“Don’t look at me like that, Beckett,” he distracts me with a flirtatious tone.
“Hmph,” I hum, squinting at him in the dark corner of this bar. “Well, Chapman or not, I’m glad you came back.”
His eyebrows shoot up in mock surprise. “Really? I’ve been upgraded from vigilante this quickly?”
My eyes roll without my express permission and I can’t help but grin at him. “If you hold everything I say in the heat of the moment against me, you’re going to have a hard time being my friend, Cabot.”
“I think I’m going to have a hard time being your friend, regardless.” He says more to himself than me as his gaze heats just enough for me to notice before it cools, as if he realizes that maybe he crossed a line by flirting with me so brazenly. He pushes back from his stool clearing his throat. “I should, uh, probably go find Will.” I feel a weird sense of disappointment knowing this conversation is over. I glance around the bar realizing him and Grant are the only people here who I currently want to talk to and Grant seems to have disappeared.
“Yeah… Thank you. I don’t have the capacity to deal with drunk Will right now,” I say, pushing up from my own stool. “Can you let him know I walked home? I have an early day tomorrow.”
He hesitates, concern flickering over his face. “Let me walk with you,” he says, shifting directions toward the front door rather than the back one Will walked out of.
“I’m starting to think you have a death wish, Cabot.”
His smile reaches the corners of his eyes as they twinkle with mischief. “I can handle mylittlebrother, Olivia.”
“Who said anything about Will?” I wink, and as I do, I notice that my eyes are no longer damp.
I feel Ben’s gaze on my back as I approach the front door, but when I turn around for a final wave goodbye, he’s already gone. I wonder if I imagined the attention he paid me the last half hour, but I’m not delusional enough to imagine the way I felt. I shouldn't feel this way, right? Maybe it’s not weird that I find Ben’s company nice, or comforting, or oddly familiar, because Iam dating his brother. Or I’m rationalizing because being near him makes me feel warm and safe, and the way he looks at me heats me in places I should definitely not be heated for anyone but Will. I take a deep, cleansing breath, deciding not to let the guilt bother me as I finally spot Will, the blonde girl leaning so far over the bar table you can now completely see down her shirt.
Barring our unfortunate meeting, my time with Ben has been an unexpected pocket of joy in the usually dark, never ending pit of grief this week brings. And I don’t think I need to intellectualize that.
The thick coolness of the evening August breeze reminds me of my last night with Lily. Normally, this would have thrown me through my third spiral of the day, but it’s about to rain, and the air is filled with more than fragments of the past.
8
Ben
Picking up the lily Olivia left on the bar, I tuck it into the pocket of my wallet, carefully flattening it in a way that it won’t get crushed. I can’t help but recognize the tattered stem, as if she had spun it between her fingertips a hundred times.
I can only imagine what it must be like to lose a friend, especially the way Olivia did. I looked it up after the fact: the odds of someone so young having a brain aneurysm are slim but… it happens. It feels almost surreal to me, that the night I was hoping to shoot my shot with her was the last night she spent with her best friend. That she went into that night imagining a very different tomorrow than the one that occurred. That after that night, things went so awry.
Dread trickles down my spine as I think back to our conversation about Lily.She doesn’t fucking know.The thought haunts me, but I push it away, saving it for another time.
I suddenly feel Grant’s mammoth sized bicep drunkenly wrap around my neck.
“Cabot, if you don’t ask the coach to get back on the team, I’ll kick your ass myself.” I chuckle knowing Grant wouldn’t hurt a fly much less his best friend.
“So… Olivia Beckett…” he says with a smirk and a raise of his eyebrows, finally acknowledging his assumption out loud.
“Olivia is Will’s, Grant,” I sigh, feeling heat prickle up my neck.
“If there’s one thing I know about that girl, it’s that Olivia belongs to Olivia. She takes orders from no one,” Grant’s southern accent drawls.
“Granty-boy, are you talking about my girl again?” Will, also clearly intoxicated, stumbles over, half fighting, half laughing at Grant for thinking he has a shot.
“Relax Will, I brought her up,” I say, rolling my eyes at my younger brother's unfounded confidence.
“She looked good tonight, didn’t she big bro?” Will’s eyes glimmer half jokingly, half seemingly wanting my approval. He is beyond his normal levels of hammered, that much is clear; his breath reeks of a scent reminiscent of rubbing alcohol. I spot Genevieve, her eyes clouded with emotion as she looks at Will across the bar.
“Looks like someone else wants your attention too,” I nod to her, my seconds of eye contact making a deep flush overpower her entire body clearly embarrassed that I caught her gaping at Will, not for the first time in the past decade.
“Lately Gen seems moreyourtype— thirsty, unless you’ve changed it up. Maybe Red over at the bar?” Will’s eyes swim with mischief as he pours over the red head to our left. I can tell Gen overheard because she seems to have disappeared.
I stand to my full height, two inches above Will’s frame. I dip my head just low enough for only Will to hear.
“I’m not the captain anymore, remember.” His face twitches with irritation when he recognizes I won’t take the bait. He’s clearly attempting to formulate a coherent thought despite his drunken state when a thundering voice approaches from behind us.
