Don’t let someone else
Fall in love with me.
Day 365 Post-Gavin
Snow is a thing of beauty. So beautiful and so fucking dangerous, I think to myself as I nearly slip on a patch of it.
Okay, so perhaps my choice of footwear wasn’t the most practical, but I wasn’t going to let even the strongest force, also known as Mother Nature, dictate who I’d be tonight.
My lace up booties make me feel like the fiercest woman to grace this packie.
I yank the door open and rub my arms as I’m hit with a blast of heat.
“Cold, eh?” the guy at the register calls out. His brown hair has seen better days, all knotted and sticking from beneath a beanie.
“Fucking right,” I mutter. I take a quick glance at the shelves. Wine, wine, more wine. I grimace and turn back to the cashier. “Hey, where’s the Jäger?”
It’s his turn to grimace. “Bang a left and it’s on your right. Terrible shit right there.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say as I reach for a 750 ml bottle with a grin on my face. I head back to the register with it clutched to my chest.
Beanie dude peeks at my cleavage and I let him.
“Could be tequila,” I say when he takes the bottle I hold out.
“Tequila, huh?” He grabs a brown paper bag as I reach for my wallet. “They say your choice of poison says a lot about you. I’m more herbal, myself.”
“Jäger’s full of herbs.” I reach for the bag, knowing a stoner when the conversation turns to the subject of herbs. He reeks of it, which makes me want to laugh.
“Not really my thing,” he announces, and I take the alcohol from him. “But if you were ever a tequila drinker, man? Wicked emotional issues.”
“That so?” I tilt my head to the side, interested. “What does tonight’s choice tell you?”
He smiles and it’s actually stunning. Straight white teeth combat that awful hair.
“You just want to have a good fucking time.”
It’s my turn to smile and I shrug.
“I’m off in an hour if you’re looking for someone to party with?”
He’s smiling again and it’s just as brilliant as the first time around. But that hair is killing me.
“Another time,” I tell him before rushing out with my bottle. The slush outside won’t even stop me as I turn the corner and rush toward Sabrina’s apartment. She’s only lived in South End for about a month now, so I’m still getting used to the neighborhood.
I’m about to climb the steps of her stoop when I feel my heel slip a little. It’s a feeling no woman in the world is prepared for; the sudden instability where you don’t know if you’re going to end up with a bruised ass or a broken neck.
I feel a hand grip my elbow, steadying me. When I gather my wits about me, I turn to see who my hero is—only to be faced with a chest. I look, up, over the flannel shirt where black buttons are sewn, up, past the collar that’s tucked into a brown leather jacket, up, past a jaw that hasn’t seen a razor in a pretty long time, judging by the length of the beard. Then I meet eyes, bright brown eyes that once looked so familiar a lifetime ago.
I have flashbacks as this stranger smiles, not knowing that those eyes look a hell of a lot like an “almost” of mine. Like someone I’d almost lived happily ever after with.
“You okay?”
“Uh, yeah.” I straighten. “Thanks. Don’t think I would’ve landed gracefully otherwise.”
He chuckles and it’s sexy, but my heart is a little too vulnerable to give way to that power.
I offer him a smile and thank him once more before squaring my shoulders and heading inside. I left the door unlocked on the way out, so I’m not surprised when I walk right in, bottle held to my side like an afterthought.
Sabrina’s laughing at something as she passes me to get to the kitchen. She pauses and looks at me with a frown. When I shrug, she waves me to follow her into the kitchen.
“Got your shitty Jäger?” she asks, reaching into the cabinet to get another bag of chips out.
“Yeah. Saw a guy who kinda looked like Gavin out there.”
She stops her movement and I don’t know what I’m going to be faced with when she turns my way. I get my answer a moment later and I see the exasperation on her features.
“Still, Denise?”
I’m full of shrugs tonight.
“Seems like an ‘always’ type of deal.”
She doesn’t say anything and everyone in the parlor laughs loudly about something. I wait until it dies down to speak again.
“Gonna tell me I need more time?” I set the bottle down, its thud dulled by the paper bag when it hits the counter. I don’t say anything else as I unscrew the top and take a sip straight from the bottle.
Sabrina twists her lips in disgust at my antics.
I offer her the bottle and she shakes her head.
“More for me.”
“I’m not disappointed, if that’s what you’re thinking.” She opens the bag of chips—BBQ—and starts eating them, leaning her hip against the counter. “I know you invested and went through shit. I just wish it’d been with someone a little better. Maybe more empathetic?”
“I wouldn’t care if you were, to be honest. Only he and I really know the ins and outs of what we did.” I take another sip before screwing the top back on.
“No chaser these days?”
“Guess I stopped being weak?”
“Thug life.”
She smiles, and it could be all in my head but it’s kinda sad.
“You okay?”
More laughter from the next room and I’d rather join them and be catapulted back into my original mood than deal with whatever’s going on in this kitchen between the two of us.
But the look on her face stops me.
“I didn’t know how you felt. I couldn’t understand but I understand so much better now.” The voice that’s usually so strong is cracking under the pressure of whatever she’s holding back from me.
And I fill with dread because I’m almost certain I know what it is.
Still, I ask her what she means.
“I haven’t known how to tell you . . .”
“Just say it,” I snap. And then I close my eyes because I don’t want to be angry. I just want to be a blank slate, absorbing the shades of truth she paints my canvas with.
Silence. So much silence between us mixed with laughter in the parlor. Someone’s turned on some music and I just want to disappear.
To run from this room and Sabrina’s truth.
“I’m pregnant,” she whispers, her lip trembling. “About sixteen weeks.”
I feel my heart fall to my feet as tears fill my now open eyes.
“I wanted to tell you before but . . .” She grips one of my shoulders. “I’m sorry.”
I shake my head and attempt a smile. Smile through your broken heart because you’re supposed to.
“Please,” I tell her as I wipe my eyes. “Don’t be sorry. This is nothing to apologize for. We should be happy. And I’m so . . . fucking happy for you.”
I nod over and over, even as tears continue to fall.
“I’m sorry.” She pulls me in for a hug.
I pull back after a moment and put on a brave face.
“Good thing you moved in here,” I offer a weak chuckle. “You’ll need the space.”
She nods, and her chuckle is far sincerer than mine.
“Don’t keep anything from me anymore. I want to be part of this.” I sniffle. “I want to be here for you the way you would if it were me.”
“Of course. It’s you and me until the end, shorty.”
“Not anymore,” I say, and I kiss her cheek. “Can’t wait to spoil it.”
“Peter wants a girl.”
I tilt my head and shoot her a confused look.
“That’s a first.”
“He’s insisting he wants a daddy’s girl.”
I grab the bottle of Jäger and nod.
“Purely selfish motives. I respect it.”
I tuck the bottle in the crook of my elbow and Sabrina lifts a brow.
“Just gonna get some air.”
“Don’t take too long,” she says to my back as I start to walk away. “You’re supposed to be doing Jäger bombs with Pete and I know some of the guys in there are curious about you.”
“Cute,” I say over my shoulder. “Be back.”
“I love you most,” she shouts behind me.
“Impossible,” I whisper.
Once I’m outside on the stoop, I feel like I can breathe again. I purge the thought of pregnant Sabrina and her beautiful life upstairs and only focus on myself and my bottle.
Just as I take a swig, the door behind me opens.
With the bottle tucked between my knees in its brown paper bag, I ready myself to politely greet a stranger.
I look up and it’s the man who kept me from bruising my ass or breaking my face.
“Need more help?” he asks, his keys jingling in his hands and that sexy smile doing things to me in my vulnerable state.
Those fucking eyes.
“Getting drunk? No, no. Pretty sure I’m a pro at that.” I cringe when I hear my words. I sound like a fucking drunk.
“I didn’t mean it like—It’s cool. Not here to judge you.”
“At the risk of sounding like a complete asshole, why are you here, then?”
“Well, I was planning on grabbing a drink with some friends, but I figured since I saved your life and all, I’m owed a drink.”
He gestures to the bottle in my hand.
“Hardly. You probably just saved my shoe,” I mutter with a smile. “And my pride.”
“Good thing we’ll never know,” he says as he moves to sit beside me, jacking up his pants like a grown man does. That move alone makes me feel a little light, like I could just . . . let my feelings carry me away.
I unscrew the top and take a big gulp. I already feel the warmth in my chest from what I’d had upstairs. When I offer him the bottle, he examines it with a grin.
He looks like the kind of guy who’s always smiling.
I like it.
“I gathered you did. Not too many people drink Jäger straight.”
He shrugs and takes a swig while I try to keep myself in check.
No more thinking things out loud, Denise.
He’s staring at me and I’m wondering if I’ve done it again when he passes the bottle back.
“Just move in?”
Ohhhh, questions, I think to myself with a smile before I take a sip.
It’s losing its burn which means I’m losing my sobriety.
“My sister.” I gesture toward the second floor. “Moved in a month ago.”
“Do you visit often?”
I pass the bottle back to him.
“Odd question to ask a stranger. I might think you’re trying to stalk me.”
I’d never seen someone smile into a Jäger bottle but this man made it happen.
“Could be,” he wipes the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand, “that I’m trying to find out the likelihood of running into you again. And maybe after running into each other a few times, I could take you out.”
I snort as I take the bottle from him.
“You don’t even know my name,” I tell him. “Don’t know if I’m a psychopath.”
Close.
He’s still smiling.
“It’ll all come in time.”
I’m sure it will.