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Well, she supposed he would have to fall asleep on his own tonight. What did she care if he slept or not? She wasn’t there for him to hassle.
Let him be a tyrant all alone. It was like a tree falling in the woods—the sound was meaningless.
She pulled out a twenty and set it on the bar.
Sue rolled her eyes and tossed a towel over her shoulder, breezing past Ryan. “I’m taking five. You can deal with that.”
Ryan’s lips formed a thin line as he approached. “Erin.”
“Hi, Ryan.” She smiled, trying to be nice, but his expression remained blank. “I’ll take a vodka and iced tea, and make it a double.”
He got to mixing her drink but didn’t bother with small talk like he did with the other customers.
When he set the cocktail in front of her, she asked, “Have you seen your cousin, Finn?”
He raised a brow and watched her suspiciously. “What do you want with Finn?”
“He…invited me.”
He gave a disbelieving laugh. “Sure, he did.”
Her jaw hardened. “Have you seen him or not?”
“He’s probably home—with his wife.”
She was perfectly aware that Finn was happily married to his beautiful wife. She remembered Mallory well. Everyone assumed Erin hated the woman, but she didn’t. She was happy for Finn, happy that he finally found someone who could love him the way he deserved.
That person had never been Erin. The kindest thing she had done for Finn was show him how screwed up she truly was and let him get away. She’d hurt him, but it was for his own good. He would have spent years trying to make her happy, but there was just too much pain, too many bad memories he couldn’t understand.
Ryan took the twenty and slid her the change. The alcohol hit her system like a welcomed tranquilizer and as she resigned herself to being alone. Figuring Finn got held up with his kids not feeling well and the fact that a blizzard was coming, she downed the liquid courage in less than a minute and ordered another.
Ryan rolled his eyes but said nothing.
The tables were full. She didn’t want to sit at the bar facing Ryan and Sue, so when her second drink arrived, she took it to the back wall and hid in the shadows.
The wavy tilt of the room warned her to slow down, but she anxiously welcomed the thought of drunk oblivion. She scanned the bodies filling the bar, spotting several old classmates, a few randoms she’d used for a fling, the cliquey girls who excluded her because she grew up wearing her brother’s hand-me-downs, and the new wives and husbands she’d never met. Those new folks somehow hated her all the same, thanks to the warnings from the locals.
None of them paid her any mind. She was invisible to all of them, a truth that both pained and infuriated her. Anger was always easier than sadness so she glared at them from the shadows, despising them so their dislike of her wouldn’t hurt as much. She lifted her glass and toasted them, mentally assigning every hateful label she could imagine on them as a whole.
Perrin appeared on the stage and welcomed everyone. The music cut off and the crowd clapped. The McCulloughs were so loud. They hooted and howled and banged pint glasses and beer bottles on the tabletops as soon as Giovanni was introduced.
Erin slipped deeper into the shadows, once again wondering why she was there. Sipping her drink down to the ice, she ignored Giovanni’s big entrance and took the distraction as an opportunity to measure the competition.
They weren’t her competition, just her enemies. Her mother’s rejection was the first of many. Her teenage years were pocked with humiliating moments, the result of never having an older female around to guide her.
When her childhood girlfriends started to mock her clothes and make fun of her knotted hair or personal hygiene, Erin reflected their disgust, picking at any sore spot she could find. If she rejected everyone, no one would have the chance to reject her.
She’d said and done enough cruel things—a defense mechanism in the face of rejection. But, as a result, not a single person there would piss on her if she were on fire.
Fuck ‘em all.
She shuffled back to the bar and flagged down Sue. The bartender’s dark, guarded eyes held her at a distance. “What are you drinking?”
“Vodka and tea.” No point in niceties they didn’t mean.
Once she had a fresh cocktail, she turned. Her head foggy, and her feet no longer hurting in her four-inch heels. Her lips lacked their usual control as she sipped from the straw, but she wasn’t as upset as she’d been earlier.
“So I’m single,” Giovanni’s voice echoed through the bar.
