By ten o’clock that evening, we’d eaten pork chops, watched a movie, and I’d left the house with a bottle of Mom’s whiskey. It wasn’t a favorite drink of mine, but she never touched the stuff and I needed something to help me sleep through the night. My wine collection at home was reserved for good times, and I didn’t want to taint my favorite beverage with sorrow.
This anniversary was never officially over until I was rip-roaring drunk.
On the way home, I made an unplanned visit to the cemetery. It was closed, but no one ever locks up a cemetery so tight that you can’t get in; it’s the getting out part that proves the most difficult.
Wes had a flat grave marker and I hated it. I tried to talk my mom into getting one of the raised ones to replace it, but she’d refused. Maybe that selfish part of me wanted something at eye-level to look at and talk to, or maybe even hug.
“God, Wes. You should see how much Maze has grown,” I said, sitting Indian style over his grave. It was dark as sin, and the only light illuminating the grounds shone from a tall lamp near a marble statue of an angel. “She’s so sweet, not like me. I was a little terror and you,” I said, waving my unsteady finger at the ground, “should have never let me go out with Josh Holden when I was fifteen. What were you thinking?”
I hiccupped and screwed the cap back on the bottle.
“Just because he was on the football team, you thought he was cool and he passed whatever test you had for the guys who called me up. Josh thought he was going to score a touchdown that night.” I snorted. “That was the first time I’d ever been to second base and when he started to slide into third, I slapped his face and walked home. Josh works at the gas station now. But then, who am I to talk?” I yelled up at the trees. “I’m just a candy girl.”
The grass met with my back and I gazed up at an infinite blanket of stars. Smog dimmed their usual brightness because I wasn’t far enough out of the city. Plus, I was three sheets to the wind.
“Guess who I saw today, Wes? Your best friend.”
I quietly lay there, thinking about how it made me feel.
“And?” a voice asked.
“And what? He pussied out and drove off in his tough-guy car.” My fingers yanked on the grass angrily and then it dawned on me—the voice I’d just heard wasn’t my imagination.
I rolled over and saw Austin leaning on his left shoulder against an aging tree. Austin always liked to do an ankle-cross while scoping out his surroundings. I used to think it was sexy as hell when he wore his leather jacket and fingerless gloves.
It took years before I realized that most girls probably had a crush on their brother’s best friend at some point in time. No big deal—just a childhood thing.
But damn, that lean was hot.
My eyes blinked a few times, as if I could make him disappear.
“Only time I ever saw you drunk, Lexi Knight, was the time we drove to San Antonio to a concert. Not even old enough to order a drink. Do you remember?” Austin pushed off the tree and stepped forward a few paces, arms crossed. “Wes was pissed when he found out those guys were buying you beers and he pulled you out of their truck before they decided to take the party to a new location. Good thing we found you when we did.”
“Oh? And where were you? I don’t even remember you being there.”
I emphasized the last bit and by the look on his face, he got my meaning.
“Kicking the shit out of every last man in that truck, that’s where I was. Got my nose broke in the process.”
The air stilled.
The only thing about that night I remembered was going to the concert, some guys giving me drinks from their cooler, and then hanging out in the parking lot cracking jokes. The next day, I woke up sick as a dog and Austin hadn’t returned to the hotel room. Wes drove my hung-over ass home and told our parents I had caught the flu. Since Austin had taken a separate car, I just assumed he left without us or was banging some girl all night.
“That’s right,” he said, carefully watching my stunned expression with shadowy eyes I couldn’t see in the darkness. “Bruised my knuckles knocking out the third guy, but he deserved it.”
“Why?”
“Because it was his lap you were sitting on,” he said in a low and dangerous voice.
A muscle flexed in his jaw and he lifted the bottle of whiskey, taking a slow swallow as a lightning bug flashed beside his shoulder. Austin screwed the cap on and I closed my eyes. I could have slept right there, sitting up in a graveyard with a ghost of my past in front of me.
“I’ll take you home.”
“No.”
“I’m not letting you drive in this condition.”