One Last Time: A Second Chance Romance

by Roxie Noir

  The doorman opens the door, and I thank him as I step across the threshold and into the cold winter night.

  “Please?” Ava says, still behind me. “Come on, Delilah. It’ll be fun. Come on. Come on!”

  “Ava, I —”

  “Come on.”

  “I don’t want—”

  “Come onnnnnnnnnnn. Delilah. Come on. Come on!”

  I stop in the middle of the brick walkway, keys in my hand, my car already pulled into the circular driveway of the Blue Ridge Country Club, where Ava’s rehearsal dinner has just concluded.

  “It’ll be fun,” my little sister says, stopping in front of me and looking up, hair swept back from her bright blue eyes. “You do remember fun, right? It’s the thing you do when you’re having fun?”

  I didn’t count how many glasses of wine she had at the dinner, but it was several.

  “I like fun,” I say, a little defensively. “But I have to get up early tomorrow because someone is getting married and decided that I have to get my hair done first in case it takes, and I quote, ‘ten hours to wrestle into shape.’”

  She blinks up at me like she can’t believe her ears.

  “Delilah,” she says. “It’s nine-thirty.”

  “I also want to call Lainey and see how her match went,” I say, grabbing my keys from my purse, then shrugging it back onto my shoulder. “They were playing the Blacksburg Brawlers tonight, and you know those college girls are all twenty years old and completely fearless.”

  That’s all true, but I also just want to talk to Lainey because I feel like I almost got into it with Seth today and I don’t even know why. I just know I’ve got that distant, trampled feeling I get after we fight, like I’m a patch of grass in front of an elementary school.

  Ava rolls her eyes, tosses her hair, and plunges her hand into her own purse, coming out with her phone and typing furiously. Behind her, the door opens again, and our cousins Wyatt and Georgia walk out.

  “Seth won’t be there,” she says, half-distracted, her face glowing with the reflected light. “He’s the owner, not the bartender.”

  I feel like my heart slips a gear. Kerthunk.

  “What? I don’t care if Seth is there,” I tell her. “That’s not why I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go because —”

  “You get weird every time I mention his name,” she says, still looking at her phone.

  Well, we can barely see each other without either fucking or fighting, I think.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You’re weird now,” she says, glancing up at me and raising one eyebrow.

  “I’m not weird, I’m tired and slightly annoyed and you’re being a total Bridezilla,” I say.

  “Ooh, throw a shoe,” says a voice off to the side.

  “No one is throwing a shoe,” I say, calmly, as Georgia and Wyatt join us on the walkway.

  “I could throw a shoe,” Ava says, tilting her head to one side. “And I’d get away with it. I’m the bride.”

  “Probably,” Wyatt agrees.

  “See?” Ava says brightly, and then her phone dings. “Ah! Cool, Lainey’s gonna meet us there.”

  “What?”

  “Lainey,” Ava says, loudly and slowly. “Is going to meet us —” she circles her forefinger overhead, indicating the four people standing there, “— at the brewery.”

  “You’re a monster,” I tell her.

  “A Bridezilla,” she grins. “Come on. Lainey’s expecting you and it’ll be a fun, exciting family time! And your hot ex won’t even be there.”

  Thank God it’s dark, because I can feel my face warming up.

  “I already told you, I don’t care —”

  “Being weird!”

  “Your ex is coming?” asks Georgia. “Wait, is your hot ex Nolan?”

  She sounds confused, and I can’t blame her. Hot isn’t the first word most people associate with my ex-husband.

  “She’s talking about a guy I dated in high school,” I explain.

  “Sethhhhhhhh,” Ava says, sounding like a drunk, lisping snake. “And he’s not going to be there, which is the whole point. When I bring him up, Delilah gets weird.”

  “I do not —"

  “Seth. Seth. Seth. SETH. SEE—”

  “Okay!” I hiss at my increasingly-loud little sister. “Fine. I’ll go for half an hour, but I am thirty years old and I can’t get wasted until three in the morning and get up at seven and be fine anymore.”

  “My God, thirty,” says Georgia. “Positively ancient. How are you standing there without blowing away into dust?”

  Georgia is twenty-nine.

  “Must be a miracle,” I tell her, as Ava steps closer to me.

  Then she sandwiches my face in her hands, points my head toward her, and stares deep into my eyes.

  “Delilah,” she whispers. “You are not old. You are a wonderful, beautiful unicorn. You are a tiger. You are a fierce, strong, unicorn tigress and I believe in you.”

  I put my hands over hers and force myself not to laugh at my little sister, because even if she’s pretty drunk and a little bit bratty, I think Ava has the purest heart of anyone I’ve ever met.

  “Thank you,” I say. “Let’s get going before I turn into a pumpkin.”

  Ava runs the last five steps to the brewery, grabs the door, then pulls it open triumphantly and gestures to the big room inside.

  “Ta-da!” she shouts, holding both arms up and spinning in a circle. “See? No Seth!”

  I have never wanted to muzzle my little sister more than I do right now.

  “Okay,” I say, like she’s an insane person, which she kind of is.

  “I told you!” she chirps. “It’s totally fine and safe and free and you don’t have to be all —”

  She’s cut off by the sound of many voices squealing in unison. We all turn to see a cadre of young women descend on my little sister.

  “It’s my girls!” she shouts, and then she’s giggling and hugging at least five of them at once, jumping up and down, a white sash settling over her shoulders as they bear her away.

  Georgia, Wyatt, and I look at each other.

  “Is that a sorority?” Georgia whispers.

  “I think it’s the Borg,” whispers back Wyatt. “Except, you know, blonde?”

  “Dork.”

  “It seems kind of nice,” I say, still watching the giggling mass that enveloped Ava. “I mean, they’re happy for her, right?”

  “That’s how they get you,” Georgia says very, very seriously.

  As we’re contemplating beers at the bar, my sister Winona floats over. It takes me precisely one look at her to realize that she’s also had a lot of wine.

  “Guess who’s got two thumbs and opened a tab with Mom and Dad’s card?” she asks, grinning and jerking her thumbs at herself.

  With that, my normally-very-proper sister spins and drifts away, leaving Wyatt, Georgia and I to look at each other.

  “That was an invitation, not just a brag, right?” Wyatt asks, one eyebrow raised.

  “It was now,” I tell him, gesturing expansively at the chalkboard beer list over the bar. “Go hog wild. Get you the fanciest beer on tap.”

  Beers in hand, we find spots at the end of a long wooden table. A few minutes later, I wave over Lainey when she comes in.

  “Harold Radcliffe’s tab,” I tell her. “And you know Wyatt and Georgia, right?”

  “Yeah, we met at Vera’s July Fourth shindig,” she says, still standing, shaking hands with the two of them, her shoulder-length locs falling over her shoulders as she leans in. “You’re the guy who thought it was okay to put cream cheese in guacamole.”

  Wyatt grins.

  “I stand by that,” he says. “It’s delicious. You can’t argue with delicious.”

  “It’s an abomination,” says Lainey, though she’s also grinning.

  “Two sentences and I’m already under attack,” Wyatt says, taking a sip of his beer and looking at Georgia and me. “You’re
seeing this, right? She’s out to get me.”

  “This isn’t an attack, this is a conversation,” Lainey says. “Hold on, I need a beer.”

  She walks off toward the bar, and Wyatt’s eyes follow her.

  Lainey comes back a few minutes later, and we all drink beers while she tells us about her roller derby match, complete with a track diagram on a napkin. Her team — The Beasts of the Blue Ridge — lost, but only by a few points.

  “Their track was too slippery,” she says, taking a sip from her half-full beer. “We kept falling down.”

  “I’m sure that was it,” Wyatt deadpans, but Lainey just laughs.

  From there, we move on to whether rollerblading is still cool, then skateboarding. Wyatt says he can do a couple tricks, but no one believes him, and that leads to Georgia telling us a story about the time that my dad apparently pushed theirs into a pool and nearly drowned him, or so he claims.

  After a bit, Wyatt and Georgia get up to grab more beers.

  The moment they’re out of earshot, Lainey glances around skeptically, then turns to me.

  “Not to question a free beer, but what exactly am I doing here?” she asks.

  “Are you not enjoying the after party to my little sister’s rehearsal dinner?” I say, gesturing vaguely at the rest of the brewery. “Is this not your preferred way of spending a Friday night?”

  “Ava’s never contacted me before in her life, and suddenly it sounds like if I don’t meet you at a bar someone’s gonna die?”

  “She’s drunk,” I say. “She’s been drunk since about five-thirty, I think.”

  “Please tell me she doesn’t have a hostage.”

  “We’re all hostages to the bride.”

  Lainey snorts.

  “Sorry about her,” I say. “I don’t even know where she got your — what am I saying, I’m sure she got it from my phone during dinner when I went to pee or something, because Ava doesn’t know what the word boundary means.”

  “You have to passcode that thing,” she says.

  “They’re trying to sabotage my dick detox,” I sigh. “Vera’s being Vera about it, and I’m sure Ava thinks she’s helping somehow. I don’t even know why she dragged you into it. You might be bait to get me to come here. I’m sorry.”

  She takes another drink and looks around, frowning slightly.

  “Wyatt’s your cousin, how are they sabotaging — oh, shit,” she says, as it finally dawns on her.

  “He’s not here,” I say. “Remember, it’s a drunk twenty-two-year-old’s plan.”

  “And she doesn’t know.”

  “Fuck no, she doesn’t know,” I say. “She thinks we were high school sweethearts and that’s it, not…”

  I trail off, because there’s not a word for what Seth and I are. At least, there isn’t in English. German probably has a word for people who were together a long time ago and have repeatedly and unwisely hooked up in the years since, even though their brief couplings inevitably lead to anger and heartbreak.

  “Fuckbuddies?” Lainey offers.

  “We’re not really buddies.”

  “Fuck… compatriots?”

  I contemplate this for a moment. I also contemplate telling her about our non-fight this afternoon, but I don’t really feeling like doing it in his bar, while I look over my shoulder every ten seconds to see if one of my sisters is listening in.

  “It’s technically accurate,” I finally say.

  “Just one of the many services I offer,” she says, and clinks her glass against mine, then glances up. “Quit talking about Wyatt’s weird chin, he’s coming back.”

  “Now I know you’re just fucking with me,” Wyatt says, sitting and grinning at Lainey, who’s clearly enjoying herself. “My chin is perfect.”

  He rubs his face like he’s in a shaving commercial, and Lainey laughs. Georgia, once more seated next to Wyatt, rolls her eyes at her younger brother.

  “Chin jealousy,” he says. “Totally normal. I get it. I’d be jealous of my chin. It’s great chin.”

  “Sure, that’s it,” laughs Lainey. “You know, this sort of over-the-top self-aggrandizing behavior can often be defensive —"

  “LAINEY! HIIIIIIIIII!”

  Ava’s back, and she sits with a whirl of blond hair and the feeling that the energy at our table just went from six to eleven.

  “Hi,” Lainey says, grinning at my adorable and drunk little sister. “Congratulations on your wedding! You nervous?”

  “Oh, my gosh yes,” Ava says, wide-eyed, both her hands around a half-empty glass. “When we did the rehearsal a few days ago, one of the bridesmaids tripped on some flower petals, and the ring bearer got distracted by something on one of the chairs, and I’m really worried that the band might miss our entrance cues or play the wrong song! I saw it happen at one of my sorority sister’s weddings a few months ago and it was awful.”

  Lainey’s smiling politely, trying not to laugh.

  “I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time even if something does go wrong,” she says, soothingly. “It’ll give you something to laugh about later.”

  “Everyone keeps saying that,” Ava huffs, brushing her blonde hair out of her face. “But I don’t want something to laugh about, I want something — oh!”

  She squeals the last word, then points so emphatically that we all grab our beers and turn our heads, expecting a loose bear or at least a squirrel.

  It’s not an animal. It’s a person, and he’s looking directly at us.

  For a split second, my insides feel like they’re falling through the floor.

  “DELILAH!” Ava whispers so loudly she’s probably audible in Richmond, arm still outstretched toward the bar, finger extended. “IT’S SETH!”

  “That’s Eli,” I say, grabbing her hand, putting it on the table, and turning my head away from where he’s standing behind the bar.

  Ava frowns dramatically.

  “Are you sure?” she says, still several decibels too loud. “I think that one’s Seth.”

  She’s trying to point again. I hold onto her wrist so she can’t.

  “Yes, I’m sure, and for the love of God stop pointing,” I hiss. “Were you raised by wolves?”

  “It looks like Seth,” she says, dubiously.

  “Well, they’re related.”

  “Is Seth also kinda hot?” asks Georgia, who’s sipping her beer and casually observing Eli, like she’s in a box seat at the opera.

  “Please quit gawping like he’s a tiger in the zoo.”

  “They’re all kinda hot,” Lainey offers. “That’s their whole thing.”

  “I’d like you to elaborate on all, if you don’t mind,” Georgia says, eyebrow raised.

  She does not quit gawping, though at least she’s doing it somewhat politely.

  “There are five Loveless brothers,” I explain, carefully releasing Ava’s wrist. She doesn’t point again, but I keep an eye on her. “Two of them own this brewery, one of whom I dated when we were in high school.”

  “But they’re mostly married,” Lainey offers, then looks at me and jerks her thumb at Eli. “Is that one married?”

  “That’s also pointing,” I hiss.

  “He looks like he’s got a ring,” Georgia says.

  “He’s kinda far away to tell,” Ava adds.

  “He’s married,” I interrupt, already imagining Eli telling Seth that Delilah was at the brewery and her little sister was acting like she was on safari and he was the world’s last rhinoceros. “That one’s married, the middle one is married, and the oldest one’s engaged.”

  Now everyone is looking at me, but at least no one is pointing at Eli anymore.

  “Any further questions?” I ask, sarcastically.

  “So you’re an expert,” Wyatt drawls, clearly enjoying this.

  “Knowing that someone is married is not insider knowledge,” I say.

  That’s technically true, but do I also sometimes have a drink or two and then stalk Seth, and by extension his brothers, on
the internet?

  Of course I do. Show me a person who’s never nosy about their ex, and I’ll show you a damn liar.

  Levi, the eldest, has no social media of his own, but occasionally appears in posts from the Forest Service. A few months ago he did a short video about identifying poison ivy that got almost five hundred thousand views, some very thirsty comments, and wound up on several Buzzfeed lists. I don’t think it was because of his practical wilderness tips.

  Eli, the second oldest, has all his stuff set to private, but occasionally turns up in foodie articles and whatnot around southern Virginia, including some food blog’s “Five Sexiest Chefs.”

  Neither Daniel or Seth ever seems to post anything of their own, but Loveless Brewing has reasonably active social media accounts, which have supplied me with plenty of updates and pictures of the owners, even if they’re completely impersonal and designed to sell beer.

  And finally, Caleb, the youngest, is a math professor at Virginia Southern University. He’s easy to find on the internet, but boring unless you’re really interested in academic papers or symposium sessions.

  Georgia sighs.

  “The good ones are always gay or taken,” she says, finally looking back at us instead of staring at Eli.

  “Hey, I’m right here,” Wyatt says.

  “You’re my brother.”

  “But I’m single, straight, and great.”

  “Well, hold on,” says Lainey.

  I risk another glance Eli’s way, just in time to see him disappear into the back of the brewery.

  I finally exhale.

  “I don’t see why a simple statement of self-assurance means you both have to jump down my throat,” Wyatt says, but he’s grinning. “A modern gentleman can’t be self-confident?”

  “What’s this gentleman thing?” Lainey teases.

  “Lord,” Georgia mutters into her beer glass.

  Ava flits off somewhere else, probably back into the arms of her sorority sisters. Thad — her fiance — has shown up with a gaggle of matching fraternity bros, and the two pools seem to be mixing.

  Georgia and Lainey keep harassing Wyatt, who not only takes it in good cheer but eggs them on. Secretly, I think he likes the attention from Lainey, but I know better than to say that out loud to either of them.

  He’s literally just pulled up his sleeve and is flexing his bicep, presumably to prove that he’s a catch, when I hear my name yelped.