6. Ava
“I think you should go for a replay.”
I pointed a fry at my best friend since kindergarten, Lydia Haven. The town was built and created by her great-grandfather, who was best friends with Cameron’s great-grandfather. Paul Haven and Ronald Tomlinson started the town, and Walter Kelley handled the land.
“I think you’re an idiot like he is,” I retorted, and shoved my fry into my mouth.
As soon as I got back to town, practically jumping out of Cameron’s truck before it was stopped in my parents’ driveway, I barely took a breath to say hello to my parents before I hauled my butt in my mom’s old Chevy truck to head into town for dinner with Lydia. I’d texted her on the way. Filled her in.
Her text back saying, “Holy frak! This is amazing! Get him!” didn’t surprise me.
The fact she had the guts to say it to my face did. Lydia was the only other soul on this planet who knew about the night I’d spent with Cameron. I’d planned on taking it to my grave, but the first time I saw Lydia, I burst into tears. Completely unprovoked, I’d collapsed right into her and told her every single detail.
To which she’d repeatedly muttered, “TMI, friend. TMI, friend.”
Good thing about my best friend was that if I couldn’t take it to my grave, Lydia would. Of that, I had no worries.
“Why not? He obviously still has a thing for you.”
“What? Why would you say that?”
“Because around you, Cameron Kelley is still the stupid little teenager who pulls a girl’s pigtails and bullies her if he likes her. It’s his immature way of flirting.”
Lydia was nutso. She was also dead wrong.
“Don’t be dumb. He doesn’t like me, he just gets a sick thrill out of pissing me off, like I’m his little sister or something.”
She snorted. Actually snorted. Across from us, Millie Miller, owner of Millie’s Diner, arched her brows. I shrugged and rolled my eyes, silently letting her know Lydia was at it again.
She smiled as she went back to rolling her silverware inside of napkins.
I refocused on Lydia. My walking, talking, lunatic-of-a-best-friend, Lydia.
“If he thinks of you as a sister, I’ll castrate a dozen calves this fall.”
Lydia hated all things ranching. While she did enjoy her job working with her mom running the grocery market, she despised getting her hands dirty. Every fall, after the Kelleys had calving season and had to bring the calves in to vaccinate, brand, and castrate, Lydia found some reason to be unavailable. Despite the hard work, most of the town showed up—definitely all of their friends and family. It was an all-hands-on-deck kind of day.
I loved it.
It made Lydia want to vomit.
Bonus to me, since it happened in the fall, Cameron was always busy with football or college and so he was hardly ever there.
“Don’t promise things you know you won’t end up doing.”
She made the sign of the cross over her heart. “Swear to you. If, by the time you move into your apartment, Cameron isn’t fighting for you to stay in his home, I, Lydia Lorraine Haven, will assist in vaccination day. And I will do it without puking.”
“I’m not taking the deal. There’s no way to know. I’m not going to throw myself at him for a replay of the most humiliating night of my life, and when it comes time for me to leave his house, Cam will most likely be more than willing to move me into my apartment by himself.”
“All right.” She shrugged and bit into her Reuben sandwich.
She let that go far too easily.
I narrowed my eyes on her. “You’re planning something.”
“I’m eating my lunch and letting this conversation go. What’s wrong with that?”
Nothing. Everything. When Lydia got an idea in her head, she didn’t back down.
“If you say so,” I muttered, but I didn’t believe her. Not for a damn second.
“Wanna head to Tom’s tonight?”
Tom’s Saloon was the most popular bar in town. With old-school swinging saloon doors as a faux entrance, you entered the bar on the corner across the street from our town’s square, which had a clock tower and the county courthouse. Always felt strange to me to leave a bar after drinking and be right across from the courthouse, but that didn’t deter anyone who lived in New Haven.
Since my options for entertainment for the night were either watching television, probably baseball, with my dad, or quilting with my mom, there was only one answer to give. “Eight o’clock?”
“Sounds good.”
We ate our lunch. We dropped any and all conversation about the Kelley family, Cameron in particular, and when we parted ways, Lydia walked the block down to the market, and I climbed into Mom’s truck I’d parked right off Main Street on Center Drive.
Isaiah’s sheriff’s deputy Ford Explorer was sitting in my parents’ dirt driveway when I pulled back in. I resisted the urge to run straight into the back of it, knowing he’d get in big trouble for it. The fact that my mom loved her cherry-red 1982 Chevy Silverado was the only thing that stopped me.
It was possible I loved the old thing as much as her.
I hopped out of the truck and stomped up the stairs of their wooden front porch that wrapped around the far side of the house all the way to their massive deck in the back and slammed the front door when I was inside.
“Isaiah!”
He popped his head around the corner of the kitchen that was straight at the back of the house. Of course he had a piece of pizza in his hand. His mouth was full of the bite he’d just eaten.
“I can’t believe you still come home to eat dinner with Mom and Dad.”
“It’s the best food in three counties.”
“Awww. Thanks, kiddo.”
Isaiah was twenty-six. He was still called kiddo.
He shamelessly grinned at me and tore off another bite of his pizza. Pizza Mom would have made with her sourdough starter and homemade fresh mozzarella cheese, which meant I was now extra pissed I’d hauled off to Millie’s so quickly.
Good thing I would be there for lunch tomorrow.
“You over being mad at me yet?”
I punched his shoulder on my way to the fridge. “Never gonna happen.”
“What happened this time?” Mom asked. She was sitting at her spot at our small, round table. A table my dad and his dad had built back before Isaiah and I were born. It was worn. It needed a fresh coating of stain, but if anything ever happened to it, my heart would be crushed. The best meals I’d eaten and family memories I had were made sitting at that table.
Usually with Isaiah and I kicking each other’s shins beneath it.
“Your son is a moron,” I told my mom.
She shrugged. “Tends to happen with folks who hold the Y chromosome.”
“Connie,” my dad chided. “Are you calling us men fools?”
She smirked at him. “If you had two X chromosomes, you’d be smart enough to figure it out.”
My dad chuckled. I burst out a laugh and poured a glass of water from the door in the fridge before taking a seat next to Mom.
Once seated, it was Dad who asked, “What’d Isaiah do today, honey?”
“Nothing!” He stormed over to the table and sat down. “I didn’t do anything.”
“It’s what he forgot to do.” I glared at my brother.
“This is ridiculous. So what. Now you have to stay in a mansion with a pool for two weeks. Who cares if Cameron’s there? He’s like our brother.”
I fought the urge to gag and resisted. Barely. There was nothing brotherly about Cameron in my eyes.
“I thought Cameron was in the Bahamas,” Mom said.
“He was.” Isaiah flipped his hand in a circle. “There was a storm, now he’s home. And he doesn’t care at all that Ava’s there. He was surprised, yeah, because I did forget to ask him if she could stay there, but he’d have said yes anyway, so there’s no problem.”
“Oh, that’s so nice of Cameron,” my mom crooned. “He’s always been so sweet to us. And it was so nice of him to bring you home this weekend. Saves you miles on your own car.”
My mom and cars. If she wasn’t quilting, she was looking at vehicles. Heck, she even changed her own oil even when Dad tried to take care of it for her.
“Yeah, he’s a real Boy Scout,” I muttered. I was doing that a lot lately, but if everyone would leave me alone about Cameron or if I didn’t have to spend so much time around him, I’d mutter a whole heck of a lot less.
“See?” Isaiah grabbed another pizza slice off the pizza stone in the center of the table. “No harm. No foul. Everything worked out perfectly.” He bumped his shoulder into mine. “I saved you miles off your vehicle. You should be thanking me.”
I sighed. There was no winning this argument.
“What time are you off tonight?” I asked instead.
“Ten. And then I’m off all weekend. It’s the last of my four days.” Unless there was an emergency, all the sheriff deputies worked four ten-hour shifts a week. They could be called in if necessary, but it wasn’t like a lot happened in Plum County, so that didn’t happen a lot.
“Lydia and I are headed up to Tom’s later if you want to join us when you’re off.”
My brother narrowed his hazelnut eyes at me. “Is that because you forgive me and want to have a drink with me? Or because you’re going to sit back and watch Regina poison me?”
Regina Tomlinson worked behind the bar. Her great-granddaddy opened it, and it was passed down from generation to generation. A few years ago, her parents took off, and she stepped up to run it. Folks said her parents split because they drank so much the bar was at risk of closing. They poured their profits straight down their throats. On the flip side, Regina stepped up and took it over. I’d never seen her have a single sip of alcohol, and no one had any idea why she hated my brother so much.
I flashed Isaiah an evil grin. “Feel like playing Russian roulette with your drinks at the saloon?”
“So help me. She poisons me, and it’s on your conscience.” He shoved to his feet, kissed Mom’s cheek, and clapped Dad on the back. “Off to save the town and rescue hapless maidens. Take care!” He lifted a hand in the air on his way out, and seconds later, the screen door slammed behind him.
Before Mom could warn me of the dangers of drinking too much, calling if I needed a ride, or any of the other warnings she’d given me every day of my life since I was fourteen, I turned to her. “I bought new yarn today. Wanna see what I plan on making?”
She’d taught me how to crochet and knit when I was a kid. I’d stopped when I was a teenager because it wasn’t cool, but now I found it soothing. I could keep my hands busy while watching TV at night, and sometimes, if I needed to work out a problem in my head, it was the gentle clacking of needles and the rhythmic motions of following a pattern that helped me work out the kinks in my brain.
Her entire face lit up with a smile. “I’d love to! I’m going to rush off to see Grams after I’m done eating. Want to come with and show us both?”
Grams was my great-grandma and almost ninety. My mom’s parents had died in a car crash in a winter storm when I was five, and my dad’s parents lived in Arizona, and I hardly ever saw them growing up. Grams was the only grandma I ever knew. She’d also lived alone until last year, and at the age of eighty-eight, she declared she was bored living alone and wanted to be with people.
Mom and Dad moved her into the retirement home in town as soon as a spot opened up, and now she was the home’s social chair coordinator.
The home had never been so busy, had so many events, or had such high attendance.
And Grams had never been happier.