Chapter 12

Frankie

I was getting tired of the endless string of holiday songs. Normally I loved Christmas music, but tonight I wasn’t in the holly jolly mood. I sagged over the bar top like a deflated balloon, keeping one hand on my drink while the other rested on the phone in my lap. I’d picked it up to call Val a few times now, but stopped myself every time. Not only was she dealing with her own problems at the brewery, but I couldn’t justify calling a client to vent to her about my problems. Even if I felt like we shared a deeper connection than I was accustomed to with clients, it didn’t change the fact that she was paying me. I rarely felt lonely, but it struck me hard now. The realization that the one person I wanted to talk to was the one person it would be ethically wrong for me to call hollowed me out.

“Another drink?”

I looked up to find the bartender smiling at me. Xavier, his name tag read.

“Yes, please.” I finished the rest of my beer and placed the empty glass on the bar.

Xavier was already pouring me a fresh pint. “You seem like you’re having a rough day.”

“I’ve had better.”

“Is it a guy?”

He placed the frothing pint in front of me and leaned his hip against the counter. He was a friendly looking guy, somewhere in his mid-forties with brown hair beneath his bald crown and a pair of thick-rimmed glasses. I wasn’t the kind of person to spill my life story to strangers, but I was in a funny sort of mood. I looked around to see if anybody else was listening, but the bar was basically empty. A couple sat in one of the far tables and an old man in a suit was playing one of the video lottery machines, but apart from that I was alone.

“Yes and no,” I said.

Xavier raised one of his patchy brows.

That one simple movement triggered something that made the whole story spill out. His eyebrow tugged a thread inside of me. I tried to keep the story as simple as possible, identifying myself as the maid of honor. I wasn’t keen to get into the specifics of my unusual job.

By the time I’d finished my tale, or the approximation of it, anyway, I was half-finished with my pint, and I felt twenty pounds lighter.

“I don’t understand how someone could be so horrible for no reason,” I said. “What do you think?”

Xavier, who was now leaning on his elbows, nodded slowly. “He sounds like a man in a lot of pain.”

This surprised me since I hadn’t even told Xavier about Levi’s ex.

“Or he’s just an asshole,” I replied.

Xavier shrugged and stood, pouring himself a glass of coke from the spray nozzle. “Could be. Assholes usually take pleasure in being assholes, but he sounds miserable.”

“He’s not miserable,” I said. “He’s smug.”

As I thought about it, though, I wasn’t so sure. I couldn’t say I’d ever seen Levi smile, except in that dream. I hadn’t spent much time with him, and my very presence seemed to make him unhappy, but maybe it wasn’t my presence that did it.

“Either way,” Xavier continued after taking a drink. He waved his cup in my direction. “Not your problem.”

“It feels like I’ve made it my problem,” I said. “When we fought in the room, things got personal.”

I felt ashamed of what I’d said to Levi, even if he’d volleyed it right back. I couldn’t tell whether I felt worse about what I said to him or what he said to me. It all hurt, just in different ways.

Someone sat down at the far end of the bar, drawing Xavier’s attention. My heart jumped, and I flicked my gaze down to see if it was Levi. Nope. Just the old man who’d been playing the video lottery. Based on his gap-toothed grin, he’d gotten lucky.

Had I wanted it to be Levi, or was I afraid that it would be?

I’d been sitting at the bar for nearly half an hour, and I still couldn’t figure out whether I wanted to go back to the room and sort things out or run off into the night and never see him again. The second option grew more tempting with every drink.

Even though I hated him for saying everything he did, there was a part of me deep down that knew there was some truth to it. I wondered what Levi would say if he knew I was divorced.

Xavier came back over after he finished serving the old man. “You want some chips?” he asked, tossing me a bag of chips from the basket behind the bar. “On the house.”

I laughed. “If I start crying can I get some pretzels too?”

Xavier looked toward the bar’s entrance, and a wrinkle of concern tapered his brow. A second later, Levi sat down beside me.

“Glenmorangie, please,” he ordered. “Neat.”

Xavier nodded, poured him his drink, then looked at me. I gave him a short nod and he moved down to the other side of the bar.

Levi brought the glass to his lips, took a sip, and placed it gently back on the bar. He cleared his throat. “The roads are closed.”

My heart sank. “What?”

I looked over to see if he was playing a prank on me or something, but he was dead serious. He licked his lip and looked down at his glass.

“Yeah. Snowstorm, I guess. They might open up tomorrow, but Garrick said it looks like we’ll be stuck up here all weekend.”

“Great,” I muttered, finishing up my beer.

A whole weekend with Levi. I began to wonder if stealing a skidoo would be worth the jail time and potential hypothermia.

Xavier brought me another beer and passed it over with a kind smile. I drank it in silence, wondering why Levi was still sitting there. If he’d come out here just to tell me about the roads, shouldn’t he have finished up his whiskey and gone by now? Why’d he order a drink in the first place? Levi had made it quite clear that being anywhere near to me was the last place he wanted to be in the world, and I thought I’d done the same.

After a while, his presence started to irritate me. It was bad enough that I was stuck here the whole weekend. I didn’t need him following me around, reminding me of everything I didn’t like about myself. He probably didn’t even care. I bet he was just bored because he didn’t have anyone to antagonize back in the room.

When he finished his whiskey, he ordered another. I was down to half a beer, and I took a big swig of it before clearing my throat.

“Are we just going to sit here in silence all night?”

“It’s going well so far,” he replied, staring down into his drink. It was a typical Levi thing to say, though his voice held none of its usual arrogance.

Screw it. He wanted to sit here, he was going to get an earful. “I’m divorced,” I announced. “So you were wrong.”

Levi lifted his face to look at me, but I kept my gaze firmly on the basket of chips behind the bar.

Talking with Xavier must’ve loosened my tongue because soon I was telling Levi a story I never thought I’d share with him.

“I got married when I was nineteen to this guy Aaron. My maid of honor was my best friend from school, and I thought I was going to have the best wedding ever.” I paused to take a drink. I could still feel Levi’s eyes on me, but I was too afraid of what his expression might reveal to look over at him. “It wasn’t. I didn’t think she was doing it on purpose at the time, but my supposed best friend did everything she could to ruin my big day. Then the two of them started having an affair. I caught them. We got divorced. I didn’t build my business so I could fantasize about the wedding I’ll never have. I want to prevent anyone else from having the horrible one like I had.”

I mustered the courage to look at Levi. He wore an unguarded expression, and it felt a little like I was seeing him for the first time.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

It was the most sincere moment that had ever passed between us, but it wasn’t enough for me. I shook my head.

“I don’t want your pity.” I tipped my head back to finish my drink. “And to answer your earlier question, no, I don’t get tired of being so saccharine all the time. Being happy is a choice, one I make every single day. You should think about trying it sometime.”

Xavier noticed my empty glass and came back around.

“Just two bottles of champagne for the road, please.”

If the older man was shocked by my request, he didn’t show it. He reached down into the fridge and pulled out two bottles of champagne while I looked anywhere other than Levi. The second he passed them to me I was off my stool and stomping back to my hotel room.

I couldn’t be certain why I’d told Levi everything I had. The most likely answer was that I was a little bit drunk, and I wanted him to feel bad. But, as I walked back to the room, I wondered whether part of it might be a tiny bit of hurt from me reaching out to the hurt in him.

I banished that thought. It wasn’t my job to fix Levi, and Levi didn’t want to be fixed. There was no need to get sentimental. I had said my piece. As far as I was concerned, there was no reason for us to speak for the rest of the weekend.