Chapter 35

 

 

 

 

 

Finn

 

“Why are you here?” Ophelia says to me as I slide into one of the wooden bar stools across from her. “Shouldn’t you be at the party with everyone else?”

I shake my head, because no, I shouldn’t be there. I should be exactly where I am. About to drown my many sorrows in a vat of scotch. Because tomorrow is the worst day of the year and this bar isn’t open then, which means I’ll have to suffer through it alone. But I can’t tolerate doing that right now. And I can’t tolerate being around happy people at a Christmas party. I certainly can’t tolerate being around Gia in her gold dress, so here I am.

“Johnny Walker Blue. Four fingers, no ice and you can probably just leave me with the bottle.”

Ophelia gives me the long once over and I wait patiently while she decides if she’s going to aid me in my journey to total self-destruction.

Ophelia is pretty. I’ve always thought so. If I could have gotten away with fucking her and never having to see her again, I might have done that once upon a time. But I like this bar. It’s close to my condo and it’s close to the hospital. And it’s comforting in an inexplicable way.

So I never tried it.

“Coming up,” she finally says. “But you do know it would be like a fourth of the price to just go out and buy the bottle in a store, right?”

“Does it look like I care if I spend five hundred dollars on scotch right now?”

“No,” she says, leaning across the well of the bar so that she can put her elbows on the wood and level me with her eyes. “Money has never been your issue.”

I laugh humorlessly at her choice of words. “You got me there.”

“I’m not stupid enough to think this is all about Gia. I knew you before I knew you with her. But you should know she broke up with that Mason guy weeks ago. So, if by some weird miracle this drinking binge is about her…” she trails off with a shrug.

“My son would have been six tomorrow.”

It’s the first time I’ve said those words out loud. To anyone. The impact of them slams into me with so much force that it knocks the wind out of me and I have to clutch onto the edge of the bar for support.

Ophelia nods at me, the corner of her mouth pulling down.

I can’t even bring myself to mention Kelly or Grace. That wound is still too new. Especially after seeing them only a few short weeks ago.

“Okay then, Johnny Walker Blue it is.” She goes to the back only to return a few minutes later with two crystal glasses. Not glass. Crystal. She sets them down on the counter, one for me and one for her from the looks of it. Ophelia grabs the mostly full bottle of Blue from the very top shelf and proceeds to pour us each a healthy glass. She holds up her tumbler and I hold up mine and we lock eyes. “My big sister would have been thirty-two tomorrow. Car accident.”

I nod. “Car accident.”

“Fuck Christmas.”

“Fuck Christmas."

We drink to that. Both of us slamming down the entire drink in one gulp. She winces, blowing out a huge breath of alcohol-tainted air. I swallow mine down just to feel the burn and acknowledge the pain.

Ophelia takes her glass and sets it on the back counter of the bar. Maybe for later. Maybe because it’s a special glass which can’t go in the dishwashers here. Whatever the reason, she leaves it there and leaves me without another word to go about my drinking. I guess everyone has their own heartache. Their own secret pain they don’t wear on their sleeve for others to witness.

Lifting that heavy bottle, I pour myself a moderately full glass, because I’m not in the mood to keep refilling it, and then I take a sip this time. Closing my eyes, I allow myself to picture Logan. To remember how he felt in my arms when I held him that one time. What it felt like to kiss him goodbye before they took him from us.

Then I think about Grace. That beautiful little girl who was the spitting image of her mother. There was none of that piece of shit who is technically her father, in her. For some reason, I find some comfort in that. Especially since brown hair is a dominant gene and that guy definitely had brown hair.

And Gia. Why did Ophelia have to tell me she broke up with Mason? That doesn’t help me right now. I’ve already done so many things wrong where she’s concerned. Hurt her in so many ways. I don’t want Gia to be single. To be alone. I want her to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for her.

Taking another sip, I lean back and allow the flow of alcohol to color my blood with heat. My eyes close and my mind wanders. “I should kick your ass, Banner,” Mike says and I wonder if I’m more drunk than I thought.

My eyes open slowly and I turn my head. Mike is dressed in black sacks, a black jacket and a white button down. And a bright red tie. I guess I’m not imaging him. “You going to court?” He just glares at me and I throw Ophelia a look, but she tosses her hands up in surrender and shakes her head as if to say, it wasn’t me.

“My girlfriend is pissed at me. I left our house, our first Christmas party, to come and see you.”

Leaning my elbow against the bar, I position myself so I’m facing him better. “Go home, then. I certainly never asked you to find me and I sure as shit don’t need a babysitter. I’m perfectly capable of getting drunk and tucking myself into bed. Maybe someone else’s bed if I’m really lucky.”

“You stupid fuck,” Mike snaps and this surprises me because Mike is not known for his aggression or language for that matter. Only with me it seems. “You’re sitting here wasting yourself in a bottle of scotch when you could be with Gia.”

“Don’t,” I warn, sitting up straight and using my three extra inches as an advantage. “Go. Home. I’m not fucking around. I will not have this conversation with you. Not tonight.”

Mike slouches down and looks over at Ophelia who has been furtively watching us out the corner of her eye as she serves up other people’s drinks. Mike raises one finger and then points to the bottle. She nods and then a minute later, she’s bringing him a glass. “Ice?”

“Sure.”

“You good here?” she asks both of us, but her eyes are on me.

“Yeah,” I say, even though I know we’re not. “We’re good.”

She walks off, back to work as things begin to pick up and I’m left with Mike and a bottle of scotch between us. Mike pours himself a glass and then raises it up at me. “What are we drinking to?”

“To Logan,” I say and Mike gives me a pleased grin.

“To Logan.”

We both take a sip and I have to wonder at just what the hell he’s doing here.

After several long silent minutes, he finally says, “Do you remember that little girl who came in after that apartment fire? It was your second year of residency. One of the worst days I’ve ever had as a doctor. Three people died on my table and ten more were sent up to the burn unit including that little girl.”

“Yes,” I say, lost in that memory. I still think about that little girl. Certain cases, certain patients, just stay with you. “Both of her parents died in that fire. They threw her out the window because they knew they weren’t going to make it out.”

Mike nods, his eyes boring into mine. “She fell two stories, shattered both her ankles, her left ulna and had third degree burns on over thirty percent of her body.”

“Shit, that was awful.”

“Do you remember what you said to her when she told you she was scared and in pain?”

I look over at my friend and shake my head. “You said, if you’re scared and in pain, it means you’re still alive. It means you’re still fighting. You told her it takes a very brave person to keep fighting even when they’re scared and in pain.”

“Mike–”

“Tonight, is the first time I’ve heard you say Logan’s name since the day you told me about what happened with Kelly and the baby. And that was the only time you’ve ever spoken about that.”

I shake my head, turning away from him, my hands closing around my crystal glass. My throat constricts making it nearly impossible to swallow. To breathe. My chest feels like it’s being crushed by a vice.

“I’ve never mentioned anything about this before tonight, because you’ve lived through a hell I’ve never known. A hell most haven’t. I always kept it to myself, because I figured you knew better than I what your world was like and what you could handle. But I was wrong, Finn. I did you a disservice by staying quiet all this time. And I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry I wasn’t a better friend to you.”

“I can’t do this, Mike. I always appreciated you kept your opinions about my life to yourself. It’s why we’ve stayed close as long as we have. And I was just saying that to comfort her. She was alone and her parents were dead and she just needed someone to listen and tell her it was going to be okay. That little girl could be worse off now than she was then.”

“No,” he says and then shoves his phone in my face. There’s a picture on it of a young Hispanic girl with braided pigtails. She’s smiling, missing a tooth on top. And even though the little girl in my memory was covered in burns and gauze and blood and smoke, I know this is the same girl “She’s in third grade now. A straight-A student and top speller in her elementary school. Her foster mom adopted her and they live on 123^rd street.”

I have no words. My mind tumbling in a million different directions as I stare sightlessly into the amber liquid in my glass.

“You can’t change the fact your son is dead or that Kelly deceived you or that Grace isn’t yours. Life has been real shit to you. I will not dispute that. But Gia loves you. She told me so tonight.”

Shit, that makes me ache and smile and ache all over again.

“Gia is not Kelly. Gia is not your mother or even your father. She still cares despite everything you’ve put her through. She’s the one, Finn. That might sound like a cliché, but it’s true. She’s it. You’d be a fool not to fight for her.”

Mike picks up his glass, tosses back the rest of it, slaps me on the back and then walks out.

You’d be a fool not to fight for her.

His words recycle themselves through my mind on constant repeat, swirling around the way the scotch swirls in my glass. Suddenly, I’m struck with the most bizarre form of irony. All this time, I’ve acted on the principle that if I lose Gia, the way I lost Logan and Grace and even Kelly, then that will be it for me. I’ll officially be done. Because there really is only so much a man can take.

So I pushed her away, effectively losing her.

Yet somehow that felt more palatable. Being the one in control seemed to make all the difference. But I realize I never had control. It was always an illusion. Because I’m still the one sitting here alone, hurting, when I could be with her. It sounds easier than it feels. I’ve been emotionally paralyzed for a very long time.

The idea of going to Gia, of asking her to be mine, terrifies me. A million terrible things could happen to her or us. And I’m powerless to stop any of them. How do I make sense of that? How do I compartmentalize such a prominent part of me? I’ve been ruled by this pain and fear for as long as I can remember. Even before we lost Logan, it was there.

I’ll always grieve from the losses I’ve sustained. There will always be a scar. Jagged and poorly healed.

But maybe not having Gia is worse than all that?

A fool not to fight for her.

Yeah, he’s probably right about that.