He lifts his eyebrows, not convinced. “You’re a sad sap, bro.”
“Am not,” I mutter, taking another shot of whiskey. “Seeing her was a shock, okay? I didn’t expect to ever see her again, let alone be her stepbrother. It’s weird. I don’t know how to handle it. I’ve known this girl my entire life. Everything I can remember has to do with her. She is in everything. Have you had that before? That kind of connection? I’ve climbed up the side of her house and snuck into her room just to watch TV with her, just to hang out. We went to every dance together. We had the chickenpox together. When her dad died, I was there for her. When my mom died, she was there for me. It isn’t as fucking black and white as you’re making it out to be. She was my only constant. So yeah, it was like losing a part of me. She was my family, in the sense of being a soulmate. I thought that’s what she was. So, can you just get off my fucking back about how I am acting and dealing? I don’t know how to deal with it. I was fine until I saw her. It brought back emotions I pushed aside.”
I slam the bottle of whiskey down, frustrated, and pissed off. Whiskey drips down the neck of the slender bottle onto my hand. My chest heaves, and instead of using the shot glass, I chug from the bottle directly. I’m so sick of explaining myself.
Hell, I’m tired of feeling like this too. It isn’t easy. I’m a man’s man. I don’t like feeling emotions. Everly is the one thing that makes me feel. I don’t have a choice. There isn’t an option to switch it off. I want to, fuck do I want to, but I can’t. I’ve tried. I keep trying. I won’t stop trying either. But until the day I can, I just have to figure out how to let her go. How do I let fifteen years of love go?
When there is an answer, I’ll fucking do it.
“Let it out, buddy,” he tells me as he slaps my shoulder with a reassuring grab afterwards.
I groan and put my head on the bar. “I’m not letting anything out. You’re just annoying me.”
“Shhh, love hurts. I know. It’s okay. Here.” He pours me another shot and slides it in front of me. And then pours himself a shot. “To heartache,” he cheers, lifting his glass in the air to toast.
“You’re an asshole.”
“I know.”
I shake my head and take the pity shot he poured me. Ten minutes later, he is wandering around the bar, talking to a woman with tattoos up and down her arms. Typical. My head swims, and my thoughts turn to Everly again. I think about the time her dad died. It doesn’t hurt as much, and I’m thanking the liquor for that. Everything is numb.
She was thirteen when he got hit by a drunk driver. He had been thrown out the windshield. Dead on impact. I was the first person she called. And the sobs that echoed on the receiving end of that phone call haunted my dreams for weeks. I never heard her cry like that before. It came from the soul. And it hurt me so bad to hear her in so much pain. I felt it, and I started to cry for her. I just listened as she sobbed through two words: “Dad died.”
I cried for her, and for me because her father was a good man. A kind man. He didn’t deserve to go out the way he did. He deserved to watch his little girl grow up. She asked me every night for six months to stay with her, so every night I climbed up the side of the house and snuck into her window. I held her every single night while she cried herself to sleep.
And when my mom died? Whew, I don’t think I would have made it without Everly. My mom died two years after Everly’s dad, of cancer, and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to witness. I watched her wither away with every day that passed, and Everly was there with me visiting my mom in the hospital. I went through different steps during the entire process: anger, sadness, depression. Everly held my hand every step of the way.
I tend to push people away when I need space, and when my mom died, and we buried her, I disappeared to the Overlook. Everly knew exactly where I was. I yelled at her that night. I told her to leave. I told her I didn’t want anything to do with her and that I didn’t want to see her. To just go.
But she stood there and let me use her as her verbal punching bag until I wrapped her in my arms, held her tight, and sobbed onto her shoulder.
“I can’t believe she’s gone,” was all I repeated over and over into her neck as she let me cry out my agony. Everly never judged me because she understood the pain of losing a parent. I was a momma’s boy, so losing her killed a part of me. But Everly slowly brought that part back to life.
We forged a bond I never thought could be broken. To know someone like that, to feel what they are feeling, what they are thinking, to share the pain, to find them in the darkest times when they are lost in their thoughts, which I’ve learned is the most dangerous place to be, that takes so much trust and time.
Sure, I’ll meet someone else, and I’ll love them, but I don’t think I’ll ever have a connection with them like I had with Everly.
“Penny for your thoughts?” the bartender asks as he wipes down the counter. “You seem awfully downcast for
