Our first baby.
I was sure we’d have at least three.
Now, I’m never going to know what it’s like to start a family with the woman I love. I’m going to live the rest of my life alone, wishing for something I can never have, knowing there’s no one to blame for it but myself. If I could go back in time and punch Younger Mason in the face, I would do it. In a heartbeat.
But I can’t, so I’ll have to settle for taking my self-loathing out on my liver.
“I’ll have another whiskey, Buddy,” I call out in a firm voice.
The bartender has massive, cauliflower-shaped hearing aids in both ears. Still, you have to talk loud enough for him to hear you over a train, even when you’re the only person in the bar and the jukebox is quiet.
“Coming up,” Buddy grumbles with a heavy sigh, one that insinuates that I’m a pain in his ass, and that he could care less if I live or die, let alone continue to patronize his establishment.
“Make that two,” comes a familiar voice from near the entrance.
I don’t remember the door opening or closing, but it must have, because Buddy and I are no longer alone, and my day just got worse.
It’s Parker. I’d recognize my uncle’s smug twang anywhere.
“Thought that was your fancy new car outside,” Uncle Parker says, crossing the room to clap me on the back in a way that’s almost friendly. “Figured I’d stop in and see if you wanted to buy your uncle a drink.”
“Sure.” I nod to Buddy as he sets my whiskey down in front of me. “Add whatever he wants to my tab.”
“Well, ain’t that generous?” Parker settles onto the stool beside me with a happy sigh. “Very generous, indeed.”
I glance at him out of the corner of my eye to find the old man grinning like the dog that crapped in the cat’s water dish.
“You’re in a good mood. Somebody die?” I ask, drunk enough not to care if I pick a fight.
But Parker only laughs, a long, high-pitched laugh that ends in a coughing spasm he quiets with his own shot of whiskey.
“Nope, nobody died.” He clears his throat and slams the shot glass back on the bar. “Just glad to see people getting what they deserve.”
I turn on my stool, watching my uncle over the rim of my glass as I take a drink of lukewarm beer. I’ve never seen him so damned happy. Never, with maybe the exception of my junior year, when my team made it to the state basketball finals and I missed the winning free throw, dooming Bliss River High School to another year without a state championship.
I’d come home exhausted and feeling awful for failing my team—despite the fact that not a single one of my teammates, or my coach, had blamed me for the loss. Parker had been sitting on the front porch with a shit-eating grin on his face, practically twitching with excitement over the chance to glory in my failure.
Just like that, I know who gave Aria my old lease.
“You went through my desk upstairs, didn’t you?” I set my beer calmly on the bar, determined not to give him the satisfaction of seeing me angry.
“Well now, it’s my desk, ain’t it? In my house, after all,” he drawls, smile still wide on his face. “And I figured that little girl had a right to go through your things after what you put her sister through.” His eyes narrow as his smile grows thinner, meaner. “Guess she must have found something, or you wouldn’t be drowning your sorrows, now would you?”
I let my eyes drift over his face, imagining what it would feel like to smash my fist into that smug grin or blacken one of those hateful eyes, to fully unleash, taking vengeance for all the times he dragged me down instead of lifting me up.
But I’m not drunk enough to start throwing punches.
Or maybe I’m already too drunk, buzzed enough that it doesn’t seem worth the effort. Nothing seems worth the effort. I might as well stay right here on this stool for the rest of my life. At least I’d be sure never to see Lark again. She doesn’t come to places like this. She probably doesn’t even know Buddy’s—the cheapest, shit hole bar in Bliss River—even exists.
“So what is it?” Uncle Parker smacks his lips, as if savoring the taste of my failure. “I thought those old poems were pretty embarrassing, but girls like shit like that.”
“The lease,” I say, unable to tear my eyes away from my uncle’s mouth as he smirks and smacks, lapping up his only nephew’s misery the way he licks his fingers after fried chicken. “I signed it before I asked Lark to marry me.”
“Ah.” He nods, grinning so hard his jaw creaks. “Well then, that would do it all right. She must have wanted to shove a pole up your lying ass.”