I glanced at my hand, staring at the silver band. Tori had taken hers off? I hadn’t noticed. I wondered if she’d taken it off before leaving the hotel room that morning or after. Not that it mattered one way or another.
“I had too much salt last night at dinner. Hand’s swollen.” I tried to pull the ring off and was grateful that it was actually a struggle. “The wedding, it was a joke. Really. Of course I like her; who wouldn’t? But I’m serious when I say that she and I are temporary.”
“Don’t blame you,” Vince said and hiccupped. “Girls are trouble anyway.”
“Is that why you’re always trying to get their numbers?” Seth asked, shifting his teasing to a new victim.
“Damn straight.”
The waiter returned with another beverage for Vince, much to our surprise, and he downed it before the waiter had finished clearing our plates from the table.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
Seth: Can you help me get him to bed tonight?
I thought of Tori and our unfinished business that I was eager to follow through with. With no small regret, I nodded at Seth across the table just as the women returned.
It turned out that getting Vince to bed had been a significantly more difficult event than the night Tori had helped me. He’d argued with us just inside the doors of the hotel about getting one more drink at the bar. Tori had lingered long after Nicole had disappeared behind the elevator doors, but after an unsuccessful attempt of leading Vince directly to the elevators, I’d kissed her and told her to head up to the room.
“Sorry,” Seth said to me while Vince was in the bathroom of the hotel bar. “Hate to ruin your plans, but he pulled this shit last night, too.”
“After dinner at Deb and Bob’s?”
Seth nodded. “We didn’t make it past reception before he was whining about having a nightcap in the bar. Which turned into three drinks. Nicole fell asleep in her clothes waiting for me.” Seth sighed and let his head drop back against the wall outside the restrooms. “I thought if I had backup tonight, he’d go right up to his room. But no such luck.”
“Well, you don’t need to apologize to me. I’m sorry you were flying solo last night. You could’ve called me.”
“I almost did.” He gave me a grim smile. “We gotta do something about Vinny. He’s in bad shape. I think I’ve seen him consume his body weight in alcohol these last four days.”
I ran a hand over my head. Seth wasn’t wrong; it was alarming seeing Vince get drunk every single night. The problem was, I didn’t know if this was a frequent thing or new since Will’s death. We all coped in our own ways and often those ways were unhealthy, but Vince’s wasn’t just unhealthy—it was dangerous.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “He doesn’t listen to me. He won’t.”
“I worry what will happen to him after this week is over. Does he drink like this back home in Cali? Does he travel home safely after a night of drinking? God, it’s like we all just scattered across the country and the only thing that kept us sort of together was Will. Now that he’s gone, what will happen?”
“I don’t know,” I said quietly. It was a worry of mine too. Being Vince’s babysitter was easy when we were all staying in the same building. But once we were back to our normal lives, what then?
I glanced at my watch. It was well after one in the morning. I knew from Tori’s conversation with Naomi and Nicole that she had a class to teach in just a few hours, which meant she’d be out of bed before me again. Selfishly, I wanted to go upstairs and wake her up, finish where we left off before dinner. But I wouldn’t.
Vince stumbled out of the bathroom and crashed into the wall beside Seth. “Whoops,” he said. “Ready to go to bed, guys?” His eyes were half-closed, and his mouth was slack.
“Let’s go, big guy.” Seth wrapped his arm around Vince’s back and we half dragged, half carried him to the elevators.
After we got him settled in his room, Seth and I parted ways. These late nights were catching up to me, so even though I’d had a brief, passing thought to wake Tori up for some more of what we’d started, I knew I was mere minutes