Page 31 of Dreaming of Dawson

He nods his thanks and then says, “Dad had a heart attack seven weeks later.”

“Oh, my God.” I lean over, making the effort to reach out to him, and he lets me rest my fingers on his arm, lowering his head to stare at them for a second, before I pull my hand away again.

He takes another long drink, this time keeping hold of the glass. “Stevie and I made it back from college in time to be with him when he died, but I don’t know if he realized we were there.”

“I’m sure he did.”

Something changes around the edges of his mouth and the corners of his eyes. I’d swear he wants to smile… but he won’t let himself. And he should, because for a second I catch a glimpse of the man he could be, and it’s wondrous.

“Maybe,” he says, shrugging his shoulders, like he’s pulling the mantle of sadness back on.

“What did you do?” I ask. “Did you stay on at college?”

He nods his head. “Yeah. But there was a lot to work out. My parents both had life insurance, and they owned a property, which was mine to keep, or to sell. I wasn’t sure what to do, but about two months after Dad died, this place went up for sale.”

“The bar?”

“Yes. The guy who owned it before had left town, owing money to a lot of people. There were legal hoops to be climbed through, but once that was done, the place was sold to pay his debts.”

“I see… and you bought it?”

“Eventually. Yes. I had a few legal hoops to get through myself, including selling Mom and Dad’s house, but once it was done, we moved in here.”

“We?”

“Yeah. I was living with Stevie by then. I had been all the way through college, and as well as helping me deal with my parents’ deaths, she was the one who convinced me I could make a go of this.” He glances around, although he doesn’t move his head, just his eyes, bringing them back to focus on me.

“What was it like?” I ask.

“Living here with Stevie?” he says, clearly confused.

“No. The place itself. Did it need much work?”

“More than you can imagine.”

“Why?”

“The guy’s financial problems had taken their toll. We had to rip out almost everything in here and start again, and as for upstairs…” He rolls his eyes, shaking his head at the same time.

“Was it bad?”

“It was worse. We lived in just one room for ages, because the others were either being used for storage, or were uninhabitable.”

“It sounds awful.”

“Except it wasn’t.”

“Because you were doing it with Stevie?” I say and he flinches at the mention of her name, even though he’s said it himself.

“I—I guess,” he says, and although I can tell this is hard for him, he steps forward, like he’s worked out that talking is helping, and he wants to do it some more. “We’d never spent that much time together before…”

“But you said you lived with her all the way through college.”

“I know, but I’d worked two jobs so we could eat and pay rent on our apartment.”

“Didn’t Stevie work too?”

“No. She was studying.”

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