Whiskey Moon

Numbness blankets my body. Even if Wyatt and I weren’t on speaking terms, I’d have expected him to reach out and tell me about the death of his father. I would’ve dropped everything and flown home to comfort him, no questions asked, because as hurt as I was by his actions, I still loved him.

Secretly, I still do—or at least a part of me still does. All I know is I think about Wyatt far more than I should, and there are moments I miss him—the him that I knew—more than I should. Love is complex like that. It’s as irrational and unpredictable and confusing.

“Think I’m going to head upstairs and unpack,” I say.

“Make yourself at home, sweetheart. Just glad to have you back.”

I find my suitcase at the bottom of the grand staircase, already covered in silvery-white cat hairs thanks to Odette’s fur children. Yanking the heavy thing up the wooden steps, I wheel it to the end of the hall until I find myself outside my bedroom door, paralyzed. Gathering a deep breath, I twist the knob and head inside. With the first footstep I’m transported back to a simpler time, where a fresh-faced, wide-eyed small-town girl once lived, laughed, and loved without a care in the world.

Closing the door, I take a seat in the white wicker chair in front of my old desk, gazing up at the bulletin board littered with a sea of photographs. Homecoming. Various high school theater productions. Dance recitals. Track meets. Silly selfies with friends. And in the center of them all is a picture of me with Wyatt. Rosy cheeks grinning wide, I’m looking at him like he hung the moon, the sun, and all the stars. My arms are wrapped around his broad shoulders and he’s looking down at me with his half-bitten smile and that signature gleam in his green-blue eyes.

I imagine him married now, giving that same gaze to another woman.

A thick tear slides down my cheek. With an angry swipe of my hand, it’s gone.

The end of this month would’ve been ten years from the date we made our pact.

Rising from the chair, I unzip my suitcase and pack my clothes into various dresser drawers before hanging a few items in my closet. But it’s in the midst of all of this that I stumble across one of Wyatt’s old plaid flannels … one he gave me the night before I left. I couldn’t fit it into my bags then, so I planned to come back for it and get it the next time.

Lifting the worn fabric to my nose, I inhale it like an emotional crazy person, telling myself this is good groundwork for future acting roles. Characters do this in film and TV all the time when they miss someone. This is nothing more than research.

But I’m not expecting it to smell exactly like him—the leather and the country air and sweet hay and all of those warm summer nights at the line shack.

I let myself have my moment before crumpling the shirt and tossing it on the floor of my closet, discarding it the way he discarded me.

If anything, maybe being home might do me some good.

Maybe I’ll get answers.

And closure.

Lord knows I need closure.

I need to be released from his invisible hold over me so I can finally move on.

3

Blaire

* * *

“Blaire?” a voice calls Wednesday morning from the end of the produce aisle at the Henderson Food and Drug. “Oh my gawd. Blaire Abbott …”

From the corner of my eye, a bottle blonde in a denim skirt and rhinestone-covered cowgirl boots pushes her cart in my direction before trotting around it, arms wide open.

“It’s been for-ev-er!” She wraps me in a perfumed hug—something I’ve grown used to not receiving in the city. People either stare through you or they do the air kiss. Huggers aren’t a thing in Manhattan. “How are you? And what are you doing back?”

It takes me a second before I realize I’m face to face with a girl from my former high school—Ivy Forsythe. Though the Ivy I knew was a wallflower string bean with mousy hair and a chest flatter than an ironing board. The Ivy before me is spray-tanned, bleached, and teased to the heavens. She reminds me of some of the big rancher’s wives back in the day; the ones who dressed like Southern Belles and retired beauty queens and loved nothing more than looking pretty on the arm of a bona fide cowboy.

I never would’ve guessed this path for her, but she radiates sunshine and bliss and if that isn’t all that matters, I don’t know what is.

“Ivy,” I say, leaning into her embrace. When she pulls away, I spot a glimmering diamond rock on her left finger. “How are you? It’s been so long.”