Page 22 of Say it Ain’t So

With another sigh, I turned and walked away, only to get caught in the early morning crowd that had suddenly arrived out of nowhere. The noise pounded through my head like I’d had one vodka shot too many, and I was tempted to cover my ears and run back to my room, to wallow in my pain until my broken heart scabbed over and let me die in peace. But the crowd wouldn’t let me through.

I was boxed in, pushed back, made to turn around and face the music. The ringing, buzzing, chiming music.

Coming from the slot machine.

Jackpot.

My eyes burned and my head hurt, and I couldn’t understand a damn thing that was being said, as the casino workers and the gawking crowd gathered around to see the winner of what I’d heard through the cacophony was the biggest jackpot win they’d ever seen.

On my machine.

The same machine I’d played when I first saw Joss.

My Joss.

My wife.

I looked down at the ring in my palm, then squeezed my eyes shut, trying to wipe away thoughts of her naked body writhing under mine. The way she felt, the way she sounded, the way she fit me like a glove.

My gorgeous, perfect Joss.

My lucky charm.

8

RYLAN

There’d always been a trick to getting the front door open at my mom’s house. Back when I was a kid, she told me you had to stick your tongue out the right side of your mouth and squint your eyes just so in order to get it to work.

She’d laughed at me when I tried it, but it had worked, and it took me years to realize it’d been a joke. Years that she continued to let me make that silly face, thinking it was the only way to get in. So many years that, even now as an adult—after frantically searching for my wife followed by an exhausting cross-country flight home alone—I found the tip of my tongue slipping out of my mouth and my eyes narrowed at the door handle as I twisted the metal and let myself in.

The house was small—smaller than it used to feel due to how much I’d grown in high school, how much muscle I’d put on since. It felt like walking into a kid’s playhouse.

Something I’d long ago outgrown.

As if my walking in the door was a preprogrammed thing, a flipped switch that set off the same sequence of events as always, a whirl of energy swept toward me.

My mother.

Her dark hair, now with more streaks of gray than were there the last time I saw her, was pulled up in a half-ponytail. She was wearing the uniform I swore she lived in because I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw her in anything but the black pants and white, stained button-up from the diner she worked at.

“Rylan!” There was genuine surprise in her voice, but it didn’t keep her from swiping her jacket off the back of the recliner and tugging it on. “Didn’t realize you’d be dropping by.”

She lifted onto her toes, grabbing my arm to drag me toward her. I caught a whiff of her favorite floral perfume as she pressed a quick kiss to my cheek.

“Hi, Ma.”

“Sorry I can’t stay.” Same thing she always said. Might as well have been a recording. “Shift starts in five minutes.”

“Ma.” It took at least ten to get to the diner from here. And that was if her car started on the first try, which it rarely did.

“It’s fine, it’s fine.” She squeezed past me and opened the door, stopping only when she had one foot out the door. “I’ll catch up with you later, okay sweetie?”

She didn’t bother waiting for my response. She was outside and into her car before I even recovered from the whiplash of her barely-there greeting. Her car engine whined, but just as I reached for the handle on the screen door, it rolled over and she sped away.

The pit in my stomach felt like it opened up and swallowed the ache that now lived in my chest. I put my hand on the glass of the screen door, watching the taillights of my mother’s car as she drove away.

Just like always.