Aria is silent for a long moment. “No. But a weak part of me would want to, even after everything.”
“Well, I’m not going to listen to the weak part of myself, either,” I whisper. “I can’t. It’s too painful to hope and…” I shake my head, swallowing hard. “Better to be done with it, once and for all.”
“Done with hope?” Aria’s eyes fill with tears again, as if she’s just now realizing what she did when she decided to show me the lease. “What about the best is yet to come? And everything you said to me the other night? That can be true for you, too.”
I’m suddenly tired, so tired that even shaking my head again feels like a Herculean effort. “I meant what I said. Mason was it for me. I’m done hoping for that kind of happiness.”
I’m done with love, I think to myself as I move around Aria and trudge up the steps into the house.
This time, my sister lets me go, as if she can sense that the battle is over, and this time, everyone has lost.
Chapter 24
Mason
I don’t get wasted. Never. Not even in college.
I’ll have a few beers with friends, a mixed drink during happy hour, or wine with dinner, but I don’t drink to get drunk or to escape my problems.
I had enough stepfathers who Drank with a capital D to know that getting smashed only creates new problems. When you sober up, whatever you were trying to escape is still there, and all you have to show for your trouble is a sour stomach, a pounding head, and an increased risk of liver disease.
I know better.
I absolutely do.
There’s no excuse for finding myself at Buddy’s at eleven in the morning with a beer in one hand and a shot of whiskey in the other.
No excuse at all, except that Lark shut me out of her heart—forever. The world is a dark, worthless place to be, and Buddy’s is the perfect place for feeling miserable.
The bar is literally on the wrong side of the tracks, a squat wooden building next to an abandoned train station built in the early 1940s that, as far as I can tell, has never been renovated. The gravel parking lot is overgrown with weeds, the wood siding is cracked, and the foundation is so badly rotted it’s hard to believe it passed code.
The inside is even worse.
The faded old bar is patched in a dozen places, the floor has settled on a slant, it smells of sour armpits and stale nuts, and even in the middle of the day it’s so dark it’s hard to see into the corners. The single rectangular window above the door barely lets in enough light to maneuver your beer to your mouth.
Which is good. I don’t want to be able to see the glass clenched in my hand too clearly. I have serious doubts about its cleanliness. Its surface is gummy against my skin, sticky the way the floor feels under my shoes.
The thought that I’m drinking out of a used glass turns my stomach for the first few sips of beer, but after a shot of whiskey and a refill of whatever amber swill Buddy—the ninety-year-old bar keep, a cantankerous old man without a friendly bone in his body—has on tap, I find I’m not too worried about my dirty glass.
By the third beer and second shot of whiskey, I hope I won’t be worried about anything.
I don’t want to think anymore. I don’t want to remember the defeated look in Lark’s eyes, or the hopelessness in her voice when she told me it was over. I don’t want to admit to myself that I’ve lost her for good this time. I don’t want to imagine a future without my best friend, or leaving town tomorrow without her in the seat beside me.
I was planning to ask her to move in with me tonight after dinner. I made a reservation at the little Italian restaurant where we had our first date years ago, and planned to ask Lark if she would consider moving into my condo in Atlanta with me. She said her catering business is equally divided between Bliss River and larger venues in Atlanta. Her commute wouldn’t have been any worse, and I would have been only a few minutes from home when I got off work.
I’d already been imagining coming home to Lark at the end of the day, imagining the two of us walking the streets of our new community, trying all the Chinese restaurants to see which had the best eggrolls, running in the park before work, hitting the Farmer’s Market on Thursday nights, and finding a new brunch place for long, lingering breakfasts and reading the paper on Sunday mornings.
I’d already decided that I didn’t need a home office, after all. I could find a place for my desk in the living room. That way Lark and I could turn the second bedroom into a guest room for her sisters for now, and a nursery for our first baby in the not too distant future.