Maybe we did.
And on the other side of the talk: Daniel and Jackson and maybe Tyler, the ones to watch with a wary eye. The ones who circled us, watching, waiting. The ones who let their anger break free, who acted. Who broke up with us, who pushed us away when they were displeased and then came back for more.
Who was really surprised, looking from the outside in?
After all the talk, I didn’t understand how any of them stayed.
* * *
I DROVE SLOWLY BECAUSE of the glare coming from the sun, nearly setting, and the roads that wind gradually and then sharply with no warning. And the deer that could be standing there, frozen on the double-yellow line. And because Everett was plowing through his emails and we were about to lose service around that next bend.
I waited for him to start cursing at his phone. “Want to stop at the library again?”
“No,” he said, leaning his head against the window. “It can wait until tomorrow.”
“Hungry?” I asked.
“Famished.”
“Good. I know a place.” I cast a quick glance at him. “All I have at home right now are microwave dinners. We can hit the store tomorrow.”
“You need to eat better,” he said. “You look like you’ve lost weight.”
To judge from the way my pants were fitting, I probably had. I’d been busy, skipping meals, filling my gut with coffee and soda until I could feel the acid churning and rising. Everything else tasted either metallic or stale.
I parked in the lot behind Kelly’s Pub because the front streets were already lined with cars, and because that was where the residents parked. Tyler’s truck wasn’t there, but Jackson’s bike was in the corner slot.
The Friday-evening crowd was different from the daytime crowd. The college kids, home and looking for something to do. The after-work crowd, catching a few extra drinks before returning to their families. But the smell was the same as always: alcohol, grease, perfume mixed with sweat.
There were two people behind a full bar. Jackson at the far end and a woman I vaguely recognized, with a too-tight top and super-straight hair to her waist. She looked in my direction as I entered. “Seat yourselves,” she said, nodding toward the tables, as if I didn’t know how it worked here.
I slid into a two-person table pressed up against the window, in full view of the vestibule connecting the stairs to the upstairs apartments. “Look at the menu, I’ll go get us some drinks,” I said, standing. Everett gestured to the waiter and waitresses making the rounds, but I shook my head. “It’s faster this way. Trust me.”
I walked over to Jackson’s side of the bar and knocked on the countertop, since his head remained down.
“Gee, what brings you around today, Nic?” he asked with a smug smile.
“Vodka tonic,” I said. “Double.”
“Rough day?”
“And a water.”
Jackson paused and looked over my shoulder at Everett, who was studying the menu intently in the dim light. “Who the fuck is that?”
“Everett. My fiancé,” I said as Jackson’s bloodshot eyes stared back at me. “Have you seen Tyler? I need to talk to him.”
“So you thought you’d bring your fiancé to his place? That’s cruel even for you.”
I flinched. “It’s an emergency.”
“Haven’t seen him, Nic,” he said, sliding the drinks in front of me. “But this”—he tilted his head toward Everett—“is not the best way to get his attention.”
I sipped my drink. “Do me a favor,” I said, pointing to the vodka tonic. “Keep these coming.”
At the table, Everett watched me as I ordered, and when the waitress left, the corner of his mouth was tipped up, and I didn’t think it was the alcohol just yet. “Never heard you talk like that to anyone but me,” he said. “It’s cute.”
My accent was never as strong as most people’s here. My father wasn’t from here. My mom was, but she left. Got out. Went to school, met my dad, got married. Had a career, a whole life out there. But she came back with Daniel. Said she wanted to raise her kids where she grew up, where her parents lived and died and were buried. She’s buried beside them now.
When I left, I learned to mask the accent, faint though it was—to clip my words, shorten the vowels, tighten the I’s, sharpen the A’s. To speak with a casual efficiency. Until I sounded like I could be from anywhere else.
The accent came out when I was drunk, and I wasn’t drunk often. I wasn’t drinking now, but it was seeping in nonetheless. “You fixin’ to get me drunk and take advantage of me, Nicolette?” Everett asked, and I forced a smile.
I spent most of dinner staring at the open door, made irrationally angry by Tyler’s absence. By his visits with my father, by the questions I had to get answered, by the way I could imagine Tyler looking at his phone, seeing it was me, and deciding to ignore the call.
We were almost done with our burgers, and Everett had just finished his third double vodka tonic, when Tyler arrived. He paused for a moment, scanning the crowd from the entrance—caught sight of me, caught sight of Everett—and then he was gone.
“I’ll be right back,” I said. “Bathroom.”
Everett’s back was to the door, so he didn’t see me push through the crowd and turn right out of the vestibule instead of heading to the other side of the bar, where the bathrooms were.
“Hey!” I called, but Tyler didn’t stop moving up the stairs. “I need to talk to you!”
He paused on the steps but didn’t turn around. “Is that him?”
I stomped up the steps after him, lowering my voice. “You visit my dad? Why do you visit my dad?” He turned around, and we were way too close. I pressed my back into the railing.
“What? I have a project nearby. I swing by for lunch once a week. He could use the company. I’m right there.”
“He could use the company? Are you trying to make me feel guilty?”
“No. I’m not trying to make you feel anything.” He seemed to notice how close we were standing, and he took a breath, stepped back. “Your mom died and he checked out. I know, I was there. I get it. You don’t owe him anything. Nobody blames you.”
“That’s not why I don’t . . . I have a job and a life. I can’t just stop because my dad literally drank himself into oblivion.”
He nodded. “Fine, Nic. You don’t need to convince me. So I visit him. That’s my choice, too.”
“He said he wasn’t supposed to tell me,” I said, because that had to mean something. I’d felt like Tyler was keeping something from me, and now I was sure of it. “What do you talk about? What did he tell you?”
He tipped his head back, looking at the ceiling. “Nothing. We just . . . talk. He’s not supposed to tell you because of this, Nic. This is the reason.”
I stuck my finger at the center of his chest. “Don’t lie to me.”
His jaw twitched. “I don’t lie to you. And you know it.”
That used to be something I was sure of. There used to be nobody I trusted more. But the fact remained: He hadn’t told me that he visited my father, and he didn’t want me to know. “Just tell me why, Tyler.”
“Give it a rest, there’s nothing to tell!” He stepped closer. “He’s your family, and you were mine. You left, but he didn’t. I don’t just cut people off when they no longer suit me. It’s that simple, Nic.”
I wrapped my arm around my waist. When they no longer suit me. “I haven’t been yours in ten years. He’s not your problem anymore. How’s that for simple?”
I thought for a second that he was going to argue. Tell me all the reasons I was wrong, all the ways I didn’t understand. Instead, he laughed. He laughed with his eyes closed, and it came out like a grimace. “Okay. No problem.” He took a step up, then pulled out his key ring. “Ten years, huh? I could’ve sworn it was sooner.” He took a key off his ring—mine—and threw it to me, but I let it clatter in the stairwell, echoing as it fell. “Listen, I have to take care of some stuff. Do me a favor and stay away.”