Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 121210 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 121210 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 606(@200wpm)___ 485(@250wpm)___ 404(@300wpm)
I should’ve been with my baby sister Jezzy that day my mother’s neglect ended with her drowning in the bathtub. I should’ve never left Norah for Red Bridge. And I should’ve been with Grandma Rose when she had her stroke. And I should’ve found a way to embrace my happiness and time with Clay.
“Jose?” a raspy voice whispers, startling me from my self-beratement.
Wide-eyed and hopeful, I lift my head to find Clay looking right at me. Warm honey and a soft smile, the man I love is back.
“Clay?”
“Baby, what happened?” His voice is dry and raspy and is the most gorgeous fucking sound I’ve ever heard in my life.
“Oh, thank God!” I cry out and lean forward to wrap my arms gingerly around his shoulders. “We were in an accident. We—”
“The glass,” he says, his clarity coming back quickly. “It was in my stomach, wasn’t it?”
I nod. “And you yanked it out. There was so much blood.”
“Dumb fucking move.” He laughs and then immediately stops on a groan. “Shit, that hurts. Are you okay?”
“I was so scared. I thought I lost you,” I tell him instead of answering his question. And I press kisses to his cheeks and lips and eyes and forehead. “I thought I lost you forever.”
“You’ll never lose me, Josie. You couldn’t get rid of me even if you tried.”
After The Moment: Part 6
The What I Wish I Would’ve Done
47
Clay
Tuesday, September 14th
“Fill her up!” Bennett shouts and slams his hand down on the top of my bar. The rocks glass that used to be filled with Pappy’s bourbon is so dry, I wonder if he licked the fucking cup to get every last drop.
It’s a little after midnight, and besides a few regulars, he’s the only customer I’ve been serving drinks to for what feels like the whole night. I tried to keep a mental count when he started up this drinking session, but after five glasses and when he started to just steal the bottle from behind the bar and pour his own refills, I couldn’t keep track.
The wheels have completely fallen off.
I know it’s a normal phase of grief and that, with our support, it’ll pass. But seeing my best friend like this—suffering so completely—and not being able to stop it is a vulnerable feeling I can’t explain.
I try to ignore him, try to pretend I’m busy with something at the cash register, but the drunk bastard starts shouting, “Anotha one! And anotha one! And anotha one!” Every fifth “Anotha one!” he adds, “DJ Khalid!”
It’d be funny if it weren’t so fucking sad.
When a few of my regulars start giving me annoyed looks because Bennett’s voice is drowning out the music, I head over to him on a sigh. I rest my elbows on the bar in front of him and lean forward to meet his eyes.
His face is a mask of bloodshot eyes and a lazy smile. He’s so numbed by the bourbon that he’s lucky if he knows his name at this point.
“How ya feelin’, Ben?”
“Like somebody kick-ed me in the dick and yank-ed my heart out of my chest. But that Poppy does reallll good with pain.” He smiles then and tries to pick up his glass, but he ends up shoving it off the bar instead. It hits the floor with a shattering bang. “Whoopsies. Anotha one! Ha! DJs Khalids!”
Four days have passed since we laid Summer to rest, and while this is the first night he’s shown up at my bar to use alcohol as a solution, I have a feeling it won’t be the last. Bennett has an unfortunate history of using shit like alcohol to numb pain, and with his sister Breezy gone back to New York this morning, there’s no one in his house to ride his ass about staying away from it anymore.
I understand she had shit to get back to, but it’d do Bennett and everyone else a whole hell of a lot of good if she’d just move here.
“I’ll pour you another one, but only under one condition.”
His head lolls to the side. “What?”
“Give me your keys.”
“What, you ’fraid I’m gonna get killed in a wreck or somethin’?” he questions on a laugh. Sober Ben would know that question’s not funny at all, but drunk Ben doesn’t give a shit. “Might be nice, dude. I already feel like dyin’ anyway.”
“Don’t be an asshole,” I tell him, my voice hardened by my own shitty baggage. For a fraction of a second, his face sobers.
Not only is his teasing bluntly inconsiderate to me—having nearly died in an accident myself—but it’s the kind of bullshit his daughter would be disgusted and disappointed to hear him saying.
Chastened, he wrestles his keys from his pocket and drops them on the bar with a clank. I grab them, slip them into my pocket, and then, begrudgingly, follow through with my end of the deal. Though, this time, I discreetly fill three-fourths of his cup with water and top it off with a little bourbon instead.