Dannika Dark - Seven Years

We were sitting at a table by the window, watching Maizy color with a green crayon, when my mom gasped and covered her mouth. “Oh my God, is that who I think it is?”

I swiveled my head around in the direction she was looking. Sunlight reflected off the glass as the door opened and made me squint. Stepping through the front door of Dairy Queen… was Austin Cole.

Also known as my brother’s “best friend for life.” They’d met in the first grade and had been inseparable ever since. He and Wes had run with the same crowd, sometimes dated the same girls, and could finish each other’s sentences. Austin used to spend the night at our house and we’d treated him like a member of the family. In fact, when I was thirteen, I secretly decided we were going to get married. I had doodled Alexia Cole inside my notebook where no one would find it.

As kids, Austin used to pick on me without provocation. He once plucked off all the eyes on my stuffed animals and would dip his finger in my juice glass at the breakfast table and flick the drops at me. He didn’t have a sister, so he probably didn’t know how to deal with girls. Austin wasn’t doing it to be cruel—he just enjoyed getting a rise out of me. I was a dramatic little girl.

“He’s changed,” Mom said in a quiet voice.

Her sullen expression at his unexpected appearance told the story. The last time we had seen him was seven years ago at the funeral. He’d left town that week without any explanation. No phone call, no letter, and that hurt. We’d been like his second family.

The visual of his body standing in front of the door burned into my retinas. His swagger in those loose jeans, the way his tight T-shirt had come untucked on the right side, the black leather Oxfords, and most notably, the ropes of muscle in his arms. Austin no longer resembled the boyish young man I had last seen seven years ago. He had filled out in all the right places. While I couldn’t see his eyes behind those mirrored shades, I knew they were still crystal blue and the most remarkable feature he possessed, although the slight cleft in his chin came in a close second. Something about those pale eyes against his brown hair and thick brows could make a woman forget her own name.

He was dangerously handsome and held the attention of every woman of age in the room.

“Is she pretty?” Maizy asked, holding up her picture.

I blinked.

Princess in a green dress with an orange face. “She’s beautiful, Maze.”

My heart pounded against my chest and Mom stabbed the ice cubes in her cup with a clear straw. When her eyes lifted and locked, I knew right then and there he’d spotted her and they were engaged in a staring match. I waited expectantly for him to come up from behind and say an awkward hello.

Instead, I glanced out the window and saw Austin walking briskly to the adjacent parking lot where he had parked his classic Dodge Challenger. It was a badass model with black paint and tinted windows.

“Mom?”

I didn’t even know what I was going to ask. I just felt like something had to be said to deaden the moment.

He had been a second son to her, and maybe having him around after Wes’s death might have helped her get through it. I knew that thought crossed her mind, so I shot up to my feet. “I’m going to get some ice cream.”

“Yay!” Maizy cheered.

I marched over to the counter and right out the door, staring at his tinted windows with my hands on my hips. The tires spun, throwing gravel across the parking lot as he tore off.

But I knew Austin had seen me.

A boy named after the city he was born and raised in. A kid who ate dinner at our house three nights a week. A man who now sped off like a bona fide chickenshit when faced with the option of talking to his dead friend’s sister.

A man who’d kissed me passionately the night my brother was killed.

By ten o’clock that evening, we’d eaten pork chops, watched a movie, and I’d left the house with a bottle of Mom’s whiskey. It wasn’t a favorite drink of mine, but she never touched the stuff and I needed something to help me sleep through the night. My wine collection at home was reserved for good times, and I didn’t want to taint my favorite beverage with sorrow.

This anniversary was never officially over until I was rip-roaring drunk.

On the way home, I made an unplanned visit to the cemetery. It was closed, but no one ever locks up a cemetery so tight that you can’t get in; it’s the getting out part that proves the most difficult.

Wes had a flat grave marker and I hated it. I tried to talk my mom into getting one of the raised ones to replace it, but she’d refused. Maybe that selfish part of me wanted something at eye-level to look at and talk to, or maybe even hug.

“God, Wes. You should see how much Maze has grown,” I said, sitting Indian style over his grave. It was dark as sin, and the only light illuminating the grounds shone from a tall lamp near a marble statue of an angel. “She’s so sweet, not like me. I was a little terror and you,” I said, waving my unsteady finger at the ground, “should have never let me go out with Josh Holden when I was fifteen. What were you thinking?”

I hiccupped and screwed the cap back on the bottle.

“Just because he was on the football team, you thought he was cool and he passed whatever test you had for the guys who called me up. Josh thought he was going to score a touchdown that night.” I snorted. “That was the first time I’d ever been to second base and when he started to slide into third, I slapped his face and walked home. Josh works at the gas station now. But then, who am I to talk?” I yelled up at the trees. “I’m just a candy girl.”

The grass met with my back and I gazed up at an infinite blanket of stars. Smog dimmed their usual brightness because I wasn’t far enough out of the city. Plus, I was three sheets to the wind.

“Guess who I saw today, Wes? Your best friend.”

I quietly lay there, thinking about how it made me feel.

“And?” a voice asked.

“And what? He pussied out and drove off in his tough-guy car.” My fingers yanked on the grass angrily and then it dawned on me—the voice I’d just heard wasn’t my imagination.

I rolled over and saw Austin leaning on his left shoulder against an aging tree. Austin always liked to do an ankle-cross while scoping out his surroundings. I used to think it was sexy as hell when he wore his leather jacket and fingerless gloves.

It took years before I realized that most girls probably had a crush on their brother’s best friend at some point in time. No big deal—just a childhood thing.

But damn, that lean was hot.

My eyes blinked a few times, as if I could make him disappear.

“Only time I ever saw you drunk, Lexi Knight, was the time we drove to San Antonio to a concert. Not even old enough to order a drink. Do you remember?” Austin pushed off the tree and stepped forward a few paces, arms crossed. “Wes was pissed when he found out those guys were buying you beers and he pulled you out of their truck before they decided to take the party to a new location. Good thing we found you when we did.”

“Oh? And where were you? I don’t even remember you being there.”

I emphasized the last bit and by the look on his face, he got my meaning.

“Kicking the shit out of every last man in that truck, that’s where I was. Got my nose broke in the process.”

The air stilled.

The only thing about that night I remembered was going to the concert, some guys giving me drinks from their cooler, and then hanging out in the parking lot cracking jokes. The next day, I woke up sick as a dog and Austin hadn’t returned to the hotel room. Wes drove my hung-over ass home and told our parents I had caught the flu. Since Austin had taken a separate car, I just assumed he left without us or was banging some girl all night.

“That’s right,” he said, carefully watching my stunned expression with shadowy eyes I couldn’t see in the darkness. “Bruised my knuckles knocking out the third guy, but he deserved it.”

“Why?”

“Because it was his lap you were sitting on,” he said in a low and dangerous voice.

A muscle flexed in his jaw and he lifted the bottle of whiskey, taking a slow swallow as a lightning bug flashed beside his shoulder. Austin screwed the cap on and I closed my eyes. I could have slept right there, sitting up in a graveyard with a ghost of my past in front of me.

“I’ll take you home.”

“No.”

“I’m not letting you drive in this condition.”

“What are you even doing here?” I finally snapped my eyes open. “Seven years, not a word, and you just show up and think everything is okay? Get away from me, and get off Wes’s grave.”

He flicked his eyes down and stepped to the side, shoving his fingers through his hair in a frustrated manner. “I think you’ve had too much to drink.”

I fell back and curled to my side, mumbling myself to sleep. “I don’t care what you think anymore. Leave me and Wes alone.”

* * *

When I opened my eyes, it was morning. I was asleep in the back seat of my Toyota with one leg stretched between the front seats and the other pressed against the glass.

“Shit,” I murmured, rubbing the crud from my eyes. My long hair was all over the place. Thank God I was still at the cemetery because I was wearing a dress and lying in a position a gynecologist would endorse.

Then I sat up and found myself staring at a neighborhood, or more accurately, my mom’s front yard. Nope, I wasn’t at the cemetery.

A curse flew past my lips and I quickly glanced around and made sure the neighbors weren’t out mowing their lawns or calling the police. The last thing I needed was my mom waking up and wondering why the hell I was giving the neighborhood a peep show in the back of my Toyota.

I leapt into the front seat and headed home.

During the drive, I gave myself a lecture, mostly going over the stupidity of driving drunk, even though I couldn’t remember a thing. What was I thinking? Even worse, my stomach was churning like one of those hand-cranked ice cream mixers and if I didn’t get to a bathroom soon, I was going to be sick in my car.

After arriving at my apartment, I dragged my feet up the second flight of stairs, stumbling twice.

“That good, was it?”

I glanced at my neighbor, Naya, and she caught the irritated look in my eyes. Naya threw world-famous parties in her apartment and invited everyone in the complex. She did it to give them fair warning there would be loud music, probably a few broken bottles, maybe a fight, and a drunk playing Urinator in the pool. Naya worked as a stripper and once came into the candy shop looking for an oversized pinwheel lollipop. She invited me to a party and that’s when I found out what she did for a living. But off the clock she dressed like everyone else, and we hit it off as friends even though we had little in common.

We recently ended up living next door to each other when I needed a place to live after my breakup with Beckett. I wondered if she’d paid off her neighbor to break his lease, because the timing was impeccable.

Naya didn’t have a man, at least not a permanent one. She was a huntress and hung out with some wealthy and dangerous men she’d met at work. Trouble usually came with money, but Naya said she’d paid her dues and wanted a better life.

My dues were about to wind up all over the landing if I didn’t get my ass inside.

“Later, Naya.”

I slammed the door and made a World Series slide to home plate in the bathroom, regretting every second of the previous night as I retched. After my humiliating porcelain moment of the day, I stripped out of my dress and debated whether or not I wanted to take an unsavory nap on the bathroom floor. Instead, I hopped in the shower and washed pieces of grass out of my hair. It felt delicious to stand beneath the spray of hot water, and after towel drying my hair, I snuggled up in my favorite pink robe.

I hadn’t been that drunk in a long time and wondered why I never learned my lesson. The only thing on my mind after that was coffee, so I headed into the kitchen to brew a pot of Italian roast. That’s when I saw Naya sitting at my bar playing solitaire. My wet hair squeaked when I pulled it around my shoulder and ran my hand down the long length of it.