After pouring a small tumbler full of scotch, I tossed back half in one gulp.
Silence sucked all the air out of the room. I stared into my drink, unable to find the words that might make this situation right.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have come,” Bess said in a low voice, “but I don’t care. I’m here for you, Lane.”
“I’m a living, breathing mess,” I said as I barked out a demented laugh. “You can’t fix me, Bess. I’m the one who fixes others. I don’t have a fixer.”
Quickly unraveling, I tossed back the rest of my drink, mindlessly grabbing the whole bottle and settling into the chair across from the recovering alcoholic proposing she’d make it all better for me.
“Well, I could try,” she said, staring at me intently. “I’ve never really been thefixer, but I’m up for it. Even with you sitting across from me guzzling down a bottle of high-priced liquor.”
Glancing down, I noticed the almost half-empty bottle in my tanned hands. I stared down at the bottle, mesmerized with the liquid sloshing around inside it when she moved in for the kill.
“Why don’t we start with you telling me about your parents?” She leaned forward and grasped my hand, her thumb rubbing small circles on mine.
Looking at a point over her shoulder, I said, “There’s nothing to tell.”
“Jake told me they died.”
That was when it was clear that I was nowhere near getting my shit together. I erupted like a volcano, jumping to my feet and yelling, “Jake did what? When did you see Jake?”
Red. All I saw was blood red.
“Jake came to me,” she said, her eyes wide as she gazed up at me. “Told me you weren’t doing great. He just knew somehow, and he gave me the courage to come. And he said your parents died.”
“Well, of course he did. After years of handing his sloppy seconds to me, he wanted to take a run at mine.”
Bess gasped. Leaning back into the couch, she looked like she’d been slapped. Essentially, she had, yet she didn’t move.
Furious with myself, I hung my head. “I’m sorry, that was rude.”
Jake, what a fucking traitor. After all I’ve done for him.
Dragging my poison in a bottle, I moved to the couch and sat down next to her, trying to pull her to me, but she wouldn’t allow it. “Bess, God, I fucked up. Let’s start over. You have my emotions doing backflips in my head.”
“No,” she said firmly, then stood up and moved toward the door. “Maybe this was a mistake. Here I am facing my own demons,” she said pointedly, giving my scotch the evil eye, “and all I want to do is help you stare down yours. And you won’t even talk to me. I’m such a fool.”
I rushed after her, grabbing her before her hand hit the doorknob. “Bess, don’t. It wasn’t. I’m tired. I haven’t slept since I left Ligonier. I’m so fucking tired, and now I’m sloppy drunk.” I whispered the last part as I sank to the floor in front of her, on my knees.
I needed absolution.For everything.
My head rested against her knees as she stood above me, and I repeated, “I’m so tired.”
A moment passed that seemed like years until she dropped to the floor next to me and wrapped her arms around me, soothing me like a little boy in my mother’s lap.
With my head buried in her stomach, her legs crossed Indian-style in front of me, I murmured, “The nightmares, they’re chasing me.Finding me down here, and they won’t stop.”
And then I fell asleep on the cool tile floor in the cocoon of Bess’s warmth. I hadn’t been so embarrassed since I prematurely ejaculated with Cindi Swanson in the attic at my grandparents’ house when I was a teen.
Needy was not becoming on me. I was a man, resolute and firm in my convictions.
Yet there I was nodding off in the lap of a woman I had wronged, allowing her to care for me.
