Page 17 of Sunrise Arrows

“I know you did not just take a picture of her!” He squeezes my hand and earnestly says, “Welcome home, Tinsel.” Then, as sharp as before, his voice booms, “Gimme your fuckin’ phone!” He stalks out from behind the bar and goes to get in some guy’s face.

“Well that’s hot,” Briar admires. She spins on her stool, leaning back on the bartop as she finishes off her margarita, the both of us watching Ames’s standoff with one of his patrons before kicking the guy and his girlfriend out.

He stands up on a table, cutting his hand over his throat to silence the music. With everyone’s eyes on him, he lays down a new edict.

“You all leave Tinsley the fuck alone when you’re in my bar! Ya hear? I won’t put up with this shit! You got a problem with that, then go the fuck some place else because you ain’t welcome here!”

Everyone remains silent, and when Ames is done scanning the crowd and he’s satisfied, he raises a hand over his head and spins his finger, signaling the music to come back on.

“I guess your muse was right. We don’t have to worry about this town.”

“Told you.” I toss back the last of my drink and pop off the barstool. It takes a minute for my feet to turn steady, but when they do, I hold my hand out for Briar’s and say, “Now, let’s fucking dance!”

CHAPTER6

Archer

“Okay, Ellie is out cold,”Ryder announces, trotting down the stairs of his home. He drops onto the loveseat with me and points at the plate I’m holding. “You gonna eat that?”

I look down at the serving of strawberry shortcake I’ve been moving around the plate but not eating while we played Pictionary and shake my head, handing it over. “Take it.”

“Yes,” he gloats, rubbing his hands together. With a forkful already in his mouth, he asks, “So, what are you gonna do?”

“About what?”

He looks at me like I’m stupid. When I don’t budge, he rolls his eyes. “About Tinsley, dipshit.”

“What about her?”

“Jesus Christ,” he sighs. “Are you intentionally being stubborn, or has all that intelligence in there—” he says, tapping a finger on my temple, causing me to swat at him, “—eaten away at your common sense?”

I scrub my hands over my face and drop my head back on the cushion.

“I don’t know. I don’t fuckin’ know.”

“She’s single.”

“Yep.”

“And she’s here.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So are you going to…”

“Ryder, I wish I knew.”

And I do.

I’ve been asking myself the same thing since we ran into each other. Willful obstinateness when answering my older brother aside, I really wish I knew.

A few years after she left, I tried to move on, but nothing stuck. No one elicited even a fraction of what she could in me, and after several failed first dates, I stopped trying and accepted what I already knew to be fact.

Tinsley is a once in a lifetime kind of woman, and I had a once in lifetime kind of love with her. What we had—it’s not something that can be replaced.

And therein lies the problematic paradox that’s been keeping me up the last several nights.

I’ve moved on from what happened, learned to live with it and all my unanswered questions. But I haven’t moved on from her. She’s still my paradigm of love. I want to be free of her and our history, but I still cling to every moment and memory, choosing to surround myself in them with every song and the few reminders of her having been in my life that remain. I’m angry over her sharing us with the world and turning our relationship into a best selling album despite knowing it could, and probably would, happen one day. But at the same time, I want it to mean something. To mean she’s still as tangled up in me as I am in her. As haunted by the past and the cast aside future as I am.

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