I watch Hart shake out a cigarette and smoke it in slow motion between swigs of warm beer. Every time he reaches out to flick away the ash, my eyes trail after his hand. I’m half hypnotized by the glowing orange embers hovering in the dark.
Willie Nelson hisses loud and angry from across the pond, and the sound of an airboat drifts in from somewhere back in the bayou.
I hear Hart clear his throat, then he pulls a beat-up envelope from his back pocket and hands it to me. It’s bent in half and all wet. He flicks open his lighter and holds the flame so I can see. The envelope is purple, and my name is scrawled across it in pencil.
“It’s just a card. But I wanted you to have somethin’ tonight.” I can tell he’s embarrassed. “Picked it up at the Chat and Scat in Kinter.”
That actually makes me smile. A wet gas station birthday card. Typical Hart.
I can’t stand the idea of reading it right now, though. Even a cheesy Hallmark knockoff might be enough to sink me this evening.
“Thanks,” I tell him. And I slip the soggy envelope into my back pocket.
“You believe in past lives, Greycie?” Hart’s already working on another beer. He’ll be totally wasted before long.
“Why?”
He runs one hand through his wet curls before he takes another drink, and I feel that familiar itch in my own fingers.
“Somethin’ my mama told me. She thinks all of us – you, me, Elora, Sera and Sander, Evie, Mackey, Case, Ember and Orli – all ten of us – are linked like that.” I add Zale’s name to his list in my head. Mysterious number eleven. “That’s why we pull so hard on each other.”
Hart digs the cigarette pack out of his shirt pocket and shakes out another one. It’ll be a miracle if the thing is dry enough to light.
But he holds it between his lips.
Flick.
Whoosh.
Pull in air.
Slow burn.
“Like maybe you and Elora were mother and daughter once. But another time, you stormed the beaches at Normandy together.” He slaps at an mosquito. “Shit. Maybe Case was my goddamn grandpa in another life. Or my boss.” He laughs low and quiet. “For all I know, Evie coulda put a bayonet through me during the War of Eighteen fuckin’ Twelve.”
I finish my first beer and immediately get handed a second one.
“I like that idea,” I tell him. “All of us recycled over and over in each other’s lives.”
“Me too.” Hart looks up toward the dark sky, then he takes a long drag off his cigarette. I wish he could breathe out hurt, the way he breathes out smoke. “Maybe next time I can save ’er.”
We sit in silence while I finish my second beer, and Hart offers me a third. But it turns out there aren’t any more. Which is probably good, because my head is spinning now, and Hart’s words sound sloppy. But I can’t tell if it’s his tongue that’s not working right, or my ears.
He stands up and moves toward the back of the boat to rummage around under one of the seats, then he holds up a half-empty bottle of whiskey and grins at me in triumph. “For special occasions,” he announces. And I guess the saddest birthday party in the world counts, because he unscrews the top and turns to pitch it into the dark like a baseball player. Then he tips the bottle up and takes a long swig without even flinching.
“Hart.”
He doesn’t respond. He just stands there for a long time. Staring out at the water.
Still.
Watching.
Waiting.
If it weren’t for the whiskey bottle dangling from one hand, he’d remind me an awful lot of Willie Nelson.
Finally he turns around to look at me.
“Don’t come back here, Greycie. Next summer.” I stare at him. “Elora didn’t want you here. That’s what last summer was all about. At least mostly. All that shit that went down between the two of you. She didn’t want you to come back here. Ever. She didn’t want you to have any reason to.”
I feel stung. Like he’s slapped me hard across the face.
“She wanted to get rid of me.”
Hart shakes his head. “Dammit, Greycie. You aren’t listening. She wanted to save you.”
I hear the words, but my brain won’t process them.
“Save me from –”
He cuts me off midquestion. “From this godforsaken place.”
“Why?”
“Jesus.” He lets out an exasperated sigh, and it makes me feel stupid. “Because she was scared for you. Of what you might become if you came back here.” He washes the words down with another long swallow of whiskey. “Because she fuckin’ loved you.”