Free In Twenty Years: A Novel by Allison Winn Scotch Page A

silent. Then, “I dunno. It was hard, I guess, after Bea.”
    “Being happy?”
    “Staying in touch.” He looks out the window for a moment too long. “Maybe the other thing too.”
    She doesn’t answer, so he says, “I guess it’s not like we didn’t try.”
    “Being happy?”
    Colin laughs, though there’s not much joy behind it. Annie doesn’t remember him sounding hollow when they were twenty. Annie remembers him full of life, vibrant, the magnet she couldn’t break an attraction from. He turns from the window, his beautiful, sculpted face with its just-so cheekbones, with its firm jaw covered in stubble and its strong chin with just a kiss of a tiny cleft, fragmented almost undetectably, but detectable to Annie, who studied that face for what felt like forever.
    Annie wants to take his hand and clutch it to her racing heart, but she fiddles with a clasp on her bracelet and instead thinks, We didn’t try, though. We didn’t try at all.
    “Anyway.”
    “Anyway.”
    Then the front door unlatches, and there are “Hellos!” that echo upstairs, and Colin’s face morphs into something more buoyant as he shouts, “Lindy!” and Annie has no choice but to take his lead and barrel down toward her.

7
    LINDY
    Lindy could really use a drink, but since she’s attempting sobriety, she squelches the urge. Actually, what she could really use is something stronger—some sort of benzo—but that seems out too. She debates the harm of one drink. Just one. What sort of damage could that do? Not a lot, she tells herself. Anyway, she only has two more weeks to endure, until she knows what she’s doing, makes a plan for what’s coming next, and she thinks she can stay sober for that. Fourteen days. Then she’ll drink herself blind.
    They’re all here now and gathered around the kitchen table, dodging eye contact and feigning friendliness as if bonds hadn’t soured like skunked beer. Owen is opening up Amstels that they’ve found in the fridge.
    “I’m on antibiotics.” She waves her hand from her perch on the steps leading to the second floor. “Also, super beat with jet lag.”
    None of them even bothers taking notice.
    “I had the worst bronchitis,” she adds. “Off and on for two months. Killer to sing live.”
    “That sucks,” Owen says.
    “Thought they were going to have to perform surgery.”
    “For bronchitis?” Owen asks.
    “Yeah, I mean, for a node. It’s complicated. The doctors weren’t sure. Trying meds again. We’ll see. If we can’t lick it now, it could ruin my voice forever.” Lindy’s not sure why she’s elaborating, she could have stopped with “antibiotics.”
    “Colin, I cannot believe you’re still single,” Catherine interrupts, passing out napkins.
    “I was engaged for three months,” he says, and Annie, who has been incessantly uploading photos to Facebook, glances up, her face slackening.
    “What happened?” she asks.
    “Didn’t stick,” he replies, and her jaw eases, her eyes soften, and she returns to her screen.
    My God, Lindy thinks. She’s still mooning over him.
    Then, to Colin, “I can’t believe you’re in LA. I’ll have you over sometime. I have a sick view from the Hills.”
    She watches Annie to see if this needles her, prods her in the ways that Lindy has grown used to prodding everyone. She thinks she notices Annie freeze for a split second, but she’s not certain. It irks her that she’s not certain, that Annie has learned to hide from her.
    “Dude, I can’t believe you’re famous,” Owen says. “Remember how we took that songwriting class senior year?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Shit, I got the A. You practically tanked it.” Owen laughs. “Maybe I should have given a music career a go.”
    Lindy does remember the class, how peeved she was that their professor didn’t find her special, didn’t think she was any more worthy than the other sad sacks in the seminar. Owen, for Christ’s sake! She basically kamikazed her grade just to be a