I make a pitcher of it, bring it over to the coffee table, and sit down two glasses. Everything clinks against the glass, and the pitcher spills a little, but I don’t care. I have no want, need, or energy to clean up after myself right now.
Two cherries are at the bottom of the glasses, and when I pour the red mixture in the cups, the cherries floated to the top.
He brings the drink to his mouth and narrows his eyes at me. “Really? This is all you know how to make?”
“I never said I was a skilled bartender. I know what I like. I like this. There is no need to know any more.”
“I have so much to teach you,” he chuckles.
Hope wiggles its way in like a little buzzing bee trying to fit into a flower. Maybe he can see I’m not so bad and decide to spend the rest of his life with me.
I snort and chug my beverage. There is no way that will happen.
I eat my cherry, plucking it out of the cold liquid and pulling it from the stem with my teeth. “What are we going to do? I don’t have a line of guys wanting to marry me, let alone, marry me in two weeks.”
“I bet if I took you out right now, you’d find one,” he says.
“I don’t think you understand. I’ve never had a man come up to me and ask if I want a drink. They always say I’m intimidating, but that’s just a way to call yourself a pussy. I stopped going out. I never get asked out genuinely.”
“We should test that theory.”
“Let’s not and say we did,” I reply, wrapping my tongue around the straw in my yummy beverage.
“I want to see what you’re talking about.”
“Rowan, no one is going to talk to me with you around. You’d be the biggest cockblock of them all besides my awkward personality.” I laugh at my own joke. Sometimes, I’m funny.
“I’ll stay back. I just want to see because I find it ludicrous.”
“Can’t we play a different game? Do you know anyone single that will come over and marry me?”
Rowan sips his Shirley and hums. “Yeah, I’m not real sure what to do about that.”
I can’t help but stare at him as he does that. Every move he makes, he makes it seem like a graceful, choreographed dance. It’s beautiful and serene. The way he holds the glass, his fingers wrapping around the expensive crystal, gently, but still with a firm hold.
It’s kind of like the way he holds me. Carefully, but meaningfully. I can’t remember a time where he wasn’t eye-catching. All the women wanted him, and he dated a few, probably had sex with a few. And my teenage heart couldn’t even think about that. I’d always get so sad and down knowing he wanted others, but not me.
Now it isn’t the case, is it? I’m blinded by the confusion, the pain of losing my mom, my love for Rowan that never went away. Is it these four walls we are stuck in? Is that why this is so easy right now, not that love is easy—it never is—but is that why we were able to push through all the anger to get here, to this moment? What happens when we walk outside the door, back to the real world? I have to go to work, and so does he. Will these past few days be written history right alongside everything else?
It’s a hard pill to swallow. All the times he climbed up my bedroom window, sneaking in to watch Grey’s Anatomy. He said he hated that show, but I think he loves it, or he wouldn’t have kept watching it with me. And the school dances. I smile on the inside, not wanting to give away what I’m thinking. Even if he was dating another girl, Rowan did the thing he was never supposed to, he either broke up with them right before the dances or he would not go with them because he always went with me.
I swallow the emotion trapped in my throat, threatening the way I breathe. I stare inside my drink and sip from the small black straw. The sweet grenadine hits my tongue, but it does nothing to yank me out of the memories. All of them, written in history, never to be relived again.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks.
“Nothing, just the past, is all. We really were inseparable.” The only reason why we aren’t now is because of me. All the reasons or excuses I can think of to tell him why I did it, none are good enough.
He clears his throat and takes a large gulp of his drink. “Yeah, we were.”
The emotion and heartache on his face is all it takes to break me in. “Remember the bonfire?” I ask. Right as the words left my mouth, I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m currently thinking of Malcolm and how Rowan acted. He was so protective.
I hit the bottom of my drink, slurping past the ice. Then lean forward to pour another Shirley. “Do you want another?”
The silence is deafening before he says, “Sure.”
I pour him another glass and scoot back on the couch again, pulling my legs up to the side. I should have never mentioned the night of the fire. It was the night we had sex for the first time, and the moment I left him, dropping him like he meant nothing. But he always meant everything.
“I remember,” he says, twirling the straw around in his drink. “I remember you coming to the fire looking so beautiful; it took my breath away. That little plum dress hugged all your curves just right. You took my breath away. You always did. I had planned on telling
