“What happened?” I ask.
Something had to have happened. Something is happening right now, I just don’t understand it.
He exhales loudly, still not turning to look at me.
“I just need a minute,” he says, almost too quiet for me to hear. “I promise I’ll be back.”
There’s a split-second where I wish I knew what to say to stop him, but then he picks up the keys and disappears through the door before I can find the words.
Chapter Twenty
Iregret having so much to drink last night.
Well, today, really. But I slept, so it feels like last night. Now I’m awake again and the thought of lying in the dark with my own thoughts was enough to immediately propel me to my feet, cotton mouth, aching bones, roiling nausea, and all.
I better not hurl. I’m not going to hurl. I just need something in my stomach, and a little space to breathe.
When I stopped at the gas station for fuel after leaving the house, I picked up a bag of Funyuns to settle my stomach, a Gatorade and a Monster to chase them with, plus a cherry-flavored sucker to help keep the dry mouth at bay. I wish I had a goddamn IV, but the snacks and caffeine and electrolytes will have to be close enough.
It all gets consumed in the parking lot, each item methodically inhaled like it’s the solution to all my problems until it’s just me and the sucker against the world, and I can finally get back on the road. I’m going to a bar, because where the fuck else is open that isn’t home right now? But that doesn’t mean I have to drink.
As long as I can sit in peace without Silas’s worried gaze and my sisters’ disappointment trailing me, I’ll be fine. I need to escape the weight of my own inadequacies for a hot minute, and I’m not letting anyone stop me.
The drive to the Feral Possum all happens on auto-pilot, and by the time I’m testing my suspension over the pot hole-ridden parking lot, I wonder if this is a mistake. Sure, this is probably the place where I have the most friends at any given time in this town. Real friends, that is. Not the kind of friends I had at school who all stayed permanently at arms’ length, because I had way too many secrets to let any of them in.
Except for Wish, obviously. The first person to karate-kick down my defensive walls, whether I liked it or not.
At least she won’t be here. Thank fuck for the tattoo expo that’s kept her not just out of state, but too damn busy to needle me about things the way she normally does. But that doesn’t mean the others won’t be watching me, waiting for me to go nuclear or whatever they’re all doing lately.
Fuck it. Maybe I do need a drink, after all.
I get out of the car, shivering briefly against the chill. There’s no snow on the ground, but the gravel underfoot has that particular kind of crunch that tells me snow isn’t far off, and the trees surrounding the lot seem to shrink in on themselves, closing ranks in a dark blur that makes this place seem even more isolated than it is. Even the animals are quiet tonight, only a distant sound of frogs piercing the noise humming from the bar.
For a brief, singular moment, I miss living in the trailer with an aching kind of fierceness. I miss the darkness, and the way it felt so full of life, the amount of wildlife on our doorstep constantly buzzing and thrumming with their existence at all hours of the night. The sounds of coyotes yipping on top of cicadas on top of the hum of Mom’s TV set permanently to homeshopping, on top of Sky and Maddi shuffling around to go to the bathroom or get a snack.
I love Silas as much as I’ve ever loved anyone, but I didn’t expect living with him to leave me feeling so alone.
These are not the kind of thoughts I should be entertaining at 9 p.m. in a parking lot. Not when there are a couple of smokers 20 yards away starting to give me weird looks, I’m assuming for the loitering. I shove my hands into the pocket of my hoody to ward off the chill, set my eyes on the ground, and follow one foot with the other until I’m inside where it’s warm.
The warmth hits me like a wall, complete with the smell of too many people in a too-small space, and the sickly sweet rotting lime smell from the bar runners that I know you can’t get rid of, no matter how much Gunnar cleans. He’s nowhere to be seen right now, and neither is Tobias, which makes me breathe a sigh of release. It’s just Sav and Kasia behind the bar, and they’re both judgey motherfuckers but at least they’ll keep shit to themselves.
I walk up to the bar on instinct, taking up an empty barstool and studying the taps, despite the fact that I told myself I was going to just chill by myself in a corner.
Fuck it.
“What’ll it be, pretty boy?”
The words sound like they should be a compliment, but something about Kasia’s wry tone and permanently disdainful expression makes it clear the nickname is an insult. I’ll take it anyway.
“Draft and a shot, please,” I say, trying to not look ashamed as I say it.
I don’t think I succeed, because she arches an eyebrow at me before quickly deciding she doesn’t care about whatever shifty shit my expression is doing. That’s probably a key partof surviving as a bartender, at least in a small town like this. Distancing yourself from the shit you know everybody gets up to.
“You care what it is?” she asks.
“Whatever. Well.”
I really, really don’t care. I just want to arrest the momentum in my spinning brain for a hot minute.
