Austin parked in the garage, and we entered the house. After depositing my suitcase in his guest bedroom on the first floor, I came back out to find Austin already at the wet bar. It was fully stocked with as much alcohol as the nearest liquor store. It even had some top-shelf whiskey that wasn't available in stores but had to be purchased straight from the distributor. He took drinking very seriously. It was maybe the only thing he took that seriously.
Austin poured me a glass of whiskey, and I sank into the sofa. He crashed back into a chair and turned on the big screen to SportsCenter. It was at that exact moment when golf stats were on for the British Open, a tournament I should have been at.
I downed my entire glass in one gulp. "I'll take another."
Austin gave me a strange look, as if he knew something was wrong, but he didn't say anything. He just changed the channel. "Help yourself."
That was the best thing about Austin. He didn't pry.
We sat around for a couple of hours, watching some baseball game neither of us cared about while drinking ourselves stupid. When it was almost time for me to go to Flips for the reunion , Austin finally turned to look directly at me.
"Bro, you should probably come up with a story to tell Jensen," Austin said.
"About what?" I played dumb.
"Whatever the fuck you're dealing with. You know he's going to ask, and you're a shit liar."
"I'm not dealing with anything."
"Like I said," Austin said, refilling my glass one last time, "shit liar."
I laughed and raised my glass to him. "Maybe I'll tell him the truth."
"Nah, you won't. That's not the Wright way."
Now, that was a true statement. We were a family of five, ranging from thirty-three to twenty-one, and we hid the truth from each other like we had been made for it. We'd learned that from our long-ago dead parents. Our mother had never told us about her cancer, and our father had lied about the alcohol, even on his dying breath. Maybe it was the Wright way.
Either way, I didn't argue with Austin on that point. I'd deal with Jensen when I had to.
With my head sufficiently foggy, I changed into a pair of khakis and a light-blue button-up. Then, I waved good-bye to Austin and walked the few scant blocks to Flips. The last time I'd been there, I'd found out that Jensen and Emery were dating. It had been a weird fucking night, and I was really hoping not to have another one like that any time soon. I wanted to get tanked, talk to some of my old friends, and forget about the shit I'd left behind.
I signed in at the front and then angled straight for the bar on the left side of the room. I almost made it when Jensen stepped right in front of me.
Great. Just the person I didn't want to talk to about my problems.
"Hey," Jensen said.
"Hey, bro."
"Where's Miranda?"
"Don't know. Where's Emery?"
Jensen pointed behind him, and I saw Emery leaning over the bar in an all-black ensemble, gesturing to the bartender.
"What do you mean, you don't know where your wife is? I'd rather not have her run into Emery. She still acts like a … " Jensen looked at me, and his eyes said that the word he was looking for was psychopath, but he didn't want to say it in front of me. "Well, she doesn't like Emery."
"Nothing to worry about then because I didn't bring her," I said. Then, I tried to push past him to get my drink.
Jensen grabbed my arm. "How the hell did you get away with that?"
"Give it a rest, Jensen."
He sighed and dropped my arm. "What happened?"
"Look, we had a fight, and I left without her. The end."
"Must have been a pretty big argument for her not to come with you," Jensen prodded.
Jensen, like the rest of my family, hated Miranda with a fiery vengeance. He might think he was able to keep his distaste for her under wraps-unlike my sister Morgan-but he didn't fool me. Only my youngest sister, Sutton, was any good at pretending that she liked Miranda. Not that I blamed them at this point.
"I'm leaving her, man. Is that what you wanted to know?" I spat at Jensen.
He stared back at me, stunned. Maybe he never thought I'd actually do it. Miranda had pushed and pushed and pushed, and I'd never broken. There were reasons for all of that. Reasons I'd handled the Wright way with no one else knowing about them. But she'd crossed the line, and I'd had enough.
"Landon, you know that I just want you to be happy."
"Yeah, well, I need a drink, not a lecture. Leave it be."
I stumbled over to the bar and ordered that drink, making sure to angle away from Emery. We were on all-right terms now, but since this was all about high school, I didn't want to dredge up those awkward memories. Maybe I'd find some of my old football buddies.