Jack and I walked into the bar off of St. Mary’s Street.

The weather was icy, ‘nough that keeping your hands outside of your pockets for too long got them to start hurtin’.  

It had been a good while since I had come back to Canyon- ‘bout fifteen years, roughly.

Of course, I wasn’t tryna go around tellin’ everyone about coming back.

Not after what happened last time.

As we walked in, I quickly took my arms and stretched them above my head, searching left and right to make sure nobody that I recognized was there.

It wasn’t a popular bar or anything of the sort; on the contrary, Jack and I probably went to the most outback, down-low mysterious bar we could find.

We needed to be careful.

I motioned Jack to come next to me, giving him a solemn expression, before calling over the bartender.

“One whiskey- neat, please.”

The woman nodded, before turning to the other man.

“Oh”, Jack started, “One-”, he looked at me and winked playfully, “Jack and coke please”.

I rolled my eyes, staring at him.

The bartender, oblivious to the joke, walked to the other side of the bar.

I scooted a couple of inches away from Jack as I quickly put my hands in my pockets.

“What’s wrong, Les?” he began.  “You seem awfully nervous.  You never told me how long you lived here for.”

I stared at my surroundings, memories flashing through my eyes, dictating my youth.

“Nothin’ at all, Jack.  Don’t you go worryin’ now, lived here my whole life and I can’t say I ever imagined comin’ back.”

I looked up at his face, to see his eyebrows crinkled in worry.

“Well, too late to say that now, ain’t it?”

We both looked back up at the bartender, as she came walking back, handing us our drinks.

I hadn’t realized how cold it would be in here.

“So, how long you been in this little business of yours, Jack?” I replied, numb.

I hadn’t turned to look at his face, but I could feel him make a soundless chuckle.

“A while.”

“So,” I began, “All this time, all of the years, you’ve been…doin’ this?  Is Jack even your real name?  I don’t even know where to begin.”

I tried desperately to keep my voice steady, slowly taking out my hand to take a sip of the whiskey, yet found my throat, along with my hand, quivering.

“The ones I care about call me Jack- and you should know after all this time how deeply I care about you, Les.  You don’t know how much it took outta me to not tell you after everything we went through together- I just couldn’t, I knew I had to wait until now, and-”

I cut him off.  My throat began to clog up as I attempted to take another sip of my drink, before slowly regaining the strength to speak again.

“How long do I have.”

I tried to avoid eye contact with him but found his hand approaching my chin, turning my head towards him.

“Hey now, when you go, I go too- that’s how it works ‘round these parts- that’s how I plan to make it work.”

My eyes began to water.

“Why?  Why do you make it work like that?  If I’m going, I-I don’t want you to go with me.  I still want you to be here.”

He smiled at me.  

“Les, you’ve lived for 75 years now- and I’ve lived much much longer than that.  Don’t you think I’ve seen enough?”

I took his hand off of my chin and took another sip of my drink before keeping my hands in my pockets.

“You’re all I have, Jack.  You’re all I have, especially after what happened here- that night so many years ago.”

I frown, and begin to think back, recollecting my memories.

“How- how did we get here anyways?  Why did you bring me here?”

I looked him in the eyes and slowly leaned back an inch.

“Why am I here?”

Jack looked away, taking a sip of his drink and chuckling.

“I have no clue, Les.  You took us here- don’t they say before you die your life flashes before your eyes or something like that?  This place was where the most important scene of your life happened- so now we’re here.”

I felt my heart stop- or was it even beating in the first place?

I tried to focus, but found that I wasn’t even breathing either- all of it had stopped.

“Finally noticed, eh, Les?”, Jack muttered.

I was dumbfounded, wondering what exactly to focus on, before he continued speaking, presumably to take my mind off of the fact that all of my bodily functions had apparently stopped working.

“You wanna tell me what happened here?” he continued.

I tried to focus, but found my vision began to gradually blur.

He snapped his fingers and held my head in his hands.  

“Focus, Les.  It’s not your time yet, you have a little longer.  Tell me.”

My vision began to clear, and I shook my head.

“I- they died here.  The fight, the bar fight.  My boyfriend- I was 17, so young, and I wanted to hold his hand.  I-I was so stupid, so naive, I knew it was a bad idea- ‘especially in this stupid fuckin’ town, but I just wanted to, I just wanted to feel his hand.  I thought of it as a little game, I tried to hold it secretly in one of the booths, but- but the man saw, that fucking man on the other side of the bar.  He saw and- he was so drunk- he took his gun out, wavin’ it around, not knowin’ how to use it, and- Bill.  Bill died.  He’s dead.”

Jack stared at me for what seemed like hours, before finally saying, “I’m sorry, Les.”

I tried to stop my lip from quivering, but found it damn near impossible.

He looked down at my right hand and softly whispered, “Can I?”

I swallowed the large lump in my throat and nodded.

He took his right hand and slowly put it in mine, intertwining the fingers.  

“Now, that’s better, ain’t it Les?”

I stared down at the hand feeling years of painful memories swell up inside of me.

“What do you wanna do Les?  What do you wanna do before you go?”

I put on the bravest face that I could.

“I wanna be free.”

He smiled at me and slowly approached to kiss me, and I felt my entire body begin to slowly dissociate into the air.