Twenty-four

Henley

2017

I hurt him.

I hadn’t counted on that. I knew he’d be angry. I’d been ready for it. Prepared to face him down and accept whatever he threw at me because I’d deceived him and deserved it, but hurt wasn’t an emotion I’d counted on.

I hurt him.

And then I punched him in the face and ran like a coward.

When I slid onto that barstool last night, I smiled at Declan even though my chest was so tight I could barely breathe, waiting for him to recognize me. When he didn’t, I was able to breathe a little easier.

With my carefully applied make-up, capped teeth and perfect nose, I look like a completely different person.

“What can I get you?” he says, tossing a napkin down in front of me. I remember the way he was, the restless, angry core that sat at the center of him that shown through from time to time. The resentment that was visible to anyone who knew how and where to look. He seems different. Less angry. Settled into his skin somehow. I wonder how it happened. How he found a measure of peace with who he was and aligned it with who he became.

A commotion erupts at the end of the bar, and I look. I have to.

I caught sight of him the moment I walked in, flirting shamelessly with what looked like a bachelorette party—shiny plastic tiaras and matching T-shirts—leaning into a heavily blushing bride, obviously trying to talk her into something she’s not so sure about.

He looks different. Harder. His smile sharper. His gaze calculating. I remember what he told me once—that most people are like ghosts to him. Transparent. How easy it is to figure out what they want.

Like he knows exactly what to do to tip the scales, Conner whips off his shirt. In front of me, Declan mutters a curse, the sound of it smothered by the collective gasp of every woman in the room. Tattoos, dozens of them, stretched over hard, rigid slabs of muscle. Not the kind of muscle you build in a gym, lifting weights. The kind you earn through hours of hard labor.

He shoots a devastating grin at the bride, who looks like she’s about to keel over and tosses her the shirt, saying something I can’t make out over the din.

“Excuse my brother. He’s a one-man circus,” Declan says, sounding more resigned than ashamed. “What can I get you to drink?”

I watch Conner turn toward the wall of booze behind him, choosing a bottle of top-shelf tequila while the bridesmaids behind him let out a loud cheer.

He boosts himself up onto the bar, the movement exposing the inside of his heavily muscled bicep. The tattoo running down the length of it.

I never drink. Even in high school, surrounded by kids who tossed back martinis and manhattans like they were chugging cheap beer, I never indulged in more than the occasional glass of wine. I was too afraid of letting my guard down. Saying or doing the wrong thing. Clueing the people around me into the fact that I was just a pretender. Not really one of them at all.

Sitting here, I realize I don’t belong here either.

“Shot of whiskey,” I say, finally tearing my gaze away from the spectacle of Conner Gilroy. Declan’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise, but he doesn’t say anything. Setting a shot glass in in front of me, he speed pours me a shot of Jameson. I reach for it before the liquor reaches the rim and toss it back, my eyes widening at the wildfire spread of heat that erupts in my belly.

Declan gives me a crooked half smile. “Another?” he says, brandishing the bottle like a knife, laughing when I emphatically shake my head no. Without being asked, he scoops ice into a glass and aims his mixer gun over the top of it, filling it with something fizzy before adding lime and a cherry. “Club soda.” He slides it in front of me before shooting a look down the bar. “You need something stronger, let me know,” he says, a knowing expression on his face, telling me I’m not the first woman to come in here looking for his brother.

Down the bar, the bride-to-be licks salt off Conner’s abs and use their mouth to lift a shot glass of tequila from the gap in his fly while their friends cheer and howl their approval. I’m about to signal Declan for a double when Conner levers himself off the bar, leaning over it to give the bride-to-be a quick, almost brotherly kiss on her cheek before collecting his shirt.

Pulling it on over his head, his lifts his arms and I see it again. The tattoo. A string of numbers and letters. Symbols and signs that don’t make sense to anyone else but me.

Schrödinger’s Equation.

I rationalized it. Conner Gilroy lives on whiskey, casual sex and more than the occasional bar fight. He’s not the boy I used to know. He isn’t going to care that he fucked me. He’d probably laugh about it.

But seeing that tattoo told me differently.

Told me I was playing with fire. That I was about to do something irrevocable. Cause damage I couldn’t undo. I felt myself wavering. Talking myself out of my barstool. I’ll go back to the apartment on Boylston. I’ll get a good night’s sleep and come back tomorrow. I’ll do this the right way. I’ll get to know him again. I’ll tell him how I feel. What I want.

And he’ll shut me down completely. Deny me, just like he did when we were kids.

I’m tired of being denied. Of living someone else’s life. I deserve to have what I want, don’t I? Just once. Not what I’m supposed to want. What I really want.

Conner.

I can do this. Take what I want. Be who I want, for once in my life, without my mother breathing down my neck. Chastising me at every turn. As relentless as water, eating away at who I was. Shaping me into something different.

I’ll spend the rest of my life, being who she wants. Who she needs me to be. Last night, I was determined to be who I was. Who I should’ve been.

I see it now. Knuckles stinging from where I hit him, chest heaving under the weight of what I’ve done. Who I did it to.

Having sex with Conner was a bid for freedom. It’s me, terrified of the course I’ve set myself on. Struggling against what I’ve become.