Three Simple Words (Kingston Ale House)

by A. J. Pine

  He scrubbed a hand across his jaw, smiling as he looked from the building back to her.

  “Isn’t the Emerald City at the end of the yellow brick road?”

  She nodded.

  But he shook his head. “Then no. We’re not.” He kissed her once more, soft and sweet this time. “Because, Annie—I’m already there.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Wes was trying to process what had just happened on the curb. Something had shifted between him and Annie the other night. He knew that. He’d been trying to wrap his brain around it for three days.

  But that kiss? Christ, that kiss. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear he had just polished off a bottle of that imported scotch. But he was stone-cold sober, standing in the entryway of the apartment he hadn’t seen in five years, not since he lost the one person who held their small family together.

  He braced his hand on the wall, grateful he’d just walked in instead of knocking, so his father wouldn’t see him like this.

  “Hey,” Annie said softly. “You okay?”

  “Wes? That you?”

  A gruff voice sounded from around the corner, so he forced himself to stay upright and follow the sound, Annie thankfully by his side.

  When the small hallway opened into the living room/dining room combo, Wes found his father opening a bottle of wine at the dining room table—and Sarah standing next to him with an empty glass waiting to be filled.

  His dad stood tall, a good two inches over his own six-foot frame. His hair was light brown like his, but it was threaded with more gray than the last time they’d seen each other. And he had a beard. He’d never seen his dad with a beard. He and Sarah were oddly matched, his father in a cream cable-knit sweater and jeans while the dark-haired woman wore a navy cardigan and khakis.

  “You brought someone with you,” was his dad’s greeting.

  No Hello or How ya doing?

  “So did you,” he responded, not expecting the words to sound so bitter. He liked Sarah. She’d lived in the building as long as they had. “Will Mr. Forster be joining us as well?”

  Sarah’s face went white.

  “Wes,” his dad said, his voice low and soft yet with the hint of warning it carried so well. “Joel passed away two years ago. A heart attack.”

  Wes staggered back. Annie tried to grab his hand, but he pulled free before she could get a good grip on him.

  “You’ve got to fucking be kidding me,” he said.

  “Watch, it, son,” his dad said.

  “Robert, honey, it’s okay,” Sarah said. She grabbed the bottle of wine and filled a glass, handing it across to Wes as if it were a peace offering.

  He took it, but that honey—that’s what did him in, what pushed him so far over the edge he wasn’t even going to try to climb back up.

  “I need a minute,” he said, and strode across the hardwood floor to the open balcony door. As soon as he was outside, he breathed in the Lake Michigan air. Despite them living a few streets inland, he knew the lake was out there, and he took comfort in knowing that just a few miles east was freedom.

  He drained his glass of wine in seconds, only then realizing he’d basically thrown Annie to the wolves. He turned and found her standing on the balcony just outside the door, arms crossed and her eyes narrowed.

  She pursed her lips, and Wes readied himself for the onslaught. He deserved it.

  “Tell me about your mom,” she said, her tone soft and tentative.

  “Wait, what?” he asked.

  She stepped out onto the small, metal balcony and met him at the ledge.

  “Down This Road starts with the hero, Ethan, at his mother’s funeral. He and his father barely speak, and then Ethan leaves town for three years. How much of Ethan’s story is yours? I mean, I’ve met Oksana and Stacy. I saw you with Lindsay.”

  His eyes widened at this. Looked like they’d both kept Lindsay a secret.

  “How much of that book is really you? How much of that bleak, hopeless, I-accept-my-lonely-existence stuff is Wes?”

  He braced his hands on the ledge in front of them and sighed.

  “The correct answer is none of it, right? The story belongs to Ethan, not me.”

  She shook her head. “You’re deflecting. And I’m not going anywhere, so you may as well lay it all out there, Hartley. I told you I don’t scare easily.”

  But her voice was uneven, maybe even a little shaky. He knew it wasn’t about his past. She could handle whatever he told her. But could she handle what it meant, this kind of intimacy? Because she was asking for it, and he was about to comply.

  “Five years,” he said. Her brows furrowed. “Five years,” he echoed. “I’ve been gone for five years. Since the funeral. I was home for her birthday weekend, the first time I’d been here since I left for school. She and my dad had just argued about something, and she’d stormed out saying she needed to go for a drive.” He shook his head. “I should have never let her get behind the wheel,” he said. “I should have fucking stopped her. Instead I hopped in the passenger seat to keep her company.” Annie put a hand over her mouth and shook her head.

  “Why didn’t you tell me? God, that day on the highway when I drove like a lunatic to change lanes and get off at the Starbucks ramp—I didn’t know.”

  Her gaze softened, and she reached a hand to his cheek, but he didn’t let himself press into her warmth.

  “I don’t even remember the accident. I blacked out and woke up on a stretcher in the ambulance. According to the accident report she swerved to miss a fucking pothole and lost control. The driver’s side wrapped itself around a light post. I walked away with a few stitches and a fucking concussion.”

  She pressed her palms to his chest, and a tear slid down her cheek. But he shook his head.

  “I don’t want your sympathy,” he told her. “I was gone for two years before that, too,” he added. “No matter what I say about my father, I’m an equal opportunity shitty son.”

  “You were away at school,” she said. “If you’re dealing with survivor’s guilt, I get that. If you feel guilty for avoiding your dad since your mom passed, fine. But don’t punish yourself for being a kid who loved being away. That was most people I know.”

  He shook his head.

  “I liked school, Annie. But I stayed away because it was easier.” He ran a hand through his hair. “They were good people,” he said. “I mean, she always told me what a great guy he was. But it was like they existed purely to push each other’s buttons, to get a rise out of each other. I didn’t want to get caught in the middle of it anymore. My father had to plead with me to come home that weekend—promising it wouldn’t be like it was before. Instead it was a whole lot worse.”

  She tugged at his belt loop and pulled him close, reaching on her tiptoes to kiss him. Just once—soft and reassuring.

  “You were a kid. Cut yourself some slack.” She kissed him again on the cheek. “And the accident wasn’t your fault. God, Wes. I’m so sorry. Maybe it’s time you got to know your dad as an adult. Man-to-man and all that. You guys need each other.”

  He laughed softly and unexpectedly. “I’ve never actually heard someone say that. Man-to-man.”

  She swiped a tear from under her eye and shrugged. “Well…he’s a man. You’re a man. Go be men together. Or whatever.” She cradled his face in her palms. “Where were the stitches?” she asked.

  He took her left hand by the wrist and raised it to the hairline just above his temple, pressing her fingers to the raised scar beneath his hair. She kissed the wound he knew she couldn’t see, one that had been sealed for years. Only now it felt like it was finally starting to heal.

  He skimmed his fingers across her forehead, wondering what he did to deserve her and how he was going to keep from messing this up.

  “I’m really glad you’re here,” he said. “Thank you.”

  She rested her palms against his chest, and he could feel his heart beating against her touch.

  “I’m
glad I stopped by to pick up my cider—that I totally left in your apartment not completely by accident.”

  He grinned. “Maybe it wasn’t the cider you really wanted?”

  Her cheeks flushed pink. “Don’t get too cocky, mister,” she said, backhanding him softly on the chest.

  He caught her hand before she pulled it away. “I know what I want, now, Annie. And I think—maybe—you were right.” But he didn’t take it any further than that. Instead he grabbed her hand and pulled her back through the door.

  “Everything was delicious,” Annie said, raising her wineglass to toast Wes’s father. “Thank you so much for letting me join you.”

  Sarah gave her a look from across the table, one Wes didn’t miss.

  “Annie, why don’t you come help me with dessert while we let the boys have a few minutes alone? It’s warming in the oven over at my place.”

  Aha, Wes thought. Here comes the man-to-man part.

  “I’d love to,” Annie said. She reached a hand under the table to grab his and squeezed. And then she was up and following Sarah to the front of the apartment.

  Wes topped off his glass of red and took a few healthy swigs.

  “Place looks great,” he said, deciding on small talk. “You put in crown molding.”

  His dad gave a gruff, “Mmm-hmm,” and then took a few gulps from his own glass.

  Well, this was going well.

  “Tell him you’re reading the book,” Sarah whisper shouted, popping her head out from around the corner before she and Annie walked out the door.

  His dad set down his glass and crossed his arms over his chest. He stroked his short beard with his fingertips, like he was still getting used to it. Must be a new look. Not that Wes would know. Jesus, how did he not know things like whether or not his father had facial hair? Probably the same way his dad didn’t know he was writing a book all those years ago.

  “Are you really reading it?” Wes asked.

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  Shit. It was like he was some preprogrammed toy that only had one response—the one that was most maddening.

  “Do you—like it?” he asked.

  His dad shrugged.

  Wes tapped two fingers against the inside of his forearm.

  “Two words. Sounds like—” He raised his brows, knowing he was being an ass. But he guessed it took one to know one. It had been six months, plenty of time for a man to sit down and not only read his son’s published novel, but to have something to say about it.

  “Still a smart-ass after all these years, huh?” his dad said.

  Wes let out a bitter laugh. “After how many years, Dad? The five since I’ve been gone? Because you haven’t known me since then, and I’m not sure how much you really knew me before.”

  His father’s jaw clenched. Even beneath the beard he could see it.

  “Your mother could relate to you. I never knew how.”

  Wes shook his head. “Why? Because I wasn’t an athlete? Because a score at a speech tournament wasn’t as exciting if I didn’t have to get busted up to earn it?”

  His father slammed his glass down on the table, red wine sloshing over the rim and onto the white tablecloth.

  Wes ground his teeth together and forced himself not to react. He just held his father’s fiery gaze.

  “You really are the guy in the book. Aren’t you?” his dad asked, his voice low and rough. “That Ethan who thinks his parents had a loveless marriage, that his father never knew him? What a load of shit.”

  His dad got up and went to the bookshelf tucked into the corner between the fireplace and the balcony doors. He pulled a thick, leather-bound book off the top shelf and brought it back to the table, dropping it in front of Wes. More wine sloshed out of his father’s unattended glass, but the man didn’t seem to care.

  “Your mother and I—we had a rough time of it, trying to have kids. You came along when we had just about given up on the idea. You didn’t know us when we were younger. And you don’t remember me from when you were younger. You want the story that’s missing? Here you go.”

  Then the man simply walked past him and out the front door.

  Wes decided not to let his father’s wine go to waste and transferred it into his now empty glass. He drank it down as he pored over the photos in the album, an album he’d never seen before. Many pictures were of his parents before he was born, vacation snapshots. Some with destinations like Hawaii and San Francisco. Another of the two of them ice fishing. There was a section dedicated to a surprise thirtieth birthday party for his mom. His stomach sank, and his eyes grew hot with the threat of tears when he turned the page to find his dad staring at the camera with three paint brushes in his hand—one that had the word Mommy stenciled on it. One that said Daddy. And the third read Baby. The day he found out they were having a child.

  Why had no one ever shown him these photos? Why had he never known they were like this? Or had he blocked it out with everything that came later?

  His dad’s cheeks were tear-soaked in the photo, the whites of his eyes pink. With each second he stared at the image, Wes found it increasingly harder to swallow—to take in enough air to fill his lungs. He turned the page one more time and saw himself at four or five years old, sitting on his dad’s lap while the man read him Where the Wild Things Are.

  Wes pushed away from the table, his movement so quick and so sudden that his wineglass fell over, the remaining liquid sloshing onto the open pages of the album.

  “Fuck!” he growled, grabbing a napkin and blotting up the wine as fast as he could, but the photo was already stained red, the image itself beginning to smear. “Fuck!” he said again, and suddenly there was another set of hands helping his own.

  “It’s okay,” Annie said softly as she gently pushed him away while she continued damage control.

  “No,” he said, practically tearing at his hair. “It’s not okay. It’s not okay if I’ve had it fucking wrong all these years. I always blamed him for pushing me away, for us being too different that we couldn’t connect. But what if I pushed just as hard?”

  He thought about all the Sundays he’d walked in on his dad watching a football game, assuming they’d have nothing to talk about if Wes didn’t give a shit about who was playing. He thought about the speech tournaments his mom came to and wasn’t sure if he’d even asked his dad to join, if he would have canceled a weekend painting gig to watch his son wipe the floor with the competition. And he remembered the argument between his parents before he left for college—his dad asking his mom if she was going to cut her hours at work after she’d just made partner at her law firm and his mom maintaining that it was more important than ever for her to be a visible presence in the office.

  At that point it wasn’t about the money. He’d earned scholarships, and they’d been putting away for years to send him to school. It was one of the reasons they never left their tiny apartment.

  Maybe his mom had done her best to put Wes first. But if he tried to see it all through his father’s eyes—she’d put her career above everything else. Then Wes. Then him.

  “I fucked up,” he said, his voice rough.

  He was leaning on the back of the couch now, Annie’s hands on his cheeks. Her thumbs swiped at the wetness under his eyes, but she didn’t say anything.

  “This is the guy I never wanted you to see,” he said. “This is the guy in the book who blamed everyone else for his fucked-up life when it was always in his power to fix it.”

  She smiled softly. “Like clicking your heels together and saying There’s no place like home?”

  He shook his head. “There is no magic. And I’m sure as hell no fucking wizard.”

  Annie kissed him.

  “No,” she said. “You’re not. You’re the brilliant, beautiful man I’m in love with.”

  She didn’t wait for him to respond, just kissed him again.

  And for the first time in what felt like hours—he could breathe.

  Chapter Twenty-Two
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  “The accident,” Sarah had said as the two of them had waited for the apple pie to cool. “Victoria—Robert called her Tori—worked ridiculous hours in the suburbs. Her commute was an hour each way. He’d planned a surprise party. Tori was so late that some of the guests had to leave. When she finally got home, they both just blew up at each other.”

  “Wow.” Annie hadn’t had anything more articulate to say.

  “He’s still working past the guilt that the last time they spoke was an argument,” Sarah had told her. “And it looks like Wes is working through quite a bit, too. I’m glad he has you.”

  Now Annie and Wes rode in silence. Wes had insisted they walk to the nearest train stop, which was several blocks away. And despite the chill, Annie had complied. After an hour alone on the balcony with his dad, during which the two had made a dent in what she hoped was the beginning of reconciliation, he was in no shape to drive. She got it, now, his reluctance to step into a vehicle driven by anyone else.

  “The only place I’m in control is on the bike.”

  That was all he’d said before asking if she wouldn’t mind taking the train.

  She didn’t ask him if he wanted to go back to his place. It was like they’d decided without saying it out loud that he was going home with her. Because when they got to her door, he said nothing when she ushered him inside. Neither of them spoke a word as she peeled off his jacket and T-shirt. As he did the same with her until they were chest to chest. Skin on skin. And she could feel his heart beating against hers.

  He hadn’t told her he loved her. He hadn’t responded at all to her confession. But that was okay, right? It was there. She could feel it. He’d just had one hell of an emotional roller-coaster ride. She could give him some room to process it all.

  But right now she let him guide her to her bed, undress her completely, and himself as well. Every other time they’d been behind closed doors, he’d catered to her every need—asked what she’d wanted and given it to her. But what she wanted now was for him to take the lead. He’d lost control, and she wanted him to know he could get it back—or that at least she was in this with him, that they’d get a grip on it all together.