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God, everything came back to Miranda. My phone even buzzed, as if she had known I was thinking about her.
I checked the message.
Babe, answer your phone. We need to talk about this. I cannot believe you left without me. What am I supposed to do?
Fuck that noise. I turned my phone off.
“God, can we get fucked up before this thing tonight?” I asked in desperation. Alcohol would numb the pain for a night.
“Now, that I can help with,” Austin said with a grin.
I probably shouldn’t be contributing to my brother’s alcoholism, but fuck, I needed a drink. Austin had been drinking heavily ever since our dad died ten years ago from an overdose. Golf had always helped me manage my vices and the characteristic Wright addictive personality. Without it, I didn’t know if I’d have ended up just like my old man.
Twenty minutes later, we showed up at Austin’s house in Tech Terrace. He’d had it gutted and redesigned after he closed on it. So, even though the construction was built in the sixties, the house was brand-new. It had the advantage of being located within walking distance of the best bars, which I thought was the reason he’d bought it. But this also meant I could walk my drunk ass to and from the reunion down the street.
Austin parked in the garage, and we entered the house. After depositing my suitcase in his guest bedroom on the first floor, I came back out to find Austin already at the wet bar. It was fully stocked with as much alcohol as the nearest liquor store. It even had some top-shelf whiskey that wasn’t available in stores but had to be purchased straight from the distributor. He took drinking very seriously. It was maybe the only thing he took that seriously.
Austin poured me a glass of whiskey, and I sank into the sofa. He crashed back into a chair and turned on the big screen to SportsCenter. It was at that exact moment when golf stats were on for the British Open, a tournament I should have been at.
I downed my entire glass in one gulp. “I’ll take another.”
Austin gave me a strange look, as if he knew something was wrong, but he didn’t say anything. He just changed the channel. “Help yourself.”
That was the best thing about Austin. He didn’t pry.
We sat around for a couple of hours, watching some baseball game neither of us cared about while drinking ourselves stupid. When it was almost time for me to go to Flips for the reunion, Austin finally turned to look directly at me.
“Bro, you should probably come up with a story to tell Jensen,” Austin said.
“About what?” I played dumb.
“Whatever the fuck you’re dealing with. You know he’s going to ask, and you’re a shit liar.”
“I’m not dealing with anything.”
“Like I said,” Austin said, refilling my glass one last time, “shit liar.”
I laughed and raised my glass to him. “Maybe I’ll tell him the truth.”
“Nah, you won’t. That’s not the Wright way.”
Now, that was a true statement. We were a family of five, ranging from thirty-three to twenty-one, and we hid the truth from each other like we had been made for it. We’d learned that from our long-ago dead parents. Our mother had never told us about her cancer, and our father had lied about the alcohol, even on his dying breath. Maybe it was the Wright way.
Either way, I didn’t argue with Austin on that point. I’d deal with Jensen when I had to.
With my head sufficiently foggy, I changed into a pair of khakis and a light-blue button-up. Then, I waved good-bye to Austin and walked the few scant blocks to Flips. The last time I’d been there, I’d found out that Jensen and Emery were dating. It had been a weird fucking night, and I was really hoping not to have another one like that any time soon. I wanted to get tanked, talk to some of my old friends, and forget about the shit I’d left behind.
I signed in at the front and then angled straight for the bar on the left side of the room. I almost made it when Jensen stepped right in front of me.
Great. Just the person I didn’t want to talk to about my problems.
“Hey,” Jensen said.
“Hey, bro.”
“Where’s Miranda?”
“Don’t know. Where’s Emery?”
