Chapter Text
Drinks?
Joel looks down at his phone, at the unanswered message he’d sent Tess three hours ago. At the little gray bubble that kept appearing and disappearing at the bottom of the screen. Anxiety curdles in his gut.
See you at eight.
Joel swallows, checks the clock at the top of the screen. Two and a half hours till then, all that time to sit and wonder what the fuck was up. Normally a drinks text would be answered in the affirmative within minutes, the two of them meeting up at their usual bar for a couple hours before ending the night tangled in sheets at his place or hers. It had been that way for a couple years now, easy, without pressure.
Without feelings.
Joel locks his phone and sets it down on his countertop, reaching to the top of the fridge for the bottle of whiskey he keeps there. He doesn’t even bother with a glass, just takes a swig straight from the bottle before screwing the lid back on and replacing it. The liquor burns, searing down his throat to his stomach where it roils uncomfortably.
He has a bad fucking feeling about tonight.
--
For the first time since he and Tess started doing…whatever it is they do, Joel gets to the bar before her. Twenty minutes early, a fucking record, and he snags their usual table. Has their drinks waiting for her too, whiskey straight for him and a 1911 hard cider for her.
She doesn’t even look at it when she arrives and sits across from him, hands steepled on the table, and Joel just knows.
“How are you?” Joel asks before she can get a word out, wanting to prolong the sense of normalcy just a bit longer. Tess is, more or less, all he’s got left at this point. No Sarah, barely even thoughts of her most days or else he can’t fucking function. No Tommy, wherever the fuck he is out on the other side of the country. Wyoming, he thinks, straining briefly to remember their last conversation. Why he was still out there, Joel couldn’t remember for the life of him.
Tess eyes him warily. “I’m fine. You?” She hesitates as she asks it, like she already knows the answer and doesn’t particularly want to hear it. The unease in his stomach simmers, and Joel swallows half of his whiskey in an attempt to smother it.
“Fine.”
“Right.” Tess toys with her drink, fingers tracing the rim of the glass, staring into the depths like it’s easier than looking at Joel.
He takes the opportunity to look at her, really look at her, as he hasn’t in some time. If he’s right about this evening - about the fact that Tess is about to walk away from him like everyone else in his miserable life - then he at least oughta get one good image of her seared into his mind before she goes. They've never been the picture-taking type, so a mental image is all he’ll have.
Has her hair always been that long, Joel wonders. It sweeps straight past her shoulders, wisps of it falling forward. It’s threaded through with gray amidst the dark blonde strands, thicker at her temples. There’s lines around her eyes and mouth he’s not sure he ever noticed before either, hopefully from laughter and not from stress.
Though considering she’s spent the last couple years tangled up with him, it’s probably the latter.
“Joel.”
He snaps from his thoughts, hearing the weight, the weariness behind her uttering his name. He doesn’t say anything, just watches her and waits.
It seems like she’s searching his face for something - for what, Joel doesn’t know - but whatever it is, she doesn’t seem to find it. Her jaw tightens, resolution settling into her gaze, and Joel braces himself.
“I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
Considering he’s the one that’s kept himself aloof and separate from anything deeper between the two of them, her words shouldn’t sting. He’d even known this was coming, sensed it as soon as her text took hours to reach him.
And yet it’s like a thorn has wedged itself in what remains of his chest, seeping poison. Selfishly, he’d kind of always thought that what little he could give Tess was enough for her, that things were fine as they were. They laughed, they drank, they had really damn good sex.
They didn’t talk about their dead children.
But some part of Joel always knew deep down that this wouldn’t go on forever, that it couldn’t go on forever. Tess was a smart woman, capable, attractive as fuck. Her laugh was one of his favorite sounds, deep and husky, and it had a way of coming out and wrapping around his throat and not letting go until he found himself chuckling alongside her, the sound rusty and foreign.
So it made sense that this…arrangement of theirs wouldn’t be enough for her in the long run. And really it shouldn’t, because she deserved better than a sad fuck like him.
Tess is watching him expectantly, and Joel swallows the rest of his whiskey, nodding. “Yeah, I kinda figured.”
“It’s not –” Tess begins.
“Don’t,” Joel bites out. “You ain’t gotta justify it to me.”
“It’s not about justification,” Tess says carefully, eyes narrowing, “it’s about giving you the respect of an explanation. You should know where my head is at, I know this is a little sudden.”
If she wants to, Joel ain’t gonna stop her. Not that he particularly wants to hear her list out all the ways he’s a shit partner - like he ain’t already aware, like he didn’t hear it from his ex-wife in their divorce hearings - but he ain’t given her much else. He oughta at least give her this.
He gestures for her to go ahead, wishing heartily he hadn’t emptied his whiskey quite so quickly.
Tess sucks in a breath, eyeing the drink in front of her like she’s contemplating downing it. Instead she pushes it aside, clasping her hands together on the tabletop between them.
“This year makes ten years since Case died.” Her voice wavers on her son’s name, and Joel flinches. “And I woke up the other night and thought that…he would be so disappointed in me.” Her gaze drops to her hands, eyes shining. Joel pushes back from the table, inhaling through his nostrils. “Not for being with you,” she clarifies, little though it does to assuage the sting of her words. “But for not taking better care of myself, and for settling for things instead of doing anything that actually makes me happy. My job, my lack of friends, my…situation with you.”
Joel just makes a noise of agreement, not trusting himself to say anything. He’s thought, a lot of nights, about how disappointed Sarah would be in him if she could see him now.
But she ain’t here to make proud, so he doesn’t bother trying.
“I decided to make some changes.” Her knuckles have gone a little white, hands clasping at each other tightly. “I quit my job the other day, and I’ve been looking for a new one. Something that suits me better, makes me actually want to go to work in the morning. And I…” her eyes skate sideways to her untouched cider. “I quit drinking, at least for the time being.”
Joel swallows. “Good. That’s, uh…that’s good.”
Neither of them speak for a long moment, before Tess shifts back and pulls out her wallet. “I also…” she pauses, looking up at him before pulling out a white business card. Whatever she sees on his face doesn’t deter her, and she blows out a breath before sliding the card across the table to him. “I started grief counseling.”
Joel doesn’t touch the card, doesn’t move to pick it up. Just lets his eyes trace over the swooping logo at the top, the meeting times underneath, the email address at the bottom.
Tommy had tried to get him to do grief counseling, years and years ago. He’d had mandated therapy after his suicide attempt - something he’d never told Tess about - but once that had ended, Joel had just taken the antidepressants until they ran out, hadn’t bothered getting a new prescription, and then used alcohol to numb himself whenever he felt he needed it. Tommy’s suggestion of counseling had gone over like a lead balloon. Last thing Joel wanted or needed was to sit in a room with a bunch of strangers and talk about his dead daughter. Sit there and remember how it had felt to hold her, first as a baby, and then as she was older, until finally the paramedics had needed to pry her from his arms. Sit there and tell a bunch of random people that he’d felt like an utter failure that day and every day since, unable to do anything to save his baby girl, and he’d spent every day of his life since getting out of Wellington living down to that feeling.
Good for Tess for wanting to do things that would make her happy and make her son proud. Joel had no such desire. He didn’t deserve happiness, not without Sarah there to experience it alongside him.
“Anyway,” Tess says when Joel remains quiet, gaze fixed on the card, “I just…it’s been good with you, you know? I’ve been happier with you than I had been in a really long time. But it’s…not enough anymore, Joel.” She inhales, the lines of her shoulders sharpening as she straightens. “I need to be with someone who wants the same things I do out of a relationship, and I know you can’t give that to me. I’m not asking you to. But I’m starting to figure out what I deserve out of life, and it’s not…this.”
It’s on the tip of his tongue to argue with her, to say that he can be better for her, do better. But they both know it would be a lie, a small Band-aid on a gaping wound, and so he doesn’t insult her by offering it.
“I get it,” he murmurs, rolling his empty whiskey glass between his palms. The neon of the bar lights refract off it, bouncing into his eyes, and he lets it blind him rather than look back up at Tess. He’s a coward. “I…you do deserve better. ‘N I’m sorry I ain’t been that for you.”
Silence falls between them again, weighted and tarnished, broken only by Kenny Chesney’s twang pleading for his love to come over, come over, come over, come over.
Tess reaches forward, nudges the card a little closer to him. “Think about it, alright.” Her palms press into the table, pushing her up to stand. She tucks in her chair, steps around and bends to press a kiss to his cheek. Soft lips, the scent of her perfume washing over him again, and Joel lets his eyes slip shut. Her hand squeezes his shoulder one more time, and then she walks away.
Joel doesn’t watch her go, doesn’t call her back despite the urge to.
Instead he picks up her drink and carries it back to the bar, waving down the bartender and ordering another whiskey for himself.
On the way back to the table, Joel tosses the business card in the trash. He doesn’t need friends, compassionate or otherwise.
He’s fine alone, has been for twenty years, and he doesn’t see that changing any time soon.
–-
He misses work the next morning, face burrowed in his pillow and the smell of whiskey reeking from his pores. The buzzing of his phone is what wakes him - not his alarms, he’s slept through those - and Joel slaps a hand on the nightstand to try to make it stop.
It does, and then it starts up again, and Joel peels himself up from the mattress just enough to blink at the screen. Sunlight pierces the curtains in his room, setting off a ricochet of pain behind his eyes, but he can make out his boss’s name on the screen just before it goes dark and then lights up with a missed call notification. There’s at least three of them, the time on the phone reading 12:07, and Joel groans.
Sitting upright has the room spinning more than a little, but Joel swipes his phone open and shoots off a quick sick, be in tomorrow text to Bill. The man’s not an idiot - this is far from the first time Joel’s drank himself into oblivion, even if it happens less frequently now than it used to - and his responding thanks has all the terseness and lack of feeling that Joel usually appreciates. Bill’s a nice man, runs a generally tight ship, and there’s been more than a handful of times that Joel’s wanted to ask why the fuck he ain’t been fired yet. He’s fifty-six and while he’s good with his hands on a jobsite, he ain’t getting any younger. He’s just unreliable enough to not be promoted, definitely unreliable enough to have probably been given the boot working for anyone else.
And yet Bill keeps him around.
Joel locks his phone and tosses it back onto the nightstand. He hadn’t bothered to plug it in after pouring himself out of his Uber last night, so it’s a miracle the damn thing even had enough battery this morning to get all the calls.
There’s ibuprofen in the medicine cabinet in his bathroom, if he could find the will to get out of bed. A shower would probably help, some coffee, some water.
Instead, Joel slumps back down, closes his eyes, and pulls the covers back over his head.
–-
True to his word, Joel makes it to work on time the next morning. His head’s still pounding something fierce, even after three ibuprofen, and it feels like he’s being taunted when he walks by a bookshop with a poster advertising the same goddamn grief group Tess had talked about the other night.
He swings by the main trailer when he gets to the site, a new active living community for people Joel’s age and older - and damn if that don’t have him feeling his age - and finds Bill in there with his head buried in paperwork, as it so frequently is. He’s muttering about government surveillance and over-taxation too, and the familiarity of it almost makes Joel want to smile.
Almost.
Bill shuts the folder when he spots Joel, gesturing for him to sit down across from him. There’s a new woodcarving on the desk, a hobby they have in common even if Joel ain’t touched it in years, this one of a man fishing in a canoe. It’s nicely done, and if Joel wasn’t feeling like he was approaching the gallows, he’d compliment it.
Instead he offers up a “That’s new,” and points at the painting now hanging behind Bill’s head, a watercolor of a cottage in the woods, all blurry lines and colorful smears. Even without seeing the signature at the bottom, he knows who did it. “Frank make it for you?”
“He did.” Some of the tightness in Bill’s face eases a bit at the mention of his husband, as it always does. “Didn’t want me to bring it to work but he was asleep when I left so he didn’t get a say in it.” His mouth flattens again and he appraises his employee, taking in the shadows under his eyes, the gray tone to his skin that Joel had seen in the mirror this morning. He looks like shit, and they both know it.
Bill opens his mouth again, and Joel braces himself for this having been his last straw - he’s finally about to get fired. It won’t matter much, he works more to have something to do than anything. The payout from the class action lawsuit after Sarah’s death had left him with more than enough money to go awhile without working. But it was work or sit at home and stare at the wall, and for now he needed to work.
“I think you need to take some time off,” Bill says, and Joel blinks in surprise.
“I don’t –”
“I do my best not to get involved in my employee’s personal lives,” Bill interjects flatly. “I do not care how their latest date went or what ridiculous television show they’re currently being brainwashed by. However,” he looks Joel over again carefully, “I still try to pay enough attention to see when someone is struggling, because struggling leads to distractions and distractions lead to injuries. Injuries mean paperwork, and, well…” he waves at hand at his desk, brows pulling together. “Paperwork just invites more government intrusion into your life and business.”
Joel swallows. “Time off ain’t gonna help me.” It’ll give him a chance to do exactly what he tries so hard not to do - sit at home and think. Sit at home and stare at the boxes of Sarah’s belongings in the spare room until he’s feeling miserable and masochistic enough to open one up and pull something out and remind himself all over again what he’s lost and will never get back.
He can’t do that.
If he were anyone else, Bill might push harder. Instead he just gives a curt nod and says, “Maybe give it some thought.” And then he drops his attention back to his paperwork and Joel stands, recognizing the dismissal.
The sun’s somehow even brighter when Joel steps back outside, heading over to the foreman to find out where he’s at for the day and praying it’s one of the already-framed interior units. His temples are throbbing, eyes watering with it, and Joel’s got half a mind to just walk off the site altogether.
But there’s nothing waiting at home for him except more whiskey and another hangover, so Joel takes his assignment and gets to work.
–-
There’s little variance in his days now, without Tess. They’d usually met up once or twice a week, sometimes more frequently, sometimes less. And while he’s loath to admit it to himself, he misses her a helluva lot. Enough to make him glad he deleted her number from his phone the night she ended things, or else he’d’ve made more than one humiliating phone call to her when drunk. And he’s been drinking a lot more than he oughta, a lot more than he usually does. He hates it a little, even as he pours himself another glass.
Instead, Joel wakes up, goes to work - grateful when their part on the assisted living center is done and he no longer has to pass that bookshop and its goddamn Compassionate Friends advertising every morning - sits alone at lunch with whatever sad sandwich he’s thrown together, and then goes back home. Most nights he has at least one drink, maybe two, before he turns on some mindless television and passes out on the couch for a few hours. His back hates him for it in the morning, even if he does manage to pull himself up and onto his bed at some point.
Bill mentions again the idea of taking some time off once they’re at their new site, and Joel brushes him off same as he did before. He doesn’t need a goddamn vacation or something, he just needs to get through each day even if there’s no goddamn point to it anymore.
Tess’s words come back to haunt him a bit on the nights he can’t fall asleep. He stares up at the ceiling and hears he would be so disappointed in me in her voice, over and over again, until it shifts into his brother’s voice and the he becomes a she. He’s pretty sure Tommy had told him something like that once - that Sarah would be disappointed in him - during one of those last fights they’d had, though Joel had been drunk enough that all the words they’d yelled at each other sort of swirled together.
There’d been quite a few fights like that, before his baby brother had given him up for a lost cause and moved across the country again. Fights where they’d both said ugly, hurtful things to each other that probably sent both Sarah and their mother spinning in their graves. Tommy had said that Sarah would be disappointed in everything Joel had let himself become and the way he had given up on his own life, and Joel was pretty sure he’d shouted back something about Tommy not giving a fuck that his niece was dead.
They hadn’t spoken for three weeks after that, and his next communication from his brother had been a curt text message informing Joel that he’d taken a job out in fucking Wyoming. Joel hadn’t bothered with a cross-country move of his own this time, knowing that Tommy didn’t want him anywhere around anymore, and in the years since they’d been reduced to monthly five minute calls and brief happy birthday texts.
But he hadn’t argued it that night, and he wouldn’t argue it now - if his little girl was still alive, she’d be more than disappointed at what had become of her dad. There was nothing about him now that would have been recognizable to her as she’d known him, but Joel had buried that version of himself with her. He’d tried to do that literally too, but he’d failed, and the guilt of leaving his little brother behind was now all that kept him tethered to this world.
–-
Like he knows Joel was thinking about him, Tommy texts him three days later, somewhat out of the blue.
Need to call you.
Joel stares at that message for a long time before he even thinks about answering it. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Joel finds it a little funny that he’s now on the other end of this communication, the one someone is waiting on a response from.
And yet somehow, he’s still the one with a pit in his stomach.
He and Tommy talk on the phone now maybe once a month, plus birthdays and Christmas. They don’t deviate from it, and last Joel knew their next phone call was supposed to be a couple weeks from now.
So this can’t be good.
He thinks entirely too damn long about what to send back to his brother, before he settles on a when? and pushes send.
Tommy’s answer is immediate - ASAP.
“Goddamnit,” Joel mutters, eyes lifting automatically to the bottle of whiskey on top of the fridge. He’s damn near out, there’s maybe one glass left, but he pulls it down and pours it anyway before picking up his phone again. He skips the continued texting back and forth, instead calling Tommy and waiting with bated breath for his brother to pick up.
“Hey.”
Joel takes a swig of the whiskey. “Hey.”
Silence crackles over the line, before Tommy sighs and asks, “How’re you doin’?”
“‘M fine.” It’s a lie, but they both pretend he means it. “You?”
“I, uh,” a sound echoes over the line that could only be classified as a nervous laugh, “I’m real good, actually. It’s why I’m callin’.”
Joel slams back the rest of his whiskey, wishes heartily for another glass, another bottle, another ten bottles. Good for Tommy, that he’s doing so well out in Wyoming, but Joel would be just fine without knowing a goddamn thing that’s going on in his brother’s life right now.
“Yeah?” He finally says, when he realizes Tommy’s waiting for an answer.
Tension strings tight across the space between them, dead air hanging for a long minute before Tommy breaks it.
“I met someone out here. Her name’s Maria, and she’s…well…” Tommy trails off in another nervous laugh, and Joel rolls his eyes. Course his brother would think that his latest fling or whatever would be enough reason to need to call Joel at four o’clock on a Saturday.
“‘S nice,” Joel offers up, utterly unsure of what he’s supposed to say. He doesn’t give a damn, honestly. He wishes, more than he’d ever admit, that things were better with him and Tommy, that they could stand to be in the same room together or even talk to each other on a more regular basis. But he can’t be the man he knows Tommy wants him to be, and so he doesn’t bother trying.
“We’re married,” Tommy blurts out finally, and Joel chokes on air. “Been married a couple months actually. Her family has a ranch out here in Jackson - ‘s where I’ve been livin’ - and I’m workin’ on it with her now, helpin’ her run it. She’s actually a lawyer, but she –”
“What happened to your job with that reforestation group?” Joel cuts in abruptly, hunching forward to rub his forehead with his index finger and thumb. Leave it to Tommy to run off and get married and quit his job, just a whole host of irresponsible decisions all in one. No amount of time in the Army could shake his recklessness from him, it would seem.
“Quit,” Tommy says abruptly, all the warmth evaporated from his voice, “bout two years ago.”
Joel snorts. “You never mentioned.”
“Well –” Tommy cuts himself off, exhales. There’s a beat of quiet, a beat where Joel knows his little brother is counting backwards from ten and fighting the urge to bite his head off. It’s satisfying, in a twisted sort of way, to know that he can still get a rise out of Tommy with thousands of miles between them.
“Guess I oughta congratulate you,” Joel says belatedly, not really meaning it. He’d be surprised if this marriage of Tommy’s lasted the month, but it was his life to fuck up as he saw fit.
Tommy snorts, the sound jarring in Joel’s ear, and he pulls the phone back for a moment. “You oughta,” he mutters. “But that ain’t the whole reason I called you. We…” Tommy exhales again, and Joel’s shoulders inch up to his ears. “Maria and I…we have a baby. A little boy. He was born about two weeks ago, and I’d…well, I’d like you to come out here and meet the two of ‘em.”
Joel yanks the phone from his ear and tosses it on the coffee table, wishing more than anything he could shatter it against the opposite wall. His chest is tight, lungs sealed up and blocked, and there’s a roaring in his ears that’s still somehow not loud enough to drown out the echo of his brother’s words.
We have a baby. A little boy. We have a baby. A little boy.
Fuck, Tommy can’t just drop this on him, can’t just –
“Here you go, Dad!” A small, squalling bundle is laid carefully in his arms, one small hand already worked free from the pink blanket around her. “It’s a girl.”
Brown eyes blink up at him and everything around him fades into the background - the nurses, the doctors still tending to Ana, the beep of the machines. Everything fades and reorients and flips upside down and all he can do is stand here and stare at this little girl as she stares right back up at him. Her eyes are wide, her blinks slow and even, and it feels like she’s taking his measure just as much as he’s taking hers. Like she’s checking to see if he’s good enough, if he’s the right choice to be taking care of her.
“‘M gonna do my best, baby girl,” he croaks out around the lump in his throat.
“Would you like a picture?”
The nurse’s voice has him lifting his head to where she’s proffering the disposable camera he’d shoved in their go-bag. He’d only used it once earlier, snapping a picture of Ana giving a weak thumbs up from the bed before the labor began in earnest.
“Yeah,” he gives a watery smile, looks back down at the center of his world in his arms and hears the click of the button. “Thanks.”
Tommy’s tinny, indecipherable voice echoes out from the phone, and Joel leans forward to press the speakerphone button.
“– what you were expectin’ to hear, but it’d really mean a fuckin’ lot to me, Joel, so –”
“You want me to come out there,” Joel repeats flatly, trying to regain the thread of the conversation from wherever the fuck it had gone.
“Yeah.”
“You want me to come out there,” Joel says again, anger slipping into his tone, “and meet the woman you just married and the kid you just had and just sprung on me.”
Tommy’s quiet for a second, and Joel watches the timer on the call tick slowly upwards. They’re nearing ten minutes, longer than they’ve been on the phone together in years. “That’s what I want,” he says finally, a hard edge to his voice that Joel ain’t used to hearing from his brother. “They’re my family, and you’re my family whether you wanna be or not. So you oughta meet them.”
The derisive sound slips from Joel’s lips before he can stop it. “They’re your family. Yeah, alright Tom, whatever the fuck you say. You married a woman you barely know and popped out a kid almost immediately, I’m sure that’ll work out real well for you. Not like you ain’t already seen how that plays out, but I’m sure it’ll go a lot better for you than it did for me.”
There’s an undercurrent stretching through the silence now, vibrating and tense and strung taut from Boston all the way to Jackson.
“Go fuck yourself, Joel.” Tommy’s voice is as close to hateful as Joel’s ever heard it, and the smallest shred of guilt worms its way in through the anger and sorrow and disbelief all battling for dominance in his chest right now. “I don’t ever fuckin’ ask you for shit, I haven’t in decades since you decided to try to put yourself in the ground and fuckin’ leave me here alone. I asked you to stay alive, and you’ve done a piss poor job of it but you did it, and I ain’t asked you for anything since.”
“Tommy –”
“Shut the fuck up,” he growls across the line. “Shut the fuck up right now, Joel Miller, before you say another goddamn thing I’ll just have to punch you in the fuckin’ face for.” He pauses, almost as if he’s daring Joel to utter a word. When he doesn’t, Tommy presses on, “All I’m askin’ is for you to come out here for a week or somethin’, meet my wife and son, and then you can fuck off back to Boston and stay there as long as you like.”
His phone beeps and the screen goes dark, the call ended, and Joel’s head drops down. Fucking hell.
He leaves the phone on the table as he picks up his whiskey glass and deposits it on the counter, tosses the empty bottle in recycling, and shrugs on his jacket.
The liquor store around the corner is open till midnight, and thank fuck for that because there’s no way Joel’s getting through the night with Tommy’s words ricocheting around in his head, not if he wants to sleep or function or look himself in the fucking mirror. Not if he wants to keep the urge to demolish his entire apartment from becoming reality. He ain’t violent, never has been really other than some fights in school as a kid, but goddamn it if hearing that Tommy went off and got married and had a kid doesn’t make him want to throw things.
In another life - in a brighter timeline, maybe - that’s the kind of news that would’ve had Joel overjoyed for his brother. He’d have been ecstatic to be an uncle, delighted to have the chance to get a little payback at Tommy for the years he spent being ganged up on by him and Sarah.
But that’s not this life, so instead he closes the door behind him and heads down the street to buy another bottle or two of whiskey.
At least it’s a Saturday and he doesn’t work tomorrow.
–-
Monday finds him in Bill’s office again, another dull headache pulsing behind his eyes, another half bottle of whiskey gone.
“About the time off you suggested,” Joel starts. “Turns out my brother went and got married, and he wants me to go out there and meet her.” He can’t bring himself to mention the baby yet, forcing the rest of the words out around the rock in his throat. “So I figured I’d…do that.”
“Hmm.” Bill doesn’t say anything, just stares at him for a long moment. It reminds Joel a bit too much of standing in front of the principal when he’d been called in for punching a kid who’d been shoving Tommy around. “Alright. How much time?”
Tommy had said a week, but Joel wasn’t planning on flying out there, which meant he’d need to account for however long it would take to drive. Probably a couple extra days on either end, maybe two weeks or so.
“I’ll get back to you on that,” Joel replies, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Gotta figure out how I’m gettin’ there and all that fun. Probably a couple weeks at least though.”
Bill grunts an acknowledgement, shifting aside the blueprints on his desk to get to the calendar underneath. None of their scheduling was digital when Bill could avoid it - “Don’t need the government watching me anymore than they already are,” he’d say whenever someone complained - and he runs his finger over the blocks for the next two weeks. “Everything goes according to plan here,” he mutters, “we should be done with the bulk of the construction by the end of the month. And then you can take off as much time as you like. Hell, take a leave of absence. You’ve got the PTO to be gone for at least a couple months if you want.”
“I don’t know about all that,” Joel tries, disquiet zipping up and down his spine at the thought of that much time on his hands. He wasn’t gonna spend it all in Wyoming, that was for damn sure. Hell, he probably wouldn’t even be there the week Tommy had suggested, maybe just a couple days before they inevitably got sick of each other and Joel left. Then what was he gonna do? Come back here?
Austin, the small voice in his head whispered, and Joel brushed the thought away before it could take root any further than it already had. He’d toyed with it off and on over the years since Tommy had left Boston, the idea of moving back to Texas.
But he wasn’t sure he could stomach being there without Sarah.
“Think about it,” Bill says, an echo of their earlier conversation. “Let me know what your brother says.”
“Yeah.” Joel exhales, wishing more than anything he’d just stayed home today. “Yeah, I’ll let you know.”
–-
Well?
The question stares up at him from his phone screen, the neon signs decorating the bar walls flickering just out of his field of view. Tommy had sent it twenty minutes ago, a week after their disastrous phone call, and Joel hadn’t quite known what to say in response. He wouldn’t have been the slightest bit surprised if Tommy had called the whole thing off, opted to keep his trainwreck brother far away from his shiny new life with his wife and son.
He’d kinda been hoping for it, actually.
The letters blur a little in front of him as Joel lifts his phone to answer, the two and a half drinks he’s already had starting to make the world around him fuzz at the edges. Probably hadn’t been the best idea, coming to his and Tess’s bar, but a small, selfish part of him had hoped maybe she’d be here too. By some chance, some twist of the universe. He just wanted to talk to someone about this, and Tess had been the only friend he’d had.
But the universe has proven time and again that it doesn’t like Joel Miller, and so he sat alone, swaying ever so slightly.
Yeah, alright, he types back and presses send.
The little gray bubble at the bottom appears almost immediately. When?
“Jesus fuck, Tommy, I don’t know,” Joel mutters aloud. He pinches the bridge of his nose with his fingers, trying to think of what the fuck Bill had said about their workload. Prob end of monht, he manages to type, squinting at the screen. He doesn't bother trying to fix his typo before hitting send.
Gonna rent a car?
He should, Joel knows that. He ain’t getting on a plane ever again if he can help it, and his own pick-up wouldn’t make it past the state line. Renting a car would be the smartest and quickest, probably the cheapest other than the gas.
But he ain’t exactly in a rush to get out there, so he sends back a I’ll figur smthing out and swallows the rest of his whiskey. He wants another one, but the bar seems awfully far away right now, so Joel leans back in his chair instead, scrubs a hand over his face. His phone buzzes with Tommy’s response, but Joel swipes the notification away, unwilling to prolong this stilted conversation about a trip he doesn’t wanna be making any longer.
His eyes unfocus lazily, the colors of the Bud Light and Corona signs blurring together in front of him until he’s blinking spots away. His head is heavy on his neck, unwieldy, as he turns it to squint at the TV in the corner, trying to see what Tony’s got playing tonight. He can’t make out any of the dialogue, and his vision is barely cooperating with him, but he manages a glimpse of a blonde girl boarding a bus with a wave before someone at the bar gets in his way and the screen is blocked. But the image feels seared behind his eyelids, even though Joel’s pretty sure he’s never seen the movie before.
Lisa comes by to collect his empty glasses, not that Joel really notices. He’s too busy unlocking his phone and fumbling through opening the browser app. His fingers feel thick, heavy, and it takes him more tries than it should to get a search window open and type his query in. But he manages, eyes crossing slightly as he looks through the options that have come up from his search for bus tickets.