I glanced up, or I tried to. I couldn’t quite manage lifting both eyes, so I peered at my youngest brother through one eye. One eye was better than no eye.
“Hello, Roscoe.” I gave him a wave and ended up spilling bourbon all over my pant leg.
He put something on my shoulders, it might’ve been a blanket, and sat next to me on the porch steps. “It’s cold out here.”
“Is it?”
“It is.”
I nodded, but once I started I couldn’t stop. Nodding.
Then my brother asked, “Why are you drunk?”
“I think I just fucked things up with the most beautiful woman in the world.”
Roscoe cocked an eyebrow at me, grinning, and opened his hand. “Pass the bottle.”
I chuckled and handed it over. My youngest brother took a swig, hissing in through his mouth with the initial burn.
Saturday night. At home. Drunk. Instead of having awesome wild sex with Shelly Sullivan.
Beau Winston, everybody!
“So, what happened?”
“She wanted to have sex with me and I turned her down.”
“That was stupid.”
“Yeah.” I scratched my chest, laughing. It felt good to laugh.
Sighing, I took another swig, and stared out over the dried-up wildflower fields. I’d been cold when I left her, but it didn’t have much to do with the temperature outside.
“Wait a minute, I thought you were celibate?” Roscoe’s question cut into my contemplations.
I slid my eyes to my brother, surprised he knew this information but too drunk to care. “I am. Or, I have been since that thing in high school with Andrea Poole.”
“What thing in high school?”
“Andrea thought she was pregnant.”
“Whoa. I didn’t know that.” Roscoe seemed to require a moment to recover from this news, reaching for the bottle in my hand and taking a drink. “Was she?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“You decided to become celibate? Because of a pregnancy scare?”
“Wasn’t because of the pregnancy scare.”
“Then what was it?”
“I asked her to marry me when I thought she was having my baby, and she . . .”
“She what?”
I huffed a laugh. “She acted like it would be the worst thing to happen to her in the world. Like marrying me would be the end of her life. She said she’d give the baby up for adoption, or that she’d raise it on her own, rather than marry me. She wanted me to sign my rights away,” I tried to snap my fingers for emphasis but couldn’t manage it, “and didn’t want anything to do with me.”
“To be fair, getting married at sixteen ain’t a picnic. And having a baby at sixteen even less.”
“No. No, I agree with that. But I thought—see, it wasn’t that she didn’t want to get married, it was that she didn’t want me.” I rubbed my chest. “I’m good enough to fuck around with, but I’ve never been good enough for anything else.”
I was drunk, so very, very drunk. Hence, I didn’t realize I’d spoken these last thoughts out loud until the silence surrounding us became deafening.
I knew Roscoe was staring at me, so I managed a small smile and shrugged. “Andrea married a fella in the Navy a year later, after graduation. They live in Galveston now and have four kids.”
“You . . . loved her?”
“I thought I did, at the time. But now I think sex confused things, you know? It made me see things that weren’t there, attribute stuff to her that was lacking, including how she felt about me.”
It occurred to me in the genius-state unique to intoxication that the things I’d admired about Andrea Poole were the same things I’d admired about Darlene. She seemed to be driven, smart, capable. And she seemed to like me a whole lot. Until she didn’t.
I continued, only mildly slurring my words, “She had the outward appearance of being good, quality, having loyalty, but maybe none of the real stuff beneath.” I didn’t know if I was talking about Andrea or Darlene. Maybe both.
“How do you know?”
“What?” I blinked clumsily, having difficulty moving my eyelids in unison.
“How do you know whether a woman has substance? Whether her feelings for you go as deep as your feelings for her?”
I couldn’t make out his expression very well, everything was looking fuzzy, so I didn’t gauge my response based on what he was hoping to hear. Brief flashes of what real love looked like paraded through my mind, of Ashley and how her heart revolved around Drew. Of Sienna and how when Jethro was in the room, she was always aware of him, and he of her. She was a Hollywood star, used to being the center of attention, but we never saw that when he was near her.
Or of how Duane softened the minute Jessica’s name was mentioned, and how he’d put her dreams first showed how much he loved her.
And then I knew how to know whether a person’s feelings ran deep.
So I was flat-out honest. “She makes you a priority.”
For better or for worse, I’d never been a woman’s priority.
Roscoe was quiet, unmoving for a long time. I glanced at my brother, he was clearly lost to his own thoughts. Or memories.
I shook my head, it felt almost too heavy to lift. “I must be really drunk.”
“Why?”
“’Cause I’m talking about this shit.”
He huffed a laugh. “Yeah. You’re not very Beau-like right now.”
“Fuck Beau. He’s pathetic.”
Roscoe punched me in the shoulder, which, in my tipsiness, had me falling to the side on the porch. “Don’t talk about my favorite brother that way.”
That made me laugh. And then I kept on laughing, unable to stop. “I’m so screwed.”
“What?”
“I think I’m in love with her.” I was talking while laughing hysterically, gasping for breath.
“What did you say?” He kicked me lightly with his toe. “I can barely understand the words coming out of your mouth.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I wiped the tears from the corners of my eyes, and kept on laughing.
It felt good.
To not care.
To be honest.
To be numb.
24
“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?”
― Albert Einstein
* * *
*Beau*
It took me an unknown period of time to figure out where I was and then an unknown period of time after that to figure out that I was hungover. Somehow I was in my bed. I didn’t know how it had occurred, but there I was.
I was also going to die from this hangover. Or have a really shitty day. One or the other.
“Beau.”
I groaned, because what other choice did I have?
“Beau.”
“I don’t want any.”
One of my brothers, I didn’t know which one, chuckled. Or it might’ve been Satan.
“Beau, wake up.”
“Have you no mercy?”
“I’ve been thinking.”
It was Roscoe, I was sure of it. I didn’t know why he was in my room, talking to me, pretending he was capable of thought, but I was sure it was him.
“About what?” Managing to pry open my eyelids a sliver, I discovered his location. He was standing at the foot of my bed.
“About your problem.”
“Shh!”
He wasn’t talking loudly, but he was talking too loud.
“Sorry,” he continued on a whisper, “I have a solution to your problem.”
“Which is?”
“The beautiful woman.”
“Excuse me?” I pressed the base of my palms into my eye sockets to keep my eyes in their sockets.