At First Hate (Coastal Chronicles)

I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t change any of it, and I needed to be in Savannah to deal with all of this anyway. But it didn’t make any of it easier. I just wanted my Gran back.

“Where to?” Maddox asked.

“I need a drink.”

“All right. There’s a dive bar that I like—”

“No. Not in public,” I said automatically. “Just… I don’t know. Let’s go to the liquor store.”

Maddox nodded. “We’ll get through it together.”

He drove through downtown, nabbing a parking spot directly in front of the nicest local liquor store. Not generally the store I’d drop into, but I had to admit, it had a better selection.

Maddox followed me inside, but we split up as he went for the beer and I headed for the wine. I wanted to get a few bottles. I still had enough brandy at Gran’s to make a few sidecars. I’d watched Gran drink them for years and fallen in love with them when she finally let me have one of my own.

I added a few bottles of red and white into my basket and then went to take a look at the mixers. I turned the corner in the mixer aisle and nearly dropped the basket.

“Holy shit,” I hissed. “Ash?”

Ash Talmadge looked up at me, and I nearly swore again. Ash had been Lila’s on-again, off-again since high school. They’d called it off this summer, and I hadn’t seen him since then. I’d assumed that he was upset, but I hadn’t assumed that he would look like… this.

Normally, Ash was carefully buttoned up with short brown hair and piercing blue eyes. He was a wealthy Holy Cross boy who still worked with his father in real estate. The Talmadges owned half of downtown at this point. I’d seen him after he got into a car accident and broke a few ribs, and he’d looked better then than he did now.

His wrinkly polo was unbuttoned with the collar popped with khakis and flip-flops. I’d never seen him in flip-flops. I hadn’t been sure he even owned them. He had a little more than a five o’clock shadow. I’d only ever seen him freshly shaven. Then there were the sunglasses… he was wearing inside. Oh, and the entire shopping cart full of alcohol.

He stalled abruptly when he saw me. Something flashed across his face, and then he looked away. “Hey, Mars.”

“Are you… are you okay?” I asked, closing the distance.

“Fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“Thanks. Real nice,” he grumbled. “What are you even doing in town?”

“Gran died,” I whispered. I hated saying those words.

He looked over at me again and slowly removed his sunglasses. His eyes were bloodshot, and he had dark bruises under them, as if he hadn’t been sleeping since Lila left. “I’m sorry. I hadn’t heard.”

“Yeah. She’d been sick for a while. I thought we had more time.”

“Sorry, Mars.”

I nodded and choked back tears again. “Thanks. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You were wearing sunglasses inside,” I pointed out. “And you have a cart full of alcohol.”

“Been a rough couple months. And I’m throwing a party.”

“Yeah?”

“Labor Day out on the yacht.”

I remembered quite a few parties that he’d thrown out on the yacht. I was usually invited because of Lila. This was all new territory. And while I was Lila’s best friend, I’d been around Ash too long to let him crawl into this shell of himself. I was worried about him.

“That sounds fun.”

“Eh,” he said noncommittally. “It will be something to do to pass the time rather than being alone.”

I winced. Jesus, he was in a terrible place. “Are you sure you shouldn’t just go see a therapist instead? What happened with Lila—”

“Stop,” he spat. “Don’t say her name.”

“Sorry,” I said quickly. “I didn’t mean to…”

He slid the glasses back into place. “I don’t want to talk about my feelings. I don’t want to talk about her. I just want to get drunk. You can come to the party if you don’t mention her.”

“Ash…”

“Are you coming or not?”

“Yeah,” I said finally. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

Mostly to keep an eye on him. He was nosediving into the worst version of himself. I had some experience with that.

Ash wandered off, and Maddox found me a few minutes later.

“Whoa, did you see Ash Talmadge?” He whistled with his hand out like an airplane and then made a crashing sound.

“Well, he’s been through shit. He invited me to a yacht party on Monday. Want to go?”

“Nope. We only went before because of Lila.”

“Yeah, but I’m worried about him.”

“Can’t blame the dude.”

“No, me neither.”

Still, just because I got Lila in the breakup didn’t mean that I couldn’t check on Ash. I just wouldn’t tell her about it.

“Don’t you think Derek will be there?” Maddox asked once we were in the car again.

“Fuck. I didn’t think about that,” I muttered. “Well, I’ll be there for Ash. I can avoid him, right?”