One Last Time (Loveless Brothers 5)

SethI head back to the brewery, feet scuffing over pavement and then crunching over the brown grass that’s been dead for a few months now, thin cold stalks still sticking out of the ground.

Apologizing. It was just that easy. I was a dick, and I apologized, and now — it seems — we’re back to the plan. Back to exchanging small talk at coffee shops and meaningless chatter about our families and our jobs and sometimes running into each other at the grocery store and discussing strawberries, that sort of thing.

It’s all right. It’s good enough. It’s at least better than fighting with her for no reason, then spending hours feeling as if someone’s cinched an anvil to my chest and I’ve got to drag it around.

Outside the back door to the brewery, I stop at the edge of the floodlight. Behind the building the thick forest is black, the sky above it the deepest blue, the grassy field surrounding the building charcoal gray.

This is January in Virginia: leached of color, cold but not a deep cold, dark but not a deep dark. Cold enough that I’m freezing in nothing but a t-shirt and jeans, not so cold that I can’t spend a moment gathering myself.

She touched me, twice. They feel like brands on my skin, like she’s imprinted the ridges and swirls of her fingerprints on me, even through my shirt. I rub my hand over them — neck, chest — my own fingers cold, but it doesn’t help. They’re still there.

Back to the plan, then. I take a deep, cold breath, look up at the sky.

I know it’s not there right now. During the winter it doesn’t come into the sky until it’s almost morning and then the rising sun obliterates the faint stars, but it doesn’t matter because I’ve always got it on me, haven’t I? Even if it’s faded to blue, the dots and lines slightly blurred, it’s still there.

“Grounds inspection go okay?” Eli asks the moment I cross the threshold.

The heat of his makeshift kitchen prickles across my skin, and the door closes behind me.

“Did you know there’s plants out there?” I ask, jerking my thumb at the door. “Just plants and plants, as far as the eye can see. Trees and grass and all kind of shit.”

Eli stops monitoring the grill for long enough to give me a half-concerned, half-what-the-fuck look.

“I suspected,” he says.

“Someone ought to do something,” I say, already walking away, toward the swinging doors that lead to the big room, heart booming even though I know for a fact that Delilah’s not there anymore.

She’s not out there and we’re back to the agreement.

My hands are still cold, and I rub them together, walking past the cabinet behind the bar where we keep the kegs. Another wave of goosebumps rises on my skin, now that the relative heat of the building has worn off, but I ignore it.

I walk. Away from the bar, away from Eli in the kitchen, cooking and noticing things. Away from the light and the noise and from anyone who could talk sense into me right now.

Back to the agreement.

Into the back of the brewery and between the massive metal tanks, the bready, sweet smell intensifying. I keep the lights off, because I know this path by heart. The only light I flick on is the one in my office, and only so I can see the display on my office phone.

It’s been two years, three months, and sixteen days since the last time she touched me on purpose. I don’t want to know that number but I can’t seem to help it, as if there’s a calendar in my head slowly ticking upward. I touch my hand to my lips, still cold, rub the back of my hand across my mouth and tell myself that this is a bad idea.

I punch the down arrow on the office phone until I find the phone number I’m looking for.

The receiver’s in my hand and in one motion I hit the call button, hold it to my ear, step back, turn off the light as if darkness will make what I’m about to do any better. I hold my breath as the other end of the line rings once, twice —

“Hello?” Vera’s voice says, and I finally exhale.Chapter FiveSethTwo Years, Three Months, and Sixteen Days AgoI flip on the lights in the storeroom, look around, and silently curse whoever’s been organizing our kegs, because they’re doing it the same way that my computer’s hard drive stores data: cramming random shit wherever it fits.

But while I can de-frag my computer by clicking something, defragging our storerooms involve a lot more physical labor. Usually, it’s my physical labor, because I’m the one with a specific filing system in mind. Sometimes Daniel helps, but he’s got Rusty to deal with so I let him off the hook.