“Oh—I’m sorry, Rory.” Matt glanced back at her in the rearview mirror, feigning innocence. “Did you like that song?” He lifted his hands to gesture. “I mean, you can just tell me if you do or not. It’s not a big deal.”
Folding her arms across her chest, she only glared at his reflection.
He returned his gaze to the road, tapping his hand along to the driving beat, his arm resting on the truck door. After a moment, the song ended and another began. The low, achingly familiar melodic notes threaded through the thick silence like the ghost of a memory.
It had to be that song.
Matt abruptly slammed his hand forward to turn the radio off.
No one said anything for a while. They left the city behind, easing onto the highway. The truck hugged the curve with a low screech.
“It’s that right front tire again,” Danny said, glancing over at him.
He pulled back off the highway at the very next exit. They coasted down a tree-shaded thoroughfare, passing a brick-face colonial style strip mall before he swung into the gas station and mini-mart on the corner.
“What’s going on?” Rory asked from the back seat after he hopped out.
“The tire has a slow leak. It needs some air.”
“And there’s not enough of it in here?”
Matt flicked dark look at her in the rearview mirror.
She slid across the back seat and opened the truck door to get out.
“And where are you going?” he asked with a scowl.
“I need a drink,” she replied, slamming it shut.
Matt sat and brewed a few moments before puffing his cheeks to blow out a noisy sigh. Then he hopped out as well, following after her.
“So, what’s the deal exactly?” he called out from a few yards behind. “You can question me about anyone else I’ve ever dated—give me all the crap you want—yet suddenly I’m the asshole for even thinking about doing the same? Why not just tell me the truth?”
“I told you the truth!”
“What? That he’s just a friend?” Matt snorted sarcastically. “Please, is that what I’m supposed to believe?”
“Believe what you want.”
“You can do better than that, Rory. I know you can do better than that. There’s more going on there than friendship—it doesn’t take a genius to figure that out.”
“You can say that again.”
“Why can’t you just admit it if you’re dating someone?”
“Yes—we’re dating, okay!” She spun around to burst out. “I’m dating Mike. We went out. We had sex! Are you happy now!?”
The very air around them seemed to flinch on a silent hit. His face fell, insides crumbling.
“See?” He sucked in a sharp breath. “Was that so difficult?”
Shoulders hunched and hands shoved in the pockets of his jeans, he stiffly turned to walk away.
“Matt…” Rory’s voice broke a little as she called after him, but he didn’t even pause.
When she finally found him, he was sitting on the sidewalk curb around the corner of the building, elbows resting on his knees. Carefully, she eased down beside him, clasping her hands around her legs.
“I’m sorry.” She glanced over. “I didn’t mean it to come out like that.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he replied slowly, gazing out into the distance, trying to sort through this restless confusion of longing and regret. “I was being a jerk. And not even the loveable kind.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the whisper of a smile trace her lips, but it was chased by a lingering hollow ache. Neither one of them spoke for several long minutes.
“I’m not very good at this, I guess,” he said finally.
“At what?”
He tilted his head, his gaze gently settling on her with the faint shadow line of a broken smile. “Not being with you.”
Her damp eyes shone back at him. It still stung. “I suppose I’ve had my issues with that, too,” she said.
“You?” Matt pretended to scoff. “With that open, easy-going, nonjudgmental attitude I’ve come to know so well? No!”
Rory leaned in to give his shoulder a playful bump. Soft, sweet echoes of her laugh drifted off into the quiet buzz of the summery afternoon, and then for a while it was just the rustle of wind and the low drone of traffic from the nearby highway.
She nudged a bottle cap on the dusty pavement with the toe of her tennis sneaker, glancing at him again. “It’ll eventually get easier, right?”
“Would it be okay for me to admit,” he said, holding her gaze, “that I’m not entirely sure I want it to?”
“You know how much I hate to interrupt,” Danny suddenly called over from the truck, ending the moment. “But are we about ready here?”
“Come on.” Matt heaved his body forward to stand, offering her a hand up. “Let’s go.”
Rory gazed up at him before taking the hand he offered, and together they returned to the truck, already almost halfway home.
***
Matt folded his arms across his chest as he gazed out over the bar crowd, the loud din of voices and shouts of laughter almost drowning out the music in the background. He was a bit lacking in his usual patience tonight, finding it difficult to joke and make the typical small talk with his customers.
“Hey, I haven’t heard my song all night!” A blonde sitting a few barstools to his right pouted at him.
“Eh, sorry ‘bout that.”
“Oh, it’s okay. Believe me, it’s typical for the way my night is going.”
He gave her another glance. The view from this angle allowed him to estimate that probably half her body weight came from her breasts, ready to pop right out of her bright tangerine tank top.
“What d’ya say your next one is on me?” he offered, noticing her empty beer bottle.
Her face brightened considerably. “Thanks!”
Matt’s smile faded as soon as he turned to walk away towards the beer cooler. He rubbed absently at his temple, starting to feel the tight pull of another headache.
He couldn’t seem to stop going over the events of that afternoon, hearing the break in Rory’s voice, seeing the pain in her face. Once again, he’d hurt someone he loved. He was finishing his career with a near perfect record.
Sliding open the beer cooler, he grabbed the scraper he kept nearby to chop through the frozen blocks. The misty cloud of cool, condensed air that rose up to meet him temporarily soothed his weary, aching eyes, and he closed them briefly as he leaned on the edge.
Even though it was kind of like an amazing dream to have Rory back in his life after all these years, history dictated he would lose her again. In fact, if he gave in to everything he was feeling for her, all those emotions he tried to suppress for so long, it could be even worse than he’d ever experienced before. This time, she might just finish him off for good.
Two guys at the end of the bar with empty beers were trying to get his attention. Matt grabbed a few cold ones from the cooler, cracking open the lids to slide them down along the lacquered wood bar top. He didn’t even bother to wait to see them reach their destination.
The concept of falling in love must be truly incomprehensible to those who have never experienced it—that idea just one person could have the power to stop you in your tracks, devastate you with a look, and leave you aching for their mere presence. Matt realized it might not be exactly like that for everyone, so the question remained if he was lucky or just cursed.
Maybe he fell in love too young, and didn’t know how to get out of the patterns they’d established so long ago. He and Rory always seemed to tangle and untangle with each other, only able to push and pull away, this constant dance around each other and around the subject of their relationship making it seem as if their very survival depended upon them staying in constant motion.
While Matt may have moved beyond the point where he let his emotional immaturity dictate his actions, he had also matured to the point where he coul
d justify those actions with some well-earned reasonable doubt. And where did that leave him now?
Same place as before, he supposed. Here, without her.
He’d already come to the conclusion a while ago that getting over Rory meant giving her up entirely. As it turned out, he gave her up everywhere except in the one place that really mattered—inside his heart.
Now, if he could only figure out a way to function without it, he might be okay. Perhaps he could donate his heart to medical science, place it on cold storage in some cryogenics lab and wait until that day in the future when someone finally came up with a cure. An antidote to Rory Finn.
He placed the beer down in front of the waiting blonde.
“Thank you.” Her smile was almost startlingly white against her pink lipstick.
“So, what is so bad about your night?” He hoped that immersing himself in someone else’s sad story might help take his mind off his own.
“Oh, it’s just my friends. We’re renting a place together for the week. We’ve been planning this trip since April, for my birthday.”
“Happy birthday.”
“Thanks.” She managed a reluctant smile. “And tonight was supposed to be a girls’ night, with the three of us going out to celebrate. But they met two guys on the beach today—who coincidentally just happened to show up here. My friends have been a little preoccupied ever since. I guess I’m feeling a little like the fifth wheel.”
Matt briefly wondered what her friends looked like if she was representative of the one not getting any attention.
Another group gathered a few barstools down called out for him, requesting another round of complicated frozen drinks. It was the bane of a bartender’s existence, especially on a busy night. Heaving out a tired sigh, Matt trudged over to the blender, grabbing the assorted bottles of booze off the shelves along his way. There was only one way he was going to get through the rest of this shift.
He made and delivered their annoyingly fruity, frothy drinks, but mixed up a little concoction of his own. Returning to the lonely birthday blonde, he placed two shot glasses filled to the brim down on the bar in front of her.
“What’s this?” she asked with a curious smile.
“This is to your birthday.” Matt lifted the glass closest to him, trying to keep his actions covert. The other customers didn’t need to see the bartender dipping into his till, as it were. “Cheers.”
Her smile shifted, softening with intrigue, as she lifted her own glass to clink it against his. They both tilted their heads, tossing it back.
An hour and a couple of shots later, it began to dawn on Matt how easy it could be to slip back into this kind of life, where his romantic prospects were never further away than the barstool in front of him, and the complications were limited only to whose place they would go back to at closing. Commitment never extended beyond a possible breakfast thrown in the next morning.
“Looks like my friends are motioning for me to leave,” the blonde said a touch of disappointment.
Matt was just about to total the night’s earnings and turn up the lights for last call. “It’s about time for me to start kicking people out anyway.” He wanted this night to finally be over so he could go home. He needed a good night’s rest for the misery surely awaiting him tomorrow.
“Does that apply to me?” Her voice went strangely breathy, leaning over the bar in a way that caused her breasts to practically spill out onto it.
Matt hesitated uneasily, but was saved when her friend suddenly appeared to loop her arm through, sliding her right off the barstool.
“Leah, come on! These guys are having a party back at their place and we need to follow them to find it. They’re waiting out front.” The friend glanced in Matt’s direction, her face brightening. “Oh—it’s the cute bartender!”
“Wait!” she protested. “Give me a minute, will you?”
Matt winced uncomfortably as he watched her grab a napkin and dig her pink lipstick out of her purse. She wrote her name and telephone number down before handing it over to him.
“I’m here all week!” she called out before her friend dragged her away.
Once she was safely out the door, he crumpled it and tossed it in the trash, muttering, “Please don’t forget to tip your bartender.”
He supposed a lot of guys would be hard-pressed to find anything wrong with his kind of life. Running his own bar, living in a great apartment right up the street from the marina where he docked his boat, plus this constant influx of willing and able-bodied females in the summer months, most only looking for a little fun with no strings attached before they returned from whence they came. In fact, to many guys, Matt would undoubtedly be living the dream.
The only problem was that he just didn’t happen to be one of them.
THIRTY-FOUR
“She’s a solid little package, isn’t she?”
Rory glanced over to watch Kevin hold baby Sophie against his chest, his hand cupped around her tiny round bottom.
Jill was curled up beside him in the wicker loveseat on her mother’s porch. “Yeah, she’s gained about a pound already.” She lifted her hand to push her blonde curls off her face.
He narrowed his gaze at her; then his eyebrows suddenly shot up.
“Wait—is that what I think it is? Do I see a little bling going on there?”
Rory quickly turned her head, eyes wide. “Do you have a ring?”
“Well, now that you mention it? Yes. Yes, I do,” Jill responded coyly as she playfully fluttered her eyelashes, holding it out for them both to see.
“Wow.” Rory stared at the large square sparkler, duly impressed. “That is really beautiful.”
“Yeah, my boy done good,” she agreed.
“Damn, I’ll say.” Kevin whistled softly. “You could play ice hockey on that thing. What is it Trevor does again for a living? Drug-smuggling? Running guns?”
“Aw, don’t be fooled by the rocks that I got.”
Rory made sure to push her smile up. “Do you have any wedding plans in motion yet? Any dates?”
Jill hesitated, her voice changing as she gave her a knowing look. “We really don’t have to talk about this.”
“Jill, for once?” She sighed heavily, almost rolling her eyes. “Can my misery please not supersede everything else?”
“It’s not,” she assured her with a gentle calm. “You haven’t even said a word about it. Which is why I know how bad you must be feeling right now, and I’m telling you it’s not necessary to pretend that you’re not. Especially when it’s just us girls here.”
Still occupied with holding the baby, Kevin didn’t bother to respond, the corner of his mouth only curving up in a knowing smirk.
Rory turned away to look out over the backyard. “I don’t know if I even have a right to feel bad for myself.”
“Is Jonathan still here in town?”
“No,” she said. “He didn’t stay long. In fact, after spending the better part of last evening with me as a weepy mess on his shoulder, much to his discomfort and chagrin, he couldn’t get out of here fast enough. Although, to his credit, he tried to be as comforting as I think he was capable of being under the circumstances.”
“And have you decided what you’re going to do next?”
“Well, I have rent due. And my job waiting for me—I hope.” She pursed her lips as gestured listlessly with her hands. “Just two of about a thousand reasons why I should have been on my way back to New York weeks ago.”
It figured that, the one time she didn’t want to run from Matt, everything in her life would conspire to make it impossible for her to stay. The difference was that this time, Rory finally understood with heartbreaking clarity what she would be leaving behind. Perhaps this was her cosmic payback. Karma biting her in the ass, forcing her to look back and realize how easily she could have had everything she ever wanted, and it had been right in front of her the whole time.
“Kevin—you know we’re waiting.” Jill gave him
a pointed look.
“I really don’t know what to say,” he admitted. “Matt’s my brother, but I really can’t see into his mind. Honestly, I’ve been questioning his actions myself, for a while now, ever since he got engaged to Amanda in the first place.” He met Rory’s eyes. “I do think you should talk to him.”
“Unfortunately, that would involve him actually listening,” she replied with a wry, sad smile.
This was the real question she was left with. Was love really lost to her and Matt, or was it just that he didn’t want to find it again?
Sadly enough, her answer would be the same either way.
***
The small bell chimed out as Rory stepped inside the small coffee shop. Two lines of people stretched across the hardwood floor in front of each register, most in swimsuits and flip flops, probably on their way to or from the beach.
She ducked her head to dig through her bag as her line inched forward. This was one of those quaint little local businesses that didn’t accept debit or credit cards. She wasn’t really in the habit of carrying cash and hoped she could scrape together enough change.
“Can I help you, miss?”
“Um, yes.” She hesitated, still trying to dig up more quarters. “I’ll have a—”
“Large iced coffee.”
Her expression stilled, caught up short by the unmistakable voice, flooded with memories, frozen by the knowledge it was him.
“Excuse me, miss? What was that?”
Matt glanced over at that moment to catch her gaze, one eyebrow arching up in wary surprise. They both quickly turned away, refocusing attention on their coffee orders. He produced some bills from his wallet with a stiff inclination of his head.
“I’ve got hers, too.”
“No, I’m good. Thanks.” Rory thrust her arm out in front of his offering, trying not to be too embarrassed that it was just a fistful of change. Her heart was beating so rapidly she felt shaky and short of breath, almost afraid she might drop the coffee to the floor as they passed it over.
Matt edged away and slowly wandered off to the side to get out of line, lingering by the doors to wait for her approach. “So…when did you get home?” he asked.
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