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This is supposed to be an acknowledgment of moving forward and not being stuck in the past, but all it feels like right now is a mockery of all the effort I’ve made through the past two years. The truth is, I don’t want to revisit my grief. Not when so many other emotions course through me that have nothing and everything to do with the first love of my life. I also don’t want to continue spending hours at the Swinging Bridge, Janessa’s favorite place, in an attempt to quash my lingering guilt.
On that thought, I signal the bartender for another drink. I’m on my second, but if I had it my way, I’d be half-past drunk and calling my best friend for a ride home. Isn’t that what got me into this mess in the first place?
Too much tequila and a tempting blond beauty packaged in sass and lace.
The nice brunette sets down another glass of scotch, and I take a sip without even glancing up from my failed letter. Thoughts twist and swirl like the cubes in my glass. Past versus present. Both force me into a box labeled right and wrong when I don’t even know which way is up.
“Explains a lot.” Rhett’s voice comes from my left, and I crumple the paper in front of me and shove it into my pocket. Yeah, I’m a coward. The last thing I need is this bastard nosing into my business. I almost snort at the thought of him giving me relationship advice. The man made his way through half of Arrow Creek in the first few months since he filed for divorce. Not that I blame him for erasing the taste of his cheating ex-wife.
“What?”
He claims the stool beside me and gestures at the bartender.
“Hot woman like that gives you a sultry look, and you can’t even take your eyes off your love note long enough to check out her fine ass in those shorts. No wonder you have problems.”
“It’s not a love note,” I grumble, not even bothering with the second part of his comment.
“You used to have a thing for brunettes.”
I cut him a glare. “Are you looking for a fight?”
Rhett’s grin is wicked in return. “Though it seems to me now, blondes do it for you more.”
Turning forward again, I take another sip of my drink. This discussion tempts me to toss it all back, though he isn’t wrong on the latter comment. “What’re you doing here besides being a fuckin’ pain in my ass?”
“Checking in on a friend. Wondering if I’d find you here drowning your sorrows in scotch. Gotta say, man, I’m surprised. Thought you’d be handling this more like a man.”
“Fuck off,” I snarl. My skin feels too tight, and I’m bursting apart at the seams.
The silence between us stretches as he waves down the bartender for his own drink. She places it before him moments later, and he pushes cash across the bar. “Thanks, sweetheart.”
Rhett. The typical ladies’ man. Women drop their pants with one playboy smirk. Cynical as fuck except when it comes to everybody else’s business.
He takes a lingering drag of his own drink. “For real, though. I’ll stop giving you shit, but I gotta know why you’re freaked about this. The dad gig is a piece of cake.”
I slam down my glass, sloshing scotch over the side onto my hand. Stealing a handful of cocktail napkins, I haphazardly clean it off. “Really? You didn’t seem to think it was such a sweet gig when your wife left you for her boss. Please, do tell, how nice it is to only see your kid on the weekends?”
“Jeez, you big bastard.”
“You pushed,” I grunt, not the least bit guilty for laying it out there the way I did.
Rhett shoves my shoulder. “Someone has to, or else you’ll retreat into that big fucking head of yours again. You’re no fun when you’re dark. Talk to me.”
I finally look at him and scrub my palm down my face. “Scared out of my mind. To be a dad, sure, but out of it all, that seems like the easiest part. I’m scared of missing things, of custody battles and parenting disagreements, and I’m scared of feeling what I’m feeling for this woman.”
“I mean this as delicately as I can, but you can’t cheat on the dead, Nate. You gotta know that this is what Janessa would want.”
“Do you think that makes it any easier? I exchanged vows with a woman who was supposed to be my forever.”
“Yeah,” he mutters, taking a swing. “I did, too, and look how that worked out.”
“They’re not the same.”
His glass clinks against the bar. “Of course, it’s not. Yours tragically passed away, and mine’s a filthy, cheating whore. That doesn’t mean life isn’t shitty and doesn’t suck. Wallowing in a bar isn’t going to help you figure out what to do about it.”
I spin the glass in my hand, watching the light refract through it. “I’m not wallowing,” I grouse.
He flicks a peanut shell at me from the bowl between us. “Sure, you’re not.”
