11. Nash
ELEVEN
nash
I worked most weekends during tourist season. Sure, I had employees…treated them well, made sure they were taken care of—but when we were slammed by leaf peepers, no amount of employees was enough.
It also meant I encountered the same annual customers every year…and right now I was dealing with one I’d been dreading.
Kathleen Mercer had been coming to Juniper Falls every October for six years.
She was from Portland—Maine, not Oregon—ran some kind of architecture firm, came up alone every fall because she said the city made her claustrophobic by September and Vermont fixed it.
She was forty-one, sharp, funny, exactly my type in regard to how she liked to have fun and never asked for more than I was willing to give.
We’d slept together five of those six years. It was always clean, easy, and mutual.
And she was sitting at the bar right now and looking at me like we were about to make it six years…and I was going to have to tell her no, because I couldn’t do it.
Not when I was thinking about Maggie.
When I hadn’t stopped thinking about Maggie for weeks now.
“You seem distracted,” Kathleen was saying, swirling the ice around in her glass of whiskey.
I shrugged. “Busy Friday.”
“Mm.” She took a sip. “You’re always busy Fridays. You’re never distracted.”
I looked at her, heaving a deep breath. She looked back…not even a little offended, thank fuck. “You’re not up for it this year, are you?” she asked. “Getting too old?”
I snorted. “Fuck off.”
“I wouldn’t judge you, for what it’s worth,” she said. Then she smiled. “But no…that’s not it. You found someone, didn’t you? Someone important.”
I took a second to figure out what I wanted to say…because yes, Maggie was important, but she wasn’t mine—not even a little. And she wasn’t a good reason not to have some fun with an old friend.
Kathleen figured it out first, though.
“You found someone but she’s not interested?” she asked. “Really.”
“I’m flattered you find it that hard to believe,” I laughed. “Guess I’m not the catch I used to be.”
“You’re still a catch,” she winked. “But what’s the hold-up?”
I finally moved closer to her, ready to talk—leaned against the bar.
“You really wanna know?” I asked.
“Why not?” she shrugged one shoulder. “I’m a great sounding board.”
“Okay…” I paused, nodding. “Well. She’s about twenty years younger than me.”
Kathleen hissed out a breath. “Oof…”
“And she’s my kid’s kindergarten teacher.”
That made her laugh out loud, shaking her head. “My god. Nash—”
“Your reaction tells me it’s as bad as I think it is.”
“Well…that depends,” she said. Paused to sip her drink. “Is the feeling mutual?”
“I thought it was.”
“Meaning…”
“We had sex one night she was feeling low,” I said. “Breakup.”
Kathleen waited.
“…then we did it again in her classroom. I asked her to dinner.”
“Before or after the second time?”
“After.”
She nodded slowly, putting down her glass and clasping her hands in front of her.
“You’re in love with her,” Kathleen said.
I actually laughed out loud at that, shaking my head. “Christ, Kathleen—no, I’m not in love with her. I hardly know her.”
“All the time I’ve known you, you’ve always said you don’t do locals,” she said. “She’s in your life—firmly in your life, she’s your kid’s teacher. Your kid already knows her, I assume likes her. That’s probably why you were attracted in the first place, right? Because she’s good with Nell.”
I was still shaking my head. “I thought you were an architect, but here I am getting the third degree. You with the FBI or something?”
“Wouldn’t that be a fun plot twist?” she asked. “But…no, I’m just good at reading people. And you, my friend, are in love.”
“If that’s the case—and that is a big, glaring, massive if,” I said, “that sucks for me, because she said no to dinner. No to it all. Because she’s my daughter’s teacher and she just got out of a five-year relationship, and I’m a washed-up bartender who lives in a glorified shack and has a higher body count than most people in the state of Vermont. ”
“Woe to all the poor, misled women who’ve taken you up on a good night,” she laughed. “Seriously, Nash? The self-flagellation is a bit absurd.”
“It’s not—”
“It is.” She kept pressing me. “This girl, the teacher—you got together twice, right? What do you think that means?”
“That she was lonely and I was here.”
“You think that’s the only reason anyone ever fucks you?”
I opened my mouth…closed it again. Stared at her, then grabbed the bottle of whiskey to pour her another glass.
“Why am I getting relationship advice from my fuckbuddy right now?” I muttered.
“Because you’re in love and someone has to be honest with you.”
I let out an exasperated sigh and walked away, taking an order from someone who had just walked in. The other bartender, Tess, was getting slammed.
And that’s when the door opened…and I realized that maybe Kathleen was right.
Because Maggie had just walked in, and it felt like my chest caved in when I figured out she was with another man.
They weren’t touching at all—just talking, walking together, walking over to a corner booth. She was also with the secretary from the school and some other guy, and the two of them came over to the bar…and sat right next to Kathleen.
Kathleen looked from me to Delia and back to me.
Her eyebrows went up and she took a long sip of her drink.
“What can I get for ya?” I asked.
“Three beers,” she said, “whatever’s good on draft.” Then she paused. “And whatever Maggie usually gets.”
I fixed my stare on her.
She smiled back.
“Screwdriver,” I said. “Heavy on the OJ.”
“Perfect,” she smiled. “Thanks.”
Then she and the guy with her sauntered off to their table, where Maggie was very intently not looking at me.
Why was she here? Why come here and parade some guy around in front of me like…
Fuck. I didn’t have any right to complain. There were only two bars in town, and this was where most folks ended up at the end of the night if they were local or didn’t want to deal with the uppity fucks at Summit & Vine.
She had every right to be here, and I was just an old, washed up—
“That’s her, huh?” Kathleen asked, looking back at the table. “The shy one?”
I grunted under my breath.
“She’s not shy,” I said.
Kathleen tilted her head. “She hasn’t looked over here once.”
“She knows I’m here.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because she walked in and found the one corner of the room that isn’t directly in my sightline,” I said. “That’s not shy. That’s deliberate.”
Kathleen considered this. “Hm.” She sipped her whiskey. “And the guy.”
“Tourist.”
“He’s cute.”
“Kathleen.”
“Just observing.” She set her glass down. “He’s looking at her like she’s the most interesting person he’s ever met.”
“She probably is,” I said, very intently wiping down a specific spot on the bar.
“Nash.”
“I’m working.”
“You’ve wiped that same spot four times.”
I put the rag down.
The bar was loud around us—jukebox, Friday crowd, happy and buzzed people. Normal. Fine. I’d worked a thousand Friday nights exactly like this one and none of them had felt like this.
Because Maggie Laine was sitting in a corner booth with a stranger and he was looking at her like she was the most interesting person in the room because she was, because of course she fucking was, because she was goddamn perfect and didn’t want to get dinner with me.
“Go bring her the drink,” Kathleen said.
“Tess can bring it.”
“But you should,” she said. “I don’t think you understand what’s happening here.”
I rolled my eyes toward her. “I’m forty years old, Kathleen. What’s going on here is petty bullshit.”
“Nope.” Kathleen shook her head. “Her friend is trying to set you two up. The tourist is a prop.”
“Sounds an awful lot like petty bullshit to me.”
“Seems more likely that she has a thing for you and her friend knows that and wants her to be happy,” Kathleen shrugged. “Do you want her to be happy, Nash?”
I glared at her.
But then I turned around…made the damn screwdriver.
Looked back at Kathleen.
“This is ridiculous,” I said. “You know that, right?”
She nodded. “Mmhm.”
Then I walked out from behind the room to go to the corner booth and bring Maggie her drink.