Page 44 of My Unfinished Heart

I get a flash of the guy I used to know with his GQ hair and his team t-shirts, his skin golden tan and glowing from all the time he spent outside. The persistent, charming smile that had everyone wanting in on his conversations. Again, I want to know what the fuck happened. He mentioned a DUI. An assault. Was it drugs?

“How's your brother?” he asks, snapping me back to now.

I shift on the barstool, uncomfortable because he is. I speak mainly to the right half of his face because he isn’t looking at me. He may as well have asked the question to the guy at the other end of the bar.

“He moved in.”

“Is his leg getting better?”

“I haven't really had a chance to discuss it with him.”

“Maybe you should.”

A lecture isn’t what I came here for. I discard his sage advice as I study the liquor bottles behind the bar. In truth, I’m still pissed about West’s refusal to speak to me on the ride home from the police station.

“Listen, I need to talk to you about something,” he says after a loaded silence.

Without averting my focus from the liquor stock, I say, “Okay.”

“I talked to my lawyer this morning. The situation’s pretty bad.”

I don’t say anything. I already know what’s coming, and it makes me want to leave without another word. I can’t say why this hurts so much. He and I aren’t close anymore, and that was my choice. I left and went no contact. He’s a stranger who feels sort of familiar, but instead of wanting to know me again, he’s here because he needs something from me. Not my friendship or my support. He needs money, and he knows I have more than I know what to do with.

“I’ll probably have to sell the bar to be able to cover all of this. Financially.”

I give him the coldest glare I can manage. I try to make it slow, this glance toward him because I want him to remember it. I want him to picture it when he thinks about how bad of a friend I was.

It has the desired effect. He leans away, getting defensive. “Look—I wouldn't—you know me, brother. This makes me sick to have to do this, but I just thought⁠— ”

“You want money?”

He cracks his knuckles between his knees. He won't look me in the eye.

“I've worked really hard to get where I'm at,” he says. “The bar’s a good business. I make a good living with it.”

“What happens to it when you go to prison?”

His mouth opens like he’s about to say something, but I cut him off, irrationally livid. “What else do you want me to buy, West? Your house? Your car? You want me to pay off your credit cards, too?”

He regards me with anger and disbelief. “What is it with you? You leave for six fucking years, you show back up, you stay for no apparent reason, and you meet me here today, why? 'Cause you're bored? I thought we were friends.”

“We were. I don’t know you anymore. You sure as shit don’t know me. So, I’m not good enough to have a real conversation with, but I’m good enough to bail you out of your shit?”

“Fuck you, Archer,” he mutters under his breath.

“No, fuck you, brother.” The handful of people in the bar at this hour turn our way when I raise my voice. I wish I could find it in myself to care. “You keep acting like I owe you something, but where does it end? I sat with you all night in a police station while you barely spoke to me, I paid your bail, I got you home in one piece, and now you're meeting up with me because you know there’s more where that came from, and what? You think I feel that guilty about leaving that I'm just gonna write you a blank check? Ease my conscience?”

His expression flattens. “It sounds like your conscience is just fine.”

“My conscience is all right, but thanks for not asking. You won’t even tell me what happened.”

“I hit a cop.”

Whoa.

“You what?”

He clears his throat and lowers his voice even more. “I got pulled over on my way home after I left Abel’s. The fucker was gonna arrest me anyway for drinking and driving, and then he put his hands on me. I shoved him off, and then he shoved me back, and I hit him. Then he clubbed me in the stomach and cuffed me. That’s what happened.”