Page 3 of Shattered Veil

I griped, “Brooks, why?”

“’Cause you need to get your mind off of your ex-wife.”

Oh, good God.

“It’s been three…almost four months since the divorce was finalized.” I assured him, “Trust me, my mind hasn’t been anywhere near Alli.”

Shawn set his fork down in his lunch, interlaced his fingers in front of himself pointedly, and made direct eye contact with me for two whole seconds before stating, “Prove it.”

I exhaled. “I’ll think about it.”

His teeth blinded me, and he smacked me on my left shoulder twice.

“Atta baby, Jay. I knew you had it in you—”

“This feels like coercion at its finest,” I retorted as I stood and snatched my Tupperware.

Shawn murmured, “Uh huh. Thank me later.”

The remainder of my work day was as it usually was. My used Tupperware was stowed by my feet once I returned to my cubicle. I clicked the black button with an up arrow on the right-hand side of my desk, lifting it to the appropriate height, which allowed me to stand as I worked. I jiggled the mouse to wake the screen. My glasses, which I typically wore for late-night driving and computer glare, sat waiting for me next to my keyboard. I grabbed the silver, circular-lensed frames, brought them up to my eyes, and went to work.

Staring at spreadsheets day after day, analyzing data and various other reports to determine the financial soundness of companies that invested in our services, was…boring. There’s no other way to put it—it was never a job that felt glamorous, but I liked it. I was able to put in my eight hours per day and not concern myself with the stress of working overtime. If I had to call in sick, there was no worry over who would cover for me because the work could wait. I had a decent salary. The benefits were good. The commute was only twenty minutes on a heavy traffic day. Like I said, I didn’t have much room to complain.

And though today was a typical day, I found my mind wandering more than it usually did. Perhaps it was because Shawn had mentioned Allison and assumed that I was discontent over the lack of her presence in my life, but I was drifting off to memories that I seldom tried to visit while I drove back to my apartment—the apartment that I had taken from Claire Branson and Zoey Sheffield.

It was the day that I was told that the house I had bought with Alli was no longer mine—that was the day that I had moved into apartment 2A. I knew Claire and Zoey well…better than well. They were both part of the friend circle that we had built for ourselves here in Salem, Virginia.

Claire was my brother Luke’s girlfriend. It had been approximately one year since I had teamed up with her, Luke, Zoey, and—for what seemed an inexplicable reason at the time—their across-the-hall neighbor, Liam Cohen. The skeletons in Claire’s closet had come to roost, and save for a few wounds that were far from superficial, we had all come out safe on the other side. Traumatized and forever bonded by what we had gone through together, but safe nonetheless.

And Zoey—well, she’s Claire’s best friend. Her old roommate. And I had a bit of a fling with her a few months back. It all went sideways when she fell in love with Liam…that wasn’t something that I dwelled on, for there are no hard feelings there. Not only was it months ago that Zoey had been officially seeing Liam, but it was impossible to hold a grudge when we had all been put through hell for a second time.

Just after Zoey had stepped aside from our casual fling, she and Claire had moved out of their apartment due to a break-in from Zoey’s stalker. A horrifying event that was perfectly timed due to my recent homelessness, I shacked up in their apartment all by my lonesome because they were concerned about the threat and just…never left, I guess. In a long story very short, we all attempted to find the man after I had moved in—to detain him and call the police, of course—and don’t even ask me how she did it, but when he began to threaten us all, Zoey ended him.

And I really do mean ended him. I saw the corpse. I helped toss him in the river. I watched him float away—we all did, along with Liam’s sister, Cassie.

It was a moment that was pinpointed in my life. One that forever solidified my memories to be filed in folders labeled as before or after its existence. It was my metaphorical smelting…and the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if I really was liquid. If I really was waiting for a mold of some sort that I could be poured into so I could begin anew. Perhaps, instead, I had already been reforged. Perhaps I had been melted and left to solidify in a horrifically warped version of myself. Perhaps this was it, and I was just fucking damaged.

I shook my head to clear it, the reminder of the things that I had witnessed and the impact that it had on me an unwelcome one that I hadn’t revisited in quite some time, and a glass of whiskey slid across the countertop to sit pretty in front of me.

After arriving home, I found myself wandering to Henry’s, the bar just down the street from the apartment complex, as I regularly do. The space was small and the lighting dim. Music often played so quietly that one would have to strain their ears to hear it, and regulars would frequently wander in and out. It was a watering hole that I had grown to love, and it just so happened that Luke and Claire were two of the employees who manned the bar.

Luke stood before me, his grey eyes—my grey eyes—squinting at me. I knew the look. He didn’t have to say anything to go along with it, but he did anyway.

“What’s under your skin, Jay?”

I shrugged, reached for the glass, and brought it to my lips. The liquid went down smooth, and the taste lingered on my tongue, wetting the facial hair around my lips just enough to keep the scent fresh in my nostrils with every sip.

“Weird day,” I told him bluntly.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Claire emerged from a door to the back room on the opposite end of the bar. She held an unopened bottle of clear liquor that I couldn’t discern, and she appeared wholeheartedly unbothered until her gaze quickly found mine. Her red hair was up in a messy bun, and the yellow light from the shelves of alcohol to the left of her shined through the strands, making them glow as she cocked her head to the side.

“What’s up with you?” she asked, setting the bottle down in its appropriate spot on the lower-most shelf and walking over to us.

“Said he had a weird day,” Luke answered for me, crossing his arms.

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