“I should say so. What’re you men having?”
We all order and she nods while pulling out something from behind the bar. “Oh, Brendan, look at what was under the door today?” She holds up the menus I had delivered from my agency, complete with the new drinks. “I wonder who did this?”
I shrug, looking around. “I wonder.”
She cups her hands around her mouth. “Thank you!!!”
“You’re welcome, baby.”
Bobby practically leaps into the air, running away from us, yelling, “There’s a table on the patio emptying out!”
Annie makes our drinks as Mark and I wait. I can’t keep my eyes off her and Mark has thankfully stopped giving me shit about it. But as we walk away, with him holding Bobby’s and his drink, he leans over to say to me, privately, “You’re looking pretty happy B-man. I’m glad to see it.”
I throw him a look, expecting to see mockery thrown my way, but he’s got none to give. “Thanks, Mark.” We don’t say another word about it, and joining Bobby, we three talk about everything from The World Cup, to the Russian uprising in the Ukraine, to the latest stupid cat video that’s gone viral. The one thing we don’t talk about is women, and it occurs to me that we don’t have that, the way women do. It’s not how we operate. Maybe that’s why when we find a woman who makes us feel safe to open up about deeper things – like the way we really feel about things that are happening in our lives – we fall hard for her and let the male friendships that don’t support our new relationship die away. I’ve seen it happen in the happy marriages I’ve witnessed.
A couple hours and a few drinks later, Mark turns to me. “Hey, Brendan, You and Annie wanna come with me to Napa when Nicole comes into town. I was thinking of taking her wine tasting.”
“Yeah. Sounds great.”
Bobby looks around, eyes red and foggy. “I need a woman.”
Mark leans back on the chair. “What you need is a taxi.”
Bobby nods. “That I do. So now, wait a minute. How is this place not going to get ripped off after everyone leaves?”
I point out the gate, collapsed accordion-style against each wall. “See that.” We all turn to follow where I’m pointing next. “And see that button that’s like a garage door opener against the wall by the bar counter? That’ll close this gate. They’ll take in the tables and chairs after she closes and the gate will lock up. It’s still got a ways to go.”
Bobby’s head does a circle around us. “It’s gonna look pretty good.”
Mark stands up. “I’ve gotta go, B. Work in the morning. Just like everyone else, it looks like.”
I rise, too, with Bobby following our lead. “Yeah, me too. She’s closing early tonight. I’m going to stay. You want to join me, Bobby?”
He shakes his head. “Nah. Mark’s right. I need a taxi. I think I’m coming down with something. I’m usually not this much of a lightweight. I’m a bartender for fuck’s sake!”
Mark agrees, amused, “Damn straight. I’ll walk you out.” He passes me. “See you later.”
“See ya, buddy.” Bobby goes to hug me and I hold out my arms for protection.
“Right. Pussy.” He walks past and throws me a look. “What’s a little gunshot wound? Come on!”
I laugh and he grins, thinking himself hilarious. As soon as they’re walking away, I head to the bar where there are plenty of empty seats now. There are still around twenty-five people in the place, but it looks empty compared to how it was. Annie matches my footsteps from the other side of the counter and follows me to a barstool, so we can talk. She plants her hands on the bar and tilts her head to the side, a sexy smile on her face, her eyelashes falling as she looks at my hands lying empty on the bar in front of me. She reaches over and touches a knuckle. “Mmm… great fingers.”
“Great tits.”
She whoops and covers her face, laughing as she goes to run another credit card. I glance over to see Manny washing glasses that are piled high, his work definitely cut out for him. But he’s just smiling away, whistling to himself. Laura comes over to wish me goodnight, the slowed night no longer needing three people serving drinks.
“That decal idea was really great, Laura.”
She smiles. “Thank you. But none of this would have happened without you.”
“Don’t say that. We all pitched in.”
She thinks about it, smiles as her answer, and waves goodbye, zipping up her jacket on her way out. Taryn calls over to Annie, “I’ll be right back. I’ve been holding it for awhile.”
Annie nods and closes the register, coming back to me now that everyone’s got what they need and more seats are emptying as people file out. “I’m exhausted.”
“You look really happy.”
An older gypsy-looking artsy woman calls over, “She’s ecstatic!”
Annie laughs as she lowers her head onto the bar for a second and comes up smiling. “Thank you, Barb. Stop eavesdropping!” In a quieter voice she says, so that we’re not overheard, “I’m exhausted but really happy. True. That’s the perfect description for how this feels.”
I bend forward, closer to her. “How ‘bout you stay at my place tonight?”
She leans over the bar and can’t reach me, so she wiggles on top of it, stretching across until she’s actually lying on it. “I’d love that.”
Voices of new people walking in the door sound behind me, but Annie’s eyes are locked on mine. Fine by me. Barb calls over, “Drunk blonde on a first and last date. Break out the tequila!”
But we don’t care. The room has disappeared again. I kiss my girl like no one’s watching, nice and slow, never speeding up.
A female voice that must belong to the newcomer interrupts us. “Now that’s a kiss! Give me an application! I want to work HERE!”
We laugh and pull away. I look behind me as Annie jumps off the bar. There’s a woman our age with short, platinum blonde hair, wearing clothes that are too tight, with a guy awkwardly standing behind her, happy he’s going to get laid tonight.
Instantly, I recognize her, even before she says, “Holy shit! It’s you!” I will never forget this crazy girl’s name. Not because she was anything special to me but because her weird roommate drilled it into me that I’m a piece of shit if I sleep with a girl and don’t know her name. I always know them now.
And this one started it all.
Corinne.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Brendan
Annie and I both say it at the exact same time only her voice sounds pained. “Corinne!” Thrown and confused, I glance to her. She’s pale, her mouth open as she looks from me to Corinne.
The trashy girl who almost broke my dick off all those years ago, exclaims, “Oh man! Aren't you a sight for sore eyes? Now I can finally let THAT piece of guilt go. How long have you guys been together?”
“Corinne, don’t! Umm…I…” Annie stops. She gulps and looks at me. “Oh, Brendan, I’m so sorry.”
Totally in the dark, I ask her, “What do you have to be sorry about?”
Corinne runs over and grabs my arm. “It’s me who needs to apologize.” She turns to Annie, “When you said you were moving to Italy, Annie, I thought to myself, she’ll be back. She’s just mad I slept with YOU!” Corinne drops my arm and points at me, grinning. “She’s not really going to throw college away.” She snaps her fingers, “Just like that! But you did it! You fucking did it, Annie!” Corinne hits the bar. Everything she’s saying is coming into focus but that loud THWACK jars my memory. A crashing sound of a Pellegrino bottle thrown against the door when I was twenty-five reverberates in my ears.
I look at Annie, puzzle pieces flying together so fast it’s making me sick. “That was you?”
She stares at me with a helpless look. “Brendan, I’m so sorry. Let me explain.”
“You were that girl who got mad at me for forgetting Corinne’s name.”
Corinne’s jaw drops. “You forgot my name?!!”
Annie yells at her, “Corin
ne! Shut up!”
I nearly fall off the barstool backing away from her. “You remembered me this whole time? You know who I was?”
Corinne starts to say something, and I spin to look at her. The words fall dead in her throat as she sees my eyes. She glances to Annie, realizing she’s caused trouble. Again.
“Brendan, I tried to tell you. I can explain. Hang on. I’m coming out.”
“Unfuckingbelievable.” I start for the door.
“Brendan!” Annie runs out from behind the bar. I pass by Taryn who’s wondering what’s going on as she’s walking out of the bathroom and sees our faces. Annie catches up to me since I can’t move that fast with this fucking gunshot wound, but she doesn’t touch me, just waits until we both get outside.
I stare at her, stunned. “You knew it was me this whole time! I asked you if we’d met before!” I rake both hands through my hair, the images of all the moments I felt she looked familiar, stabbing me one after the other. “I asked you that a lot! How could you lie to my face?!”
Her eyes are desperate, and her hands reach for me, but don’t touch. “I was going to tell you so many times, but I didn’t know how!”
“You just say it! When I ask you, have we met, you say YES!!! HOW HARD IS THAT?” I walk away from her.
“Please, Brendan,” she cries out, chasing me. “Please let me explain.”
I’m looking everywhere for something stable to clamp onto, hope drifting away from me, the hope of finding someone I could trust. A hope I didn’t even know I had until she came into my life. I stop and stare at her, pain twisting my face. “Did you do this to get back at me? For being an asshole? I remember us fighting, but... why would you do this to me?”
She searches my eyes. “You told me you wanted to stay far away from me! You looked at me back then like I was less than nothing!” She gulps down the hurt of those words, and her desperation to get through to me. “And then when you came into my bar, you were so nice, and part of me wanted to tell you right then, but you didn’t remember our fight. You didn’t remember! I remembered you, Brendan. How could you not remember me?”
“I did remember you! Over and over, on the tip of my consciousness – just out of reach. And I asked you to help me remember ---- but you didn’t”
“I didn’t need help to remember you,” she says, quietly angry.
“You don’t get to be angry, Annie. Because you’ve been lying to me – lying to my face!” I pace, taking this in. “You don’t get to steal a person’s choice. If you had told me it was you, I would have thought that was funny!” A bizarre laugh tears at my insides. “I would have said how great you looked. I would have asked you about moving to Italy! You know, I was impressed that you did that, back then. We could have talked about it!” I step back, pieces still coming together. “Christiano’s in Italy, isn’t he? That’s why you called that early – because of the fucking time difference.”
Annie crumbles. “Yes.”
“The layers of this unfolding for me - do you have any idea how badly that’s going to haunt me? I’m going home. Don’t follow me. Go close your bar.” I turn and walk home. She doesn’t follow me because there was nothing about the way I just looked at her that suggested this was open for discussion.
When I get inside the penthouse, Mark’s asleep. I almost wake him. I even walk to the bottom landing of the stairs and look up, about to call his name and ask for his help. But that would be new territory, like breaking through a forest that has never had a path. I don’t have the energy to try. So I go in my room and close the door.
On my nightstand are Annie’s things – a lip-gloss, a half-empty glass of water, and the floor-plan Mr. Donovan gave her for the patio. She’d started to take them with her, but I’d told her to leave them. She’d be back, so why not? Walking to them, I go to pick them up, but I can’t touch them. So I let them sit. I crawl into bed and stare at them. When dawn comes the next morning, I’m still awake, still lying here, trying to understand.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Annie
I Want To Run Far, Far Away. Le Barré: won’t close itself. Heart: dead.
Corinne walks over, holding a pint of beer that Taryn must have poured her. Corinne’s date has one, too. “Annie, did I fuck things up again? I don’t understand what just happened!”
I take her glass from her grip, take a sip, and throw the rest of it in her face. “Get out of my bar.”
Lager dripping down chunks of hair, she stares at me with her mouth open.
I step closer, getting really still and quiet. “Get. The Fuck. Out. Of My Bar.”
Her date takes her arm. She throws his hand off her, and walks past me for the exit. He hands me his glass as he follows her. I take a sip, because I’m in shock. Corinne turns and glares at me, wiping her face. “You really need to get a hold of that temper, Annie. Seriously.”
“I don’t think I do, Corinne.” Then I raise my voice loud enough for the whole room to hear. “It’s okay to be mad when someone hurts you. That’s when it’s really A-Okay to lose your temper. Like when your best friend sleeps with the love of your life.”
“I didn’t know!”
“Bullshit!!!”
She huffs out the door, her date following with his tail between his legs, obviously in over his head. I’m pretty sure he’ll get angry sex tonight. If she’s anything like she was, he’s in for a ride.
We close up the place, with me apologizing to the remaining customers as they come up to pay. But they tell me it’s fine, each feeling free to share their own story of similar things that happened to them or someone they know.
Barb’s the last to go. “It sucks, but not everyone can be trusted.”
I nod and smile, “Goodnight Barb. See you tomorrow,” knowing I’ve joined that group of distrustful people. And I have no idea how to make that right.
Now that all the customers have gone, I turn to Taryn and break down crying in her arms. “I fucked up. I should have told him.”
“He’ll forgive you, Annie.” She squeezes me tight.
“I don’t think he will. You didn’t see his face.”
She rocks me a little, from side to side, saying in a comforting voice, “I did see his face, as you guys were leaving. I saw hurt… and people only hurt if they care. And I saw his face the other night, when he kept staring at you. I saw his face then! When someone cares, there’s hope. Okay?”
She squeezes me tightly and I whisper, “God, I hope so.”
That night when I go home, my place is quiet. There are pieces of him everywhere. The hand towel he threw at me yesterday, when we were joking around, is still on the floor where it fell. The two glasses are by my sink. Jaco is still on the couch because when I tried to put him back on the shelf, Brendan did a voice for him: I’m more comfy on the couch. The shelf is too hard.
I walk into my bedroom and fall onto the bed with my clothes still on. All night I stare at the pillow he slept on, now empty. There’s a reason he walked into my bar. He came back into my life. I didn’t have to search for him. The feelings we’ve had for each other since we’ve gotten to know each other are real. I have to believe that there is a way I can make this right. I have to earn his trust, and my own. I want to be someone who is trustworthy. I want that more than I want my pride…
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Brendan
Questions: answered. Pieces: falling into place. Heart: cut to shreds. The same night.
The high grass brushes against my legs with every step I take. There is no calmness in the Italian field this time, or in me. The silence isn’t soothing anymore. More than once I have to hold my head to stop it from killing me. And when I walk, it feels like I’m on the edge of a cliff, about to fall, but there’s firm ground underneath my feet. It makes no sense.
I think I hear something.
I turn as though in water. A breeze whispers against my lips and my heart races. I reach up to find the soft fingers that I know now are hers, have been this
whole time, but when I touch, there is nothing there. It was just the wind? The fingers have always been there. She has to be here. “Annie!!!” I turn in circles. More grass. More trees. More silence. “Annie! Don’t leave!”
“Brendan.”
Surprised, I turn around, because it wasn’t her voice. There standing behind me is Christiano, a vague version of him manifested from my memory. He’s looking at me like I’m a fool. “You have lost her,” he says, with a tone of sadness, his eyes downcast. He turns and walks away.
“Wait!” I try to grab him, but he vanishes in my hands. I look at my empty palm and see it begin to disappear, too.
Launching awake, sweat-covered and panting in my bed, I squint against the bright morning light, confused and shaken. I must have fallen asleep sometime after dawn.
What time is it?
Reaching for my phone… it’s after 9:00 a.m. I’m late for work. Great.
Chapter Thirty
Annie
Noon.
A tentative knock pulls my dead-eyed stare from the television. I look at the door like it’s not real. No part of me wants to answer it. I have no energy left after all the tears I cried this morning.
I made such a grave error in judgment, how will I ever forgive myself? How could he, when I can’t even forgive me?
After I woke up this morning, I sobbed in jagged bursts until my brain shut off. It’s like it was protecting me from the pain. I’d be walking into my kitchen, open the refrigerator, and boom. Sobbing again. I’d crumble to the ground and then after awhile, snip. The tears cut off, and I was staring blankly at a dried up crumb on the floor just under the stove. Cry then snip. Cry then snip. Again and again. That’s where I’m at now. Blankly staring at the door, not even knowing my own name, much less what to do with a knocking door.
Tangling Hearts (Hearts Series Book 3) Page 10