by London James
I slam the bottle of whiskey down, frustrated, and pissed off. Whiskey drips down the neck of the slender bottle onto my hand. My chest heaves, and instead of using the shot glass, I chug from the bottle directly. I’m so sick of explaining myself.
Hell, I’m tired of feeling like this too. It isn’t easy. I’m a man’s man. I don’t like feeling emotions. Everly is the one thing that makes me feel. I don’t have a choice. There isn’t an option to switch it off. I want to, fuck do I want to, but I can’t. I’ve tried. I keep trying. I won’t stop trying either. But until the day I can, I just have to figure out how to let her go. How do I let fifteen years of love go?
When there is an answer, I’ll fucking do it.
“Let it out, buddy,” he tells me as he slaps my shoulder with a reassuring grab afterwards.
I groan and put my head on the bar. “I’m not letting anything out. You’re just annoying me.”
“Shhh, love hurts. I know. It’s okay. Here.” He pours me another shot and slides it in front of me. And then pours himself a shot. “To heartache,” he cheers, lifting his glass in the air to toast.
“You’re an asshole.”
“I know.”
I shake my head and take the pity shot he poured me. Ten minutes later, he is wandering around the bar, talking to a woman with tattoos up and down her arms. Typical. My head swims, and my thoughts turn to Everly again. I think about the time her dad died. It doesn’t hurt as much, and I’m thanking the liquor for that. Everything is numb.
She was thirteen when he got hit by a drunk driver. He had been thrown out the windshield. Dead on impact. I was the first person she called. And the sobs that echoed on the receiving end of that phone call haunted my dreams for weeks. I never heard her cry like that before. It came from the soul. And it hurt me so bad to hear her in so much pain. I felt it, and I started to cry for her. I just listened as she sobbed through two words: “Dad died.”
I cried for her, and for me because her father was a good man. A kind man. He didn’t deserve to go out the way he did. He deserved to watch his little girl grow up. She asked me every night for six months to stay with her, so every night I climbed up the side of the house and snuck into her window. I held her every single night while she cried herself to sleep.
And when my mom died? Whew, I don’t think I would have made it without Everly. My mom died two years after Everly’s dad, of cancer, and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to witness. I watched her wither away with every day that passed, and Everly was there with me visiting my mom in the hospital. I went through different steps during the entire process: anger, sadness, depression. Everly held my hand every step of the way.
I tend to push people away when I need space, and when my mom died, and we buried her, I disappeared to the Overlook. Everly knew exactly where I was. I yelled at her that night. I told her to leave. I told her I didn’t want anything to do with her and that I didn’t want to see her. To just go.
But she stood there and let me use her as her verbal punching bag until I wrapped her in my arms, held her tight, and sobbed onto her shoulder.
“I can’t believe she’s gone,” was all I repeated over and over into her neck as she let me cry out my agony. Everly never judged me because she understood the pain of losing a parent. I was a momma’s boy, so losing her killed a part of me. But Everly slowly brought that part back to life.
We forged a bond I never thought could be broken. To know someone like that, to feel what they are feeling, what they are thinking, to share the pain, to find them in the darkest times when they are lost in their thoughts, which I’ve learned is the most dangerous place to be, that takes so much trust and time.
Sure, I’ll meet someone else, and I’ll love them, but I don’t think I’ll ever have a connection with them like I had with Everly.
“Penny for your thoughts?” the bartender asks as he wipes down the counter. “You seem awfully downcast for your twenty-first birthday.”
“Just wondering how something so good could end so bad, that’s all.”
“Word of advice?” He pours two shots and takes one in his hand.
“Sure.” I reach for the other and bring it to my lips, ready to take this shot and be plastered because that is what will happen.
“Anything that good, can never be that bad. And anything that good, will never really be over.”
“How did you know it’s that good?” I ask with a raised brow.
“I’ve seen a lot of broken men in my day—”
“Whoa, hold up. I’m not broken.”
“I know. I was going to say, I’ve seen a lot of broken men in my day, but you aren’t broken. Sure, you’re sad, but you still have something in your eyes that says it isn’t over; you’re just fighting that.”
I slam my glass down and wipe my mouth to get rid of the whiskey on my lips. “Damn, you’re good. Who needs therapy?” I chuckle.
“That’s all bartenders really are these days.” He takes a shot of the four-hundred-dollar whiskey and licks his lips. “Wow. Yeah, I can see what your friend meant. This is so much better.”
“He tends to be right about a lot of things.” I take out my wallet from my back pocket and toss my black American Express card on the counter, something I’m still not used to having.
He whistles when he taps it against the counter. “Damn, I haven’t seen one of these in ages. Tell me, how did you get so rich so young?”
“My friend and I invented a financial services app. It took off; now we’re about to break ground on land to build a headquarters.”
“No shit? Are you guys looking for an accountant or anything?”
“Always are, why? Know someone?”
He scratches his head and gives a smirk. “Me. I have some experience as a tax lawyer, but no one is looking for that.”
“Wait a minute. You’re a lawyer and you work here? Are you kidding me? What the hell happened?” I ask, flabbergasted that this guy is bartending.
He shrugs and pours a draft for someone. “Business went under, and I needed a job. There isn’t much here in Spokane. You know? I bartended in college to work.”
I pull out a business card and hand it over to him. “We won’t be ready for a while. Six months, maybe more, before everything is built. But you could have your own office. We have plenty of work for a lawyer that specializes in money. Send me your resume and salary requirements to that email, and I’ll be in touch.” Damn, saying those words make me feel forty instead of twenty-one.
“Are you serious?” he grips the card, staring at it with confusion, hope, and adoration. “You aren’t playing with me?”
Gosh, he is too young to be so cynical.
I should probably take my own advice.
“Rowan Michaels.” I hold out my hand for a proper introduction. “And I’m very serious.”
“Heath. Damn, man. You might have just changed my life. I have a little girl at home, and she is always with a babysitter at night. I’m missing all the good stuff. I just don’t want the bar scene anymore.”
“You have a daughter? You don’t seem old enough.”
“She’s ten. I had her when I was seventeen. Her mom bailed, signed away all her parental rights,” Heath pours another beer as he talks to me. A multi-tasker—I like that.
“And you went to law school?” I whistle, impressed. Not many men can or would do that and raise a kid at the same time. Shows a lot about his character.
“I had to. I wanted to provide a better life for my daughter, but here I am. Don’t get me wrong; this pays okay. I’m not struggling, but I want more for her. For us. I want to be the dad that can take her to soccer practice and watch her games.”
“You are more than meets the eye, barkeep.” I pour us another shot. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” He tilts his shot back and stuffs my card in his pocket. “You’re going to hear from me very soon.” Heath moves his way down the bar, tossing a white rag over his shoulder as he leans forward and trie
s to understand what someone is saying.
Damn, he makes me feel like a loser. I know I’m not, but his problems are bigger than mine. I put my wallet back in my pocket after everything is paid and try to walk around the flamingos all over the place, looking for Gray. After stumbling a few times and running into a few girls that wanted more than just my number, I find him.
He’s making out with a blonde chick that looks like she steals cars for a living. I’m sure she doesn’t. I don’t understand it. He is so clean cut, and it surprises me every time when he gravitates toward someone so opposite. Maybe he feels dangerous, like he is running on the wild side, I’m not sure. But his preppy boy appearance, and her badass style, it’s bound to clash, isn’t it? Opposites can only attract for so long until there is a negative reaction.
I sit back down at the bar and turn my back to the rule breaker, when a loud commotion has me swivelling around in my seat again. My eyes bug out as I see a gigantic, biker guy pulling Gray off the blonde girl like he weighs nothing.
Gray slams into the pool table, and I wince. That’s going to leave a mark.
I grab my four-hundred-dollar bottle of whiskey again and take a big gulp, watching the scene unfold in front of me. The bar chatter stops as everyone stares at Gray and the big biker man. The music is blaring Queen’s ‘Another One Bites The Dust’, and while I should be worried about what is happening with my friend, I’m more impressed by how perfect this song fits the situation.
The man pushing Gray’s chest towers over Gray, which says something because he is six-two. The biker is packed with muscle, and tattoos are covering him from head to toe.
I sigh and ask Heath for another bottle of the expensive stuff. Gray owes me. I get up and stroll over to the corner where the blonde is fighting with her biker boyfriend, and the boyfriend is fighting with Gray. How does he always get himself in these situations? The man pulls his fist back before I can get there in time and slams it right into Gray’s jaw.
And Gray still stands.
Huh, maybe he’s a little more used to this than I thought.
“Okay, whoa, whoa, whoa,” I slur. “No need for this.”
“And who are you?” The man’s voice promises death with how dark and deep it rings.
“Just a friend. I promise he didn’t know the girl had a boyfriend, did you?”
Gray holds his hand to his cheek and shakes his head. A pool of blood drips down his lip.
“Look, I’m really sorry, my friend here is sorry, and I think this is all just a misud—musid—misunderstanding. How about I pay your tab and we just go separate ways? And here, it’s top-shelf whiskey. Drink your worry away.” I slam the bottle into his oversized body, waiting for him to grab onto it. When he does, I turn around and grab Gray by the arm. I nod to Heath, and we push our way through the crowd.
We get outside, and the fresh, winter air sobers me up a bit. “What the hell was that?”
“She said she was single,” he argues, bringing his hand back to see blood. “That asshole.”
“He has a right to be mad, but not at you. I get it though.”
“How do I get myself into these situations? It happens every time.”
At least he is aware. “I have no idea. Maybe don’t make out with badass biker chicks that probably don’t care if they have a boyfriend?”
“But they are so hot in their leathers,” he whines, stumbling into a tree. “Ow.”
I slap my forehead with my hand as he falls over into a holly bush, screaming when the sharp thorns stab him. Damn, how the hell can we run a multi-million-dollar company? We are a wreck.
Chapter 10
Everly
“And they’re married?” Blaire asks as she pours some tequila in a coffee mug because we are too broke for real shot glasses.
I rub my temples from the headache I have from the previous night of getting hammered after telling her Rowan is now my stepbrother. “Yes, Blaire. Nothing has changed since yesterday.” The smell of alcohol makes my stomach roll, so I push the mug away, turning my nose up. “I can’t do it. It smells like bad decisions and nightmares.”
Blaire pushes it forward insisting, “Hair of the dog. It works.”
“I can’t,” I gag when I see the light reflecting off the alcohol when I peek inside the mug.
“Here.” She grabs my hand, licks it—
“Hey!”
Throws salt on the wet spot and gives me a bottle of lime juice because who needs real limes?
“There. Lick, drink, suck.” She makes a noise in the back of her throat. “Well, drink again, there’s no sucking this lime juice since it is in a bottle.”
My crazy best friend drinks from the tequila bottle and squirts the lime juice in her mouth after. “Woo!” she shakes her head, causing her cheeks to jiggle. “Now that is a good morning pick-me-up.”
“You are insane. I don’t know why I’m friends with you.” Since the fourth grade. How I have survived this long without getting tattooed and pink hair, I’ll never know.
“I’m the wild side of you. Now drink up, and I’ll put the bottle away and make some coffee.”
“Ugh, fine.” I wrap my fingers around the mug with trepidation and lick the salt off my hand, the same one she licked, but I didn’t want to think about that. I grimace and chug the tequila from the mug, and then squirt the lime juice in my mouth until it is overflowing.
“Better, right?” she chirps, with a big, bright smile.
I grunt, leaning my head on the countertop. “If you call death alright, then yeah, I’m great.”
“You’re so dramatic.”
No need for me to lift my head up and see her eye roll, I can hear it. The smell of coffee brewing makes me open one eye. I’m slowly coming to life as the rich brew drips into the pot. The smell of heaven and freedom. I don’t know who created this wonderful invention, but I’m eternally grateful.
“You have a coffee problem.”
No, I have a Rowan problem, hence the tequila.
“You don’t know me,” I protest, which is a weak argument considering she is the only person in this world that truly knows me.
Not true, Rowan does too.
I hate my inside voice.
“How are you doing, Eve?” Blaire asks with a softer tone. “I’m worried about you.”
I lift my head up and hold my hand to my head. “Oh, too fast.” I wait a minute before answering her and shut my eyes, taking a few deep breaths to steady myself. “I’m fine, Blaire. Really.”
“You don’t look like it.”
“Well, yeah. I’m trashed. Thanks to somebody.” I shoot an accusatory glance her way.
“We both know it isn’t me to blame.”
I let out a heavy, annoyed sigh. “I don’t want to talk about this again, Blaire. Let it go.”
“I can’t let it go. I love you, and things have been hard enough the last two years, now you find out you’re sorta related now, and you see him for the first time since…you know. And we didn’t really talk. We drank.”
I hum a sound of agreement. “I’m starting to notice that.” Because my head won’t stop throbbing.
“Talk to me, Everly.”
I get up when the coffee beeps to let me know it’s ready. I grab another mug, one that isn’t laced with poison and regretful choices, and pour myself a cup of coffee. “I don’t want to talk. It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t fix anything. Rowan hates me. I have to live with that. There’s nothing else to it.”
“There’s so much more to it.”
I whip my head around and take in her black hair and messy eyeliner from the night before. I’m ready to yell, to scream, to fight, but the concern in her bright, blue eyes takes the wind from my sails. “There’s nothing I can do, okay? Can we leave it at that? Please.”
“Okay, when you want to talk, I’m here.”
I place my mug on the fake granite counter and pull her into a hug. “I know. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Be more miserable than what you are. I’m starting to wonder who the punk with a darker soul is. I don’t think it’s me,” she jokes.
“I know. I’m so emo, isn’t that what you kids call it?”
“Something like that.” She pulls back and stands on her tiptoes to grab a cup from the cabinet. Blaire is short, really short, not even five feet tall and is super skinny. I’m surprised she didn’t climb onto the counter like she usually does.
“So, I have an idea for today.”
“Don’t think too hard; you might hurt yourself.”
I narrow my eyes at her over my coffee cup. “Funny.”
She snickers under her breath as she pours herself java. The side of her shirt falls off her shoulder, showing the colorful tattoo that takes up the entire left side of her torso. It’s a geometric design of different shapes. She got it because she says there isn’t a day where she feels the same, so she got a kaleidoscope of shapes. It suits her.
“Okay, what?”
“Today I got my student loan disbursement.”
“Okay?” she drawls out, not understanding what I’m saying.
“I want to go to your tattoo guy today and get something.”
“No fucking way!” she screeches, piercing the ache in my head. “You’re serious?”
“Blaire!” I whine, my hands shooting to my throbbing head.
“Sorry!” she whisper-yells. “But are you for real?”
“Nothing big, just small and cute. I have an idea in my mind, and I’ve been wanting to get it for a while.”
She squeals and jogs in place with excitement. “Finally! What are you going to get? Where? Color? Or greyscale? Black and white? Traditional?” Blaire spins me around in a circle. “I’ve always wanted to see you with a massive back tattoo.”
“Okay, whoa, calm down. Nothing like that. Literally, something small, like the size of a half-dollar or something.”
Blaire pouts her bottom lip. “That’s boring.”
“Does anything make you happy?” I say with a roll of my eyes.
“A massive back tattoo,” she mutters before taking a large sip of coffee.