Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
WYATT
Three months later
Friday, January 13
“Have you seen this forecast? They say we’re supposed to get, like, a thoroughly apocalyptic ice storm this weekend,” Hazel calls from the living room. But I can’t focus too hard on the weather. I’m too busy enjoying the fact that for once I can actually hear her voice.
Over the past three months, I’ve fallen deeply in love with my adorable little ginger niece. I’ve watched her sparkling blue eyes focus more and more on the world around her. I’ve watched her start to figure out her hands, attempting to grab for things but most often winding up with her tiny fingers tangled in my hair. I’ve watched her get stronger, holding her head up even as she stubbornly protests tummy time.
And I’ve heard the little bugger screaming her lungs out. Every day, starting at about five p.m. and continuing for a solid three hours until she wears herself out, then again for four or five shorter stints during the night to express her displeasure at, I don’t know, life? The dark? The fact that she’s not yet old enough to enjoy the wonder and beauty that is the hot Cheeto?
Colic is a motherfucker, let me tell you.
But a couple of weeks ago, the screaming slowly began to subside. The jags got shorter, the wake-ups less frequent. She’s still not sleeping through the night by any means—god, that’s the dream—but at least she doesn’t audition for the Metropolitan Opera after each of her late-night feedings. And today when the witching hour hit, she seemed too focused on her rainbow baby gym to lodge her usual protest.
Thank. Fucking. God.
“Wyatt, did you hear me? An ice storm. They’re saying tomorrow afternoon.” I poke my head out of the kitchen and see my sister refilling the diaper changing station she has set up in the corner of the living room. “We’ve got plenty of diapers and wipes, but do we need anything else?”
I check the fridge. We’re stocked with eggs and milk, and there’s plenty of bread on the counter. “We can make French toast for an army if this thing actually hits,” I say, because Central Indiana weather forecasting is always a bit of a guessing game.
“Good,” Hazel says, then gives Eden’s belly a playful rub. The baby’s eyes go wide, and for a second I think we’re in for a grade-A protest, but then her little lips pull into a baby grin, her dimples deepening. Hazel and I pause to smile down at her, my stomach doing that warm, gooey evolutionary thing that makes me want to get my IUD removed.
I tell you, when the kid started smiling, it really took the edge off all that screaming.
Hazel glances up at me. “What are your plans for tonight?”
“Uh, let’s see. Ernie is tending bar tonight, so I’m off. Which means I’m on duty at my part-time job: being Lady Eden’s handmaiden.”
Hazel scoffs. “You should go out.”
“Nah.” Going out has thoroughly left my vocabulary. Hazel may be the mom, but the two of us are a team. On nights I work at the bar, I take the after-midnight shift at home, pulling an all-nighter because I can sleep during the day. Then I wake up and tag in so Hazel can get ready for her spring online classes.
My whole life is Eden and Hazel.
“Come on, why not? She’s doing so much better, and if this storm is coming, we’re all going to be trapped in here. For days, potentially. You haven’t been out in—” Hazel pauses to do math, but I’ve got the answer ready. I haven’t been out since this kid was born. Taking care of a baby is a full-time job, and I’ve been too tired to even think about dragging myself out of our little brick rancher to find some fun.
“It’s fine. I don’t feel trapped here with the little princess,” I say, bending down to nuzzle her soft cheek.
“Okay, but maybe I feel a little trapped here with you ,” Hazel says.
I jerk up to stare at her. “Hey!”
Hazel shrugs. “I know I’m being impolite here, because you have been Wonder Sister ever since I showed up pregnant. You are, bar none, the greatest auntie in the history of aunties. But you and I are both dangling from the frayed ends of our nerves. If this kid is finally calming down, then all I want in the whole world is to put her to bed, lie on the couch, and watch the trashiest television Bravo has to offer in a silent fucking house.”
I scoff. “And why do I need to leave for that to happen?”
“Because you walk like a herd of Clydesdales, and you can’t watch the housewives without pacing,” Hazel says.
“Those bitches stress me out,” I grumble.
“Wyatt, I love you more than anyone in the world other than this little peanut,” she says, nodding down at the baby, who is swiping at a dangling stuffed lion. “But it’s time for us to exit survival mode. Real life is waiting. Your real life is waiting. You’re not the one who had a baby. So please, go out and have fun before I die of guilt over this whole situation.”
An ache settles deep in my chest. “You don’t need to feel guilty. You know I’d do anything for you, Haze.”
She gives me a gentle smile. “I do know that. You’ve shown me time and time again. So what you can do for me now is get out of this house and take the old Wyatt out on the town.”
Which is how I wind up alone in my rattling old pickup truck, cruising down the highway toward my favorite dive bar. Alone, because I called my two best friends only to find out that Grace is up in Chicago, where her studly new boyfriend’s hockey team is playing a doubleheader, and Carson is home with the flu. I’m all by myself for the first time in I don’t know how long.
I’m not mad about it.
I dig into the center console, pull out a cassette, and pop it into the tape player. My wine-colored Toyota Tacoma was born in 1999 and is so bare-bones it doesn’t even have a CD player. I long ago decided to embrace the Stone Age technology, and I love to scour thrift stores and garage sales for tapes, which means that most of my music falls on the vintage end of the spectrum.
Now, Heart wails out of the staticky speakers, and I wail right along with them. As soon as I leave downtown Cardinal Springs and turn onto the highway, I press the gas pedal— hard —and let my voice soar right along with Anne Wilson’s. I grip the steering wheel and feel myself coming back online, my back melting into the old driver’s seat.
I’ve lived in the little brick ranch house on Mulberry Street for nine years, but my Tacoma is probably the closest thing I have to a home. The minute I was old enough to babysit, I started saving cash, squirreling it away where my mother couldn’t dip into it to cover utilities or buy movie tickets. I bagged groceries, I waited tables, I weeded and mowed and shoveled mulch. I did any job I could find until I could afford my truck.
I was sixteen when I bought it. It was already eleven years old, and I got a pretty good deal on it because the tires were bald, the brakes needed replacing, and the windshield had a spidery crack from one side clear to the other. But I didn’t care. It was mine , and the truck meant I was free .
So when I turned eighteen and my mom decided she was going to follow some biker from Orlando up to Indianapolis and that she only had room for one kid, I was content to load my meager belongings into that truck bed and set off to make a life for myself in Nashville.
My only regret was that Hazel had to go with Libby and not with me.
But then the phone call came five years later, and I loaded up this truck again to move back to Indiana. To clean up yet another one of Libby’s messes. To get my little sister back.
I’ve thought about upgrading the truck. At this point it’s a quarter century old. But the thought of parting with it makes my breath catch in my chest. So I keep it.
Besides, at this point I know how to fix basically every part of the damn thing myself. I can’t imagine owning a new car that would put me at the mercy of an honest-to-god mechanic. I’d rather change my own oil, thanks. Hazel demands that if I drive Eden around I use her Subaru, with its back seat and airbags, and I’ve got no problem with that. But for just me?
This truck is my homegirl.
My destination, Sorry Charlie’s, is only thirty minutes away, located on a quiet stretch of highway halfway between Cardinal Springs and Indianapolis. I met Glenn, the owner, years ago at a tattoo shop in Bloomington. The motto of Cardinal Springs seems to be “What’s your business is my business,” and when it comes to my business, I don’t like to share. So when I need to unwind, to find a hookup, to drown my sorrows (or all of the above), I head to Sorry Charlie’s.
I’m just about to flip the tape in the deck when the dim lights of the Sorry Charlie’s parking lot come into view. I bounce the truck over the gravel and park. It’s Friday, so the bar is buzzing, which is good, because that means I have a chance of meeting someone. Going out isn’t the only thing that fell by the wayside when Eden came along.
My drawer full of vibrators are as exhausted as I am.
The interior of Charlie’s is dark and smoky, even though people haven’t been allowed to smoke inside for more than a decade. The stale memory of cigarettes lives in every crack and crevice. Most of the light in the room comes from a collection of flickering neon beer signs and a glowing jukebox in the corner, which is playing John Mellencamp. As soon as my worn motorcycle boots hit the sticky wood floor, I feel at home. I certainly spent more time in dive bars growing up than whatever trailer or cheap apartment Libby had us in.
“Wyatt! Long time,” Luke calls from behind the bar. His honey-blond hair is curling out the bottom of a ratty Colts cap that I know from experience smells like Budweiser and weed. He grins that crooked grin I like, and I slide onto the barstool in front of him. “Where ya been?”
“Family stuff,” I reply. “Can I get an Upland?”
“Sure thing,” he says, winking, and I’m just about to start psyching myself up to go home with him again—he’s sweet and a giver, but my clit is about a quarter inch north of where he thinks it is, and last time I tweaked my back trying to gently nudge him in the right direction. But when he slides the beer bottle in front of me, I notice some fresh ink on his forearm. camille , it says in dark, swooping script covered in a layer of Saran Wrap.
“You got a new girlfriend, Luke?” I tip my bottle at his new tattoo.
He gazes down at his forearm like there’s a golden retriever puppy there. “Yeah, we met Christmas Eve. Karaoke at the VFW. She brought down the house with ‘Gloria’ by Laura Branigan. She’s amazing.”
“Congrats, man.” I try to smile through the twinge of disappointment. I’ve been kind of fine with these last three months of celibacy—or at least too tired and distracted to care much. But coming to Sorry Charlie’s has broken the seal, and now I need to get laid . Luke would have been a gimme, but now I’m going to actually have to do some work.
Ugh, I’m so tired.
I glance around at the motley collection of jokers hanging off barstools, crammed into booths, and—god help me—playing darts in the corner. And unfortunately, I think I spot a couple of repeats in the crowd. Guys I definitely don’t want to deal with again, either because of their futons or their lack of bath towels or, in the case of the guy currently lining up a dart, his mother.
I’m sizing up a strapping farm boy who looks like he was bred to play Indiana basketball and drive a tractor when the kitchen door swings open and a barrel-chested, grizzled older man steps behind the bar.
“Oh my god, I thought you’d skipped town,” he says, his voice a nicotine growl. He leans across the bar and grabs me by the shoulders. “Get over here, girl.”
And before I know it, I’ve been lifted off my feet, wrapped in a bear hug from Glenn Fielding, the bar’s owner.
“My sister had a baby,” I tell him once I’ve settled back on my stool. “And let me tell you, that shit is no joke.”
“I’ve got four sisters, and all of them reproduced like they need kids to work the farm,” he says with a laugh, slinging a dishrag over his shoulder. “Trust me, I know from babies.”
“Well, this is my first night out in months, but I’m not sure if it’s going to be, uh…” I glance at the sad collection of subpar dick.
“Fruitful?” He follows my gaze around the bar. Most everybody either came with someone or is old enough to be well outside a fun age gap. “There’s a Pacers game, a Grinders game, and an impending ice storm. I think this is about what you’re gonna get tonight.”
He glances up as a gust of cold air whips through the open door of the bar. “Or maybe I spoke too soon…” Glenn waggles his eyebrows, pretending to pant like a dog.
“Glenn! I’m gonna tell Michael on you,” I say, laughing, but the sound catches in my throat when I spin on my barstool and spot the figure standing just inside the door, his glossy dark hair lit by the red Budweiser sign over his head. He’s looking down, and when the phone in his hand lights up, it illuminates the dark scruff on his face.
I gasp.
Owen McBride has ditched the khakis tonight. Instead he’s wearing a pair of dark jeans, a wine-colored Henley stretched across his chest. His caramel-colored Carhartt jacket is open, a navy scarf loose around his neck. He pauses on the mat just inside the door, and though I can’t hear it over the music, I can practically feel the stomp of his heavy leather boots somewhere deep in my belly.
I turn back to the bar, where Glenn is smirking at me. “Looks like tonight might be your lucky night after all. You know him?”
“Only well enough to know he’s not for me.”
He scoffs. “And why’s that, now, sugar?”
“That guy is the golden boy of my town. Perfect in every way and very much not my speed,” I reply. “I bet Owen McBride is a perfectly sweet and giving boyfriend, but you know that’s not what I’m looking for, Glenn.”
I take one last peek over my shoulder and watch Owen settle at an open two-top, his nose still buried in his phone. When he sits, his muscled thighs test the seams of his jeans. It’s a shame he’s too buttoned up for me. That body looks like an adult playground.
“Sometimes the nice ones…” Glenn trails off, and I know his eyes are tracking Owen. Glenn’s been with his husband for thirty years, but he still appreciates a fine specimen. “Gentleman in the streets, something else entirely in the sheets.”
I snort. “Only in my wildest fantasies, Glenn.”