Chapter 5
Chapter Five
My temper is shorter than my daddy’s hair…he’s bald. Don’t play with me.
— Text from Bryson to Jeremiah
JEREMIAH
“ Dude , where’s your car?”
I rolled my eyes at Bryson . “ Please , do not start your eloquent movie quotes. I don’t think I have enough carbs in my system.”
Bryson flashed me a grin.
“ I’ll drive,” Eliska said. “ I’ll bring you back to your car later, Bryson .”
“ No can do, sister.” Bryson headed to his own truck. “ I have to be at home at a decent hour tonight. There’s no way in hell that I’m going to make it much more than an hour, and you can go all night.”
Eliska rolled her eyes but didn’t argue.
Meanwhile I glanced at Merriam and said, “ You drive?”
She shook her head.
“ I did,” Gisela said. “ But Eliska , you can ride with me, and I’ll bring you back. That way we’re not all trying to park in that atrocious parking lot.”
“ Deal .” Eliska headed to her car, leaving Merriam to go in mine.
“ You drive a Volkswagen ?” She stopped when I got to my rental.
“ Actually , no,” I said. “ I drive an old 1969 Chevy truck, but I got tired of dying in the winter and the summer because it has no heat or air conditioner. So we’re modifying it to add that in.”
“ That makes more sense,” she said. “ A Volkswagen definitely doesn’t fit you.”
I flashed her a wink and got into the car.
I almost stopped and opened her door, but she already had hers open and her ass in my seat from the moment that I’d unlocked it.
I started it up and listened to it purr, a grin flashing on my face when she said, “ Ohh . It sounds nice.”
“ Funny enough, when I started it up the first time, I was a little bit surprised with the growliness of the engine. I don’t think I ever expected a Volkswagen to sound like this.” I chuckled. “ I walked into the rental place and told them I needed one, and the guy behind the counter was all, ‘ I have the perfect vehicle for you.’ Then gave me this tiny hatchback.”
“ I’m guessing that he didn’t realize you were well over six feet and wouldn’t be super comfortable in it,” she teased. “ But it’s adorable watching you get in.”
Pulling out of the parking lot, I asked, “ What do you do for a living, Merriam ?”
“ I work at a candy shop,” she said. “ Well , my dad owns it, and I manage it. One day, he wants me to take it over, but meanwhile…”
The way she trailed off made my belly tighten. “ What’s wrong with the job?”
“ I’m not sure there’ll be a business to take over,” she admitted. “ This economy is literally kicking our asses. No one wants to buy candy when they can barely afford groceries. My dad is burying his head in the sand, convinced that we’ll bounce back. But we didn’t even meet sales quotas during our biggest season of the year? I mean, Christmas practically equals candy. It’s usually our highest grossing month. And to be honest, it is. We’re doing better this month than we did last month. But that’s not really saying much.”
I looked over at her, noted the concern on her face, and said, “ Do you want to take over the candy business?”
She shrugged. “ I went to school for business, sure that I was going to love it. But I kind of hate it. I don’t like the business side of things. I like the making candy part of it. Sales ? Not so much. Cleaning up? Definitely not.”
“ Sounds like you have some hard decisions to make,” I pointed out. “ What did you want to be when you grew up?”
I rolled through a yellow light, then swung an immediate left that would take us to our restaurant.
I was pulling into a surprisingly good spot when she said, “ I wanted to be a mom.”
My brows rose. “ Why do you sound like that’s a bad thing?”
She shrugged. “ My dad is of the mind that I need to run this business and put all of my effort into it. He wants me to wait to start a family until I’m older.” She looked at me then. “ You’ve literally touched on every touchy subject that I have in a five-minute drive.”
I got out and moved around to her car door.
Opening it for her, I said, “ You can have one of my touchy subjects then.”
Her brows rose. “ Oh , yeah?”
I nodded. “ Yeah .”
“ What is it?” she wondered.
The two of us started walking toward the front doors where Bryson , Eliska , Lance and Gisela were already waiting.
“ I don’t know how much longer I want to play hockey,” I offered. “ It was my goal to win the Stanley Cup before I retired, but that hasn’t happened yet, and I’m getting weary.”
“ You look like you’re healthy,” she observed. “ Are you just wanting to leave while you’re on top?”
“ I want to leave while I’m still healthy enough to have kids and raise them. I want to make it to all the soccer games, school functions, and parent meetings.”
“ You have kids?” she whispered.
“ No ,” I said. “ But when I do, I want to be there for them. I can’t do that if I’m traveling around the States with a brutal hockey schedule. Hell , I can’t even get a date because any woman that I see thinks it’s absolutely nuts that I am gone more than I’m home for hockey.”
“ Oh , boy,” Bryson drawled. “ Don’t get him started on this.”
“ On what?” Lance asked, not hearing my words as we’d walked up.
“ He’s going to start talking about Nicola ,” Bryson sighed.
“ Nicola ?” Merriam asked at my side.
I placed my hand on her spine and felt an electric jolt travel from where I touched her all the way up my arm.
“ My ex,” I explained.
“ His awful ex,” Bryson countered. “ Look there. There’s a big table in the back. Wow , first a parking spot, and now a table? It’s like this is kismet!”
I chuckled at his words.
He was right, though.
Usually at this time of day, the parking lot was so full that you would never be able to find a spot, let alone a table inside. The fact that we found both was telling.
“ I’m intrigued. Tell me about this ex,” Merriam said as she sat down next to me.
I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms over my chest, wondering whether it was the best idea to even get into this right now.
“ Well ,” Bryson said as he slid into the booth part of the table. “ Let’s see. She moved into his house because her lease was canceled. Then she decided that throwing parties was great, because Mia had all this room and money. Why not? Then she went to hockey games, and all you could see is her making duck lips at every freakin’ turn to post on her influencer account. Even better, she was so anal about what Mia wore or what he did that he couldn’t have a single ounce of fun anymore. It was the best day of my life when we came back a day early from a road trip and found her sleeping with some man on Mia’s couch.”
“ Bruh ,” Gisela interrupted. “ Do you realize that your story about your ex, and Merriam’s story, are like, the exact same?”
“ What do you mean?”
Merriam sighed. “ Here we go.”
“ Mer’s ex was a wannabe US senator,” she said. “ He started dating her last year and wanted her at all the events. She tried, but working for her dad, she had to do long hours and couldn’t just take off like she might have wanted. He’s all about the appearance, perception, and persona. Mer couldn’t go out into public with sweatpants on because she ‘might embarrass him.’ Then , one day when she was going to be working late but ended up going to Tate’s place early because one of the candy machines broke, she found him fucking his secretary on the couch. He literally pulls away from her, dick still wet, and asks her if she wants to join in. But they’ll ‘have to keep their bedroom play on the downlow to protect his reputation.’”
I chuckled. “ Glad that you got rid of him.”
“ It was epic how she did,” Gisela kept going. “ She went live on Facebook . And since Tate had been adding all these ‘higher society’ people to her Facebook page, she was friends with so many of his colleagues and friends, that it went viral.”
“ Does this happen to be the US senator wannabe Tate Contre ?” Lance asked.
“ Yes ,” Merriam grumbled.
“ I knew him. I actually watched that live on Facebook as it happened. Someone had shared it because your page was public.” He laughed. “ That was the best thing I’ve ever seen. The woman didn’t even act like it was a big deal. Like it was normal for her to be caught having sexual relations with her boss, and also being live on Facebook . Isn’t she some big sex superstar now?”
“ You know she is,” Gisela laughed. “ She was famous for a hot minute there.”
Merriam grimaced. “ I could tell you now that I made a mistake filming. I should’ve never given her that kind of audience. She is like a cockroach, winding up in places that she never should’ve been. Now she’s made millions sucking dick, and I’m still struggling to make ends meet.”
“ She made millions, but so has my ex,” I admitted. “ One thing you can say about cockroaches, they’ll continue to thrive in any condition.”
“ What did yours end up doing?” she wondered.
The waitress came up and we placed our orders for drinks and wings before I answered.
“ Pretty much made herself famous on social media over her ‘hot hockey fiancé’ breaking up with her. And how she moved on and turned herself into bigger and better. She’s married now and makes social media content on her farm homestead with her cows that she has no clue how to milk,” I grumbled.
“ She sounds fantastic,” Merriam lied. “ Now , how about we talk about something that doesn’t piss us off? Like politics?”
We all had a good laugh at that.
“ There’s just something about discussing politics and religion that make everyone not want to fight.” Eliska snorted. “ While we’re at it, we could talk about vaccines and whether or not we want to give them to our future children.”
“ I kind of liked having chicken pox,” Merriam admitted. “ It made me skip a few days of school, and I didn’t have to go to work at the candy shop after.”
“ When did you have chicken pox?” I asked.
“ When I was fifteen,” she said. “ Which , they say, is way more awful than getting them when you’re young.”
“ I actually had chicken pox last year,” Eliska said. “ I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”
“ Here ya go,” The waitress came back with the drinks and set them all down onto the table, not bothering to pass them out. That would take too much time, and she had a ton of tables to cover that were all looking at her, wanting her attention. “ Your order’s been put in.”
Then she left.
“ She seems frustrated,” Lance noted.
“ She’s probably worked to the bone because she’s the only waitress here,” Gisela murmured. “ Didn’t they have four or five waitresses working last week when we came, Mer ?”
“ Yeah ,” she answered. “ But all of them sucked. I didn’t see a single waitress that had a table that looked happy.”
“ I actually noticed that myself,” I pointed out. “ I even mentioned it to the owner when he came by to check on our table.”
“ Wow , you got the owner to talk to you?” Gisela asked. “ One time a waitress spilled an entire plate of hot wings into Mer’s lap, then tried to make her pay for them anyway. When she asked to speak to the owner, he’d refused to come out. So we left.”
“ I wouldn’t have come back,” I murmured.
“ I tried, but everyone else sucks at making hot wings like this place.” She shrugged. “ I’ll deal with the bad service if I get my chicken wings cooked the way I like them.”
The dinner went well.
I enjoyed every second of being in Merriam’s presence.
It was completely natural for us to talk like we’d been together for years.
By the end of our dinner, with her face covered in barbeque sauce, I felt like being around Merriam was easy. She didn’t expect anything from me. She didn’t try to hide any of her personal life. She didn’t try to pry into mine without me first bringing it up.
Not to mention, she was sexy as hell.
“ I’ll be right back,” she said as she got up. “ I’m fairly sure I’m wearing more sauce than I ate.”
I agreed with her.
While she was in the bathroom, I looked up the candy place she’d said her father owned.
Brinkley’s .
I made a notation in my notes on the address, then shoved my phone back into my pocket in time to see her heading back to me with a clean face.
She smiled and took a seat beside me.
“ I’m back, Kermit .”
I blinked at her words. “ What ?”
“ Kermit .” She paused. “ You know, Jeremiah the Bullfrog ? Then it twisted in my brain to frog, then Kermit . And yeah… Kermit .”
I chuckled. “ I guess that’s pretty inventive. I’ve never heard that one before.”
“ At least it’s not Mia ,” she offered up.
“ True .” I glanced at Bryson . “ Not sure how that came about, because it’s more like Mya and not Meeya , but whatever. Bryson’s an odd duck.”
“ He’s a nice odd duck, though,” she said as she watched the four other people at our table talking and laughing about helping old ladies up.
“ He is,” I confirmed. “ There’s a reason I consider him my best friend. Odd or not, he always has my back. On and off the ice.”
“ Speaking of ice,” she said. “ Did you hear that it’s going to snow this week?”
“ I did,” I said. “ They said we might have a white Christmas .”
“ I hope so,” she said. “ Even better if that white Christmas happens before Christmas Eve , so I can spend some time at home and not making candy.”
“ Sounds to me like you already have your answer on whether you want to do this for the rest of your life,” I pointed out. “ Why not try to make it as profitable as possible, then sell it?”
“ My dad would kill me if I did that,” she said. “ He loves that place.”
But the way she said it almost made her sound…scared. Like she was terrified to find out what he’d do if she did that.
“ Doesn’t mean that he can’t accept that you don’t want to,” I pointed out, studying her carefully.
She shrugged, her eyes darting to mine before they slid away.
What was she hiding?
Her phone pinged, and she glanced down at it, wincing slightly.
“ Shit ,” she said. “ I have to go.”
My brows pinched together at the momentary flash of fear on her face.
“ Oh , I brought you, though.” Gisela started to quickly lick her fingers clean. “ Eliska , are you done?”
The urgency in Gisela’s voice had me tensing even more.
What had happened to make both women freak out the way they were doing?
“ I’ll take you home,” I offered.
Merriam offered me a weary smile, and I knew her answer before she gave it. “ That’s nice, but no thank you.”
I stilled my body, forcing myself not to reach for her.
“ Can I have your number?” I asked quietly, hoping it would only reach her ears only.
She pushed back her chair and offered me a sad smile. “ If I were in a place right now that would allow dating you, Kermit , I’d take it.” She looked at her phone when it pinged again. “ But unfortunately, I’m not.”
The two women left, throwing enough money onto the table to cover more than their fair share.
The moment they were gone, I looked at the rest of the table and said, “ Did y’all get a bad feeling like I did?”
“ Sure did.”
“ Yep .”
“ Yes .”
Fuck .