I pulled on a pair of sweatpants when I was dry and grabbed a Q-tip, towel draped over my shoulder as I walked downstairs to make tea. It was something Dani always did at night, right before bed. She’d put a pot of water on and we’d all choose our own flavors, and we’d sit on the back porch and drink and talk. Eventually, Dani would pull out her book to read and Aunt Rose would make her way up to bed. Half the time, I’d spike my tea and bug Dani or get drunk enough to wander down the road and find trouble. It was never too hard for me to do.
But now I just made it because it reminded me of her, of a past life, of what I’d had when I didn’t even realize it and what I’d lost and missed every day since.
Once the pot was on the stove, I toweled off my hair and cleaned the grime from inside my ears before tossing the Q-tip in the trash. It was just another day, another night, and soon I’d be asleep and could start all over again. Not even the new blonde in town could change that fact, though she did throw a wrench in my day.
I wasn’t sure what it was about her that even made me stop. I’d seen plenty of tourists rent out the cabins around here, plenty of girls in cut-off shorts and shoes not fit for cabin life. But it wasn’t her clothes or her hair that I thought about as the pot of water whistled its readiness through my kitchen. It was her eyes.
They were eyes that had lived, eyes that had hurt.
I knew, because I had them, too.
A knock sounded at my front door just as I moved the pot of water off the burner and I frowned, glancing up at the clock.
Who the hell would be at my door this time of night? Or at all?
When I rounded the fridge and saw the familiar ponytail and jacket, my frown deepened.
“Sarah,” I greeted when I opened the door. “What’s wrong?”
She smiled, high cheek bones flushed from the cold as she slid in past me without an invitation. “Wrong? Nothing’s wrong. I came to see you. What are you doing?”
I stood with my hand gripping the doorknob, eyes on the dark woods beyond the porch as I forced a breath through my nose and shut the door again. “Same thing I do every night, and I’m about to go to bed.”
Sarah grabbed a second mug from my top cabinet and placed it next to the one I’d already pulled out, pouring water from the pot into each of them. “Oh, stop being such a grump.” She winked at me over her shoulder before reaching into the jar I kept the tea bags in. “What flavor?”
“I don’t want company.”
“Peppermint sound good?”
Sarah didn’t wait for an answer, just ripped open two packets and dunked the teabags in each cup. She handed me mine and shrugged off her navy blue jacket, slinging it over the back of my bar stool before taking a seat in it.
I just held the mug and stared at her.
She sighed. “Rev, please,” she pleaded, eyes softening.
“Don’t call me that,” I said, voice hard, but she kept her eyes on me and finally I mirrored her sigh, taking the stool next to her. “Five minutes.”
She perked up and immediately began spouting off about her day, and I held onto my mug, trying to enjoy her company, trying to remember when she was in my bed nearly every night all those years ago.
Sarah had been crazy just like me. We used to party every night, along with Davie and Yvette, before they’d even been married, before responsibility or birthdays that started with the number two. Sarah was Yvette’s best friend and I was Davie’s, but where Davie and Yvette fell in love, Sarah and I just used each other when we wanted. Sometimes she was with another guy, or I was with another girl, or we’d play the games just to piss each other off. I never loved her, even though I thought I did for the longest time. I’d never loved anyone.
I never would.
“I think I’m going to a party in town tomorrow night,” she said, and I realized it was the only thing I’d really heard. “You should come with me.”
Her eyes trailed from my eyes down my bare abdomen, and I wished I’d grabbed a shirt from upstairs. Then again, I wasn’t expecting company, and I was reminded of that fact when her fingertips reached out to touch the towel still hanging over my shoulder.
“It would be fun... like old times.”
“No,” I said simply, grabbing her mug and taking it to the sink with mine. Hers was still nearly full.
“I wasn’t done with that.”
“Now you are.”
“God, why are you such a fucking asshole, Anderson?” The stool rubbed hard against the floor as she stood, swiping her jacket off the back. “Would it kill you to just sit with another human being for a night? Are you so mad at the world that you don’t remember how to have fun?”
“I’m tired, Sarah.” It was the only answer I had, and it was true—I was tired. From the day, from her being in my house, from my life.
“Whatever.” She yanked on her jacket one sleeve at a time, ponytail swinging. Her eyes caught on the picture of Dani and she froze. “You know, your life doesn’t have to end just because hers did.”
Her words were like ice water, and I felt every drop of them in my spine, crawling slowly before rushing like a river. I shook from the force of them, teeth gritted, fists clenching.
“Out,” I growled, rushing past her to open the door.
“Shit,” she said on a sigh. “I’m sorry, I just—”
“OUT!”
Sarah pursed her lips, willing me to look at her. When I wouldn’t, she huffed and blew past me without another word.
I slammed the door behind her, growling as I picked up her mug I’d just poured down the sink and hurled it across the cabin. It hit the frame of my wood-burning stove and shattered, light blue porcelain raining down to the floor. My daily routine had been thrown into a dumpster fire, starting with the blonde and ending with Sarah.
I ran both hands through my hair and cursed.
No way was I sleeping now.
My mind raced with Sarah’s words, with memories of my old life hammering my every move as I rushed upstairs and threw on a t-shirt and coat. It didn’t matter that I’d already showered, or that I was usually asleep by now. Apparently this day wanted to be different, and so I embraced it, grabbing my toolbox and heading back to the Morrisons’. If I couldn’t sleep and I didn’t want to think, I’d work.
It was the only thing that made sense.
There was something absolutely freeing about not having to answer to anyone.
Never in my entire life had I been able to do what I wanted, when I wanted, without thinking of how it affected someone else. First my parents, then my roommates in college, and for the last seven years since we’d married and moved in together, Keith.
But tonight? Tonight, I had nowhere to be, no one to tell me how I should be spending my night, and maybe that’s why I was dancing by the fire, dressed ridiculously in my favorite mesh lingerie one-piece from Free People with the most expensive high heels I owned strapped on my feet.
I’d tried being productive, tried sitting on the back balcony with my sketch book to work, but the truth was I didn’t feel inspired. I didn’t exactly feel uninspired, rather I sort of just existed in this liquid place between the two. I was living—breathing—and listening to what my soul told me, what it wanted from me in that moment.