“Come on,” Nikko interrupts, clearly sensing an opportunity. “One drink. We can talk about anything except Christmas festivals and farming.”
Maybe a few hours’ distance is exactly what I need to face all this tomorrow.
“All right,” I concede, pushing off from the wall. “One drink.”
12
TAYLEN
The gravel path between the Halls’farm and my house feels longer tonight. The warmth of their kitchen clings to my clothes even as Vermont’s November wind tries to steal it away, leaving me caught between two temperatures, two worlds, much like I’m caught between anger at Bastian’s stubborn refusal and an unwelcome understanding of his fears.
His refusal wasn’t a surprise. I know him well enough by now to recognize when he’s building walls. But something about it burns in my chest all the same.
The porch light I left on casts a weak light on the steps I’ve climbed for what feels like a hundred years and a dozen lives. I fish my keys from my pocket and open the front door.
Inside, darkness wraps around me, the silence hitting harder after the hours spent in the warmth of the Halls’ kitchen, where even quiet moments carry the weight of long-established family traditions.
My coat lands on the wrought-iron rack, followed by my scarf. I remove my boots and then make my way to the kitchen.
The bottle of whiskey waits on the counter where I left it last night. I pour two fingers neat, then, after a moment’sconsideration, add a third. The first sip burns, but the second goes down easier, spreading warmth through my chest that almost matches what I left behind when I decided it would be too hard to follow Bastian and the band to Joe’s.
As much as I know the guys from years of having them around on and off, between tours and album recordings, I’m not part of the group.
I roll the tension from my shoulders, feeling each knot and tight muscle protest. Bastian’s refusal to help save the festival sits heavy in my gut. All his talk about coming home to stay, about being part of the community again, crumbled in the face of actual commitment.
I push away from the counter, taking the whiskey glass with me, and head up to my room. The leather couch in the corner accepts my weight with a familiar creak, its worn surface cool against my palms.
The brass lamp beside me needs polishing, but its tarnished surface feels right tonight, matching my mood. In its weak light, the framed photograph beside it takes on an almost sepia tone, though I know its true colors by heart. Jackson’s blue denim shirt, my teenage self’s ridiculous attempt at facial hair, and the trees with their golden autumn leaves behind us.
Three weeks. The anniversary looms like storm clouds on the horizon, heavy with memories I both chase and flee. Twelve years shouldn’t feel like yesterday, but grief has its own timeline.
I clench my fingers around the crystal glass, watching the amber liquid swirl around, bringing back memories I’ve tried to forget.
Seven years ago, I ran from grief like it was something I could outpace if I just moved fast enough, drove far enough, drank deep enough. Burlington’s lights promised anonymity, its bars offering temporary refuge.
“You were wrong, J,” I whisper to the photo, to the quiet room, to the shadows and memories around me. “Some things can’t be fixed just because you want them to be.”
But even as the words leave my lips, I know they taste like lies. Because seven years of distance haven’t dulled the way my heart kicks when Bastian enters a room, haven’t erased the current that runs between us, haven’t changed the fact that every argument, every tension, every moment of friction carries an undertone of something else entirely.
The nightclub throbs around me, bass vibrating through my bones like a second heartbeat. Strobing lights slice through the artificial fog. I press my glass against my lips, letting the whiskey burn away the taste of grief that’s followed me to Burlington, though even here, three hours from home, I can’t quite shake the ghost of Jackson’s absence.
Five years and his loss still feels as raw as the night the police knocked on our door to tell us a kid without a driver’s license or insurance rammed my brother’s truck off the road and directly into the path of an old oak tree.
Bodies press against me from all sides, a living tide of perfume and sweat and desperation. I’ve lost count of how many bars I’ve tried tonight, each one offering the same false promise of forgetting. This one’s bigger than the others, more crowded, the kind of place where faces blur and names become irrelevant. Perfect for someone trying to disappear.
I push away from the bar, letting the crowd swallow me. Dancing bodies create currents and swirls, and I let myself be carried along, neither fighting nor following. The lights paint everything in stark colors, making the world feel less real, more like a fever dream I might wake from to find everything unchanged.
That’s when I see him.
At first, I think it’s the whiskey playing tricks, but I recognize the way he holds himself, the broad shoulders, the ripped jeans, the hands shoved deep in his jeans pockets. The baseball cap is pulled low, but I’d know that profile anywhere, having spent years pretending not to study it at every given chance.
He looks up, and our eyes lock across the dancefloor. The moment stretches as recognition floods his features, followed by something else before his usual careful mask slips into place.
I should leave, but I stay still, not even swaying to the rhythm of the music.
The anger in my chest tangles with something else, something I’ve spent years pretending doesn’t exist. Attraction hums under my skin like electricity. Even now, raw with grief and drunk on whiskey, I can’t quite ignore how the club lights catch the angles of his face, how his presence draws my eyes even in disguise.
The music swells around me, and I close my eyes against the assault of memory and sensation. Five years of running from the complicated tangle of emotions that Bastian Hall stirs in me. Five years of pretending I don’t check tour schedules, don’t follow his success, don’t feel his absence like a physical thing.
