“Yeah. We should’ve, soon after we got married. But we had memories of Dave, you know. In a way, that kept us together, fucked up as that might be. And then….” Denny sighed and looked into the distance. “Did you know that Janet once said that I used you to fill the hole Dave had left?”
Josiah inhaled sharply, then exhaled. “You didn’t, but I guess it… makes sense?” And it did, but he’d rather not think about that.
“See, I didn’t have many close friends growing up, I had Dave. Then in college I started to try and open up, but I couldn’t connect to people. Everyone was partying and that wasn’t me.”
“Yeah.”
“Is it fucked up?”
Without meaning to, Josiah asked, “Which part?” and immediately felt a stab in his chest.
“That I married her and we clung to each other for so long?” Denny glanced at him, frowning.
Josiah was pretty damn sure Denny had no clue about his feelings. Because if he would’ve, then he would have understood how his best friend might’ve been feeling, being compared to a brother like this.
“No. Grief does weird shit to people.” He cleared his throat. “I remember, when I was little and my neighbor Mrs. Mearls passed away suddenly, her husband kind of… vanished. He was there, went to get groceries and to work, but we never saw him go fishing or to church or anywhere else. Not even his backyard and he’d loved gardening. And then about a year after she died, they found him dead in his car at the parking lot of his workplace one evening. Heart attack. I remember my mom saying that he was healthy and only in his fifties. The coroner called it a broken heart, which apparently is a real thing.”
“I don’t think you can compare that to what Janet and I went through.”
“Can’t I? You both had your hearts broken, but you helped each other mend them. I assume there was no way to make it the same again, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t get as whole as they could be, right?” Josiah knew he was maybe talking out of his ass, but it made sense to him that that was what might’ve happened and at least, by talking about this, they weren’t talking about his relationship with Denny.
“When did you get all philosophical?” Denny moved his forearm, nudging Josiah a bit.
He snorted. “I’m a bartender, aren’t we all amateur therapists? I don’t think this is much different. Plus I know you better, and I know Janet.”
“Can you light up now, please?”
Josiah leaned away from Denny’s side and huffed out a laugh. “Oh god, yes.”
They got high as fuck, and Denny kept talking about Dave in a halting manner, telling Josiah things like what his brother’s favorite color had been, or his dream car. The stories of birthdays and Christmases that stopped abruptly when they’d both been on the cusp of adulthood and suddenly Denny was alone.
On some level, Josiah had always known that Denny had been damaged by the loss of his brother, but he had never quite understood the severity of that damage.
“Did you go to therapy at any point?”
“Couple of times back then.” Denny waved his hand dismissively, the movement sloppy with alcohol. “I probably should do that. Right?” He swiveled his head towards Josiah and stared at him.
“Yeah. I think it would help.”
“Okay. Remind me next week?”
Josiah’s heart lurched at the casual acceptance of both his words and his help. Nothing about it should’ve been a surprise, they were so in tune with each other. Except about that one thing.
“Yeah, of course. Hey, I’m going to go get myself a water and check the phones.”
“Okay.”
They’d left their phones inside, and now was the time to check them and to hide Denny’s, because Josiah wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t drunk dial his ex-wives. Josiah also planned to bring his own outside for safety reasons. He didn’t feel comfortable with hanging out with a drunk person without a phone at hand, not after the mishaps he’d witnessed both inside the Hare and out.
He took the phones off the kitchen counter and pressed the side button to see if Denny’s had messages. There was just one from Janet thanking him for messaging her earlier. It made sense, given the history Josiah now knew.
He started toward the bookshelf in the corner as he opened his own phone. He saw a few calls and messages from the Hare and the kids. He put Denny’s phone behind some books and dialed the Hare.
“The Hoppy Hare, how can I help you?” one of the twins answered. Josiah couldn’t tell their voices apart on the phone.
“Hey, it’s me. What’s wrong?” he asked, pacing back toward the kitchen.
“Oh, hi boss. Nothing too bad. We had to call the cops on someone an hour or so ago.”
