Goddess Rising (67 page)

W
es walked into
Bar Illegal, one of his and Ryke’s favorite hangouts in Austin. It looked like a storage unit inside the grounds of its better-known big brother, Clive Bar, just off the raucous commotion of Rainey Street’s bar district. But the Bar Illegal only served small-batch mezcal from Oaxaca, a guaranteed cure to what ailed you—or a great way to get yourself some serious ailments the following morning, depending on which way the scales tipped over the course of the evening. After a long day in
The Statesman
office reworking the articles with Mr. Riley and meeting the newspaper’s team of journalists and staff photographers, Wes wasn’t entirely sure which way he’d land. He figured he’d start drinking to celebrate, then see where that led him.

Wes took a seat near the bar, holding his fingers up to the bartender for two shot glasses. His gaze snagged on a couple of pretty, heavily-made-up girls sitting across the room. One of them had a tramp stamp on the strip of tanned skin between her top and her jean skirt. The other had dark hair and clear, dark eyes. Like Sammy. Or maybe close enough after enough agave. He nodded toward them and asked the bartender to send them a round after ordering a bottle.

Wes was already a couple shots in by the time Ryke arrived.

“We celebrating?” Ryke asked as he slapped Wes on the shoulder.

“You’re looking at the newest member of
The Statesman
’s photojournalism department,” Wes told him with a brief smile. “And soon to be published in a national paper, thank you very much.”

Ryke’s brows shot up as a broad grin spread across his face. “In that case—you’re buying.”

Wes laughed softly, pouring Ryke a shot. They clinked glasses and took the shots with quick grimaces before Wes poured them another round.

“We looking to get lit up tonight?” Ryke asked as he swallowed the second shot.

“Don’t know about you.” Wes licked his lips, wondering when the numbness would set in. “But I am.”

“You don’t have work in the morning?”

“Finished it up today. That’s why I’m in town,” Wes replied, shooting the mezcal before Ryke got to his. “The first of the articles come out Sunday, but I don’t formally start until next week.”

Ryke drank down his shot, eyes on Wes. He flipped his shot glass over before Wes could pour him another.

“With all this good news, why do you look like a guy who’s drinking to forget something, Wes?” Ryke asked casually though his gaze, a little too intuitive for comfort.

“Who says I got anything to forget?” Wes replied blithely, pouring another shot.

“I do,” Ryke answered. “I’ve known you since we were kids, man. You think I can’t tell when you’re looking to bury your head in the sand? What comes next?” He looked around. His eyes fixed onto the two girls Wes had spotted earlier. “Ah—your other favorite painkiller.” Ryke smiled grimly. “This mean the love’s all gone with Samantha?”

A cuff of laughter escaped him as Wes took his sixth shot. He was finally starting to feel warm now. That luscious beginning to the descent. He hadn’t let himself get hammered since it happened. And tonight seemed as good as any. His work was done for the next few days anyway, and he was finally on a much-deserved break. Wes had nothing to look forward to but that long stretch of oblivion, and if he was very lucky, a long weekend
ménage à trois
with a Sam look-alike and her sultry sidekick.

“What happened?” Ryke asked, leaning on the table.

“Came to my senses is all.”

“No shit?” Ryke said with a knowing smirk. “That why you trying to drown what’s left of them in firewater?”

“Are we celebrating or doing therapy?” Wes retorted, knocking back his mezcal. The warmth was really starting to spread. He felt loose-limbed and the hazy glow of a profound buzz coming on. Besides being told the good news about the internship—it was the best he’d been feeling in days. Even if it was artificial.

Truth was, he
missed Sammy
something awful. He wanted to tell her about everything. But he was trying to give her some space when all he wanted to do was celebrate the win with her.

Wes glanced at the girls again, their appeal ironically diminishing as he started to feel the liquor working through his system—like the opposite of beer goggles. Push came to shove, he didn’t want to get drunk and hook up with girls he wouldn’t remember the next day. He wanted Sam. He wanted to make love to her, tell her all his secrets, and listen to all of hers.

Christ, what was he doing?
He looked down at the glass in his hand, pensive.

“Wes, I don’t know what’s going on with you, and God knows you don’t have to tell me, but before you black out from all those shots, and I have to carry your drunk ass home, I’d just like to know a little about what I’m dealing with here,” Ryke said, his brow raised in question. “Last time we talked, it was all coming up roses, and now you’re talking shit about coming to your senses when it seems like you’re doing the exact opposite—”

“I fucked up—royally. All right?” Wes interrupted, setting his shot glass down. “And now I’m in time out until I can figure out how the hell to get Sam back.”

Ryke scratched his beard. “Tell me how you fucked up.”

“Jesus.” Wes put a hand on his ribs where he was still aching.

Ryke just waited him out.

“I got scared,” Wes admitted after a moment, his tongue feeling a little loose. Maybe mezcal was actually a truth serum. He stared at the empty glass in his hand. “That’s just what it comes down to. I’m not proud about it, but there it is.”

“This comes back to the conversation we had in the garage, doesn’t it?”

“I let my own doubt get in the way,” Wes confessed. “I started questioning everything, even though it was going well. I started being afraid of everything I had to lose with her—”

“So you ditched her while you still thought you could walk away whole,” Ryke guessed.

“I’m not whole though—not by a long shot.” Wes’s mouth compressed in a hard line. “Goddamn, Ryke, I feel like I’m walking around with a big piece missing.”

“You are, man,” Ryke replied, shaking his head. “You cut your nose off to spite your face, brother.”

“I know that.” Wes shot him a look. “You think I don’t know that?”

Ryke picked up the bottle, flipped his glass over, and poured them both another shot. “So then what are you going to do about it?” he asked. “You know what you did wrong. I’m guessing you want her back. Why are you in a bar with me in Austin, looking for trouble in all the wrong places when you oughtta be tracking this girl down?”

“She wouldn’t take me back,” Wes responded flatly.

“How do you know?” Ryke asked.

“I said some terrible things. I cut her to the quick—”

“You got a silver tongue, Wes. You talked your way into her good graces the first time—what makes you think you can’t do it again?” Ryke pointed out, semi-accurately.

“She doesn’t trust me anymore.”

“You haven’t given her any good reasons to,” Ryke countered. “Not recently, anyway.”

“She deserves better—”

“Who says? You?” Ryke replied, knocking back his shot. “I think you ought to let her be the judge of what she does and does not deserve. Women are tricky like that—they don’t like having decisions made for them.”

The heat and determination in Sam’s face came back to Wes with startling clarity. He recalled her expression as she faced off with De Soto. He remembered the jut of her chin when she went toe to toe with her father. Jesus H., Wes had basically done
exactly
what she hated—he’d taken the decision out of her hands and made it for her. And it’d been the wrong damn one…

“Wes, you’re like my brother, so I’ll frame it up as lovingly as I know how,” Ryke began. “You’re a dumb fuck, and you need to pull your head out of your ass.”

Wes scowled at him. “Your version of brotherly love sucks, man.”

“I’m being honest with you,” Ryke replied with a shrug. “That’s the best way to love from what I know of it. You want to become a good man, Wes? Well, there it is. You go to Sam and you be honest with her. You lay it all out on the line.”

“I’m trying to give her time—” Wes argued. “Chris told me I needed to back off for a while.”

“Now, you’re just coming up with good excuses not to walk the plank and do the hard thing. There’s a difference,” Ryke interrupted, shaking his head. “You’re just afraid Sam won’t take you back even after you make yourself completely vulnerable, and yeah—there’s a chance that will happen. It may even be likely—but there it is. You know exactly what you need to do. Now it’s just up to you to do it.”

“It’s October break—she could be anywhere.”
But he knew she was in Houston. He just hadn’t worked up the courage yet to go hunt her down.

“Have you tried calling her?”

Wes shook his head, mute.

Ryke reached in his pocket and slapped a quarter on the table. “Hop to it then. Payphone’s out the back.”

Wes stared at him, incredulous. “I’m drunk. You want me to call Sam hammered? You honestly think drunk dialing her will help matters much?”

“You’re not drunk, Wes—you just wish you were,” Ryke told him. “Besides—this is just a first step. You ought to do this in person, like a man.” He pushed the quarter toward Wes with one blunt fingertip. “You call her and you risk it. You risk her saying no to you, then you begin the task of convincing her.”

“It won’t work. You don’t know Sam like I do,” he argued.

“So you say. But I’m a few years ahead of you on this particular curve, Wes. So trust me when I tell you, this is the way it’s done—it’s the way it’s always been done.” Ryke smiled briefly. “Men screw up. Then we admit it. Then we apologize. Then we grovel. Works like a charm—most of the time.”

That’s exactly what Miranda had suggested.
But it had been a couple weeks since everything had gone sideways, and Wes was certain Sam had built her walls so high, he’d never be able to breach them. But what did he have to lose at this point that he hadn’t already lost?

“I’m going to take that quarter just to prove you wrong,” Wes said, swiping it off the table.

“Don’t really care why you take it, as long as you do.” Ryke gave him a little shove. “Now stop talking shit and go on and get ’er done.”

A couple of dingy payphones waited in the back of the bar by the restrooms. Wes passed the girls he’d been eyeing earlier on his way over. The brunette smiled at him over her shoulder. A kind of “come hither.” But all Wes could think about were all the ways he’d tell Sam he loved her if she just let him. He fit the quarter in the slot and dialed Sam’s apartment at A&M—the only number of hers he knew by heart.

Please be there. Please don’t be there. God, I can’t decide which would be worse—

“’llo?” Rita answered, like she was in the middle of something.

Wes glanced at the phone in surprise, wondering if he’d somehow gotten the wrong number. But he didn’t know Rita’s number, so it had to be Sam’s.

“Rita, it’s Wes,” he said in a rush. “Can I speak to Sam?”

A beat of silence, followed by a torrent of Spanish he couldn’t begin to follow. But Wes got the gist. He knew what being cursed out sounded like in any language. Rita must be calling him seven different kinds of asshole.

“Rita—I get it. I’m a piece of shit,” Wes cut her off mid-flight. “But I just need to talk to her, all right? I need to apologize—”

“You need to do more than apologize,
culero
! You need to stay the hell away from her!” Rita shouted into the phone.

“Why are you even answering her phone?” Wes asked, wobbling a little. He put his hand flat on the wall to steady himself. The mezcal was really starting to work through him. “Where is she—?”

“Are you drunk?” Rita asked, incredulous. “Are you seriously drunk dialing her, you stupid monkey?”

“Stupid monkey?” Wes parroted, rubbing his face. “Jesus, Rita—I know you’re pissed. I know Sam’s pissed. And yeah, I may be a little bit lit, but I need to talk to her. I need to tell her what happened—”

“You need to tell me where you are so I can come and kick your ass,” Rita countered.

“Go right ahead. Then you can give me a ride to go see her after you’re done. I’m down in Austin.”

Rita paused a beat. He could hear her breathing angrily on the line.

“I’m trying to do the right thing, Rita,” Wes admitted honestly, though he could hear himself slurring a little.
Damn agave.
“I need Sammy to know she’s the best damn thing that’s ever happened to me and that walking away was the worst thing I could have done.”

“I could kill you for hurting her like that,” Rita hissed.

“You and Chris both,” Wes answered, closing his eyes and leaning his forehead against the wall by his hand. “I need her, Rita,” he whispered. “I never needed anyone before Sammy.”

It seemed a long silence followed his confession. Wes listened. He could almost
hear
Rita weighing the options.

“Please, Rita—just put her on the phone. I’d drive out myself, but I’ve had too much to drink. I can be there tomorrow. If she wants to see me—I’ll be there as soon as I sober up enough to get back on my bike.”

“I don’t know what that means, Rita.”

“She’s not even here, Wes,” Rita told him with a huff. “I’m staying at her place while she’s gone.”

Wes thumped his head against the wall. “Just tell me where she is—I’ll drive there.”

“No.”

“Where is she, Rita?” he pleaded.

More silence.

“Goddamn it, Rita—what the hell do I have to do to prove I’m serious here?”

“Why did you wait so long to call her?”

“Chris told me to give her space. And like a jackass, I listened to him.”

“So you didn’t just wait to call until after you got good and lubed up?”

“I may have needed to work up some courage,” Wes answered honestly. “Look, can you blame me? Most of the people she’s surrounded by are training up on a hundred different ways to murder a man.”

“I will cut your dick off if you hurt her again,” Rita told him hotly.

“Well, that’s one step down from killing me dead, so I’ll take it,” Wes told her. The payphone beeped and Wes dug around in his pocket for another quarter. His hands felt heavy and slow to respond, but he managed to fumble another coin into the slot.