Dallas

Three Months Ago

The good people of Blue Beech visit the Down Home Pub for three reasons:

#1: To forget.

#2: To feel alive.

#3: A live band is playing, and they don’t have shit else to do.

I’m number one.

It’s a hole in the wall, the only bar in the county, and it has been here longer than I’ve been alive. It’s not fancy, and it doesn’t carry top-shelf shit, but I feel more comfortable here than any upscale club in LA.

I’ve been a regular since my twenty-first birthday, but in the past ten months, I’ve become almost a part-time resident the two days a week I don’t have Maven. My parents demand they get plenty of time with their only grandchild. I tend to come during the week when the people who don’t like conversation are here.

It’s a full house tonight, which is why I didn’t want to come. I hate crowds. Hate the flashes of pity men give me after sucking down another shot of cheap whiskey. Hate the women who take turns coming over with the belief that food and attention will heal me.

A fucking casserole isn’t going to restore this empty soul of mine.

I walked into the bar to find Lauren and Willow sitting at a table in the back. Lauren ordered a round for everyone and did her best to get us to get up and socialize, but neither one of us was having it. Willow eventually convinced her to bail on us and have fun on the dance floor.

Thank fuck.

My sister goes overboard when she tries to pep me up and give me a good time.

How Willow ended up here is a mystery to me. Pubs aren’t her thing. She sips champagne, does yoga, eats chocolate with fancy-ass names. She flew in for Stella’s crew party, so the only reason I can come up with is, she’s trying to stay away from Stella and Hudson’s lovefest.

I lean back in my chair, balancing the neck of my beer bottle between two fingers, and stare at her as she gives the bar a once-over. The pendant light above us shines over her head like a halo when she starts peeling paint off the table. Her weariness surprises me. I’ve always thought of her as a chameleon—someone who adapts to any situation she’s thrown into.

I set my beer bottle down and wipe my sweaty palms against my jeans. “What’s Tinder?” Really? This is what I say to break the ice? It’s all I could think of.

My question surprises her, and she lifts her gaze to me. “Tinder?” She scrunches up her face like she didn’t hear me correctly.

“Yeah, what is it? Lauren has been up my ass all week, insisting I join it.”

She laughs, a smile cracking at the side of her lips. “Really? You’ve never heard of Tinder?”

“Trust me, I wouldn’t be sitting here, feeling like an idiot, if I had.” I grab my beer and take a long draw, finishing it off. “Looks like I’m the only one lost on the Tinder subject.”

“It’s a dating app.” She pauses. “Let me correct myself. It’s a booty-call app. Swipe right; swipe left. Let’s bang; let’s not.”

“A booty-call app.” I snort. “It’s sad when your sister cares more about you getting laid than you do.”

“I seem to have the same problem with everyone but me worrying about my vagina getting the business.” She laughs again, the sound of it putting me at an unfamiliar ease—something I haven’t felt in a long time.

I want to hear that laugh again. A woman this beautiful doesn’t deserve to be sitting in the back of a run-down pub with sadness in her eyes.

“Hudson told me about the bullshit your boyfriend pulled,” I say.

Her ruby-red lips frown, and she runs a nervous hand down her dress. I pinch the bridge of my nose, regretting my words. Bringing up her douche-bag ex isn’t going to get me another laugh.

“Hudson has a big mouth,” she mutters. “And ex-boyfriend.”

“Sorry ’bout that. Hudson told me what your ex did.”

“What he did was fucked up and the final straw of our relationship.”

“Did the kid die?” I pause, the question hitting too close to home. I have a daughter. That could’ve been Maven. I can’t imagine what those parents are going through.

“Fortunately, no. Unfortunately, he has severe brain damage and will never be the same.”

Fucking jackass. Shows how one stupid decision can impact the lives of others. I only met her ex a handful of times, but I instantly knew he’d never be a friend of mine.

“And him?”

“He’s out on bail, and his trial has been postponed until he completes physical therapy.”

“You shitting me?”

She shakes her head. “The perks of being the son of the town mayor.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“It makes me sick that I loved someone who did something that bad.”

She snatches the drink Lauren ordered her and downs it. My lips slightly turn up when her face twists into something that resembles disgust.

She sticks out her tongue and points to the glass, like it’s poison. “Is your sister trying to kill me? What is this shit?”

“Jameson,” I answer, feeling my lips tilt up again—something they haven’t done with anyone other than Maven.

She stares at me, blinking.

“Whiskey.”

She pushes the glass up the table with both hands. “Well then, that’s my first and last time drinking whiskey. I’m more of a wine-slash-champagne-slash-give-me-something-fruity kind of girl.”

“Whiskey is stronger on the heart than champagne. You can’t go wrong with trying to forget with whiskey. I promise you that.”

“In that case, order me another.” She pauses to wag her finger at me. “Wait, if it’s such a heart-mender, why aren’t you drinking it?”

I shrug. “I planned on being good tonight with beer.”

She holds her empty glass up. “I planned on champagne. If I’m drinking it, so are you.”

I smile for what feels like the first time in months and hold my hand up to tell the bartender, Maliki, we need another round.

“This’d better work,” she says when Maliki drops off our drinks. She knocks the whiskey down like a pro, inhales a deep breath, and squints her eyes when it’s gone. “Shit, that one was even stronger.”

“It’ll help. I promise.” I tap the table before draining mine. It burns as it goes down.

“Do you miss her?” she asks out of nowhere, as if the question had been on the tip of her tongue all night.

My jaw flexes. I’m surprised at her question. “Every fucking second of the day.” My honesty shocks me. I’ve shut down every conversation my family has tried to have with me about Lucy. “Do you miss him?”

“Every fucking second of the day, and I hate myself for it. I can’t stop missing the parts of him that weren’t terrible.”

Maliki, like he can read my mind, brings us another round. She takes another long drink, and I still in my chair, all of my attention on her while I wait for her to go on.

She scoffs, “This is not a conversation I thought I’d be having tonight. No one brings him up, for fear I’ll want him back if they mention his name.”

I nod, a cloud of grief passing over me. I want to be mad that she’s complaining about losing someone she can take back at any second because I don’t have that option. I’d be irate, pissed, and ready to spit out fire if anyone else had said that to me.

But not with Willow.

I grip my glass and watch her take another sip of her drink. The strap of her green dress hangs off her shoulder, giving me a glimpse of the light freckles sprinkled along her pale skin. I’ve never looked at her, really seen her, until tonight. Her red hair is pulled into two tight buns at the top of her head, a few spirals of perfect curls falling out of them.

“How about we make a toast?” she asks.

I hold up my glass. “To what are we toasting?”

“To getting wasted. To going numb. To forgetting.”

I like the way she thinks. “To drinking the pain away.” I tap my glass against hers. “Let’s drown our sorrows.”

We drink our pain away. We forget our troubles. Hell, we forget everything and everyone around us.

My brain isn’t functioning when I ask my next question. It would’ve never happened if I were sober.

“So, have you tried it out? Had a booty call with this Tinder?”