Emotions warring, I rip my eyes away. What can I say? There’s nothing to say. I feel more like an outsider than I ever have.
Sean’s wife.
She’s probably in on more secrets than I can possibly imagine. Speechless, bag in hand, I turn to leave, and she stops me by speaking up.
“I’m sorry, Cecelia. You didn’t deserve that. But I just can’t look at you without thinking about the beginning.” She lets out a labored breath. “It took me a long time to get close to him. At one point, I almost gave up. And when I found out it was you who…” our eyes lock, “I guess I started to resent you a little and your place with him. All those days I dressed you…” she shakes her head as if clearing the memories and shrugs, but I feel the weight of the act. “Small towns can be a bitch, right? But that was a long time ago. I can’t fault you for being with him, can I?”
Tears threaten as I look back at her and imagine her struggle to try and build something with a man who was closed off due to the loss of his best friend and the woman who he felt betrayed him.
“I don’t know what to say.” Guilt eats me alive, and she gives me a solemn nod. I palm the handle on the door. “You have to know I’m no threat to you. I would never—”
“He would never,” she corrects me confidently. “But, he’s not why you’re back.”
She knows.
She knows my history. And I could give her a number of reasons for my sudden appearance that has nothing to do with her husband, but she’s no fool, and she’s not out for blood.
“Be careful, Cecelia. You know well not everything is what it seems to be.”
It’s not a warning. These are words of caution from an old friend. She’s throwing me a bone, and I accept it. She’s not threatening me, but she clearly resents the fact that I’m here.
And she’s not alone.
I say the only thing I can as the winter wind whips at me from where I stand with the door partially open. “Take care, Tessa.”
Heavily buzzing, I enter the dark, dank bar as a flood of memories come rushing back. Not much has changed. The floor littered with the same small round tables and cheap wooden chairs. The walls glow with a slew of neon signs. The only addition is a thinly carpeted stage and karaoke machine set up next to the jukebox.
“Cecelia?”
Behind the bar, Eddie stands scrutinizing me. I greet him with a smile as visions of the past swim in my head. “Boys of Summer” by Don Henley drifts from the jukebox as if welcoming me back to that time, in this place. The lyrics haunting, fitting, wrapping me up inside them as I sink back into the history I lived here.
“Hey, Eddie.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” he says as I approach the bar. “He won’t like it.”
No question of who he is.
“Yeah, well, I have an issue with management, and I think it’s time we settled it. I’ll have a Jack and Coke.”
He slowly shakes his head while toweling off a pint glass.
“You really aren’t going to serve me?” I blow out a breath of frustration. “Really, Eddie? I thought we were friends.” I should know better by now. I’m starting to go blind from the gleam of the ‘Scarlet A’ on my chest. I left Tessa’s dress shop feeling like the Whore of Babylon. From the reactions of the people I used to feel safest with, I’ve been reduced to nothing but an old hood groupie.
“You shouldn’t be here, Cecelia,” he repeats.
“Don’t worry. I brought my own.” I pull my half drained brown bottle from my purse and lift it for him to see.
“You can’t bring that in here.”
I pull out my wallet and place a hundred down. “Then give me one.”
Reluctantly, he pulls a bottle of Jack and a glass up from behind the bar, and I sli
de the money over. He shakes his head, refusing it. “Thanks, Eddie.”
“He’s going to have my nuts for this.”
“But you’re good at keeping secrets, aren’t you?”