The Sweetest September. Liz Talley

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      What an ass.

      Shelby looked at herself in the speckled mirror and tried hard not to let her tears join the water coursing down her face. Not only had she impulsively gotten drunk and laid, but the guy she’d chosen for such an honor hadn’t even bothered to stick around and buy her a drink for her trouble.

      Not that she needed another drink.

      The sound of crickets came from somewhere in the bathroom. Her phone. Crap. Where had she left her purse? Shelby swiped her face with a paper towel, grabbed the panties she’d bought last week thinking her now ex-boyfriend Darby might like them and searched for her purse.

      She found it on the window ledge next to the only stall, the torn condom package sitting right beside it. At least she hadn’t been too drunk to remember to protect herself. She’d bought a box in Baton Rouge, hoping she and Darby could finally take their relationship to the next level.

      But then she’d found out Darby was married. Okay, so the man hadn’t realized he was married to his high school flame when she’d started dating him. The whole thing was a big shocker for everyone involved. But by the time Shelby made it down to Louisiana to try to talk him into coming back to Seattle and the interview with her father’s firm, her perfect prospect had fallen in love with his, uh, wife.

      Yeah, another married man in her life. It was becoming a thing with her.

      “Shit.” Shelby sighed, picking up the bright red package, her heart aching at the thought of being back at square one. She felt like a blooming fool...even if none of it was her fault. Guess falling in love was like contracting measles. Bam. Just happened despite one’s best efforts. Darby was off the menu. No more visions of her in a wedding dress smiling at the dark-headed Southern boy with the alligator grin.

      Stick a fork in her dream of respectability.

      Done.

      The phone went silent just as the self-loathing took over. This was what her life had come to—driving the memory of heartbreak away with random stranger sex in a backwater crap hole. She’d never sunk so low.

      “Perfect, Shelby,” she whispered, leaning onto the stall door. The bathroom still spun a bit but she remained upright. The worst of it was she couldn’t drive in the state she was in, and she was utterly alone on her little venture out to tour Louisiana plantations. She’d either have to sit at the bar and drink water until the drunk wore off...which could be a good five or six hours, or swallow her pride and call Darby and ask him to come get her. Neither one appealed to her, but she guessed that was too damn bad.

      She’d come to terms long ago that if she waited on Prince Charming to arrive on a white steed, she’d be worm food before he showed up.

      As always, it was up to her to figure out a solution.

      She dug her phone out of her purse, noted her missed call was from Delta Airlines and asked Siri about cab service. What good was having a couple of million bucks sitting in a bank if you couldn’t pay an exorbitant cab fare once in a while? But no dice on a cab. Wasn’t even a taxi service out this far.

      So she dialed the number to Beau Soleil, Darby’s childhood home. The man owed her a ride back to Bayou Bridge. Time to go back to Seattle.

      Goodbye, Louisiana.

      So long, life she thought she’d have.

      * * *

      JOHN BEAUCHAMP CLOAKED himself inside the pickup truck that had seen better days, tossing his beat-up cowboy hat onto the bench seat and leaning his forehead against the steering wheel.

      His chest felt like he’d been hit with a wrecking ball, tight and achy, the way it had been the entire day of his wife’s funeral a year ago. He needed to cry. He needed to punch something until his knuckles bled...until the pain went away.

      What in the name of Jesus had he been thinking in there?

      He hadn’t.

      That was the problem.

      He’d come to Boots Grocery to drink away the pain and ended up screwing some blonde chick in the bathroom. Like it meant nothing. Like he hadn’t just betrayed the vows he’d made eleven years ago last month. Like that would lessen the hurt.

      No. The pain never abated, and trying to extinguish it with some bar bunny had done nothing more than release crushing shame.

      John felt in his pocket for his keys, pulled them out and reached toward the ignition, but then remembered—he was drunk as a sailor and couldn’t drive.

      Since his younger brother, Jake, was on a fishing trip, he’d have to call his older brother to pick him up.

      No. He didn’t want to see the pity in Matt’s eyes, nor the unstated disappointment that would quickly follow. Getting drunk wasn’t something they did in the Beauchamp family. Hell, naw. Praying was what they did in the Beauchamp family.

      But that hadn’t gotten him anywhere, either.

      Goddamn it.

      Nothing took away the damaged part of himself, nothing healed the open sore, erased the knowledge he hadn’t been there when she died...hadn’t even had a chance to try and save her. How could God let that happen to Rebecca, the sweetest, most wonderful person in all of Magnolia Bend? Hell, in all of St. James Parish. Why her and not someone else?

      Why not him?

      John tilted his head back and punched the dashboard. “Ow.”

      He shook his hand out and sank back onto the worn leather, the world tilting crazily. He needed to buy a new truck. This one reflected who he was—dinted, dinged and worn out. He had the money, but something stopped him every time. Because he didn’t want to change, didn’t want to move forward.

      And now he’d not only drunk himself sick on the anniversary of that day, but he’d shamed himself with Shelby.

      That had been the bar bunny’s name.

      Shelby.

      She’d had nice straight teeth, a big laugh and sugar in her smile. He’d thought maybe she could make the dull throb go away. Someone named Shelby ought to bring sunshine, but in the hard light of that bathroom, he’d seen the same emotion reflected back in her eyes—sadness.

      “Shit,” he said into the darkness, wiping the moisture from his eyes. He allowed his head to slide from the headrest, and listing sideways, he flopped onto the bench, knocking his old hat to the floorboard. The seat belt jabbed him in his back, but he ignored the discomfort and instead fastened his eyes on the stars twinkling out the window in the deep purple Louisiana sky.

      All his life he believed in heaven. In God. When your daddy’s a pastor, it’s pretty much expected. But for the past year, John had stopped believing in anything except the morning sun and the pale moon. Except the rain that fell straight onto the cracked earth and the tender shoots stretching up from the ground. He’d believed in nothing but what he could see.

      An empty house.

      A made bed.

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