by Ally Blake
Not tonight, though. Tonight she was hitting a bar.
Chapter Fifteen
April and Erica sat lined up at The Burrow’s main bar, staring unseeingly at the mirror behind the counter as they sucked down matching nuclear blue cocktails.
“You single?” Erica asked David the bartender.
“Depends who wants to know.” He glanced at each of the sisters, looking a little wary of both.
“Smart guy,” April muttered.
Erica slapped a hand over April’s mouth. “I want to know, young David. My gorgeous sister here – who finally realised the guy she was seeing is a fraud, a shyster, a big, fat liar – wants to know. The women of the world want to know.”
“Single,” he said.
“But only a bartender.”
His eyebrows shot north. “Part-time while I work on a PhD in comparative religion as fantasy literature.”
Erica was speechless for once.
April went unto the breach. “Told you he was smart. While I... I am the fraud. I am the shyster. My entire life is a big, fat lie.”
“My sister, the drama queen.” Erica motioned for another round of the cocktails that had already sent April’s tongue half way to numb.
Which was when JJ hustled up beside them, ditching her jacket and eyeing the guy on the barstool on the other side of April till he moved along. “What did I miss?”
“JJ!” April cried, her brain catching up with her eyes a few moments late.
“Hey, hon.” JJ gave April a one-armed hug while calling for a cocktail with the other.
What a woman; leaving her own engagement party to join a friend’s pity party. At least there was one relationship she hadn’t screwed up during her train wreck of a year.
Erica lifted her empty glass. “So far you’ve missed about three of these monsters, the fact that our bartender is a wise-guy, and that April is a fraud, a shyster—”
“And my entire life is a big, fat lie.”
“Possible it’s the cocktails talking, kiddo?” JJ asked, shooting Erica a look.
“Cocktails schmocktails,” April slurred. “It’s true. You know what else I realised tonight? I’ve spent my whole life trying to be everything to everyone. Stan’s most prolific worker. Mum’s good girl. Dad’s forgiving daughter. This one’s beleaguered little sister.” She jabbed a thumb towards Erica. “No wonder my life went off the rails so spectacularly. You can’t imagine how exhausting it is being that pleasant all the time!”
“No,” Erica muttered, “I can’t.”
JJ snickered. Then pushed the new martini glass into April’s hand and wrapped her fingers around the stem. “April Swanson, are you trying to tell us you’re not that nice?”
“Yes! I mean no. Nobody is. I get cranky. And stubborn. And judgey. And I want to do bad things all the time.”
“How bad?” JJ asked, scooting closer.
“All kinds of bad. Like tripping complete strangers who text as they walk. Telling screaming toddlers to shush or else their tongues will drop off. Getting naked and splashing in public fountains.”
David the bartender cleared his throat before moving away down the bar.
“Do you ever get that... that deliciously slippery urge to break all the rules? Just thinking about it gives me this visceral reaction that starts in my toes and ends up exploding the pleasure sensors in the back of my brain.”
“So you’re human, then.”
April swung her head – slowly, the cocktails having taken full effect – towards Erica. “What does that mean?”
“It means that you are a really hard act to live up to. All that patience, and Pollyanna delight. Knowing you’re only just keeping it together is a fricking relief!”
Wow. Well that had never occurred to her. She’d assumed Erica liked being the bad sister. That she appropriated that reputation as a coping mechanism. It was half the reason April tried so hard to be good. To give Erica a counterpoint. To give her that undiluted space to grieve.
April reached out and took her sister by the hand. “I’m so sorry.”
“What the hell do you have to be sorry for?”
She felt Erica pull back as she always did, only this time April gripped on tight. “Making your life any harder than it ever had to be.”
Erica’s made a big play of looking around. “Where’s a violin when you need one.” But she didn’t move her hand.
“I cracked. All the delicious bad started to ooze out all over the place. Faster than I could mop it up. So in the meantime I shifted all the high expectations I usually reserved for myself onto someone else. I chose the biggest target possible and hurled it at him. Here, catch! He was bound to fail.”
He... Finn. She hurt all over just thinking his name. Because she loved him. Because he’d lied. Because he’d have never been able to live up to all that she’d hoped he could be.
Or maybe it was because her mum equated love with pain and had spent her life teaching her daughters the same.
April waited for a small voice to shout “she was right!” but it never came. Meaning the cocktails were doing their jobs.
Either way she couldn’t get Finn out of her head. He loomed large. Like a shadow hovering over everything else. Because it was all his fault that everything had fallen apart so spectacularly tonight? Or because she was beginning to wonder if was hers?
April shook her head. In the end it didn’t matter. Finn had lied to her the entire time they were together about something important. About the very foundation of their relationship.
Her father had done the same to her mother for years. Though, to be fair, her father had been deliberate and systematic. Selfish and hurtful. Whereas Finn’s prevarication had evolved from a place of protection, and the helping of a friend.
No, no, No!
April shook her head so hard she was sure her brain clunked against the inside of her skull. She rested her temple against her palm and reminded herself the one non-negotiable in life was honesty. It had to be. Without that most basic measurement of respect, what else was there?
Erica slipped her hand away. Only to pick up one of April’s curls and moved it from one side of her head to the other. “I can see the wheels spinning so fast inside your head they’re laying track. You need to give yourself a break, kid. You’re all squidgy. And sorrowful. And pathetic. You’re a mess. It’s not attractive.”
April sighed. She was a mess. Wasn’t she?
Only she didn’t feel like a mess. Sure she felt like she’d been scooped out and wrung dry. But it didn’t feel messy. For want of a better analogy, she felt like she’d had an emotional enema. As if she’d faced her very worst fear and survived.
Sure it hurt. Absolutely everywhere. But it was a clean hurt. Crisp, clear, and open. Which, strangely, felt a heck of a lot like that moment when the clock ticked from one year to the next. The frisson of possibility. The fizz of anticipation. The clarity of optimism.
“I feel like I’ve been wearing my skin three sizes too tight and now I’ve shed that outer layer I can finally move, and see, and feel everything for the first time in living memory. Don’t get me wrong – it’s strange and it’s scary, but it’s also scintillating.”
“Maybe we need to cut her off,” Erica asked out the side of her mouth.
But April was on a roll. “What if this is what I’ve been hiding from all these years? This version of myself where I can admit that it’s actually really hard to do the right thing all the time. That I can be weak, and make mistakes, and bad choices. And that’s okay. Because it’s not merely hope, but a kind of beautiful fearlessness. It’s real living.”
“What if you’re just drunk and making no sense whatsoever?” Erica asked. Then she leaned forward and to JJ said, “Can you please talk some sense into her?”
JJ shrugged. “I’ve been there. Listening to that little voice in your head that tells you to be safe, to self-protect. Then that moment you begin to realise that voice might be wrong – it’s terrifying. Yo
u know it would be far easier to just go on as you’ve gone on before.”
April slumped. “But nowhere near as exciting.”
“There is that.”
And that was the thing. Now she’d had a real taste of living on the edge, April wanted her life to be exciting. She wanted fireworks and waterfalls. She wanted more.
And for a while there Finn had given it to her. With his particular brand of bloody-mindedness, he’d challenged her. Made her question her choices. Made her step outside of her comfort zone. In revealing himself, one delicious piece at a time, he’d shown her that shadows were not something to be feared, they were a part of her. Enabling her to reconcile the disparate pieces of herself into one far stronger, congruous whole.
They said people didn’t change, not really, but Finn had changed her. In giving her permission to fail, he’d also given her room to leap. To fly. Knowing he’d be there to catch her if she fell. Her view was greater now. Infinite.
Was that what he’d been trying to tell her back at the party? That by the time he’d made the biggest mistake it was already too late. Telling her would have fractured something fragile. New. Precious. Something he’d not gone looking for; something he didn’t want to lose.
Finn had never seen her coming but he’d found her all the same.
And, unlike Jase, he’d never told her what she wanted to hear. Unlike her mum, he’d never expected her to be anyone other than who she was. Unlike Erica, he didn’t hold her mistakes against her. Unlike her father, he never made promises he couldn’t keep. He’d never lied about how he felt about her, even if it took Olympic-level prodding to get him to admit it.
A sliver of fresh pain sliced through the blissful cocktail fuzz. And with it came an echo of all too familiar resistance. Only now, with distance, and time – and blessed vodka – she realised the resistance wasn’t to Finn. It was to having someone she loved let her down.
But in giving up on Finn so readily, she’d let herself down too.
Yet Finn – the one who’d never ceased warning her not to count on him – had stood steadfastly by her throughout.
Her subconscious tried to shake her head again, but her body refused to get in on the act.
“I want excitement,” she said, her voice coming from deep down inside. “I want my life to be bright and fiery and fun and effervescent. Even if that means taking big risks, even if it means making big mistakes, I want it.”
“Then take it,” Erica said.
“Right on,” JJ said, lifting her own cocktail in salute.
April turned to one girl then the other. “How?”
JJ said, “That safety first voice we were talking about? Ignore it. The only voice ever worth listening to is the one that insists you suck the marrow out of life.”
Erica made a funny little noise that April realised was agreement. “Hell, yeah. That diem ain’t going to carpe itself.”
April nibbled on her bottom lip. Carpe diem. Seize the day. Take it by the scruff and own it. Leap, even if it means falling. Try, even if it means failing. And love, even if it means losing.
Cause it’s the only chance you have at being loved right on back.
April’s next breaths were hard to come by as a wave of understanding flowed over her, through her, right into the tiny little holes in her bones.
She was in love with Finn. Truly. Madly. Absolutely.
She who’d been indoctrinated into believing that love always came at a cost. Meaning it had taken something special, something big, something real to make it happen for her. Something special like a generous, conflicted, imperfect, dark-eyed dreamboat. An island of a man who had recently offered to hook his island to hers, if she’d have him.
Instead she’d turned and walked away.
“I have to tinkle.” With that announcement, JJ slid off her stool, made it known to everyone nearby that the thing better not be warmed by another bottom before she returned, then headed off in search of the ladies’ room.
And the minute they were alone, Erica said, “You’re in love with the great lump, aren’t you?”
April, still lost in the fog of realisation, wasn’t sure she’d heard right. “Hmm?”
“You heard me. Do you love the guy?”
April’s heart beat so hard she could feel the pulse at the side of her neck.
She slowly sank her face into her palm, her voice smushy as she said, “I do.”
“Do you think he loves you too?”
“What does it matter? You think love is hogwash.”
“Only because life would be a hell of a lot easier if I was right.”
April lifted her head, looked at her sister. “Erica.”
Erica stayed her with a hand. “Don’t you dare look at me like that. I’m all good over here. Unlike you, I don’t need some guy to ‘hook his island to mine’.”
“Oh, dog. Did I say that stuff out loud?” How strong were these cocktails?
“You muttered a few choice phrases. That and the moony face and the big sighs and the way you keep pressing a fist to your heart. It’s sick. Love sick. Makes me sick. But there it is.”
Then JJ was back. With Smith and Clara in tow. “Look who I found wandering around like little, lost lambs!”
Smith and Clara hugged April as one. “We got the call that our girl was in trouble.”
“And you came! Gee, I love you guys. You know that, right? I’m so sorry I was narky at you the other day—”
“No idea what you’re talking about,” Smith said. While Clara squeezed April extra hard.
“So, what did we miss this time?” JJ said as she shifted yet more patrons along to make room for Smith and Clara at the bar.
April caught Erica’s eye. Beseeched her not to repeat a word. Noted the lift at the side of her mouth before she downed half her cocktail. “More ‘woe is me’ crap.”
JJ looked from one sister to the other and slammed a hand on the bar, causing everyone to jump. “Dammit. I was gone for two minutes, max. I missed the Finn conversation, didn’t I?”
April laughed. Though it sounded more like a sob.
“She thinks she loves him, poor slob,” Erica said on a sigh.
“Well, duh,” Smith said.
JJ rolled her eyes. “Tell us something we don’t know. The big question is, what is she going to do about it?”
April waved at the lot of them. “She is right here, you know.”
JJ grinned. “So you fought, right? After Hazel’s delightful bombshell. Big, ugly blowout where he said stuff and you said stuff and you both probably crossed a line or two?”
April nodded.
“That was the safety-first voice talking. From both of you. Are you going to let that be that? Or are you going to carpe the diem?”
April remembered the look on his face when she’d told him he didn’t “have her” and never had. Heard his voice say “I’m leaving town”. “I rejected him pretty soundly. I’m not sure he’d even take my call.”
JJ said, “I’ve only met him a couple of times, but he seems to have a good head on his shoulders. Kane has a lot of respect for the guy and he’s a tough sell, my man. If you went to Finn, he’d listen.”
“Maybe. But, then again, I never hid my feelings for him. I put out all the signals. Practically dared him to have me. And when he finally stepped up – in his own uniquely Finn way – I bailed. Tail between my legs, whimpering, like Prince when I caught him peeing on the living room rug. If he’s as smart as Kane thinks he is, he’ll be long gone by now.”
All four girls—and Smith—sat morosely at the bar. Erica running a finger around the edge of her glass. JJ tapping a finger against her lips. Clara nibbling at a fingernail. Smith craning to get a better look at David the bartender. April swimming in the memory of Finn with the light from the boathouse slashing across his handsome face.
Erica slanted her a glance. “I’ve always thought you more of a cat than a dog.”
“I was just thinking that!” JJ agreed, giv
ing April’s arm a rub.
“A ginger tabby,” Clara said.
Smith added, “Curled up, purring by a fireplace.”
As one they cracked up, cackling until their sides hurt. And David the bartender replaced their fluorescent blue cocktails without asking.
Erica lifted her glass for a toast. “That’ll teach you to fall in love.”
April’s shoulders lifted. Then she clinked. “I’d do it again tomorrow.”
“Here-here,” JJ said, clinking too.
While Erica let her glass drop to the bar without taking a sip. “How?”
“Hope,” April said. “What’s life without it?”
Then, no longer having the energy to hold the thing up, April tipped her head onto Erica’s shoulder. And for the first time in living memory, Erica let her.
If she’d known that a serious breakup was all it took to connect with her sister, she’d have fallen in love with an impossible man years ago.
She coughed out a laugh. Then coughed, and laughed, and coughed so hard Erica slapped her on the back. Wiping tears from her eyes, she sat taller. “We dragged JJ away from her engagement party – and whatever kinky plans she and her big, hot man had for afterward – for this, so let’s say we make it worth her while.” April held what was left of her cocktail aloft. “Let’s get this pity party started!”
They all cheered.
David behind the bar shook his head with concern. Smart man.
Sunlight flickered through the blinds in the empty office Finn had sequestered at Hamilton Holdings as it rose upon a brand new Monday. He’d been there since about two that morning, figuring he’d rather be doing something than lying in bed wide awake, tetchy, unable to sleep.
Eyes like grit, neck aching, as the clock ticked over to six he played with the corner of the eticket he’d printed out.
Sydney to Los Angeles. Twenty-four hours from now. A seat in business class supplied by Bob and Sally Jameson of California for one Finn Ward.
Because, of course, Bob and Sally had no clue that the name wasn’t real. That he wasn’t the man he pretended to be. A skilled liar, he was, taught at his father’s knee.