Whiskey Moon

The screen door creaks open, pulling me out of my head, and from the corner of my eye, I spot Blaire emerging.

“I wondered where you ran off to,” she says, helping the door close gently, like she remembers the way it used to slam.

With her purse hooked on her shoulder, she struts across the wooden floorboards, lets it fall down her arm, and takes the seat beside me—an unexpected move.

“I miss this,” she says with a soft sigh. “I miss your family. I miss your mama. I miss all the things I never knew I was missing out on. I miss feeling like I belonged somewhere with all of my … eccentricities.”

My jaw tenses before I offer a simple, “Me too.”

We linger in a moment of silence, a small tribute to what might have been.

“It was real,” she says, “wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, Blaire. It was real.” I rake my hand along my tight jaw. The fact that she doubted any of it for a second breaks my heart in two, though I can’t blame her. “I meant what I said the other night … I’m sorry for hurting you.”

“You don’t have to say the things you think I want to hear.”

“That’s not what I’m—”

“—My father told me about his first love the other night.” She smooths her palms along the tops of her thighs. “And how if he’d have married her, he never would’ve met my mother. I need to accept the fact that you’re not my person anymore … that maybe you never were.”

Her words are sharp, but they cut like a rusted blade: jagged and tortuous.

The truth lingers on the tip of my tongue, bitter and biting and begging to be breathed to life.

Ironic how the very person who gave her the speech about first loves—is the same person standing in the way of us being together.

She wasn’t gone to NYC but six weeks when her father called me out of the blue and asked me to meet him for lunch to discuss Blaire. In my teenage naivete, I assumed he was planning some sort of surprise trip or welcome home party or something he wanted me to be a part of.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

He told me she was homesick, that she called every week begging for him to move her home, and he blamed me. He told me to back off, to let her live the life she needed to live. At the time, I was aware of her wanting to leave the city, but I always talked her out of it. And I always promised her I’d be waiting when she got back someday. Not to mention, we only spoke a few times a week.

“I want you to stop returning her calls,” he told me.

“I’ll back off, but I’m not going to disappear on her,” I said, my chest puffed with the misplaced confidence of a man bringing a knife to a gunfight.

“Fine. You’ll do it gradually. Over the next couple of weeks. Cut your conversations shorter each time. Tell her how busy you are. And then one day you’ll just … stop calling her back,” Oliver instructed. “She’ll be hurt of course. There’s no way around that. But she’ll reprioritize and she’ll focus on herself and her education. She’ll be fine.”

“With all due respect, sir,” I told him, “I’m in love with your daughter, and if I’m going to back off, I’m going to give her a reason. I’m not going to just abandon her. She’d never forgive me.”

I’ll never forget the flash in Oliver’s eyes in that moment—it’s as if it was the whole point. He wanted me to forsake her in such a way that her love would turn to hate.

I refused, storming out of the restaurant in a fury, jamming my key into my truck, and peeling off in a cloud of burnt rubber. Later that night, I called Blaire when I knew she’d be out of class, but my call wouldn’t go through. Either her line had been temporarily disconnected or he’d contacted their carrier and had my number blocked. The bastard was already several steps ahead of me. He must’ve handled that before I’d even set foot in the restaurant that day.

The following morning, my father passed away—and in the week that followed, we were caught in a dust storm of funeral arrangements and unearthing the state of financial ruin he’d left us in.

I still couldn’t reach Blaire—getting a pre-recorded message every time I’d call.

Didn’t have her email address since we’d always texted and called.

Her school directory was private.

Nothing but a string of dead ends.

It wasn’t but a day after we buried my father when Oliver showed up at our door with an offer we couldn’t refuse. Given that he and my mother were “old friends,” he proposed to buy our operation and let Mama lease it back at a fair price. While Mama thanked him with tears in her eyes, he pulled me aside on his way out the door and told me in no certain terms that he’d take every last thing we had if I so much as thought about contacting his daughter ever again.