incident” Sam told me about the day we met.
“Sam saved my life. If he hadn’t been right there beside me, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. He got some minor burns on his hands trying to put the fire out.”
“Jesus,” I blurted, and my eyes felt like they were ready to fall out of my head. It was beginning to sound like Sam had spent a lot of time babysitting an adult-sized toddler without the luxury of an oversized baby gate.
“I was in the hospital for several months. They stapled skin grafts into me, the whole nine yards. The burn baths were the worst. Sheer torture. Nothing like how Penthouse portrays a sponge bath from a nurse, I can assure you. My little stint in the Burn Unit was one hell of a detox. You’d think with all that pain and all those weeks without alcohol that I would have quit drinking for good.”
“You mean to tell me that that wasn’t your rock bottom?” Our waitress arrived just then, dropping off our burgers and quickly moving on. He seemed to consider my question carefully before he replied. Then he nodded.
“It was the beginning of the end. I never really got drunk again, but I did have a few drinks. I started playing little games with myself. Like, ‘I’ll just have a couple tonight’ or ‘I’ll have one an hour.’ I knew I was headed back in that direction, and I knew I couldn’t stop – at least not on my own. That’s when I found myself in a church basement at an A.A. meeting.”
“Good for you.” I nodded and took a huge bite of my burger. B&D’s made possibly the best food I’d eaten since being in Savannah, and I was overjoyed at the basic pleasure after our excruciating day. For a few minutes we ate in silence. I saw Dale leaving with his parents. He winked at me and gave me a ‘thumbs up.’ I rolled my eyes. Trip noticed and glanced over his shoulder in time to see nothing but the door closing behind Dale. He turned back to his food.
“I have a lot of apologies to make. But trying to make amends to Vi…it’s virtually hopeless. It was hard on her. I was hard on her.” He frowned, and I couldn’t shake the thought that he looked like a tragic hero plucked from an epic movie and tossed into a bar and grill. “Now she’s shut me out completely; go figure. I totally deserve it, but that doesn’t make it any easier to face. I’d give anything for her to give me a second chance, but she’s made it clear there’s no fixing us. Some things you just can’t undo.”
It’s a little known fact that deep down I’m a hopeless romantic. Don’t get me wrong, I am a glass-half-empty girl. Not a pessimist, per se. I like to think of it as being pragmatic. A realist, reasonable . So it seems like a giant contradiction for me to bawl when I watch Braveheart or even The Little Mermaid , but the idea of true love gets me every time.
Maybe it’s all the years of obsessive reading, but I totally believe in soul-mates. I feel, down deep in my marrow, that when something is right, it’s unstoppable. There is no fighting the heart when it wants what it wants. Though I had never found anything remotely like it in my own life, I have the ability to sense connections between others. I kind of suspect that’s why my gay-dar is so damned accurate. All that said, from the moment I set eyes on Violet, I knew that she and Trip were far from over.
“Does she still love you?” I needed to gauge his thoughts on the matter. That question seemed to jolt him. He practically snickered.
“Of course not. She divorced me.” His expression told me he really believed the thought was preposterous.
“Because of your drinking and all the bullshit that went along with it.” I remembered Violet’s body language at Black Keys and her wide eyes when she heard him call me Angel. “Trip, I saw you two together. And I think you’re wrong.”
“She was the love of my life. And I drove her away.” He looked positively grim at his own declaration.
“So get her back.”
“Sam saved my life. If he hadn’t been right there beside me, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. He got some minor burns on his hands trying to put the fire out.”
“Jesus,” I blurted, and my eyes felt like they were ready to fall out of my head. It was beginning to sound like Sam had spent a lot of time babysitting an adult-sized toddler without the luxury of an oversized baby gate.
“I was in the hospital for several months. They stapled skin grafts into me, the whole nine yards. The burn baths were the worst. Sheer torture. Nothing like how Penthouse portrays a sponge bath from a nurse, I can assure you. My little stint in the Burn Unit was one hell of a detox. You’d think with all that pain and all those weeks without alcohol that I would have quit drinking for good.”
“You mean to tell me that that wasn’t your rock bottom?” Our waitress arrived just then, dropping off our burgers and quickly moving on. He seemed to consider my question carefully before he replied. Then he nodded.
“It was the beginning of the end. I never really got drunk again, but I did have a few drinks. I started playing little games with myself. Like, ‘I’ll just have a couple tonight’ or ‘I’ll have one an hour.’ I knew I was headed back in that direction, and I knew I couldn’t stop – at least not on my own. That’s when I found myself in a church basement at an A.A. meeting.”
“Good for you.” I nodded and took a huge bite of my burger. B&D’s made possibly the best food I’d eaten since being in Savannah, and I was overjoyed at the basic pleasure after our excruciating day. For a few minutes we ate in silence. I saw Dale leaving with his parents. He winked at me and gave me a ‘thumbs up.’ I rolled my eyes. Trip noticed and glanced over his shoulder in time to see nothing but the door closing behind Dale. He turned back to his food.
“I have a lot of apologies to make. But trying to make amends to Vi…it’s virtually hopeless. It was hard on her. I was hard on her.” He frowned, and I couldn’t shake the thought that he looked like a tragic hero plucked from an epic movie and tossed into a bar and grill. “Now she’s shut me out completely; go figure. I totally deserve it, but that doesn’t make it any easier to face. I’d give anything for her to give me a second chance, but she’s made it clear there’s no fixing us. Some things you just can’t undo.”
It’s a little known fact that deep down I’m a hopeless romantic. Don’t get me wrong, I am a glass-half-empty girl. Not a pessimist, per se. I like to think of it as being pragmatic. A realist, reasonable . So it seems like a giant contradiction for me to bawl when I watch Braveheart or even The Little Mermaid , but the idea of true love gets me every time.
Maybe it’s all the years of obsessive reading, but I totally believe in soul-mates. I feel, down deep in my marrow, that when something is right, it’s unstoppable. There is no fighting the heart when it wants what it wants. Though I had never found anything remotely like it in my own life, I have the ability to sense connections between others. I kind of suspect that’s why my gay-dar is so damned accurate. All that said, from the moment I set eyes on Violet, I knew that she and Trip were far from over.
“Does she still love you?” I needed to gauge his thoughts on the matter. That question seemed to jolt him. He practically snickered.
“Of course not. She divorced me.” His expression told me he really believed the thought was preposterous.
“Because of your drinking and all the bullshit that went along with it.” I remembered Violet’s body language at Black Keys and her wide eyes when she heard him call me Angel. “Trip, I saw you two together. And I think you’re wrong.”
“She was the love of my life. And I drove her away.” He looked positively grim at his own declaration.
“So get her back.”
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