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“You need him too,” he said quickly as I marched from the living room.
“What I need is you!” I swung around and roared, trembling from head to toe. Every vein in my body pulsed, my head throbbed, and the sound of the final piece of my heart fracturing filled my ears.
“I know,” he said sadly. A hand twitched at his side, and my sick, traitorous heart hoped it was because he was fighting the need to reach for me. “But I can’t be what you need either.”
I pivoted on my feet and kept moving, my shoes squeaking on the marble floor. I would not let him see me break down.
“Just one,” he whispered, his voice trailing me into the foyer. “Just one, Leelee Bear.”
Franky’s parting words bounced around Betty’s interior as I punched at the steering wheel. They forced me to go back in time, forced me to remember how much he knew me.
“I know you prefer one great friend over many, because it lessens your chances of people hurting you. Of leaving you. I know you also prefer one friend over none, because being completely alone reminds you of how lonely you are.”
I started the car and peeled off, ignoring the figure at the front door getting smaller in my rear view.
***
Monday nights were the slowest at Josephine’s, so with the place relatively empty, Cole stuck out like a sore thumb. Not that he wouldn’t have anyway. He had money written all over him, and he had the same I-own-the-place vibe that his father gave off. Even in his current drunken state.
I paid Molly like I promised and then sent her on her way.
Cole had made his way to the bar during the time I was gone. I lined up four shot glasses, filling his two with that fuck-awful gin he loved, and mine with whiskey—the good stuff. Johnny could be pissed about it later. He’d probably dock me for it too.
Cole didn’t need prompting. He chugged the shots and gestured for a refill.
“You really want to know why I keep coming back here?” he asked, his words heavy and slow. “I’m here because maybe this is where he likes to be. My father,” he added on, as if I didn’t already know. “Maybe he’ll come find me here.”
“He won’t,” I said, bursting his bubble of hope.
“You’re mean.”
“Then get out,” I deadpanned, to which he chuckled.
“I think I’ll stay, because maybe deep down, you’re not as mean as you pretend to be. Maybe, you’re not mean at all.”
“That’s a whole lot of fucking maybes,” I said, nodding to the only other customer in the place as he made his exit.
Cole sighed, a waft of gin-infused breath knocking me in the face. “I don’t blame him for not coming. My father,” he said again. “There isn’t much I do blame him for. Well, not since he brought Selene and Jasper into my life.”
“Maybe you should tell him that,” I suggested, already on my fourth shot.
“Look who’s got a case of the maybes now,” he said, lilting to one side. “Oh! You can smile!” he exclaimed a little too loudly for how close we were.
“Don’t get used to it,” I said, finding it harder to wear my angry mask when all I wanted to do was wallow in my self-pity.
“Is jazz the only thing that jukebox plays?”
“What do you want to hear?” I dug inside the tip jar for some coins.
“Claude Debussy,” he said. Franky did mention once that Cole was a classically-trained pianist.
“You’re on the wrong side of town,” I said, the coins pelting the bottom of the jar as I tossed them back in.
I moved us on to water next, because I wouldn’t be accompanying him to the hospital for alcohol poisoning. We drank in silence, both lost in our own thoughts and problems that, unknowingly to him, ran parallel to one another. Some probably met in a head-on collision.
“Have you ever been crushed by the one person you would’ve done anything for or given anything to?” Cole asked, leaning his forearms into the bar top.
“Yes,” I answered.
