When I still hadn’t seen or heard from Dan by the time 2:30 PM rolled around, I started to get concerned. Where was he? Had he gotten lost on his way home last night, or had some psycho fan abducted him and made a suit out of his skin?

I texted him twice, and called once, but still nothing. I wouldn’t have been so nervous if I hadn’t been dreading what I needed to say and do the next time I saw him, knowing that George was right all along, as much as it killed me to admit it.

“Any word yet?” Mike asked, standing next to me at the bar while he drummed his fingers on the counter. It was early enough in the afternoon that we hadn’t scared up much business yet, and we were both bored—or at least Mike was. I had so much on my mind that I was grateful no one had walked through the doors yet. I doubted I could make them a drink without accidentally putting peanuts in it.

“No, not yet. I’m starting to get really worried, he’s not normally like this,” I said and Mike let out a sigh.

“If you wanna swing by his place, I’d be fine to cover for ya. It’s not like much is going on right now anyway,” he said.

“I appreciate the offer, but what if it gets busy while I’m gone? I don’t think it’s going to be a quick conversation between us when we see each other again and I don’t want to leave you hanging,” I said. More than that, though, I didn’t really want to have the conversation—as much as I knew I needed to. The longer I could delay it, the more I could think about how to say what I needed to say.

“I don’t think it’s gonna, but if you don’t wanna leave I can’t force ya. I’m sorry you’re going through all this,” Mike said. I hadn’t told him the nitty-gritty of everything that needed to happen, but he’d heard enough of the argument between George and me to know things weren’t going to go well over the next few days.

It was painful, more than I would’ve liked to admit, mostly because my future was so uncertain. Once I told Dan I couldn’t keep seeing him, for the sake of the bar and my financial future, I had no idea what would happen. I didn’t know if he would fly off the handle and pull his funding from the bar, and I didn’t know if he would ever talk to me again.

Honestly, I wouldn’t have blamed him if he decided not to, after all the grief I’d given him about skipping town to do that dumb reality TV show and leaving me to wonder where the hell I’d gone wrong with him.

“Yeah, me too, but it is what it is. George was right, I had to make a choice, and I’ve made it. I can’t say I’m happy about it, but most difficult decisions don’t have happy endings, do they?” I asked.

“No, I guess they don’t, though I can’t say I’ve had to make many of ‘em myself,” Mike said. Just then, a car came to a screeching halt right outside the bar, whose doors were open to try to attract more people, and Dan stepped out of the sedan. He stopped to talk to the driver for a moment before he tore into the bar and ran right up to me.

“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for hours,” I said and Dan shook his head, holding his chest while he gasped for air. He hadn’t even run that far, but he must’ve run hard.

“I know, I’m sorry. It’s a long story, I overslept and I got some really awful news,” he said, and immediately my resolve deflated. What kind of news could he have gotten? Would it really behoove me to tell him I couldn’t see him anymore when he was already at a low point?

“Awful news? What kind of awful news?” I asked, though immediately the face of the weaselly reporter from the Beauclaire Bugle swam to my mind. I couldn’t say how or why, but I suspected him right away. If he hadn’t been intending to publish something salacious, why would he have barged his way into the bar and demanded to know about my relationship with Dan?

It didn’t take long for that thought to be replaced by a flash of anger, though. I still couldn’t believe Dan thought it was a good idea to let the reporter in.

“The Bugle. That reporter, he published something. I haven’t seen it myself yet, but I got calls from my manager and the label higher-ups this morning telling me just how awful it is. It’s all over the Internet, people are saying all kinds of terrible things, and I’m so sorry,” Dan said, practically on the verge of tears. So, that was it then. It was everything I feared would happen, and it’d happened much faster than I thought.

I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. Mike stole a glance at me and without a word he decided to leave us alone, retreating back into the kitchen. More than any other time, I wished he hadn’t left me alone. I was afraid of what came next.

“I’m sorry too,” I said. I wished it didn’t have to come to this, I wished we could’ve found a way to work together, but if I’d had any lingering reservations about what I needed to do, they’d evaporated as soon as Dan told me about the article.

Because the fact of the matter was that for now, there was nothing that could work between the two of us. Our lives were in different places, on different planes even, and I wasn’t sure that as long as he was a big-time singer there would ever be any overlap.

“I have to go back to California, at least for a little while, but I didn’t want to leave without talking to you first,” Dan said after he’d taken a few breaths and gotten himself under control again.

“Yeah, I kinda saw that coming,” I said, looking down at the bar and my own reflection in the shining countertop. The face that looked back at me wasn’t pretty, all twisted up in anger and confusion, but it was the honest face of a man with an honestly broken heart.

“I’m not leaving you, you have to know that,” Dan said. “I’ll find a way to make this right. I don’t care what it takes, how much I have to work or talk to stupid talking heads on reality TV shows to convince them that this is nothing, I’ll do it and I’ll come back to you.”

“No, you won’t, but that’s fine,” I said and his face fell.

“How can you say that?” he asked. After everything we’ve shared, everything we’ve worked together on, you’re going to just drop me?”

“No, I’m saying it because I’m being realistic, Dan. I love you, always have, but there’s just no way for us to do this. No matter how many times we try to sneak away and make something for ourselves, there’s always going to be a risk, always going to be some hidden camera lurking even in this small town waiting to betray us,” I said. I felt like a robot like I was somehow sitting outside myself hearing my words being spoken by another person. It was the worst thing in the world to watch his face contorted, to see his heart split on his face, but I had to do it for both of our sakes.

“You don’t know that. You can’t know that. It won’t always be true,” he said, desperately trying to find a way to make me take back what I’d said. But I’d found my resolve and I couldn’t let it go now. I had to go through with this if either of us were going to come out with any sort of future.

“I do know it. You’re going to go back to California and get wrapped back up in your professional life, and that’s fine, I understand it. But I have to stay focused on me and this bar and I can’t do that if I keep seeing you and you can’t stay focused on your career if you keep seeing me,” I said, my tone flat, almost as flat as my heart rate. I didn’t feel alive, didn’t feel like I was on the same plane of existence as the words that came out of me. They were just words, rehearsed down to the last T, coming out of me like preprogrammed code.

“You know, I came here to say the same thing. I came here to tell you that I had to go back to California and that we couldn’t keep doing this, but during the drive, I realized I couldn’t go through with it,” he said, his voice cracking, his lower lip trembling. “So to hear you say this, it’s beyond heartbreaking. I love you too Jason, I have for as long as I’ve known you, and I was willing to do whatever it took to make this work. It kills me to hear you say you aren’t willing to do the same,” he said.

That wasn’t true. I would’ve done anything to make things work for us, but there was no real way to do that, no realistic fashion we could follow, no protocol or established path for something like this. The only way we could make it work is if one of us gave up something major—for me, that was the bar, for him, that was his career—but it wasn’t fair to either of us to have to make that kind of sacrifice, so what choices were left?

“I’m sorry,” I said. It was all I could muster. “I really am.”

“Yeah, that makes two of us. Goodbye, Jason,” he said and though he searched my face for a few moments, he eventually turned and walked away, no longer running. He was in no hurry to get to the car, no hurry to leave me, and part of me screamed inside to call him back to me, to tell him I didn’t mean any of what I’d said—but I couldn’t do it. I had to let him go, this time for good, so I never found myself in a position like this again.

After his car had torn away, and after I’d see his teary eyes in the back seat for the last time, I went to the bar’s doors and slammed them shut, locking the deadbolt behind them. I didn’t care what it cost me, I didn’t care if people tried to come in and were pissed off that we’d closed early; the only thing I wanted was to be alone in the darkness of the bar.

I went back to the seating and collapsed into a chair, slumping my head and shoulders on to the cold countertop just to remind myself that I wasn’t burning up, that I wasn’t going to disappear into the horrible feelings that were enveloping me.

I’d broken his heart, broken my own, and for what? So I could spend the rest of my days locked inside these four walls, serving ungrateful customers who didn’t have the time of day for me in any other context?

It wasn’t fair, but then again, what about life was? At what point in my life had I ever been treated fairly or given a fair shake? From the time I was born, in this godforsaken town, I’d been doomed to live and work in it for the rest of my life—a fact that didn’t change when Dad passed away and left the bar to me and George, the bar I never wanted in the first place.

I should’ve left Beauclaire when I still had the chance, should’ve run screaming as far as I could’ve gone, or hitchhiked, or joined the circus, whatever the hell it would’ve taken to get out because now I was trapped.

There would be no Dan, there would be no third chance for us, there would only be bad, broken memories, all tied to a town that seemed to be drowning in lost hopes and dreams.

The reality was that I was going to end up just like my dad: broke, heartbroken, and bitter because of the first two. There wasn’t any future for me in this bar, even if it turned out to be a stable business, which wasn’t a guarantee in this town. And when it folded, because I was almost sure it would, where would I go and what would I do?

At my age, with my lack of skills, no one would hire me and no one would take a chance on me as an investor to start a new bar because I’d failed not once but twice in business—and twice in love.

I should never have let my guard down, I should never have thought it was a good idea to mix business with pleasure, as George had said because he was right all along. There’s no such thing as a real mix between the two, they’re like oil and water and they’ll always separate in the end.

I looked up through my tears to find George standing just outside his office, leaning against the doorframe. He smiled at me sadly, and I knew he had to have heard everything that happened since Dan had been in the bar, but I couldn’t say anything to him. I didn’t want to speak to him, didn’t want to speak to anyone, I just wanted to be left alone.

“I’m taking the rest of the night off,” I said and George only nodded.

“Fine, take care of yourself, brother. I love you,” he said, but his words barely registered as I walked past him and into the kitchen to grab my keys, two whole cases of beer from the stock, and stepped outside. Not even the roar of my truck’s engine was enough to drown out my thoughts, and I doubted it would ever be.

What the hell had I done?