Page 52 of Wreckage and Rain

Then I tell myself one drink with the team isn't a betrayal. One dinner with my father, who almost never asks me for anything that isn't work. Two hours. Maybe three. I'll come home before midnight. Tomorrow I'll get in the car at sunrise and be in Savannah by eight and I'll show up in the clothes I drove in with no flowers and nothing rehearsed.

That's what I tell myself.

That's the last time my mind makes a clean sentence.

***

The Butcher Block.

Of course. Of course it's The Butcher Block. The restaurant Summer and I have always come to. The restaurant my own wife sat down at three weeks ago when she saw me with Cheyenne. I don't flinch when the host shows us to the long table at the back. Cheyenne is at my elbow in something dark and simple, and she is already ordering for the table before I even set my menu down. "He likes the bourbon," she says to the waiter.

The waiter nods. Calloway claps me on the back. A bourbon appears in front of me, the glass sweating already.

"Forty-two days," Calloway says. "Forty-two days from the first greenlight to the signed paper. That is a record. That is a goddamn record."

My dad is at the head of the table. The closest thing he has to pride is loose on his face tonight. He raises his glass without standing.

"To my son," he says. "Who is going to be the best one of us. Who already is."

I want to call Summer.

I want to call Summer and tell her my father just said that out loud in front of seven people.

I drink the bourbon instead.

One.

Two.

My dad across the table. Smiling. Talking now to Calloway about Tidewater, about the next deal, about a man in Atlanta whose name I don't catch. The bourbon hits faster than bourbon should. I haven't eaten anything. The waiter is bringing food. The waiter is taking food away. I can't remember what was on my plate. The room is loud and very far away.

Three.

Wait. Three?

Everyone is laughing. My laugh feels far from me. Like I'm hearing it on a radio in another room. Cheyenne is laughingtoo, at something Calloway is saying, and her shoulder is against mine because at some point she shifted her chair closer to mine or I shifted mine closer to hers and I don't know which of us moved.

I should text Summer. I should tell her I'm at dinner. I shouldn't have lied to myself about two hours.

My phone is in my jacket pocket. My jacket is on the back of my chair. The jacket might as well be on the moon.

[skip]

A bar.

A different bar. I don't know how I got here. The Butcher Block is gone. There is music, low and bass-heavy and somewhere behind me. My dad is gone. Some of the seniors are gone. Calloway is at the bar. Cheyenne is next to me on a leather banquette with her shoes off and her feet tucked under her and she is leaning toward me to say something.

I can't hear her. The music is too loud. Or my ears are too full of cotton. I am not sure which.

A man appears with a camera. Big lens. Professional. Whose photographer is this. Someone from the firm. Marketing. PR. The new associate's husband does this on the side. I don't know. I can't make my mouth ask.

"One for the IG, Colt," he says. "Smile."

I smile.

Cheyenne tucks under my arm. Her hair is in my collar. Camera flash. The flash takes too long to fade. Spots of green in my vision when I blink.

"One more, big CEO," the photographer says. He is moving around us. He is taking more than one. He is taking a sequence.