Page 3 of Endlessly Yours
ONE YEAR LATER.
I was drunk. The amount of whiskey in my system was probably an issue. But I needed all of the alcohol. Every ounce in this bar if I had to. I couldn’t be at home for this, and I didn’t want to. I had already ignored the countless phone calls. The sad looks from our neighbors.
We all knew what today was.
I lost my wife one year ago today, and drinking wasn’t going to bring her back.
But maybe I could pretend for this moment.
I was at an airport hotel bar of all places, having driven hours just to get out of my neighborhood, get out of the places that reminded me of the woman that I loved.
Somehow I had ended up near a major airport, and figured I would get on a plane and go somewhere. I didn’t know where. I had a bag, and I’d fly somewhere. Do something spontaneous and uncaring. Anything that wasn’t Brooks Wilder. For now, I would spend the night in this airport bar and think of something to do next. And get drunk.
“Another,” I said into the din, and the bartender nodded, filling up my glass. Someone sat next to me, but I didn’t bother to look over. The place was busy, people milling about, waiting for the hours to pass before they could go to sleep, and then hitch a ride onto the shuttle.
I knew that I wasn’t making any sense. I was just going wherever the wind blew me. Only I didn’t want to stand still. Because standing still would mean I would have to think of Amara.
“A glass of rosé please,” a soft voice said from beside me, and I saw a woman out of the corner of my eye lower her shoulders in a deep sigh.
The bartender shook his head. “Sorry, we don’t have any of that. White or red.”
“Then how about whatever he’s having,” she said, using her thumb to point toward me.
The bartender immediately poured her two fingers of whiskey, and she nodded, before tilting her glass toward mine.
“Cheers.”
I didn’t feel like adding to that, but before I could say so or move my glass, she knocked back the entire glass in one sip and didn’t even shudder.
Well, damn.
“Another please,” she said, and the bartender gave us a look, before shrugging and pouring us some more. “You really don’t have good taste in whiskey, but thanks,” the woman muttered next to me, and I didn’t really know why she was talking to me, but I continued to drink.
And again.
And again.
NOW.
I sat on a wooden bench that I had built with my own hands, staring off into the land that my family now owned. I was born a Wilder, but now I was a Wilder with my brothers and cousins, building something that meant something.
The sun was starting to set, and it was about damn time since it was nearly nine o’clock. I never really realized how close to the equator South Texas was. Well, it wasn’t that close, but far closer than up north.
Someone sat next to me on the bench, breaking me out of my geography reverie, and by the vanilla scent hitting my nose, I knew exactly who it was.
“I don’t really want to talk,” I growled, annoyed with myself for speaking first.
“I know you don’t.” Rory didn’t say anything else, and the two of us stared off into the distance, the sun taking its damn time to set beyond the horizon.
“Why are you here?” I asked, not speaking of this bench. But this town, this retreat.
“Because I have nowhere else to go.”
And with that kind of answer, I didn’t have much to say, so I sat next to the first woman that I had slept with after my wife had died, and didn’t say a damn word.
And I swore I could hear Amara whisper in the wind, “Try. For me.”
And I cursed under my breath and ignored that vanilla scent.
