Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Xavier hadn’t been planning on coming into the bar today, and truthfully his employees didn’t need him there. But after spending the bulk of Sunday doing yard work, his mind on May, he’d uncovered a special kind of frustration that couldn’t be burned away by housework.
Sexual frustration.
And so he’d found himself driving to work rather than spend another moment trying to occupy his mind—and distract his libido—at home.
“Thanks, Dean.” Xavier waved to his brewmaster, who was heading out after a long day of mopping and sanitizing and kegging.
“You gonna hang out or go home?” Cheyenne, a new hire Xavier liked a hell of a lot, asked.
She was forty years old, filled to the brim with confidence, and had worked in so many bars and restaurants she’d barely needed training.
She’d joked in her interview that she was “plug and go,” and she hadn’t been exaggerating.
“Here for the long haul. You can clock out. It’s a Monday. Nothing I can’t handle.” He knew Cheyenne would love the chance to tuck her two boys into bed, which was a rarity given the bar’s late hours.
“You sure?” She was already untying her apron.
He smiled. “I’m sure.”
She squeezed his arm as she bypassed him, wished him a profitable evening, and then darted into the back.
The dining room wasn’t full, but Salty Dog pulled in its fair share of traffic even on the weekdays.
There were a lot of entrepreneurs living in the Cove.
Plenty of folks around here didn’t have to be up and at ’em at the ass-crack of dawn, so they had no qualms about enjoying a beer or two on a Monday night.
He busied himself serving two suit-and-tie guys who’d settled in at the bar for drinks after a long day. He pegged them as corporate types the moment he overheard them talking about “quarterly reports.”
That reminded Xavier of his former life. A life where he’d worn a lanyard with his ID attached to it. Where he’d written self-reviews in an attempt to earn a raise. A life where he’d had a girlfriend he’d assumed was being loyal until she’d slept with his boss.
He’d quit the job and fled Columbus, desperate to put distance between himself and Tracie.
Those had been dark days, and he didn’t make a habit of revisiting them.
Unfortunately, Sunday had served up a heaping helping of memories of her.
He’d spent the day trying not to think about May—the vulnerability in her eyes when he’d caught her crying over a wedding invitation as well as the heat that had licked up his spine when she’d tenderly touched his tattoos.
As he’d edged the stone steps on the hill, he’d replayed the end of the night. Specifically, the moment May left, even though she hadn’t wanted to leave. He should have kissed her.
The memory beckoned forth an older one. This one made of smoke and shadow. Tracie had once looked at him that way too. Before she’d fucked his boss in the breakroom and incinerated whatever trust he had in relationships.
“Shit!” A glass crashed to the floor and shattered. As he knelt to clean it up, Daryll, the dishwasher, happened to be strolling by.
“I got it, man.”
“Thanks.” Xavier pulled a frustrated hand down his beard and then noticed two new patrons settling at the bar: Anthony Renaldo and Donovan Pate.
“What’s up your ass?” Ant asked as he slid onto the barstool. Donovan did the same, folding his long body over the stool and leaning on an arm.
“Nothing. What can I get you?” Xavier wasn’t sure if he managed to smile as he poured their beers, but he tried. Memories of Tracie had a way of lingering like a bad smell long after the moment had passed.
“Broke a glass,” Donovan stated before lifting his beer to take a drink.
“Or did you throw a glass?” Donny was an acquaintance of Xavier, a close friend of Ant’s.
What Xavier knew about him couldn’t fill the glass he’d dropped on the floor.
But Xavier wasn’t blind. Unlike his own tats, Donovan’s hid childhood scars from a father who was, in Xavier’s opinion, better off dead.
“Dropped it.” Xavier took the bartender’s stance, towel over one shoulder, both arms spread, and palms resting on the bar top. “What’re you two doing in here on a Monday?”
“Rare weekday girls’ night out,” Ant explained. “Lou’s house. Sofie was invited, and Donny didn’t want to be home alone with the kids.”
“I love my kids,” Donovan said after a long swallow of beer. “But so does their grandmother. Wouldn’t want to rob her of the chance to hang out with them.”
“Have a drink with us,” Ant invited Xavier.
“Tempting, but it’s just me tonight.”
“And?” Donovan lifted one dark eyebrow. “You own the place.”
That was true. And Xavier could use a beer. After pouring himself one, he topped off his friends’ glasses and drank his own down in record time. He finished the second glass more slowly. By the time he’d poured a third for each of them, it was closing time.
“We can get out of here if you want to go home,” Ant offered.
“Finish your beers.” Xavier flipped the sign on the door and locked up while entertaining the melancholy thought that there was no one to go home to anyway.
He joined his friends on the customer side of the bar and took a deep drink of his beer, admittedly more relaxed than he’d been earlier. So relaxed, he found himself blurting out, “I was thinking about Tracie when I broke the glass.”
“Ah.” Ant nodded.
“Who’s Tracie?” Donny asked.
“Ex,” Xavier said. “Cheating, lying ex. You know the kind.”
“Used to be the kind.” Donovan offered a self-deprecating smirk. “I never committed to anyone. Except Sofie.”
To Xavier, Ant explained, “He stayed celibate for seven years to punish himself for leaving Sofie behind.”
“Jesus.” Xavier glanced over at Donovan, whose face was a placid mask. “I don’t know whether to be impressed or sympathetic.”
“I don’t do well with sympathy. Be impressed.” Donovan held up his glass.
“Okay, I’m impressed.” Xavier was impressed. He hadn’t been pursuing permanence with a woman since moving to the Cove, but he sure as hell hadn’t become a monk in the process, either.
“There’s no way around, you know,” Donny offered. “There’s only straight through. Straight through the shit she put you through. Otherwise, you carry it around and weaponize it against yourself.”
Ant nodded. “He knows that. He’s not punishing himself. Are you, Xav?”
“Does not being able to keep my mind off her count as punishment?”
“Depends. You talking about Tracie? Or May?” Ant’s grin was slow and knowing.
Xavier drank his beer rather than answer.
“She likes you,” Ant said.
“She say that?” Xavier asked.
“She didn’t have to. You should do something about that. May is no Tracie.”
“Hell, I know that.” Tracie had made Xavier immune to desiring long-term relationships, but that didn’t stop him from having relationships on his terms. In May’s case, however, he didn’t have much input. She set the terms. “Lou suggested May hire me to be her date to the wedding.”
“Like an escort?” Ant laughed.
“Reason being,” Xavier stated patiently, “to circumvent her rule.”
“What rule’s that?” Donovan leaned in, interested.
“‘No hot men,’” Xavier said.
It was Donny’s turn to laugh. “She’s not going out with you because she’s attracted to you?
” His face pinched. He was clearly having trouble understanding that logic.
“Sofie’s best friend, Faith, did that with Connor before they were together.
She liked him so much she wouldn’t let herself date him.
She wanted to establish her own independence at the time. She had a cheater ex too.”
“Goes around.” Ant wasn’t speaking from personal experience, but of his former best friend, Liam, who also happened to be Lou’s cheating ex-husband.
“I’m with Donny. May needs an excuse—any excuse—to let herself off the hook for the rule she’s no longer interested in following. Why don’t you give her one?”
“I can give her more than one,” Xavier muttered.
He and May had been dancing around each other for a few years now.
He’d made it his job to chaperone when she’d come into Salty Dog with a date, or flirt with her when she was here with the ladies.
Just this past weekend, she’d stood hip to hip with him while admiring his bedroom, for God’s sake.
He hadn’t been holding back so much as letting her make the first move.
She was softening toward him, he could tell.
She was far less committed to her “rule” than before.
She’d run away from him the night of Brady’s party not because she was tired—that yawn was as fake as they came—but because he’d broken through one of her barriers.
Maybe a couple of them. And when he’d caught her body against his, he hadn’t been alone in noticing the heat between them.
Time had frozen, the rest of the party had fallen away, and her flaring pupils had broadcasted her every thought.
She was losing the battle of resisting him. He knew it, and he wasn’t going to play it safe any longer. It was past time he told her that when it came to her, he was all in.
By Friday night, May had almost forgiven Lisa.
Almost.
“You can’t hate me forever!” Lisa looped her arm in May’s as they scanned the outdoor patio for seating. Salty Dog was busy, as usual, but they lucked out and found an empty table for four.
Lou and Elliott had carpooled from Lou’s beach house, which she’d kept to use as a workspace after moving in with Ant. The man was often running a blubbering chainsaw or a bandsaw, neither of which made for soothing background sounds for Lou’s writing.
“I don’t hate you,” May conceded.
Lisa did a lot of things without asking for permission, and rarely asked for forgiveness. But her time was coming. May planned on being there to watch it happen.
“I want a pile of cheese fries,” Elliott announced, opening the menu they all knew by heart.
“Deal.” Lou slapped her menu shut and set it aside. “Why are we sitting outside when Xavier is working the bar?”