“Uh … no. I’m good.” Her painted lips turned up at him the exact same way they had turned up at me and a shiver of unease shot down my spine.
I was tired of being second best and underappreciated. When the blonde turned back to me after Asa moved on to finish his last call, I pushed my untouched drink in her direction and hauled myself off of the barstool. “Last drink is on me. Have a good rest of the night.” She blinked at me in confusion and opened her mouth to say something but I shook my head and walked away from her before she could say anything else.
I really was good at saying no, much better than I was at saying yes. Even after the girl made me feel like a piece of meat, like nothing more than a dick that could be interchanged with any other dick for the night, I still didn’t have it in me to be a total asshole. I didn’t want my rejection or disinterest to hurt her because I was still in the throes of how badly Kallie’s desertion had hurt me. I wasn’t the type that lashed out, which made the fact I’d spilled my guts and dropped all my baggage at Poppy’s feet yesterday super unexpected. There was just something about that beautiful girl with her wounded eyes that made me want to assure her she wasn’t the only one feeling shredded and alone.
It was late fall in Denver, well past the time of year that you could be outside in the dark of night without a coat on. The chill in the air cleared up some of the fog in my head and cooled some of the still-simmering anger in my blood at being disregarded as I walked over to my perfectly restored and lovingly maintained ’67 Eldorado Cadillac. The car was my baby. She was the reason I took shop when I was a teenager and she was the thing that gave me purpose and directed me on the path that would lead to my own business and a way to provide for myself. My Caddy was my passion, the first thing that I’d ever owned that was mine outright, and she was a culmination of everything I’d ever been taught and had learned to apply to something real. There was no way in hell I was getting behind the wheel after a night of drinking. She had a million memories tied to her and I doubted I would be able to recover if anything took them away. I felt like my life hadn’t really had the chance to start until I walked into that tiny, undersupplied garage at Brookside High School and laid eyes on the mangled, dismantled beauty that was the former husk of my baby.
I ordered an Uber and propped a hip on the hood as the cold started to filter through my drunken melancholy. It and the idea of going home to an endlessly empty house made me shiver. I turned my head as the noise from the inside of the bar followed Asa out when he opened the door and did a quick scan of the parking lot. His gaze landed where I was leaning against the Caddy and I saw him let out a breath of relief. He shouted over his shoulder for someone to watch the bar for a second and then he let the heavy door shut behind him. He made his way over to where I was shivering and trying to keep my teeth from chattering.
“I was worried you were going to let the blonde take you home. Didn’t think I had to worry about you taking yourself home when you aren’t in any state to drive.” His breath left little puffs of vapor in the air and he didn’t bother to stop his teeth from clicking together as he rubbed his hands up and down his arms. “I like you, Speedy. Don’t make me take you to the ground for your keys.”
I held up my phone and showed him the map with the indicator that my Uber was only a few minutes away. “Called for a ride. I wouldn’t risk my car by driving drunk.”
He shook his head at me and rocked back on his heels. “You’re worried about your car and not yourself. You need someone to set you straight, Wheeler. I’ve been trying the last few weeks but I’m not getting through.”
I lifted an eyebrow and shrugged at him. “I come by for a drink and the company. I don’t remember signing up for a therapy session.”
He snorted at me and rolled his eyes. “You might not want to hear it, but you should listen anyway. When a man that’s made more than his fair share of mistakes sees another man driving off into the ditch, he isn’t much of a man unless he tries to get all those wheels back on the road. Sometimes it takes a tow truck, sometimes it only requires a little push from some helping hands. I understand your old lady did you wrong, but you aren’t going to make it right by drinking yourself into the kind of man you wouldn’t waste your time on if you ran across him.” He pointed a finger at me just as the Uber pulled into the lot and the driver flashed his lights. “Get yourself out of the ditch, Wheeler. There’s nothing good down there and all you’ll end up doing is spinning your wheels.”
I wobbled a little as I pushed myself off the car and put my phone in my back pocket. “I’m good at fixing things that are left behind and broken down, Asa. Don’t worry about me.” I had booze-fueled confidence to make the words sound more certain than they were.
He sighed again and looked down at the toes of his boots. “It’s never fun to see a good man get knocked down.” When he lifted his head back up there was concern stamped clearly across his face. “It’s even worse when that man doesn’t seem interested in getting himself back up. I’m cheaper than a shrink, Wheeler, and my office is a lot more fun.”
The man was going to be spreading himself thin if he was trying to save every lonely heart that sat down at his bar. He was weeks away from opening his own speakeasy-style bar in the heart of LoDo and that meant double the amount of advice to dole out to people that probably weren’t going to listen anyway.
“I’ll keep that in mind, Asa. Take care of that beauty.” Most would think I was talking about his pretty cop girlfriend, but anyone who knew me or knew anything about how a real gearhead operated would know I was talking about the Nova. He was doing the bulk of the restorations himself but occasionally he would bring it by the shop for a mechanical issue his limited knowledge couldn’t handle. It was a sweet ride and I was glad it found a good home. Besides, it wasn’t like anyone needed to tell Asa to take care of his girl; he treated the redheaded cop like she was his entire reason for existing … kind of the way I’d treated Kallie until it all went south.
I gave the Uber driver the address to my place in Curtis Park and tried to tamp down the now familiar hollow and vacant feeling that came with heading home to an empty house. I’d bought the place a hot second after I slid my ring on Kallie’s finger thinking that she was finally ready to settle down and grow up. We’d been together since we were nothing more than kids; however, while I’d gotten more ambitious and more focused on building something impossible to take away from me over the years, she seemed stuck in place. She was always a handful, a bit of a princess with an annoying tendency toward drama and hysterics, but she loved me and she never left me. So I put up with it all. Now that she was gone, hindsight was startlingly clear and I could see all the ways that we had been moving in different directions long before her first indiscretion. I wanted stability and a solid foundation. She wanted to party and be free all while letting me take care of her and support her. Being needed was nice, but not when it turned into being needed for the things I could provide instead of being needed for the man that I was. I’d turned into an ATM machine instead of a boyfriend and a lover. The worst part was I let it happen by not being able to tell Kallie no. I was too worried that if I denied her she would go. In the end it didn’t matter how much I gave, or how hard I’d loved: she went anyway.