“You do. By showing up for their wedding and plastering on a fake smile for the photographer. I mean, come on, Clara, that was the guy you were planning on marrying, and now he’s marrying your little sister after going behind your back with her for God knows how long.” Boone’s voice rose, every word half a note louder. “If that’s giving the guy your middle finger, then damn, you need a reeducation on the topic.”
“I think I know where to get one if I decide for myself that I need one,” I fired at him, shifting on the bar stool so I was leaning more away from him than toward him. We might have been ten feet apart, but another two inches couldn’t hurt. “And where do you get off trying to paint me as the villain with everything you’ve got stacked up in your corner?” I tucked my hair behind my ear and shook my head. “Me and everyone else the villain and you the hero. Got that twisted around there, Boone.”
When Tom slid Boone’s drink in front of him, Boone shoved it back at him, which struck me as strange. I’d maybe seen Boone Cavanaugh turn down a drink . . . never. “Oh yeah. That’s right. I forgot about you knowing everything about everyone. Guess I shouldn’t have let that slip my mind—that being an Abbott family theme and all.”
My body was so tense, my muscles felt close to snapping. I’d come into this place to find a way to relax, not to get more wound up. Massaging my temple with one hand, I took a sip of my shot with the other. My body convulsed more violently this time. This wasn’t a sip-and-enjoy type of establishment.
“Is this really how we’re going to do this, Boone?” I asked. “Picking up right where we left off seven years ago? Is this really how much we’ve matured all these years later?”
Boone’s head angled my way some. He was silent for a moment, watching me. “Where else would you expect us to pick up, Clara?”
I leaned forward, curling my arms around my drink and staring at the void right in front of me. I couldn’t look at him and talk rationally. That had always been the case, no matter how good or bad our relationship. “Somewhere along the lines of civil.”
Boone’s laugh rolled through the room. His malicious laugh, not the one I used to love. “What you did to me, how you treated me. . . you’re not the person to be going on about civility. Don’t you dare preach to me about being civil.”
I felt the first flash of alcohol in my system, dulling my inhibitions and heightening them at the same time. “And you can just get down from that high and mighty stool down there and stop lecturing me about right and wrong. Nice try.” I lifted what was left in my glass and chugged it. This drink was better than the first two—a sure sign the alcohol was doing its job. “You want to bring up the past, I’m willing to bring up a few pieces of it too.”
From the corner of my eye, I noticed him shift on his stool. He was obviously under the same impression that another couple of inches of distance couldn’t hurt.
“Why don’t you finish your drink and leave?” he snapped, motioning at the screen door I’d come through. “This used to be the one place a person could go without worrying they’d run into an Abbott, and I’d like to keep it that way. I’ve put up with enough from all of you to have earned my sainthood a decade ago, so beat it.” He waved again at the door, waiting for me to run off like I wanted to.
But I wasn’t going to run. Not yet. I’d cut and run from Boone enough times that I wasn’t going to add to that list. Besides, I wasn’t leaving until I was good and marginally intoxicated so I could endure the reunion with my family.
When I slid my empty glass across the counter, Tom didn’t need the nod from me. He knew what I wanted.
“Don’t worry, Boone. I’m not planning on ransacking the place and spoiling your retirement plan of ruining your liver.” That was, if it wasn’t already permanently damaged from the bottles I’d seen him empty as a teenager. “And I’m only in town for the week, so the likelihood of us running into each other again is next to none.”
“Which would be too soon for me,” Boone announced to himself, though he didn’t mutter or mumble. It wasn’t his style to say something under his breath. If Boone had something to say, he said it for everyone to hear.
The heat pressed in around me, making it impossible for me to think straight. “Okay, you hate me. I get it.” I grabbed the refilled shot glass out of Tom’s hands so quickly, half of it splashed across the counter. The particle board lapped it up like it was as desperate for the drink as I was. “You’ve made that exceedingly clear. But why don’t you stop acting like you were the only one who got hurt? You paid me back. And then some.”
When I noticed my hands trembling, I tucked them into my lap. I didn’t want to seem weak around him. Not after all this time. Boone already knew all of my weak parts and pieces from childhood and adolescence. I didn’t want him having an education in my adult ones.