The heavy air around him is thick in my lungs. “Is everything alright, man?”
He takes a deep breath and another sip before he says words I’d never thought I would hear come out of his mouth. “I think I know what you were talking about. The anger,” he clarifies. “That you had toward your mother. I think I understand why you were so hurt. And why that made you hate her.” His voice cracks at the end and my heart splits in two at his words.
Trying to fully process what he’s saying before responding, he adds on, “Please, just don’t tell me I told you so.” When he looks up at me, tears are gathered at the corner of his eyes, and I know I would never, ever tell him that.
There is not an ounce of satisfaction at seeing him like that.
“What happened?”
“We’re working through it. But…” He trails off, running his hand across his stubbled jaw. He does a quick scan of the bar, making sure there’s no one close enough to overhear. “I’m not really ready to talk about what happened but, uh, she relapsed—” He chokes on the words and washes them down with another drink.
Fucking hell. My stomach drops to the floor.
“I—I, fuck dude, I don’t know what to say.”
He hangs his head and hunches over the bar. “You don’t have to say anything. It’s her business and we’re working through it, but…I just want to let you know that I get that anger. And while I will never agree with what you did to her because she’s the love of my fucking life, I now see what you were trying to protect me from. The ache of it all.”
My chest cleaves in two. “I never wanted to be right,Walker. I really didn’t.” I judged Scar right off the bat because all I saw was my mother, and it wasn’t fair to her. Still isn’t. And as I sit here trying to support Walker, I’m actively working to separate her from my mother again in my head. “And I know you don’t want to talk about it, but if you ever do, I’m here for you. Always have been, always will be.”
We sit in silence for a while, listening to the music ring through the bar and sipping our whiskey. It coats my throat, settling heavy and warm in my gut.
After what feels like an eternity, I ask, “Where do we go from here?” I don’t hide the vulnerability from my tone. I’m done hiding from him, from Penny, from the rest of my friends. It doesn’t feel good to revisit the past, but it does feel good to sit here with Walker and have him know all the ugly parts of me.
And hopefully, despite it all, he’ll want to be back in each other’s lives again.
“I don’t know,” he sighs. “What do you think?”
“Well, I’d like to be friends again. If you forgive me.”
He bites the inside of his cheek and scans the bottles behind the bar. “I want to move past it. I’m sick of having this animosity in the back of my head and the unresolved issues between the four of us, even if we’re not a band anymore. But I can’t say that trust is just going to be rebuilt overnight.”
I nod, having expected that.
“And I got a lot of shit going on with Scar right now that’s taking all my mental energy. But I just…I just need my friend back right now.”
I clamp a heavy hand on his shoulder and squeeze. He stiffens at the initial contact but relaxes a moment later. “I’ll follow your lead.”
He smiles at me, the first time he’s done so in years, and although things are far from being normal between us, this feels like a bit of light at the end of a long, long tunnel of turmoil.
“I can’t be gonefor long!” Penny protests as I lead her by the hand outside and into the alley. Walker left a few minutes ago and I’ve been waiting for her to get a break. “What are you?—”
I cut off her words by slamming my mouth to hers. She’s startled for a moment but as my tongue traces the seam of her lips, she relaxes into the kiss. Her fingers dig into my shirt, and I blindly back her up until she’s flush to the brick wall. I cage her in, never letting her go.
After everything that I just spewed out, all the ugliness of my life and my choices, I need this moment with her.
My hands find her hips, pulling them flush with my own and relishing in the heat of her body that feeds into mine. It’s not a calm kiss, not a sweet one like the one the other night on the beach.
This is frantic. Frenetic. Charged with the emotions of the day and the need to make her understand that I need her, even if I don’t know how to say it. I’m telling her the way I know how right now.
We break apart, chests heaving, breaths mingling.
“Thank you,” I rasp against her lips.
“For what?” Her fingers brush my hair back and trace soft lines across my forehead.
“For just being there. You anchored me today, whetheryou realized it or not. I was about to run, but you, seeing you there…you’re what I didn’t know I needed.”
Her eyes shine, and using her grip on my hair, she closes the distance between our lips once more. I melt into her touch, her moans, her smell.
