being sent home from school yesterday because she kissed a boy. She’s five. Clearly, she’s been taking notes from Dylan, who lives with Mal, but whatever. I was kissing boys at that age too. Hey, maybe that’s where I went wrong.
I don’t know why, maybe because of the kissing talk, or they never left, but my thoughts rush to Lincoln, and I hate that I’m thinking of him so easily. And then I think about his wife, and I wonder how she died. I doubt he’s ever going to tell me.
Mal, Dylan, and I fight over sausage and eggs Everett made us when Avie’s office door cracks open. I’ll give a guess as to who surfaces.
If you thought to yourself, I bet it’s Presley. You’d be right. And she’s wearing the same clothes as yesterday, and if you look close enough behind the door that gets shut quickly, you can faintly make out Avie asleep on the couch.
“Sleep over?” Dylan asks, seemingly satisfied the conversation is no longer on her marriage-wrecking ways.
Presley startles, her hand on her chest. “What are you guys doing here?”
Mal looks down at her phone in her hand and then sets it down on the counter behind us. “It’s past eleven in the morning. We open in twenty minutes.”
“Oh, right,” Presley rushes to add, trying to juggle her shoes in one hand and her purse in the other. She drops one shoe on the ground in the process. “Yeah, I know that.”
Smiling, I lean my elbows onto the bar. “Good night?”
Presley’s cheeks flush. “I was just helping him with deliveries. Fell asleep.”
“Uh-huh.” Dylan steps toward her, picks her shoe up, and precariously sets it on the top of Presley’s purse. “Babe, your shirt’s on backward.”
Presley’s eyes snap to her chest. “Oh, uh.” Sighing, she gives up. “Fine. I fucked him. Happy?”
Dylan leans her hip into the bar, her eyes dancing with amusement. “Details please.”
Mal makes a gagging sound. “No. No way. Please don’t. I don’t want to know anything.”
I guess that confirms on her end that she and Avie haven’t been boning like Presley thought. Even though I knew that already, you can literally see the rush of relief pass over Presley’s face in that moment.
Presley gives Dylan details, and I avoid them. I’m with Mal. No way do I want to know anything about what they did in that office. It’s bad enough he’s my brother, and worse yet, I do filing in that office. Everything I touch, I’m gonna wonder what else it touched. Not exactly a thought I want to have.
Twenty minutes later, Avie comes out of the office, his hair matted to one side and looking just as tired as I left him earlier this morning. He says nothing to any of us and leaves. Presley’s shoulders sink. “It’s so hard to know what he’s thinking.”
“Girl, I can relate.” I don’t tell her about what happened earlier this morning with Lincoln, or me giving Bear my phone number to give to Lincoln like some kind of teenage girl with a crush. And then I think to myself, is that what I have, a crush? Why had I fallen so easily and effortlessly with this guy?
I don’t know why. Maybe because, despite his lack of sharing for words, I find myself inexplicably drawn to him. I remember one time when I was about thirteen and had my first taste of loving a boy. Don’t worry, it wasn’t Damien. But I do remember asking my mom how she met dad and if she felt a connection with him right away. She told me, “Baby, your father, he destroyed my heart the day I met him and wrecked it for everyone else. I was nine, and I knew right then it’d be him.”
From then on, I had a fairy-tale version of what I thought love should look like. Only, it’s not real. You saw how it ended with Devereux. My love life is like torn pieces of paper you rip from a spiral notebook. While the paper rips off whole, the edges are flaky, and sometimes you leave pieces of yourself.
I stare at the jar at the end of the bar. The one with the rose petals we find lying around the bar. I’ve seen forever in a man’s eyes. I like to think there’s maybe still a few good ones out there like the man I compare everyone to.
The moment the Open sign bursts to life, the bar fills with regulars who spend their