Page 51 of Bourbon and Lies

“I was in love with Phillip when I was sixteen. He was my first...everything. I was blissfully naive to think I’d just end up with him. Even when his family moved away, I still wrote to him. It’s what kept me single in college, and then I lost my dad.” She looks up again, her eyes watering. She bats away a tear and glances down at her hand, the one I’ve just covered with mine.

“Go ahead, I’m listening.”

Her brow furrows like she’s remembering in real time, just playing it back for me. “We lost touch. I moved on with my life. Mostly. I moved into the city and started working for an event company that had clients who were very different from the kind of people I grew up around. I ended up being really great at it. People wanted me to plan their events and weddings. I was making a name for myself.” She clears her throat. “In Colorado.”

Liar. She was never in Colorado. But the rest of what she’s saying feels too raw tonotbe true.

“I was given the lead on a wedding for a high-society client. The bride's mother hired me, which was pretty common. But when I met with the couple getting married, it was Phillip. And his new fiancée. And in hindsight, I should have bowed out right then. I knew nothing good was going to come out of me planning that wedding.”

“But you didn’t?”

She takes another swig. “No, I didn’t.” With a sigh, she continues, looking at me warily. “You might go back to not liking me very much after you hear this.”

I tilt my head. “I never didn’t like you.”

When her eyebrows raise, I explain myself.

“I don’t trust many people. Least of all people who are hiding something.”

She looks up from where my finger is running across her knuckles. The way this woman wears vulnerability is like a fucking drug. I want to experience it, consume it, and tell her anything she needs to hear to keep herself open like this.

“It started as text messages about the wedding. And then small inside jokes that turned into flirting. I didn’t even realize that months had gone by, and I wasn’t really dating anyone or even seeking out going on dates because I had started falling for him again.” Pausing, she swallows roughly. “I looked forward to his texts. And yet I was still planning his wedding to someone else. The only time I was alone with him was the night that I told him I never wanted to see him again.”

It’s clear she’s ashamed of whatever happened that night, because she pulls her hand away from mine, maybe needing the space. “He called, telling me his fiancée didn’t understand him the way that I did, and that he should be marrying me and not her. That he needed to see me and talk through his feelings.”

I really fucking hate this guy.

“He said wherever I was, he’d meet me. He just needed to talk to me. And I stupidly said yes.” Wiping away another tear, she lets out a clipped, fake laugh. “I had hoped it was what I was waiting to hear. That he broke it off. That it was me he wanted.” She looks down, picking at her thumb. “I was at a storage facility looking through some of the old things I had kept of my dad’s.” Her voice gets softer. “I hate that I wasthere,of all places.”

If this guy put his hands on her unwantedly...

“He kissed me. And I wanted him to. It was the only time we had been physical. Everything leading up to that was conversations and texts.” Her eyes meet mine, shaking her head in disbelief. “Maybe that’s worse. I assumed if he needed to seeme that urgently that he had ended things because the Philip I knew was a good guy. The one I had known as a teenager was.” She stops there and waits a moment, and I hold myself back from holding her hand again. “Things got heated, and he said he needed this with me. Just this once...to get me out of his system.”

The anger I felt when she started telling me about wanting this man is nothing even remotely close to how pissed off I am at hearing that someone could fucking say this to her. Someone who was already planning a life with another woman.

“I’ve never felt more ashamed of myself.” Another tear drops from her cheek. “It didn’t even register what he had said until his hand was down my pants, and he was...I didn’t even have a chance to register what was happening, much less enjoy it. And he was already done.” She tries to laugh, but it’s more like a wince. “He jerked himself off with two pumps and came on my leg. I’d never been more disgusted than I was in that moment. I told him that I thought he cared about me, but when he looked at me with sympathy, like he felt sorry for me for misunderstanding what this was, I snapped. I yelled at him to leave and that I never wanted to see him again. And he told me that he would always care about me, but he had to take the opportunity he was given.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” I stand up, swatting at the mosquitos getting on my nerves, and remember I had left a lighter in the tackle box next to the stack of kindling.

She smiles at me when I look up from starting the fire. “We were from a different class of people than the clients I was working for. His fiancée is the daughter of a pretty big name who runs a huge financial institution. What comes of his career and the lifestyle he wants was solely based on him marrying her. I was a coincidence or an inconvenience.” She rubs her hands along the tops of her thighs, working out what else she mightwant to share. “I thought he cared about me, and I’ve never felt so stupid in my entire life for getting that wrong.”

My head hurts from gritting my teeth so fucking hard. My fists have balled up at my sides, eager to punch the next Phillip I meet right in the fucking ear. I swallow it all down, though, because she’s telling me something true, and it might be part of something I’ve been itching to understand. “How does that bring you here?”

She clears her throat and waits a few seconds before responding, “I needed to leave.”

I can’t tell if she’s lying by omission or if the bourbon she’s been sipping on is what’s making her flushed.

The sun is barely left peeking as the sky above us deepens to a darker shade of blue, shades of pink from the sunset disappearing. And I can’t for the life of me remember why I’ve been so hell-bent on figuring out what she’s been hiding. That I assumed it was something dangerous and not a woman just looking to start over and forget some shitty choices.

“He never planned to leave her. I don’t know if I ever really thought he would either. And I let it all happen anyway. And that’s the part of it that—” She inhales a deep breath, and on the exhale, she says, “I knew better. I’m better than that. So today, at the book club, I overheard a few women talking about me, and it felt like...” I watch her shake her head, trying to get through what’s triggered all of this. “It felt like I was that person again. The one who didn’t fit in but tried too fucking hard, and the person who chose to carry on something with a man I knew was wrong.”

Nervously picking away at the skin on her thumb, she blows out another breath, almost relieved to have said it out loud. I know what that feels like, having to hold something in because there’s nowhere else for it to go. When the right person hasn’t shown up to hear it yet. It feels good to be that for her. And whatshe doesn’t realize is that a truly bad person wouldn’t feel the way she does about her actions.

She stares at my chest, suddenly not wanting to look into my eyes, which isnotokay with me.

“That’s your bad thing?”

It takes a moment, but she nods, lifting her chin a bit.

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