Page 11 of Forever & Always You

Zach gives me a ride to the bar, because he has had one single glass of wine, whereas I have gulped down a second in an attempt to calm my nerves.

It doesn’t help that Mom is having a breakdown at the thought of me socializing with Austin Pierce, because the Pierces were never “our kind of people.” And yes, of course she accused Austin of being a drug dealer, and then of being my drug dealer, like the only possible reason we could have for hanging out is a nefarious one.

So, Zach and I ditched her as soon as dinner was wrapped up, even though she wailed from the front door as we reversed out of the drive.

We pull up outside the dive bar where I agreed to meet Austin, and my anxiety doubles. My stomach flips and flops so much, I feel like the only way to stop it might be to violently throw up.

Zach scrunches his nose up at the bar’s questionable exterior, but I won’t dare admit that Buck’s Tavern looked even worse. At least this bar has no graffiti on the door. He looks at me and asks, “ Are you doing drugs? Because .?.?.”

“ No ,” I say firmly. “Never.”

“Really? Never? Because I did for a while after Dad died.”

“Zach!”

He laughs as I punch his arm. “I took a couple pills; you dropped out of college. Let’s leave it at that.

” It’s beginning to grow dark outside, twilight settling over the city, and he flicks on the car’s interior lights to get a better look at me, or maybe so I can’t lie to his face.

“Why are you going for drinks with scruffy Austin, anyway? I didn’t know you guys were friends again. ”

“We’re not,” I say, then a sigh follows.

“What you said this morning? About me being Mom’s perfect daughter in high school?

You were right. I was awful, and I was especially awful to Austin.

I don’t like the person I’ve been the past ten years, and this disaster of a life I’m currently living since Dad passed? It’s my karma.”

“So this is .?.?. what?”

I meet my brother’s curious eyes and shrug, because at this point, I’m not entirely sure myself what I’m hoping for. “Redemption, maybe?”

“You think some vodka sodas in some crap bar in your hometown is going to fix what you did to Austin?” he says, and the hint of mockery in his question makes me feel stupid, like I’m some naive idiot for believing exactly that.

“Thanks for the ride,” I mumble, throwing off my seatbelt with a clang and stepping out of the car.

“Oh, Gabs, c’mon,” says Zach, leaning over the center console to catch my eye again before I slam the door shut.

And maybe it’s because I’m two glasses of wine deep and my adrenaline is pumping that I lean back into the car.

“I’m a loser, okay? A big fat loser, but I’ve sucked up this life for the past three years and I’ve served my time, so now I want to clean up the past and start thinking of my future.

Fuck, maybe I’ll even get around to being nice to Mom one day too.

But I can’t go back to Durham and live another year like this.

It kills me to admit it, but Dad would hate how things have turned out for me.

So no, I don’t think some drinks with Austin are going to redeem my character, but it’s a start.

And I have to start somewhere, Zach, because I’m already at rock bottom and the only way is up. ”

Zach widens his eyes as I catch my breath, because it’s probably the most I’ve expressed to him in our entire lifetime together.

We have a good relationship despite not seeing each other very often, but we don’t talk too deeply.

We catch up on things, but never discuss the fragility of our mental states.

“You seem determined,” he says.

“I am.”

“Then go talk to Austin.”

I shut the car door and wave goodbye as Zach drives off. The stomach thing becomes unbearable again. It’s jarring, being so nervous around Austin, when he was once the person I felt most comfortable with. I’m struggling a little bit with figuring out what’s causing the nerves—my guilt, or him.

I push down the rising nausea and head inside the bar.

It’s not the greatest, but it was the bar we walked past weekly on our way home from the recreation center, and we would joke immaturely about getting wasted in here as soon as we turned twenty-one.

Except, of course, we both moved away for college.

Oh, and also, we weren’t friends at twenty-one because I fucked him over. Yeah, mostly that part.

It’s Friday, so the bar is a full chorus of boozy voices.

I expect to find the clientele exactly like that of Buck’s Tavern—mostly old men sporting two-day-old body odor—but there’s a surprising mix of ages in here.

However, there is only one person that seems to have come straight from their corporate job, and that’s Austin.

I spot him at the bar, suit jacket folded over the empty stool next to him.

It’s been over an hour since we spoke at the house, so I wonder just how many drinks he’s managed to work through since then.

Warily, I approach from behind. “Hi.”

Austin cranes his neck to look at me, his hand gripped tightly around a glass on the bar in front of him. “Hi.” He throws back the dregs of his drink, exhales, then moves his suit jacket from the stool next to him. “Join me. Look, tequila.”

As I slink onto the stool, I dubiously study the two tequila shots on the bar as Austin slides one toward me.

There is no way I’m drinking that, because first of all, I have no idea how long those shots have been sitting there, getting all warm and gross, and two, I never accept drinks that I haven’t personally witnessed being poured. It’s a hard rule of mine.

I slide the shot glass back toward Austin. “Sorry, but I’d prefer a fresh one. Who knows what you’ve put in there?”

“Just arsenic,” Austin says with a smile, pushing the glass back again.

I bite my lip hard to stop a laugh escaping.

He always made me laugh when we were young, not because he was particularly witty with one-liners or perfectly timed jokes, but because of his unintentional goofiness.

He never knew just how hilarious he was, but now that he’s confident and knows he’s funny, I refuse to give him the satisfaction of hearing me laugh.

“Can I get another shot of tequila over here, please?” I call out to the bartender, and it feels slightly foreign being on the other side of the bar for a change.

I have to refrain from reaching over and grabbing the bottle of tequila myself.

When the bartender sets the shot glass down in front of me, I tell her to add it to Austin’s tab and then fix him with a sweet smile.

“So?” I prompt.

“So .?.?.?”

“Are you drunk enough to hear my apology?”

“Not quite,” Austin says. He grabs a shot glass. “Bottoms up, McKinley.”

I clink my glass against his. “Bottoms up, Pierce.”

We suck down our shots in unison, and while I’m screwing my face up and trying to shake away the bitter taste in my mouth, Austin grabs the spare shot and gulps that one too. He licks his lips without so much as a grimace.

“Show off,” I mutter. I flag down the bartender again and this time order something I actually enjoy that doesn’t feel like acid burning my throat — some cheap white wine—and Austin orders a beer.

“How’s the head?” he asks, casually resting an elbow up on the bar and swiveling his stool to face me.

His legs are so long, mine end up positioned between his knees.

His shirt sleeves are rolled up again, and the top button of his shirt is undone to reveal a dusting of chest hair.

I can tell he’s got a buzz on, because his expression is soft and lacks the hatred I know he feels toward me.

“Wasn’t fun washing my hair, but I think I got all the blood out,” I say, my hand subconsciously moving to my scalp, brushing over the sutures.

Honestly, I forgot about those. “Was I this clumsy when I was younger? Because I fear it’s a new development.

” As the bartender sets down our drinks, I gasp when realization sinks in.

“Shit, I shouldn’t be drinking with this damn concussion. ”

“No,” says Austin. “You probably shouldn’t.”

“But when this is my third glass of wine tonight, stopping now won’t make much of a difference, huh? Cheers.” I hold up my glass, and Austin taps his bottle of beer against it.

As he takes a swig, his gaze stays trained on me over the rim of the bottle. “You know, I think I prefer your hair like this. The curls are nice. Reminds me of sixth-grade Gabby.”

I frown into my glass of wine. “Sixth-grade Gabby was a lot nicer to you.”

“Yeah, she was,” he agrees. “I’d ask what happened to her, but by our sophomore year of high school, I’d already figured it out for myself.”

Ah. His tone is so soft, it makes his words cut even deeper. “I can’t defend the way I treated you. The only thing I can say is that I was a teenage girl, and teenage girls are really fucking stupid.”

“Don’t worry. I was an idiot too,” he says, then shakes his head. “A real idiot for letting you walk all over me for so long. But I was a kid with not many friends, so I had no choice but to let you treat me the way you did. Having shitty friends seemed better than having none at all.”

Maybe it’s because I’m semi-drunk that the corners of my eyes nip with tears. I blink hard to keep them at bay. “You were the most genuine friend I ever had, Austin.”