Alex gave me a quick squeeze before we wove through the club’s entrance. “Let’s have a good time tonight, okay? You deserve one.”
I nodded. Not because I thought I was actually capable of having a good night so soon after the break up to end all break ups, but because Alex had gone out of her way to try to cheer me up. I could pretend it was helping as a way to show my gratitude.
The club was very Seattle cool. During spring break my senior year of school, I’d gone to a nightclub in L.A. with my boyfriend of the month. It’s a long story . . . Anyways, that club, the L.A. glamour scene, was the polar opposite to a Seattle club. Seattle was full of rich tech nerds who still lived with their moms, gray-suited business women who’d forgotten how to smile, and young hipsters who thought world peace was a possibility. There wasn’t a market for glam up there.
The club was understated, the music wasn’t too loud, the majority of people had some locally made craft beer clutched in their fist, and there wasn’t a single sequin to be found. As clubs went, it was a solid spot to get together and pass the night away with friends. There were worse places I could have been.
There were also better places, much better places, but I tried not to think about that anymore. I could have called any of the Walkers, Garth, or Josie to talk. I knew none of them would hang up on me. They were the closest thing to family I had. But they’d been Jesse’s family first. They were his before they were mine, and I didn’t want to put them in the awkward position of choosing sides. I would never force them to make that choice, but it was human nature to pick sides. It was hard to be neutral. So I hadn’t talked to anyone at Willow Springs in weeks. It wasn’t a tenth as painful as not talking to Jesse, but it hurt like hell just the same.
I followed Alex and Sid through the crowd as they made their way to a free table in the back.
“What do you ladies want? I’ll go start a tab.” Sid pulled out a chair for Alex and one for me.
“Surprise me,” Alex answered, tugging on one of Sid’s dreads.
“Rowen?”
I wanted a shot. Actually, I wanted a line of them. Hold that . . . How about just bring me a bottle? That’s what I wanted. It’s not what I needed, though. I plopped into my chair and sighed. “I’ll have an amber.”
Sid waved his acknowledgment, then disappeared into the crowd.
“So I know this probably isn’t a great time to bring this up”—Alex scooted closer to me—“but have you decided what you’re going to do when I move out? Are you going to find another roommate or move into something smaller?”
I groaned. Alex had told me a while back that she’d be moving out at the end of the school year. Sid had asked her to move in, and she’d agreed. When I’d told Jesse over spring break that I was pretty sure Alex was making one giant mistake, he’d laughed and said sometimes what we think are the giant mistakes in life turn out to be the best decisions. As usual, thoughts of Jesse delivered a sharp pain to my chest. I tried to bury those thoughts. At least temporarily. They never stayed permanently buried.
“Do you really have to move out? I mean, do you really think Sid’s going to be a better roommate than me? I bet he walks around nak*d and drinks milk out of the jug.”
Alex smiled wickedly. “A girl can dream.”
“What happens if you move in together and then break up a week later? Talk about hostile living conditions. You really should just stay with me and save yourself the worry.” I knew it was a futile argument, but I still had to make it.
Then Alex flashed her hand in front of my face. Her left hand. “If that man calls it off, he is not getting this back.”
An engagement ring. A sparkly, emerald cut engagement ring. I felt two things at that moment: excitement for my friend and sadness for myself. I shoved the second emotion aside; that moment wasn’t about me. It was about Alex, a girl I’d been certain would never let an engagement ring come within arm’s length of her left hand.
But then she found her soul mate and that all changed. I’d found mine, too. And I’d lost him.
I had to force a smile, but I didn’t have to force the genuine happiness I felt for her. “Holy crap, Alex. Congratulations.” I gave her a big hug before taking a closer look at her ring. Truly, it was lovely. Sid had to have sold a lot of doughnuts to pay for that baby. “Let me guess. The wedding dress is going to be black?”
Alex feigned a look of insult. “With a few splashes of scarlet thrown in.”
“I’m so happy for you. My little girl’s growing up so fast.” I gave her cheeks a pinch before she slapped my hand away.
“We’re pretty damn excited about it, too. Sid and I are kind of one giant mess on our own, but when we’re together . . . Well, it’s a beautiful thing. We’re functionally dysfunctional, but somehow, it works, Rowen. It works.” Alex was staring off into nothing and smiling. She was so happy. I’d give anything to feel that way again. Any. Thing.
I glanced toward the bar, hoping Sid was on his way back because I really needed a good chug of that beer. Then I saw another familiar face coming our way.
“Shit. That is Rowen Sterling. And now I can die a happy man because I got to see the face of the girl who rocked my f**king world one more time.”
I had to do a double take, but the giant panther tattoo running down his arm confirmed it. “Cillian? Cillian Sullivan? And now I can die a happy woman because I got to do this one more time to your face.” I lifted my middle finger at him.
He laughed first, but mine followed shortly after.
“Hey, girl. How’s it going?” Cillian gave me a hug, which took me by surprise. Back when we’d “dated” in high school, he hadn’t been one for showing physical affection. Or at least, not the fully clothed kind.
“I’m doing okay. How about you?” I asked after he settled into the fourth chair at the table.
“Can’t complain. I’m in town because my band’s playing a few opening gigs, then it’s another town, and another one after that.” From what I’d known of Cillian, that meant fresh cities of women who couldn’t have heard about the love ‘em and leave ‘em guy Cillian was.
“Living the dream, eh?”
He nodded, shooting me a wink.
“This is my friend and soon-to-be traitor roommate.” I smiled over at Alex, who looked like she wanted to flip me off. “This is Cillian. We went to school together and were . . . friends.” I’d told Alex enough about my past for her to know exactly what kind of friend Cillian had been.
Cillian tilted his chin at me as if to say, our secret’s safe with me. “I was the foreign exchange student with an Irish accent who drove the prim and proper American prep school girls wild. Plus, I had a lot of tattoos and smoked.”
“Hold up.” Alex held out her hands. “You play in a band, you have tattoos, and you smoke? That’s, like, a combination I’ve never heard of. You are a rare find, my exchange student bad-boy friend.”
Cillian nudged me. “I like this girl. She reminds me a bit of you when we first met.”
“What bit?”
Cillian’s dark eyes glimmered. “The crazy bit.”
“It takes one to know one.” I kind of wanted to wipe the smile off of his face, but it was a nice smile. I hadn’t appreciated it back in high school. What had turned me on then was a cigarette dangling from his lips, or that unimpressed expression he’d meticulously perfected. A smile meant a lot more to me now than it once had.
“I’d cheers to that if I had a drink.”
“Looks like I’m one short, brother.” Sid came up behind Cillian balancing three pints of beer.
“No worries. I couldn’t drink one even if you’d brought an extra.”
“Why not? Did you wear your liver out already?” I asked him. Cillian and I had singlehandedly consumed so many bottles of alcohol that we’d probably kept a tequila factory in production during our high school years. We got drunk together, then had sex in our drunken stupor, then got even more drunk so we’d forget about hav**g s*x. Which we’d have again when we’d gotten shit-faced yet again. It had been a vicious cycle, and one part of me always assumed our fast lives would lead to early graves.
But there we were, a couple years later, both alive and sober.
“I kind of had to go through a court-ordered twelve-step program,” he answered, shifting in his seat. “If for any reason a cop were to test me and I had even a trace of alcohol in my system, I’d be spending a few nights in a cell.”
“That’s extreme. What extreme thing did you do to deserve that?” I asked.
“I wrapped a car around a pole because I was drunk.”
“Yikes,” I muttered.
“Dumbass.” Alex’s reply wasn’t a mutter.
I smiled. “So that earned you court-ordered sobriety?”
Cillian shrugged. “Since it was my second time doing it, yeah.”
Sid’s face ironed out in surprise.
“And it was a stolen car. Not intentionally stolen,” Cillian added, lifting his hands. “I was just so rip-roaring drunk I couldn’t tell the difference.” Alex shook her head and grumbled another Dumbass. “And the pole happened to be a streetlight in front of the police commissioner’s house. Whose grandkids play in his front yard a lot. In fact, I think they might have been there that morning.” Cillian looked up, thinking.
“That morning? Shit, Cillian, what were you doing drunk driving in the morning?”
“I was still drunk from the night before.” I did my best to give him a parental look of disapproval. All he did was laugh. “No one was hurt, Rowen. Insurance fixed the car, the city fixed the streetlight, and the court fixed me by not letting me drink.”
“And how’s sobriety going for you?” From the looks of it, he’d had a few. Maybe I was wrong, but I knew that lazy smile of his and the way he liked to lean in real close when he was talking to someone.
Opening the flap of his jacket, he reached into one of the inside pockets and pulled out a tiny glass bottle. “Fucking fantastically.” He twisted off the top, lifted it ceremoniously, and downed the whole bottle in one gulp.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” I said, shaking my head.
“One of us had to. And it obviously wasn’t you.” Cillian eyed my full beer before reaching in for another bottle.
Through the rest of the night, I surprised myself by actually having a decent time. I was out with one old and a couple new friends, laughing, dancing, and trying to pretend my life was as great as it had been the past year.
Cillian downed a couple more bottles, but really, from what I knew of his tolerance, a handful of tiny glass bottles was like anyone else having a sip of beer. After chatting and bantering, I realized that high school wouldn’t have blown so badly if Cillian and I could have been real friends. The kind that didn’t only use friendship to cover up getting wasted and laid. Oh, well. There was no going back and, even if there was a way, I’d rather die—not an exaggeration—than relive my high school years of hell.