Hold On

He tossed the phone he’d gotten out of his jacket to the bar and caught my eyes.

“You know,” he stated. His words weren’t slurred. Merry could hold his drink. He’d had more than his normal that night, for sure. But he wasn’t sloppy drunk. Just, I hoped, feeling no pain.

Or less pain. The kind of pain he was drinking away didn’t really ever go away.

“I know,” I told him.

And I did. Everyone in the ’burg knew.

The finale to a fairy tale that didn’t have a happy ending.

He looked at me a second, then grabbed his glass and lifted it toward me. He didn’t wait for me to grab mine. He took a healthy swallow of his. He didn’t shoot the whole thing, but he wasn’t fucking around.

He set the glass back to the bar.

I wrapped my fingers around mine and leaned into my arms on the bar top.

“She’s a dumb fuck, Merry,” I said softly.

He didn’t look up from his contemplation of his whisky when he replied, “She isn’t. But I sure as fuck am.”

“That just isn’t true,” I returned, and he lifted his gaze to me.

It took a lot, but I didn’t flinch at the depth of pain and strength of anger burning from his eyes. The bad kind of anger. The worst.

The kind where you’re pissed as all hell at your own damned self.

“Got shot of her,” he declared. “Fucked around when I knew I shouldn’t in gettin’ her back. Watched Feb and Colt get it back. Watched Cal get his head outta his ass, find Vi, and hold on. Tanner and Rocky got their shit together, and when they did, Tanner told me. Pointed that shit out to me. Warned me what would happen if I fucked around. Mike nearly lost Dusty, bein’ stupid and protecting himself against somethin’ good, but he pulled out all the stops to get her back and keep her. All that goes down, what do I do?” He shook his head. “Dick.”

He lifted his glass, took a sip, and lowered it.

When he did, he muttered to his glass, “I did dick.”

“Your ex lives in the ’burg too,” I pointed out.

He looked at me, brows slightly pulled together. “And?”

“She also did dick.”

It was true. She did.

Mia Merrick did dick.

Which made the bitch the single stupidest female on the planet.

I was not around when they were married. I was not around when they got divorced.

I was around when every decent man in the ’burg got nailed down and happily allowed the ball and chain to be clamped around their ankle. And that meant I was around, and Mia Merrick was around, seeing all that and waiting for Merry to make his play to get the wife everyone in that ’burg said he loved more than anything back in his bed.

And now I was around, alone at J&J’s Saloon, the bar where I worked, watching Garrett Merrick drown his sorrows because the news made the rounds that day that Mia Merrick got engaged to another man. Not only that, he was a professor, had worked at IUPUI in Indianapolis, but this semester he’d taken a new position down at IU in Bloomington.

So she was getting hitched and leaving town. The For Sale sign had gone up in front of the house she’d shared with Merry that very day.

Moving on.

Leaving Merry behind.

“Was my play to make,” Merry told me.

“Yeah? How’s that?” I asked him.

“Cher, babe,” he said gently, “it’s cool you’re tryin’ to be there for me, but you don’t know.”

“I know she did dick,” I shot back.

His lips tipped up in a small, sad smile.

“Was my play,” he repeated.

“No,” I declared, leaning into my arms on the bar. “That’s bullshit, Merry, straight up. You got good, you don’t let it go. It lets you go, you hold on. It slips through your fingers, you pull out all the stops to get it back. You got somethin’ worth fighting for, you fight for it. You do not sit on your ass waitin’ for it to come back to you. You show whoever that is they mean something and you go all out on that, and the only way you go down is doin’ that shit swinging.”