Page 40 of Archer
“Yeah, well,” Crow looked over to me. “Never met a girl who didn’t drive him away after a day, so it must be worth helping or whatever.” He trailed off before he could get into a deeper, sappier, explanation. Heading toward the door, he turned to me and said, “See ya tomorrow, Archer,” then turned to Rose, giving her a cordial nod. “Good to meet you, Rose.”
He opened the door and left, leaving me and Rose alone once again. She turned to me with a huge grin on her face. “Aw, he’s so nice!”
I stared at her, my jaw hanging slightly in disbelief. “You are the strangest person I think I’ve ever met.”
“Would you change it, though?” she asked, shooting me a cheeky smile and I shook my head.
“Absolutely not.”
Sitting shoulder to shoulder, our eyes met, and we went silent. There was a peacefulness in her eyes, and it passed over to me, and all I wanted to do was continue talking to her. We didn’t even need to fool around, I just wanted to joke about Crow’s secret soft side or other trivial things. “Want another drink?”
When she nodded, my heart skipped with excitement until her eyes landed on the jewelry box. “Actually, um, I’m tired. I think I’m going to go to bed early. Weren’t you going to have an early night, too?”
“Oh, uh, yeah,” I said, completely forgetting about my original plans. “Right. No problem.”
Grabbing the purple felt box, she hopped off the stool and bowed her head. “Have a good night, Archer.”
I gave her a smile and grabbed my bottle. “Night, Rose.”
As soon as I heard her door close, my fake image of happiness vanished, and my shoulders slumped over. Every single interaction I had with Rose was just deepening my attraction toward her. The feeling gave me an unsettled feeling, I hadn’t felt attached to a woman in almost a decade. Getting attached was for idiots who wanted to get hurt.
Besides, I already promised Rose I wouldn’t. That I didn’t get attached. There was no future. In fact, I gave her a lesson on how to give an amazing blowjob, ensuring that the next man she was with would surely put a ring on her finger. As soon as she was out of this house, she’d move on and forget about me. I’d never meet another girl with her same youthful, innocent spirit because no one lived a life like her. There’d never be another evening of us laughing with Crow. I’d never get to put my arm around her and kiss her cheek, letting the world know I was the luckiest man in the world.
Because I wasn’t.
I was the guy to teach her how to be the perfect future girlfriend for another guy. A guy who worked in an office, a regular nine-to-five job. Someone who bought a house in their early twenties, ready to fill with a wife and children. A man who only enjoyed a small glass of merlot with a fine steak. She’d be with a guy who lived an opposite lifestyle to me, someone who would make her feel stable and secure, giving her everything she ever wanted. Everything she deserved.
I’d never be that man.
Standing from the stool, I walked over to the fridge and grabbed another beer before trudging to the sofa. Turning on the TV, I threw on some random game show and stared blankly at the screen. It didn’t matter what I put on, because all I could focus on was how badly I wanted to share small, mundane moments like watching television with Rose.
Chapter Twenty
Rose
Sitting on the edge of my bed, I stared at the box that my father gave to Crow. Too afraid to open it in front of them, unsure of what could be inside or the emotional reaction it could invoke, I waited until I had some privacy. Although I was tempted to continue drinking with Archer after my mood brightened substantially, the package called my name.
Gently lifting the lid of the box off as if it were made of glass, I found a small golden locket with a small green oval gem in the center. I pulled the box closer to my eyes to examine the necklace, trying to see if I recognized it, but I’d never seen it before. I picked it up by the chain and dropped the cool gold jewelry into my palm so I could remove the bottom of the box, in hopes my dad left a note inside.
Unsurprisingly, there was nothing there.
Frowning, I picked up the locket again to inspect it closer. It was beautiful. Elegant in a classic way, as if it held generations’ worth of memories and secrets. On the side, I noticed a small clasp and my heart skipped. Excited, I eagerly scrambled to open the clasp, struggling from the tiny size and my short fingernails. After about five minutes of fiddling with it, the lock pop opened.
My jaw dropped.
The locket opened in half, revealing two pictures on each side of the locket of a woman and a tiny baby. Although I hardly remembered her, even from the tiny photographs in the locket, I’d recognize those same blue eyes as mine any day. It was my mom holding me when I was a baby.
Inside my chest, my heart both ached and soared. Part of me felt more connected to my mom than ever, holding a piece of her in my hands, but the other part made me miss someone I’d never get to meet.
Stroking the locket with my finger, tears pricked my eyes as I wondered what the locket meant. My father never showed my locket before, though it was evidently a possession that was dear to his heart. Clutching the locket tightly in my palm, I pulled it to my chest and lay on my bed, hugging the blanket tightly around me.
Melancholy was what I felt, like a weighted blanket of sadness hung over my shoulders. The locket wasn’t just a casual gift. I knew why my dad decided to pass it on to me now and not when I returned home. My dad didn’t think I’d be returning home. I didn’t think my dad expected to see me again.
“This is how you say goodbye?” I asked out loud, overwhelmed with frustrations toward him but nowhere to put them, I felt furious.How could he do this to me?Everything he thought he was doing to protect me was only hurting me.
I lay awake in bed for hours, not wanting to leave even to use the bathroom. Every limb on my body was weighted to the bed as I thought of my predicament. No matter how much I tried to tell myself that everything would be fine, all evidence pointed otherwise. My dad was not going to be okay.
The sun had fallen, and a gentle breeze blew in a cloud of cigarette smoke through the open window.Archer must be smoking. Cigarette smoke was a smell that was oddly comforting to me, it reminded me of my early teens, during a brief period where my dad smoked. I think business at the bakery must have been doing well at that point because I remembered his coat always smelled of smoke when he walked through the door, but he was always chipper.
