be the only real selfless thing I could do at the moment.
She scratches behind Benji’s ears and mutters a slew of gibberish to him. “I could use a walk. We can both go.”
I’m surprised to hear her response, but grateful at the same time. “Of course.” I step into the house, basically uninvited to wait for Melody as she places down the bags she carried into the house. While hanging up her purse, she spots the bag I’ve been holding in my hand.
“What’s in the bag?”
“Something,” I say, smirking to lighten the mood a touch.
“Something you need to take with you on the walk?” When she asks the question in that way, I realize she might think I have something ridiculous in the bag, but I’m going to go out on a limb and assume she knows me better than that, even though some might say, she hardly knows me at all now.
“Yes,” I say.
Melody attaches the leash to Benji’s red collar and takes a couple of steps toward me, hinting that I should exit the house. I open the door for her and wait until she’s down the front steps before closing the storm door behind me.
Benji heads right for the front lawn, forcing us to pause and wait. I’d rather she speaks first so I don’t ask something that could make her day worse, but silence lingers for a long minute before she starts to talk.
“I’m sorry again about last night,” she says.
I throw my head back, distraught that thoughts of last night are still tormenting her overloaded mind. “Please, do not worry about Parker or me right now. You have more than enough to think about.”
“She’s a little girl,” Melody responds, “and she lost her mother, so I have some understanding—maybe a lot of understanding.”
The last thing I want to do is get into detail about my misery with someone who is already going through enough pain, but she’s staring at me with more than just a question swimming through her mind. Her eyes are demanding more, and it’s enough to make me talk. “To make a long story short,” I begin. “Parker’s mom got pregnant, found out two months later, and had no clue who the father was. She wasn’t the type to hang around the men who disappear after a couple of dates, but it happened. Abby was terrified, had no clue how she would raise a baby while enlisted in the Marines, so I told her she should move in with me, and I’d help her in any way I could.”
Melody has shock written across her parted lips. “Oh, wow, I didn’t see the story going in this direction.”
That’s not where the story went; it’s just how it began. I swallow hard, trying to find the words to explain the rest. “It wasn’t in my plan to help raise a child then, especially not my own, but Abby was my best friend, and I truly believe everyone deserves someone to depend on in life.”
Melody turns her head around to spot Benji sniffing something in the dark then looks back at me. “You’re a good person, Brett.”
I didn’t do it for the recognition. I wondered if anyone would do the same for me if the tables were turned. I think Abby would have, so the answer was clear to me all along. “I don’t know if I’d say that, but thank you,” I sigh. “Anyway, when Parker was four, Abby left for a three-month deployment. Thankfully, I was between deployments, so I was free to take care of Parker while she was gone.”
Melody places her free hand on her cheek. “Is that when—?”
The thump in my hollow chest answers for me as it always does. “She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Abby wasn’t in active combat, but she was being transported to deliver documents to another battalion when her vehicle drove over an IED.” There was far too much shock and despondency on Melody’s face for me to continue with further details. This is why I left last night. She doesn’t need to be versed in my past, at least not now. “You know, this might not be a great story for tonight. I wanted to make you feel better, not bring you down.”
Melody runs her fingers through her long strands of windblown hair and shakes her head slowly without blinking. “You’re making me realize I'm not alone in this world right now.”
Benji forces a pause into our discussion by yanking Melody into the street, ultimately leading us down the darkened portion of the road.
I blow the air out of my mouth slowly and
try to keep up with her, finding it impressive she can see so well on a dark road without proper street lighting. She asks me questions, but I’m not digesting them, and my words are short answers—fillers. We walk down a short path between an opening in the woods, and I’m terrified of my mind going somewhere dark. A crack of a stick could set me off. I hold my breath as I see the other side of the clearing, which opens into a large grass-covered park with lighting and an oversized aged gazebo. Benji finds it necessary to start running, so I grab the leash from Melody before she goes flying.
She doesn’t seem relieved when I take the leash, but rather curious as she studies my face. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
“You’re sweating.”
“Oh, I’m fine. I—it’s nothing.”
Melody stops in front of me. “Benji, sit,” she commands. With the back of her hand, Melody touched her cool skin to my forehead. “You’re burning up.”
“No, it’s—um—this is going to sound dumb … I just have issues on dark roads sometimes because—”
“The war?” I’m surprised she picked up on it so effortlessly.
“Yeah, but I don’t want to get into it—”
“I understand,” she says. “Really. There’s better lighting over there.”
Benji’s patience runs out, and he bolts toward the center of the field. I suppose the distraction of a hyper dog is welcome and gives my heart a physical reason to beat at the pace it’s beating, seeing as I’m attached to the other end of the leash. The closer we get to the gazebo, the more familiar it becomes. I’m on the other side of where I used to spend time back in high school. We would hang out here because it was a place where we could play ball or frisbee, I tie Benji’s leash up to a post on the Gazebo. Thankfully, he’s out of breath and happy to comply after his frolic.
We take a seat on the bench closest to Benji’s leash, and I place the bag down by my feet.
“What’s in the bag?” she asks again.
Now, we’re in the middle of an empty park, and it looks like I want to get her drunk. I didn’t think this through. I scrunch my nose and squint an eye, hoping she doesn’t get the wrong idea when I pull out a bottle and two glasses from the bag.
“Oh, no, no … I don’t drink bourbon. I just support it,” she says. “In fact, I’ve only had it once, and it was one time too many.” I huff with laughter because I suspect she still isn’t a big drinker of the stuff, not after the time I recall she taste-tested it at the last party we saw each other at all those years ago. I suppose she could have acquired a taste for it since then, but I’m guessing by her apparent dismay, she has not.
“You need to know what’s special about bourbon before you cross it off your list,” I tell her. Plus, she wants to take up work at the shop, and it’s hard to sell something you know nothing about. Not that this is the time to be teaching her about bourbon, but a distraction is sometimes necessary for the worst moments.
“I borrowed a book about bourbon today. I plan to learn everything I can so I can help out more in the shop.” It’s like she was reading my mind. I know she isn’t about to let her family business die along with her dad, but I was wondering what her plan was for picking something up she hasn’t been a big part of over the years.
“You can’t learn everything about bourbon from a book,” I explain. Melody tries to argue with more nonsense, so I pacify her statements as I open the bottle and pour a little into each glass. “This is the first bottle of Quinn Pine to be opened this year, and it’s from 2009.”
“Is old good?” she asks, seeming embarrassed by the question. We’re definitely starting from scratch here.
“Yes, old is good,” I respond, trying to hide a chuckle. I continue babbling off the explanation of why older bourbon is better, why the tastes are unique because of the process, and how everything can be altered by different steps in the phases of distilling. I also convince her that she needs to take a sip and see for herself that it isn’t as bad as the look on her face is making it out to be.
She gives in, closes her eyes, and takes a pull on her glass as if ingesting the worst tasting cough syrup. Her eyes squeeze shut, and her lips curl, but she’s thinking about the taste. I see a look of relief settle into her expression. “It’s sweet like vanilla or caramel, maybe a hint of cinnamon too, but it has a dry smoky aftertaste.”
Her description stuns me. She’s precise and knows exactly what she’s tasting. It’s incredible. “Wow, you’re spot on.”
“What can I say?” she responds with a coy grin.
Melody may not be into bourbon, but she has the taste buds of a bourbon connoisseur, and I’m impressed with her skill to detect the flavors in one sip. I watch as she takes another sip, which is followed by a peaceful smile curling into her cheeks. “I’m glad you’re sipping it this time.”
Her eyes open wide with a look of surprise. “What do you mean by that?”
“The last time you had bourbon was at the holiday party all those years ago, right?”
Melody seems taken aback by my question, as if I shouldn’t know such a minute detail in her life. “Yes …”
I smile at the memory, recalling the moment I found out she had been gulping the bourbon Journey had been feeding her that night.
We both take a moment and pause the conversation for another sip from the glasses. “You’re still drinking it. That’s something,” I tell her.
“I guess this isn’t the worst tasting stuff in the world,” she says.
“It’s amazing to think your dad began preparing this very bottle ten years ago. It’s crazy to think about,” I say, offering more justification about this particular bottle, wondering what she is thinking.
“Ten years ago,” she says as if digressing. “Our lives were perfect.”
“Mine wasn’t,” I reply, wishing I could suck the words back into my mouth.
“Why not?” Melody asks, placing the cup down between us on the bench.
This isn’t the time, but I’ll be damned … because it’s definitely the right place. Screw it. What do I have to lose? “Well, there was this kiss,” I say, my words sounding faint. “It made me want to change my future, but I had already signed papers—signed my life away.” It was that night, that one damn night, I realized I had made a mistake. I should have tried harder. I wasn’t ready for the life I had signed up for.
“A kiss?” Melody asks. Her gaze falls to her lap as her cheeks burn with her signature color of red. “What kind of kiss could make you want to change your future plans?”
An unfamiliar pain in my chest shakes me up as I admire the way her cheeks glisten from the surrounding lights. My focus falls to her lips, taking advantage of the moment when she doesn’t notice my stare, but I’m lost, wishing I could taste her lips once more because I have never had the desire to kiss anyone as much as I want to kiss her again. It makes no sense. I was so young back then, knew nothing, yet my heart spoke as if it knew everything. I was sure of it all even before I realized how deep my feelings were. “It was just one kiss,” I say, still admiring the perfection of the cupid’s bow curve of her lips—how it’s perfectly centered beneath her nose.
“She must have been some girl,” Melody responds in merely a whisper.
“You sure are,” I say, feeling foolish for the way I’m attempting to explain how she made me feel that night.
“Me?” she questions as if my statement is absurd.
I’m not sure how else to make her understand. I reach my hand to her cheek and sweep the tip of my thumb along her bottom lip. “I wouldn’t forget my first kiss,” I explain.
“There’s no way,” she says.
It’s nothing I would have admitted to at the time, nor did anyone know back then, but between sports and trying to at least pass classes, there wasn’t time for much else.
“I went to an all-boys school,” I remind her.
She glances down again, her shyness making her all that much cuter than she already was. �
�You were my first kiss, too,” she admits, biting down on her lip.
I didn’t know for sure, but by the way she showed her nerves that night, I assumed it might have been a first for her. “I had no idea.”
“Liar,” she calls my bluff.
I shouldn’t be doing this right now. I want to kiss her. I want to lift her up from that damn bench and push her against the beam so I can press my nose to the side of hers, run my fingers through her soft hair, feel the heat of her cheeks burn beneath my palms and kiss her like I wish I knew how to ten years ago.
I need her.
But I know better.
I can’t.
Not now.
It hurts to hold myself back.
“I wish you were home for different reasons,” I say.
Melody places her hand down on my knee, her gaze following her fingers as she traces a small circle into the fabric of my jeans. “You are a nice distraction.”
I shouldn’t be distracting her from the reality of what she’s about to go through. It doesn’t seem right, and she could misconstrue this as me taking advantage of a weak moment. In truth, though, I would do anything for the circumstances to be different, but if they were, she might be with someone else, and I might still be playing house as a single dad. There’s no way either of us could comprehend what the other has gone through, and there is no rhyme or reason for how we both ended up back here like this.
The silence between us is filled with thoughts of what could be, but also, what can’t be … right now, and it’s enough time for Melody to fall back into the reality of her situation. “My mom must be wondering where Benji and I are. I don’t want her to worry,” she says, sounding disappointed.
Bourbon Nights (The Barrel House Series Book 3) Page 13