I raised my beer bottle, closing my eyes. “I would! I would!” I said dramatically. “But I only came here to dance with my husband!”
“Boo!”
Apparently not all of us could be adults.
“Oh well! You still got me, fellas!” Maggie Beautiful screamed, crossing her legs and shaking her shoulders.
Brando pulled me away, and we took a seat further down the bar. He set me on his lap and we watched the band play. His foot beat in time to the music, not really wanting to dance, just enjoying the rhythm of it.
“Do you remember the last time we were here?” I asked him.
He took a pull of his beer. “The night you hit Wild Martina over the head with the beer bottle.”
“She had her claws sunk in you. What was I supposed to do?”
“She’s prone to vertigo. I would’ve spun her around and she would’ve let go.” He said this without an ounce of humor in his voice.
I had to hold in the sip I had just taken because I was about to spit it out.
“Yeah,” he said, sighing. “I remember.”
“How did you know that I was here?” I thought back on that night, and I still didn’t know how he knew where to find me. I had come with Maggie Beautiful.
“Mitch. He had one of his buddies call me.”
Mitch passed right then and I called him aratto. He gave me a narrow look and lifted his hands.
“I still think about that night sometimes,” he said.
“You do?”
I turned to look at him, but he set me forward, telling me to watch the band.
“I was damn near close to asking you to marry me before you left. It took Luca talking some sense into me to set my mind straight. I was struggling.
“I found you at Maggie Beautiful’s after. You were drunk, wearing her clothes. Your behavior reinforced everything he had said. I had to let go. I came here to get drunk. Then I left with a buddy. Only to come right back and find Puddin’ manhandling you. You know damn well what happened after that—Stone cuffed you and took you away in the back of his car.”
“You were going to ask me to stay, to marry you?” He had never told me that before.
“Yeah. At one point.” He rested his chin against my shoulder, his mouth close to my ear. “I didn’t think I could do it. Find the strength to let you go. I was going insane. There wasn’t a price I wouldn’t have paid to keep you with me. Instead, I paid with my soul to let you go.”
“And now, when you look back? Would you do it again? Let me go?”
“No.” He placed a kiss on my neck. “I’d rather die.”
I pulled his arms around me and he squeezed, holding me even tighter against him. I smiled to myself, thankful that we were not there anymore, and closed my eyes, enjoying the moment. He seemed to be a bit sentimental, gone a little soft at the lyrics being sung. The top of my body swayed with the slow pace of the song. Jane had stepped down from the stage, and the new guy was pleasant enough to listen to.
Brando said something underneath his breath that made me crack an eye open. Mitch and Violet were in the middle of the dance floor. Her eyes were closed, hands around his neck, and he held her tight, singing the song in her ear, both of them lost to the rest of the world.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” I said.
“Yeah.” Brando swallowed his drink. “Too obvious. What the fuck is he thinking,” he seemed to say to himself instead of me, like he was trying to explain a problem that had the most obvious answer to the smartest man on earth.Just don’t.
I went to pull away, but he pulled me back into him.
“I’ll cut in. I don’t want—”
Just then, Jane Jones went to Mick, who was busy playing darts with a bunch of guys in the corner. She whispered something in his ear.
