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She moved closer to the window beside me. “Next time you get the genius idea to set me up with another guy, you might want to do your homework to see if said guy is available in the first place. Thank you for that awkward moment, by the way too. Ass. Hole.”
My jaw tightened. “I didn’t know Colt was serious with anyone.”
“Yeah, that’s obvious,” she muttered.
“Anyone I know?” I asked, not because I cared but because the longer we talked about Colt, the less we would talk about me.
“A little. Only one of your best friend’s little sisters.” I saw her watching me, waiting for something to register, but the only thing that registered was more confusion. “Jesse is the best friend I was referring to. In case you were running through some long list of best friends I’m not aware of.”
My eyes narrowed into the night. “Which one?”
“The only
one old enough to date.” Josie’s voice was coated in sarcasm as she stepped closer. But it wasn’t me she moving closer to—it was the window. “Why do you think Jesse was just exuding warm feelings when we all ran into each other at dinner that night?”
I should have picked up on Jesse’s out-of-character gruffness with Colt and what it could have meant, but I’d been too preoccupied that night. “Lily’s, like, painfully sweet and quiet. Colt’s, like, painfully not those things.” I shook my head, wondering if Josie had it wrong. “I’m not getting the love connection there.”
“I’m not sure you’re qualified to judge any love connection after what you pulled tonight.” The edge in her voice was dulling, but her posture didn’t indicate a woman letting go of her anger.
“Maybe,” I answered quietly.
Silence came next, but for no longer than a minute. Josie sighed. “So what’s your plan from here, Garth? Do you have one? Is it practical?” she added when I raised a brow in her direction. “Because I’m starting to question your ability to form a string of logical thoughts.”
The breeze was playing with the hem of her sundress as it continued tugging at her hair. I would have preferred to face her and spend the rest of our last night together watching the wind move over her, but I knew Josie well enough to know she wouldn’t have gone for that. She likely had another five dozen questions and comments and insults to fire at me. “My plan is for you to let me go and get on with your life while I get on with mine. That’s my plan.” I had to close my eyes to get out the rest. “I’m ready to implement it whenever you are.”
If my words pained her as much to hear as they pained me to say, she didn’t show it. “With you and your little friend there?” Her chin lifted, indicating the bottle shoved between my legs.
I felt as if it had almost started to burn me, despite the lack of feeling I had in that region. “I like to consider myself open-minded when it comes to my friendships.”
Josie glared at the bottle for another moment before holding out her arms and slowly spinning in place. “And this is where you’re planning to get on with your life?” Her gaze lingered on the broken windows, the missing drywall, and the dangling electrical wires. “Holed up in this place and letting yourself rot away on the outside while your insides rot away from drinking that stuff? Whining about your glory days and the accident that ended them to anyone who’ll listen? Shutting yourself away from the world you knew, living your life going from one bottle to the next?” She paused, waiting for me to make eye contact.
Even if I’d tried, I couldn’t have. I was too damn ashamed of my behavior, from the day I’d woken up in the hospital to now, with an emphasis on the past day and a half.
She eventually continued, accepting I didn’t have it in me to look her in the eyes anymore. “Now who does that sound like?”
For a moment, I felt a surge of rage at her insinuation, but it didn’t last. My shoulders sagged as I took a good look at myself. My clothes were dirty and rumpled, the odor rolling off me a mix of sweat and body odor, a bottle of whiskey close to my heart and, more importantly, my lips. I hadn’t seen it until right that moment when she’d all but thrown it in my face, but I could have been a carbon copy of Clay. Right down to the bull-riding injury that hadn’t just ruined my career—I’d let it ruin the other parts of my life as well.
I slumped further into the chair, my fingers curling tightly around the neck of the bottle. I needed another drink to dull what I was feeling. I needed the rest of that bottle to wash the realization that I was becoming my father out of my mind until I woke up tomorrow in a pile of my own vomit and self-loathing.
“You should leave, Josie.” My voice sounded like his too. If her shoving Clay in my face wasn’t enough to remind me why I needed to save her from myself, like he hadn’t been man enough to do with my mom, I didn’t know what could have been more motivating.
“This place is just as much mine as it is yours. My money went into it too. My name’s on the deed just like yours is.” Her arms folded over her stomach as she backed away from the window. “So if you want to rot away on your own, go buy your own shitty little trailer and get on with it already. I’m going to go to bed now. In my house.” Leaving the room, she turned down the hallway.
I followed her, but she was moving quickly, and I was too drunk to move as fast. Or hold a straight line.
“Hey, Insane,” I called when I heard her climbing the steps to the second story. She couldn’t just spend the night there. There wasn’t anything up in those bedrooms but cobwebs and dust. “Locate the loose screw and drill it back into place, okay? You’re not staying.”
She paused on the stairs, turning to look at me at the foot of them. “What are you going to do?” She peaked an eyebrow. “Make me leave?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
She moved a step higher, practically smirking at me. “Then make me.”
She was halfway up the stairs and only moving higher, challenging me with that look on her face. I’d come out here to distance myself from her, and there she was, making herself comfortable and staying put, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop her. Being confined to the chair made me feel a whole new level of helpless.
“You want me to stop defining myself by this wheelchair, but how can I not when you do something like this?” I thrust my arm at her. So close, but she might as well have been in another galaxy for my ability to reach her.
“The man I fell in love with wouldn’t have let a few measly stairs or that damn chair get in the way of what he wanted,” she shouted, tears welling in her eyes.
