“Done with hope?” Aria’s eyes fill with tears again, as if she’s just now realizing what she did when she decided to show me the lease. “What about the best is yet to come? And everything you said to me the other night? That can be true for you, too.”
I’m suddenly tired, so tired that even shaking my head again feels like a Herculean effort. “I meant what I said. Mason was it for me. I’m done hoping for that kind of happiness.”
I’m done with love, I think to myself as I move around Aria and trudge up the steps into the house.
This time, my sister lets me go, as if she can sense that the battle is over, and this time, everyone has lost.
Chapter 24
Mason
I don’t get wasted. Never. Not even in college.
I’ll have a few beers with friends, a mixed drink during happy hour, or wine with dinner, but I don’t drink to get drunk or to escape my problems.
I had enough stepfathers who Drank with a capital D to know that getting smashed only creates new problems. When you sober up, whatever you were trying to escape is still there, and all you have to show for your trouble is a sour stomach, a pounding head, and an increased risk of liver disease.
I know better.
I absolutely do.
There’s no excuse for finding myself at Buddy’s at eleven in the morning with a beer in one hand and a shot of whiskey in the other.
No excuse at all, except that Lark shut me out of her heart—forever. The world is a dark, worthless place to be, and Buddy’s is the perfect place for feeling miserable.
The bar is literally on the wrong side of the tracks, a squat wooden building next to an abandoned train station built in the early 1940s that, as far as I can tell, has never been renovated. The gravel parking lot is overgrown with weeds, the wood siding is cracked, and the foundation is so badly rotted it’s hard to believe it passed code.
The inside is even worse.
The faded old bar is patched in a dozen places, the floor has settled on a slant, it smells of sour armpits and stale nuts, and even in the middle of the day it’s so dark it’s hard to see into the corners. The single rectangular window above the door barely lets in enough light to maneuver your beer to your mouth.
Which is good. I don’t want to be able to see the glass clenched in my hand too clearly. I have serious doubts about its cleanliness. Its surface is gummy against my skin, sticky the way the floor feels under my shoes.
The thought that I’m drinking out of a used glass turns my stomach for the first few sips of beer, but after a shot of whiskey and a refill of whatever amber swill Buddy—the ninety-year-old bar keep, a cantankerous old man without a friendly bone in his body—has on tap, I find I’m not too worried about my dirty glass.
By the third beer and second shot of whiskey, I hope I won’t be worried about anything.
I don’t want to think anymore. I don’t want to remember the defeated look in Lark’s eyes, or the hopelessness in her voice when she told me it was over. I don’t want to admit to myself that I’ve lost her for good this time. I don’t want to imagine a future without my best friend, or leaving town tomorrow without her in the seat beside me.
I was planning to ask her to move in with me tonight after dinner. I made a reservation at the little Italian restaurant where we had our first date years ago, and planned to ask Lark if she would consider moving into my condo in Atlanta with me. She said her catering business is equally divided between Bliss River and larger venues in Atlanta. Her commute wouldn’t have been any worse, and I would have been only a few minutes from home when I got off work.
I’d already been imagining coming home to Lark at the end of the day, imagining the two of us walking the streets of our new community, trying all the Chinese restaurants to see which had the best eggrolls, running in the park before work, hitting the Farmer’s Market on Thursday nights, and finding a new brunch place for long, lingering breakfasts and reading the paper on Sunday mornings.
I’d already decided that I didn’t need a home office, after all. I could find a place for my desk in the living room. That way Lark and I could turn the second bedroom into a guest room for her sisters for now, and a nursery for our first baby in the not too distant future.
Our first baby.
I was sure we’d have at least three.
Now, I’m never going to know what it’s like to start a family with the woman I love. I’m going to live the rest of my life alone, wishing for something I can never have, knowing there’s no one to blame for it but myself. If I could go back in time and punch Younger Mason in the face, I would do it. In a heartbeat.
But I can’t, so I’ll have to settle for taking my self-loathing out on my liver.
“I’ll have another whiskey, Buddy,” I call out in a firm voice.
The bartender has massive, cauliflower-shaped hearing aids in both ears. Still, you have to talk loud enough for him to hear you over a train, even when you’re the only person in the bar and the jukebox is quiet.
“Coming up,” Buddy grumbles with a heavy sigh, one that insinuates that I’m a pain in his ass, and that he could care less if I live or die, let alone continue to patronize his establishment.
“Make that two,” comes a familiar voice from near the entrance.
I don’t remember the door opening or closing, but it must have, because Buddy and I are no longer alone, and my day just got worse.
It’s Parker. I’d recognize my uncle’s smug twang anywhere.
“Thought that was your fancy new car outside,” Uncle Parker says, crossing the room to clap me on the back in a way that’s almost friendly. “Figured I’d stop in and see if you wanted to buy your uncle a drink.”
“Sure.” I nod to Buddy as he sets my whiskey down in front of me. “Add whatever he wants to my tab.”
“Well, ain’t that generous?” Parker settles onto the stool beside me with a happy sigh. “Very generous, indeed.”
I glance at him out of the corner of my eye to find the old man grinning like the dog that crapped in the cat’s water dish.
“You’re in a good mood. Somebody die?” I ask, drunk enough not to care if I pick a fight.
But Parker only laughs, a long, high-pitched laugh that ends in a coughing spasm he quiets with his own shot of whiskey.
“Nope, nobody died.” He clears his throat and slams the shot glass back on the bar. “Just glad to see people getting what they deserve.”
I turn on my stool, watching my uncle over the rim of my glass as I take a drink of lukewarm beer. I’ve never seen him so damned happy. Never, with maybe the exception of my junior year, when my team made it to the state basketball finals and I missed the winning free throw, dooming Bliss River High School to another year without a state championship.
I’d come home exhausted and feeling awful for failing my team—despite the fact that not a single one of my teammates, or my coach, had blamed me for the loss. Parker had been sitting on the front porch with a shit-eating grin on his face, practically twitching with excitement over the chance to glory in my failure.
Just like that, I know who gave Aria my old lease.
“You went through my desk upstairs, didn’t you?” I set my beer calmly on the bar, determined not to give him the satisfaction of seeing me angry.