Page 95 of Soft Flannel Hank

Hank woke late, as he had every other morning that week. He and Esther had been staying up too late every night. Talking. Having sex. Playing cards. She showed him her tarot cards again and explained some of them. And then they slept until midmorning because without anywhere to be, the schedule didn’t much matter.

Every morning, Hank had slowly come awake with the feeling of Esther’s solid heat against him, her curls tickling his nose, the soft whistling she made when she breathed through what she had told him was a deviated septum.

He shifted his body to lay on his back. She always followed him, pressing her face into his neck and draping an arm over his belly. When he rolled to his back with no movement beside him, Hank felt the bed next to him where Esther had been and found it empty. Cold. Maybe she’d gotten a head start on making coffee.

He sat up and pulled on the pair of sweatpants that he’d stepped out of right next to the bed. He didn’t bother with a shirt and walked out of the bedroom and into the kitchen area.

Alarm bells rang wildly in his head as he peered around him at the empty space. The stovetop espresso maker was still upside down in the drying rack. The wood stove burned low. Esther’s backpack was gone, but Hank refused to let himself panic. That is, until he turned a slow circle that brought him to face the front window.

The truck was gone.

It wasn’t like at home where someone could just “run to the store real quick” for something they forgot or go to the diner to grab breakfast and bring it back. Nat’s cabin was fifty miles away from the nearest sign of civilization. Which could only mean one thing.

She had left him.

Again.

Hank felt his fury rising like lava rushing to the surface. In an explosion of anger and emotion, he grabbed a floral coffee mug off the counter and hurled it at the wooden door. It shattered on contact. Hank’s hands flew to his face, regret instantly coursing through him on the heels of that anger. That wasn’t him. He didn’t break things. He wasn’t a violent man.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen how dangerous I could be for you.

He went to the door and carefully picked up the shattered porcelain pieces, collecting the shards in one palm before dumping them in the trash and sweeping up the fragments. The guilt dissipated after the mess was cleaned, but the anger still coursed hot through him.

Hank sat heavily in a kitchen chair and looked around him. He racked his brain, sifting through every conversation from the previous day in the same way he would have examined evidence, dusting for metaphorical fingerprints and signs of trouble. But he could think of nothing that stuck out as different. And now she was gone.

Again.

Hank stood and started pacing, feeling the cold floorboards under his bare feet as he stalked around the small cabin, looking for any sign of her. Finding none.

The last time she’d left, he’d been in his home, with his truck, and his phone. She’d ripped his heart out with her bare fingers, but at least he’d been among civilization. This time, she’d left him completely stranded in the middle of nowhere. Nat kept a hunting rifle in a safe in the closet to keep up appearances, so Hank wouldn’t starve to death, but who knew how long it would be until someone came for him. It could be weeks.

She’d be long gone by then.

Hank wasn’t sure how long he paced in the cabin, feeling like the zoo tigers stalking back and forth in front of the bars of their enclosure, all restless energy and animal potential. But eventually, his stomach got the better of him. He went to the cupboards and yanked them open, looking for something to eat.

In the back of a corner cabinet, he found a dusty bottle of Kilbaron Irish Whiskey that had never been opened. Hank took it down off the top shelf and turned it over in his hands. He’d never been much of a liquor drinker. He didn’t like how out of control he felt when he drank it.

But as he braced his hands on the edge of the counter of an empty cabin in the middle of nowhere with his very heart feeling just as broken as that goddamn coffee cup, Hank decided that whiskey couldn’t possibly make him feel more out of control than he already did. Maybe it would dull the sharp pain he felt in his chest.

He pulled the cork-bottomed stopper out and took a long swallow of the whiskey, which burned all the way down his throat.

“Fuck,” he swore as he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand at the slow fire left by the whiskey.

His stomach rolled. He found the biscuits Esther had made for breakfast the morning before and ate two of them cold and dry, taking long pulls of whiskey to help the crumbs go down his throat.

Hank crossed the couch and sat down heavily, staring into space with the bottle clenched tightly in his fist. His head swam and his stomach ached, and he felt himself losing the tentative handle he’d kept on his emotions until that point. He leaned forward and set the bottle on the floor, resting his elbows on his thighs and burying his face in his hands.

“Goddammit,” he whispered, his voice thick.

Suddenly, the whiskey felt like a terrible idea. After all, getting drunk wouldn’t bring her back. It wouldn’t make him feel the loss of her any less. It wouldn’t ease the betrayal. Because that’s what it was. Esther had charmed him with her warmth and light and magic, and he’d fallen irreparably, ass-backward in love with her. And then she’d left him alone.

Again.

Hank had nobody to blame but himself. Hadn’t she done it twice before? Hadn’t he chased her every time?

But not this time. She’d made sure of that.

“Fuck!” he shouted to the empty room, picking up the bottle again, as much because his hands were restless as anything. He took another swallow and regretted it immediately.