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“Harlan,” he said. “Moose. The farm. Yes. I was there, and it was really sad, then really pretty, then it was okay. Other than, you know, the car crash.”
I sucked in a breath, reaching out to clasp his hand in mine. “I’m glad it went okay.”
“You remember that time I came into the brewery, right after you’d started working there, and we were basically the only ones there?”
“I do,” I said. “That was the emptiest I’ve ever seen Jade Brewery, to this day. Everyone was out on summer vacation, or something.”
“I was only going to sit at the bar for an hour or so, and I ended up there ‘til closing. You let me complain about my family for hours.”
“It was an interesting conversation,” I said. “I always like getting to know more about you.”
“It was the first time anyone had ever actually cared about what I had to say about my family problems,” Sawyer said. “Even on the farm, I’d tried to keep that shit to myself. Hell, even when we were kids, and I knew you knew how bad it was, I still tried not to talk about my family too much.”
I furrowed my brow. “Really?”
He sighed. “Before then, people always said the typical stuff. Well, your family wants the best for you. Well, your mother is trying her best. Your siblings don’t look down on you, they just want you to have success, too. And I always believed them, because they were halfway right.”
“Just because your family didn’t toss you out on the street doesn’t mean they were good to you. They haven’t treated you with the respect you deserve in your whole life, as far as I’ve ever heard.”
“I couldn’t even really see that until you pointed it out to me,” Sawyer said. “I thought I was just the failure of the family, and they were the pinnacle of success. Something to live up to.”
I shook my head. “Now that’s bullshit.”
Sawyer looked at me, his eyes going down to my lips for a moment, then back up to meet my gaze. “That was the first night I should have known I was attracted to you.”
I swallowed.
He’s on heavy drugs, I reminded myself, even though I already felt way too warm on the inside.
“You weren’t attracted to me back then,” I said, looking down.
“Like hell I wasn’t,” he murmured. “Honestly, I probably was into you even when we were teenagers, but I was way too scared to think I might be different in any way.”
When I looked back up I half expected him to be asleep again, since his voice had sounded so soft.
But he was awake. Looking right at me. Like he meant every word of what he was saying, painkillers be damned.
My heart felt like it was somewhere lodged in my throat.
“Sawyer Hendricks,” a voice said from the doorway. A nurse came in, heavyset with a big, poofy grey bun at the top of her head. “I’m back. I’m going to fix you up.”
I moved out of the way, squeezing Sawyer’s hand before resting it back on the bed and standing up.
“Nurse Carol,” Sawyer said as if he was greeting an old friend. “Nurse Carol, this is Harlan. I was telling her about your lemonade earlier.”
“He told me about your lemonade three times,” Carol said. She was the type of woman who looked angry but clearly had a very kind voice and bedside manner. “He even told me the ratio of lemon juice to water and sugar you use.”
“And when I make it at home, the same way, it never comes out as good,” Sawyer said, feebly reaching up a hand to point at her. “Carol, I told you the recipe. It will never come out as good.”
“It’s all in the lemons,” I said.
“He knows how to pick the best ones,” Sawyer said lovingly.
“This is going to hurt,” Carol said, rolling her chair up near his bed and wiping some sort of cleaning ointment onto them.
“That doesn’t hurt too bad—oh, fuck,” Sawyer said, wincing.
“Almost done,” the nurse said.
For another hour, she and a couple assistants came in and out of the room, giving Sawyer stitches in a few places along his arm and leg. Finally, Dr. Sandoval came back in along with Carol, and they fitted Sawyer for the right size soft cast.
I stayed by his side through all of it. As the night went on, he started to drift in and out of sleep, only waking up intermittently, when the hospital staff came in to work on him.
It was almost midnight when he was finally released to go home. Carol wheeled him out to my truck in a wheelchair even though he was capable of walking on his own with a little pain.
The moment he was in the passenger side of the truck, he was asleep again. I’d just turned the key in the ignition, ready to start the drive back to my house, when my throat got tight again all at once.
