Page 12 of Chasing Whiskey


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“Watching your weight?” Oriana asks playfully, but I shake my head.

“Weirdly, I have a bit of an obsession with salad.”

“Is that right?” She raises an eyebrow, and I nod.

“It’s weird. I know. I can’t really explain it except that when I was in the service, no matter where I got stationed, I could never seem to find a good fucking salad. My mom always loved salads, too, and she used to make these really fancy ones with tons of croutons, hard-boiled eggs, and bacon strips. Sometimes she’d even add pepperoni. Now I seem to forever be on a quest to find the perfect restaurant salad. I don’t know,” I shrug. “It’s one of my quirks.”

“It’s adorable,” she says, taking a bite of her sandwich. “I can’t say I share your love of salads, but I can appreciate good food.”

“You grew up in a small town, right?” I ask. “Was there a big selection of food?”

“Believe it or not, my town was smaller than Greenville. We did not have many restaurants,” she says. “Or any at all, actually,” she adds. “My mom loved to cook, though. My brother and I would spend hours in the kitchen just watching her.”

“Are you and your brother still close?”

“No,” she shakes her head. Oriana stares at her sandwich for a second and seems to be deep in thought. Then she looks up at me. “My brother passed away,” she says.

“I’m sorry.”

“He killed himself, actually. A few months ago.” She shrugs, but I can tell she’s in pain, and I reach for her hand.

“We don’t have to talk about it, love.”

“It’s okay. I think I kind of need to tell you. It’s such a big part of who I am. I mean, it really is the reason I left town.”

“I’m happy to listen.”

“PTSD,” she says. “It can happen to anyone. He didn’t get the help he needed. He tried. He went to the VA a few times, but they kept turning him away and saying it was all in his head. It would be weeks and weeks between appointments and they wouldn’t give him anything for the anxiety and they wouldn’t get him set up with a counselor. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. He left a note and he…well…”

She’s crying freely now, and I realize it’s time for us to go. I drop a couple of ones on the table, pull Oriana to her feet, and guide her out of the café and down the street.

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry, Oriana. None of this is your fault. We’re going to my place and we’ll keep talking there.”

“Okay.”

She allows me to lead her down the street and around the corner. My house isn’t more than a five minute walk from the café, and we make our way there in silence. When we reach the tiny blue house, we go inside, and Oriana makes herself comfortable on the couch while I start brewing some tea. I come back to her and sit beside her.

“I can’t imagine the pain you must be feeling,” I tell her.

“For awhile I felt betrayed,” she admits. “I felt sad he would leave me. It’s just me now. My mom’s been gone for a long time and my dad left years ago. For a long time it was just me and Bobby, and after he went, well, it felt like I was all alone in the world.”

“You aren’t alone, Oriana.”

“I know that now. Now I don’t feel as betrayed. I’ve had some time to think and to process everything. Now I just feel sad. He burned the house down when he did it, though, and we had lived together. That’s why I don’t have any stuff. It’s not because I’m a minimalist or because I left behind all of my childhood crap. It just doesn’t exist anymore. I was at work all night when it happened. No one called me. I didn’t hear anything about it until I got home and there were fire trucks outside of my house.”

“That must have been horrible.”

“At first they thought it was an accident,” she says. “But later I found the note. He’d placed it in the windshield of his car, like he somehow expected me to just find it there.”

I pull her into my arms and hold her tight.

“You’ve been through so much,” I murmur. “But you’re so strong, Oriana. You’re so brave. You came all the way here. Despite everything you’ve been through, you came to Greenville. You decided to start a new life. You decided to take control of your future and to live the life you want: not the life other people think you should have.”

“You really

think that?”

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