“Are you about ready to go face your ex-sweetheart and little sis, who are about to exchange I dos in a few days? Because from what I recall of your little-to-no alcohol tolerance, by now you should be shit-faced enough to do what you Abbotts have made an art form of and Pretend Everything’s Just Fine and Dandy.”
I stared at the screen door, wishing I’d never come through it. Part of me wished I’d never met the guy sitting six stools down from me. Right then, I was willing to sacrifice the good memories for the sake of having none of the bad ones. “Stop, Boone. Just stop. I can’t do this again.”
“Just getting started, Clara.”
Before I could snap something back, my phone vibrated in my shorts’ back pocket. The cut-offs and tee I’d slipped into in Santa Barbara had seemed like a good choice at the time, but now I was wishing I’d gone with a light, airy sundress. This heat was like nothing else, and it had been so long since I’d been in it during the summer, I guessed I’d purged those memories from my brain.
I had a new text. From my little sister. The youngest of the three Abbott girls—Avalee. In it was a picture of her hand, her nails perfectly polished in some shade of petal pink, a diamond the size of Delaware flashing on her ring finger. It was so large, it covered up most of her middle finger and all of her pinkie. The words, Sterling asked! This was my answer! were all that accompanied the photo that knocked whatever air I was still clinging to from my lungs.
Avalee was twenty-one. She’d graduated high school three summers ago. She was the youngest, the one who should have been the last to get married if chronology had anything to do with it, and here she was, engaged before I had one solid prospect in the queue. The middle sister, Charlotte, was getting married in six days, which left me, the oldest, as the last daughter to marry off. Or else fulfill the opening of old spinster.
I could only imagine what my mom would say when I rolled up to the curb tonight. Starting and ending with, when are you going to get serious and settle down?
I forced myself to stop thinking about what my mom would say, and the increased pressure, guilt, and scrutiny I’d be under from the moment I trudged into their presence until the moment I fled from it. I forced myself to type back, Congrats! So happy for you both! and hit send before I could change my mind.
I should have been happy for my sisters, but being happy for one another was not an Abbott sister trait. One-upping was more the thing to do, and a big reason why I got out as soon as I could. Charlotte might have wound up with Ford, and he might have been a handsome, rich son of a bitch, but there was far more to him than that—far more of the undesirable qualities in a lifetime partner. And Avalee might have landed the biggest diamond I’d ever seen, even after living in coastal California for seven years, but what good was a big precious gem if your husband worked all day and spent most of his nights with his mistress(es) as Sterling Beauregard Senior was infamous for?
After making sure the message had gone through, I flipped my phone over on the counter, willing it to stay silent for the rest of the night. I could have turned it off, but that seemed too easy.
Boone twisted on his stool and angled himself in my direction. “How much longer are you planning on staying tonight? Because if you’re not leaving in the next five minutes, I am. I came here to forget my problems for a few hours, not resurrect a whole shitload of them.”
My phone buzzed again. Repeatedly. I kept it flipped over and tried to ignore it. When I noticed the full shot glass in front of me and couldn’t remember ordering it or how long it had been sitting there, I knew better than to drink it.
I knew better—but I didn’t do better.
The chemical cleaner smell and taste had disappeared. Yet another sign that I’d exceeded my goal of getting tipsy. That might have been the reason my mouth opened and out came words I hadn’t planned on saying. “Listen, I’m sorry, Boone.” I twisted on my stool so I was facing him. “I’m sorry for how things went down between us. I never wanted to hurt you . . . but that didn’t change that I did.” I bit my lip when certain memories came flickering back to life. “And I’m sorry.”
He was quiet, his expression flat and his body still. Around us, the bar echoed with noises and voices, the air filled with the scent of alcohol and body odor. This should have been the last place in the city limits I’d go to. The person sitting down from me should have been the last I’d find myself with.
I didn’t know what any of this foretold about the next week, if anything at all, but I found myself wishing I could plan on more of the unexpected. What I expected was a whole lot of what I’d lived, breathed, and drowned in for eighteen years.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you apologize.”
Boone’s voice cleared my head some, bringing me back to the here and now instead of the there and then. No matter where I was and who I was with, I far preferred the here and now.