RUSH (City Lights, #3)(9)
I nodded, and tore my gaze away as the group settled down at a corner table. “I’m fine. Totally fine.”
Melanie pursed her lips. “Are you? Your hands are shaking.”
I glanced down at the ice scoop in my hand, a glass in the other. Both trembled. I put both down, and wiped my hands on my apron. “What the hell is he doing here? There are eight billion bars in the city…”
My voice trailed away as it seemed Keith had been designated to buy the first round for him and his group, and was now wending his way through the bar. Tall, blond, and built, Keith Johnston looked like he belonged on a beach surfing instead of in a darkened Greenwich bar.
The last time I’d seen him, he’d had his arm around Molly Kirkpatrick instead of that brunette, but the cocky swagger and arrogant grin were the same. His handsome face morphed into pleasant surprise when he saw me, with not one iota of shame or remorse for what he put me through. I cursed myself for not slipping out the back for a break before he could spot me.
“Charlotte?” Keith sidled right up to the bar without so much as a glance at Melanie. “I never expected to see you at a dive like this, let alone tending the bar! How are you? It’s been awhile. Last I saw you…” His face scrunched up into a look that was half sympathy, half pity, and one hundred percent fake to everyone but him. “Oh, damn, I remember. Your brother—”
“What can I get you?” I asked loudly.
Keith ignored my question and leaned forward, talking to me in a gentle, intense manner, as if I were the only woman in the room, in the whole world. It was a patented Keith Johnston move, one of many that made me fall for him, made me trust him and believe he was sincere when he told me he loved me.
“Charlotte, listen. I’m not good with grief. You know that. I mean, I feel things so hard, so deeply, that your pain…it was just too much. So I ran. It was cowardly and I’m not proud, but I had to. Your eyes…You know it was your eyes that drew me to you—those big doe eyes of yours…”
Those “big does eyes” of mine stung with tears at the way he talked about my grief and my pain as if they were things I’d done to him. Impositions.
“And when you came back from the funeral, those gorgeous eyes were filled with so much sadness, there was nothing left. The Charlotte I knew was gone, and in her place was someone I didn’t know. Someone I couldn’t reach. I should have told you that then…but I just wasn’t strong enough. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Melanie had been staring at him with slack-jawed awe and apparently couldn’t keep to herself another moment. Her owlish features morphed into a snarl. “Are you kidding me? You think she’s going to buy that bullshit?”
Unruffled, Keith turned to her, a plastic, polite smile on his lips. “Hello, Melanie. Nice to see you again, too. If you don’t mind, I’m talking to Charlotte.”
I shook my head faintly at Melanie and she narrowed her eyes. “I’m going to the restroom. I’ll be right back.”
“She’s right, you know,” I said when Melanie had gone. “It’s all bullshit what you just said, and even if it wasn’t, you should have talked to me a year ago. A year, Keith. Instead, I come back from the funer—from Montana to find my boyfriend with another girl and my chair in the Strings gone.”
He cocked his head, a perplexed smile on his lips. “Is that what you’re upset about? The Spring Strings? Charlotte, you were gone for opening night. I had to do something. The show must go on, right?”
I rubbed a spot on the bar with the rag. “What about us, Keith?” I asked in a low voice, hating how pathetic I sounded. Why was I entertaining his excuses instead of just throwing a drink in his face? But some part of me needed to hear answers, even after all this time. Closure, they call it. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt as much if he had a good reason. Something I could believe. Something more than the one I had been living with—that he and I had been a lie.
But his ridiculous, perplexed smile reappeared. “Us? I don’t recall that we ever got exclusive, Char. We were ‘together’”—he actually made air-quotes here, “for a few weeks, right?”
Two months, one week, and four days, I thought. I could probably count up the hours if I really thought about it.
“I got busy with the Strings, then graduation…” Keith shrugged, his smile widening. “But it’s good to see you again, and as much as I’d love to catch up, my friends are going to send a search party if I don’t get back with the drinks.”
He slung his arm on the bar as if we were in a saloon and winked at me like a cowboy in a bad western. I was suddenly overcome with embarrassment that this insincere * was part of the reason my bruised and battered heart couldn’t find my music.
“Sorry,” I said, tossing the rag down. “I’m on a break.”
I pushed past Samneric to get to the alley outside, sat on an overturned bucket used for hauling ice, and burst into tears. Not for what Keith had put me through, but for the awful déjà vu of those months last year. Keith’s pleasantly indifferent face brought it all back to me in a rush: the pain and grief and betrayal. I cried for what I’d thought I’d had with Keith, which was—as it turns out—nothing at all.
But mostly I cried for Chris. I sobbed for my brother, the ache in my heart throbbing along with my pulse. I could have sobbed all night and the tears would never stop. There was an endless well of them for Chris that never seemed to dry up.