The Sweetest Summer

Chapter Sixty-Eight - Save Your Tears

Eli -

I still couldn't figure out how the fucking crew had dragged me out here. Maybe it was the promise of free booze, or good music, or the bevy of women...none of which I wanted.

Truth be told, I didn't want much of anything these days. Just complete and utter numbness. Which I was slowly working my way towards, thanks to the massive blunt I'd smoked in my taxi, and the third beer under my belt.

It'd been two months since Avery had walked out. Since she'd left me, and I hated to admit it, but I didn't like the feeling. Standing there all alone and confused in my apartment, I was a broken version of the asshole I used to be.

I just couldn't fathom how after our drawn out, sordid history, she could actually fall in love with someone else. Someone who, rumor had it, she'd ended things with...for me. It made no sense then, and it still didn't now.

We'd always been the end game. Her and I. Avery and Eli forever. So how did I end up here?! Alone in a club in Capetown, South Africa, after taking the role of a lifetime. The one she'd pushed for me to take, and then broke my heart over. Life just didn't make sense anymore.

I blinked into the strobing lights and intermittent darkness, thinking how every blonde reminded me of her. Everywhere I went, it felt like I was just waiting for someone to turn around and be her. Hoping destiny, or fate, or whatever the fuck people believed in would intervene, and put us back together.

As if sensing my distress, the universe actually intervened, dropping someone straight from the heavens...or at least the VIP section above mine. As I reached forward to pluck my beer from the scuffed table in front of me, a large body flew threw the air and landed square on the booze-stained wood, crushing it immediately.

Holy...shit! I blinked a few times as the table settled, and the lights strobed, and I wondered what the actual fuck had just happened.

The big body groaned and the desecrated table creaked as the person pushed themselves up from the mess of wood. In the dim club, I could make out a steady stream of blood running out of a skull tattoo on the victim's forearm.

"Fuck man! Are you okay?!" I finally found my legs and pushed myself forward to untangle the man from the remnants of the table. A mess of arms and legs - wood and flesh.

"I...I think so." An unsteady voice responded and I paused. The British lilt was like a knife to the chest. It...it couldn't be...

Sure enough, the man stood, the mane of messy blonde hair longer than the last time I'd seen him...three years ago, going home with a busty redhead.

I took a step back and my fingers squeezed so tightly onto my beer bottle, I pictured the amber glass stabbing Ethan Fucking Hawthorn directly in his stupid tattoo'd chest. His brown eyes met mine and we stood there for a moment, unsure of either of our next moves. He was taller than me, around six foot four or so, but I had at least twenty pounds of solid muscle on him. He was all slender and damaged in that way that most musicians were.

"Just my luck..." He laughed loudly, but it seemed...wrong. Like it had years ago, when he went through lines of coke and women in equal measure. He was entirely...fucked up. Likely the heady mix of alcohol and something...medicinal in nature. Not that I could judge.

"Luck isn't the word I was thinking of...." My lips were so fucking tight, they felt like wax paper on my face. "What're you doing in South Africa, 'Thorne?" It wasn't like I cared, honestly I just wished he would go back up to his own section of the world, and leave me alone. Enough female faces were peering over the railing in this club alone, that I wondered what Avery ever saw in the guy. He was so obviously a womanizer.