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There was a pause, in which I wrapped my head around the fact that he was here and that I was so close to being discovered by him. Thankfully, my seat back reached beyond the top of my head, hiding me from the face on the other side of the booth, although I felt the heat of his gaze burning through the wood.
“And how many times do I have to tell you it’s called taking a cock, Johnny. Not shitting,” Leland eventually said. I flinched from his brashness, from his crude delivery, and maybe even from the act he’d confessed to itself. I badly wanted to stand, to peer over the top of the seat to see if his sweet face had hardened the way his tone had implied. Words delivered like that couldn’t have come from anything with a trace of softness inside of it.
“And besides, I’m not on the clock yet,” he said to Johnny, letting me know he worked there.
“You are now,” Johnny said. “Get behind the bar, Leland.” Johnny may have been at his wits’ end, but there was fondness under the exasperation too. “And cover up that hickey, will ya? One of these days I’m going to make good on my promise and fire you,” he grumbled.
He’d been fucked and branded by someone other than me, and I shouldn’t have given a damn. Not now, not with everything I had going on in my life, not ever again. I shouldn’t have been there, yet, I had to see him now that I was. I prepared myself for what I might see before peeking my head out of the booth.
Leland was busy wiping down the bar. He wore a fitted thermal with the sleeves tugged up to his elbows, and he hadn’t done anything to hide the bruise from the view of customers as Johnny had requested. He’d need a turtleneck to hide something of that size anyway. Instead, he wore it proudly, a scarlet letter he paraded around without shame.
Leland didn’t exude the impishness I’d come to know him for during our time together. His eyes weren’t as soft around the edges, and the boyish smile that had always teased below the surface of his lips no longer existed. He’d hardened.
He was still handsome, more so now, if that were possible. But he no longer reminded me of sunshine. Leland was a cyclone of pain. I’d tarnished him.
Maybe this was what I’d come here for. To hopefully see him and be reminded that nothing good ever came from me getting too close to anyone. First Theo, then Annabeth, then Cole, then Jasper and Selene. And now Leland. I was better off in my mental isolation, trapped inside myself where I couldn’t hurt anyone but myself. Where the hurt I’d already inflicted paled in comparison to what I could do if I made myself available to those who needed me most.
I stuck around long enough to witness him hit on every paying customer who sat at his bar. I didn’t bother waiting for the bill. Instead I dropped enough cash on the table to cover my tab and gratuity, then gnashed my teeth as his flirtatious laughter followed me into the cool night air. A laugh that held a dark edge that hadn’t been there before.
***
Selene smiled at me from the picture frame atop the armoire as I tore at my tie, adjusting it for the tenth time.
“How am I supposed to get through this day?” I asked, closing my eyes on her. We had an hour to be at the church. An hour before well-meaning people joined us in saying our goodbyes. An hour before the plethora of apologies began rolling in. An hour before we were forced to smile and offer gratitude for their sympathy, when all I wanted to do was lock myself away and forget that one of the most important people in my life was now gone.
An urgent knock sounded on the bedroom door before Cole barged in, breathing raggedly.
“Cole?” I said, spinning away from the mirror. We’d all been sitting in our separate corners, licking our wounds these last couple weeks since her death. I knew what guilt looked like, knew the awkward energy it exuded, knew the gazes it made one unable to hold. Cole and Jasper felt guilty, and their guilt caused them to avoid me, and mine caused me to let them, so I was surprised to see him here now. “What’s wrong—”
“Jasper’s leaving. He won’t even stay for the funeral. You have to do something. Talk to him.Please.”
“Did he say why he’s leaving?”
“Just… Just that he needs time away.” He folded his arms defensively. Lying had never come easy to Cole. He was a man who spoke plainly, but he lied to me now, or at the very least only gave me a half-truth.
The right move would’ve been to assuage his distress. I should’ve told him that I would do whatever it took to keep what remained of our family intact. That would’ve been the fatherly thing to do. I couldn’t form the words he needed to hear, though, because I was in no condition to keep anything together. And a part of me approved of his and Jasper’s separation. A big part of me. Most of me.
“Everyone copes in their own way,” I said, unable to hold his stare. “If he wants to leave, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
He blanched, stumbling back as if I’d struck him with an open fist. “But he’s your son,” he whispered, cutting out what remained of my heart.
“I know,” I said. What I knew and what I felt resided on two different planes. “But forcing him to stay may not be what’s best for him.”
Cole battled with indecision, likely knowing that if he wanted more from me, he’d need to offer me more. He wouldn’t, though, because then we’d have to deal with why we’d lost Selene just hours before being notified that she’d made it to the top of the donor list. We’d have to deal with the fact that he and Jasper had grown from stepbrothers to lovers practically under my nose.
There was a sense of betrayal that came with that knowledge, but it also further highlighted my inadequacies as a parent. How had I not known? How had I not seen it before, whenallI could do was see it now. There was no escaping the way they looked at each other.
“So…so you’re just going to let him go?”
God,his watery blue eyes bore into me the way mine had beseeched my father after learning I’d lost Gloria and Theo. I swung around, giving his pain my back, but its reflection gaped at me through the mirror anyway. “Some time apart could be good,” I said. My father had said something similar to me. “I’m sure he’ll return.”
“I can’t lose him too,” he said. “She would want you to fight for him.”
“So now you’re the expert on what my wife would want?” I snapped, pivoting to him again. He was right, of course, which was what set me off.
Cole’s cheeks were now hollow, and his suit hung loose on his frame. Peering down at how my own suit swam on me told me I wasn’t faring so well either.
“No, I’m not. Had I been…” His anguish cut him off. “I’m sorry.”
