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Fuck me.I step out of the room and rest my back against the wall.What the fuck do they know, anyway?
The snoring gets louder and more obnoxious. I need to get out of here before my dad catches me. The last thing I need is for my old man to tell me that this loss wasn’t my fault. Been there, done that, bought the entire fucking T-shirt collection.
The men on the screen talk again, but fuck them. I push off the wall and quickly grab the remote off the end table beside my dad and turn the TV off. He stirs in his chair, and I make a quick exit back to the kitchen.
I press my palms to the counter and exhale a harsh breath. My anger bubbles within. I try to take a few calming breaths, but nothing is helping the steady, uneven pace of my beating heart. Every anxiety that I’ve pushed down and buried under hours of manual labor comes crawling to the surface, leeching into my skin.
My fault.Two words that have enough weight to sink someone to the bottom of the ocean and stay there without an anchor.
When I open my eyes and look up, I spot the bottle of bourbon sitting on the shelf alongside the other bottles of alcohol.Bingo!
Picking up the bottle, I forgo a glass and head back out to the backyard and lean against the shed. Sliding down to sit on my ass, I twist open the bottle and take swig after swig till my thoughts become muddled and cloudy in my mind.
I drown myself in this bottle, and the last thing I recall as the sun sets in the distance iseverything is always my fault.
“You’d think that with all that money you make, you’d be able to fix that ugly mug of yours.”
I jolt awake at the muffled, deep voice in my room that definitely doesn’t belong to my mother or father.Am I dreaming?
The side of my face that is pressing into the pillow feels damp.What the hell?I bring my left hand to my face and realize that I’m drowning in my drool, nursing a terrible hangover. I’m pretty sure if you looked up the world record for the worst cotton mouth, you would see my name beside it.
I try to put the pieces of the puzzle of last night in my brain together, but things are rather fuzzy at the moment.
I remember working on the fence, the news broadcast, swiping the bottle from the shelf, and then—wait, how did I get up here?
A throat clearing forces me to twist toward my childhood desk. The fast movement has my head spinning even more. I pinch my eyes shut, and when I open them; I think I might be fucking dreaming.
“Tanner?” I blink a few times, waiting for my eyes to focus.Fuck, it’s bright in here.Once my vision clears, I see that it’s not Tanner but his younger brother, Austin.
“You look like hell, man.” Austin is sitting in my desk chair, bent over with his elbows resting on his knees. I don’t miss the fidgeting of his hands as he avoids commenting that I just called him by his brother’s name.Does that happen often?Growing up, there was no denying them being brothers with their similar features, including their voices. There may have been less than a year difference between them, but their personalities couldn’t have been more different. Tanner was athletic, outspoken, and preferred to be being the center of attention, while Austin was extremely introverted, preferring to blend into the background and hide behind his books. Had Tanner still been alive, is this what he would have looked like at twenty-four?
I push myself up on the twin-size bed. My body aches almost as much as my head.
“What are you doing here?” I run my palms over my face and through my hair, wincing as I catch a whiff of myself. I smell like a fucking distillery. Maybe I should open a window.
Austin pushes off his elbows to sit straight up. “Your mom sent in reinforcements.”Typical Shannon Graham.
I look around the room, and he must sense exactly what I’m looking for.
“She’s not here—she and your dad are at church.”
Silence fills the small space. A million questions neither of us verbally acknowledge linger in the air.
Austin is the first to break the ice. “So, were you planning on coming around, or were you just planning on drinking yourself stupid out by the shed every night?”
I could correct him that it wasn’teverynight, but point made. “About that.” I grip the back of my neck. “Yeah, I’m so—”
He holds his hand up, stopping me. “Nah, man, it’s whatever. Shit happens.” He shrugs. I may not have beenas closeto Austin as I was to his brother, but he’s still an extension of my best friend. I owed it to him and his parents to at least stop by. “So, what are you gonna do now that you’re in retirement?”
That’s the million-dollar question.
I scoff, shaking my head.Retirement at twenty-four—what a joke.
“I’m not sure. Right now, I’m just—” I search for the right words. “—sorting things out.”
It’s his time to scoff. “And sorting things out means hiding out at Casa del Graham for the rest of your life?”
My back stiffens. “I don’t hide out here.” I don’t need a lie detector test to tell that I’m lying. It’s obvious as the words leave my mouth.
