Chapter 3 #2
I shrugged. “We had to grow up. There was no future in it.” My smile felt weak. “It was just a fling, like I said.”
“I’m no math major, Uncle Granger,” Miranda said. “But you said Lassiter, then after law school. That’s pretty long for a fling.”
“That’s not a fling, that’s a trebuchet,” Emily agreed, nodding.
I laughed despite myself. I could see why Miranda liked her. I took another swig from my can, swallowed, and said, “Seven years.”
“Holy shitballs,” Miranda said, eyes wide. “That’s longer than two of your marriages.” To Emily she said, “One of them was only three years, and she made me call her Aunt Melanie, even though I was fifteen and she was like… I want to say twenty-something?”
“Thirty-something,” I said, which I was sure wasn’t much better in Miranda’s eyes. Melanie had not been one of my smarter decisions, and she could certainly say the same for me. We were much friendlier as exes than spouses. “Late thirty-something.”
Miranda scrunched up her nose. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, quite sure. I was the one who was married to her. Can we move off the subject of my ex-wives now?”
“I want to hear more about Bobby,” Emily said.
Careful what you wish for, as they said.
“There’s not anything to tell,” I said. “Law school finished, and so did we. We had our futures to consider.”
“Wait.” Miranda blinked at me. "Nobody’s ever mentioned you dating a guy, and I know Mom would bring it up at every Thanksgiving if she knew. Was Bobby your secret lover?”
Emily gasped.
“No, because this isn’t a telenovela,” I said. “We didn’t date. We just…” I shrugged again. “Bobby and I weren’t ever going to be anything permanent.”
Even after all this time, it stung.
Shouldn’t have, because we’d both known from the start what it was, but it still stung. And when the sting of remembering fresh faded, it left behind an ache that had never really gone away.
Jesus.
This same cabin. This same fucking couch.
It had been more years than I wanted to count since Bobby had buried his face in my neck that time and I’d thought: I want this.
I want this—him—all the time. But I’d swallowed the words down before I could do something stupid like say them out loud, and then he’d kissed me on the cheek, so tenderly and sweetly that my stomach had tied itself in knots.
I’d pushed him off me with a laugh, like I hadn’t felt the weight of the moment, what it meant.
It had been the end, even if I hadn’t known it at the time.
Right here in this room.
But there weren’t enough White Claws in the world to get that out of me.
Turned out there were enough White Claws for me to get so drunk that driving back to Richmond wasn’t an option.
I ended up sleeping on the couch, and when I woke up the next morning my back and neck reminded me in a hundred different ways why that had been a bad idea.
There was no sign of the girls, but Miranda had left a note taped to the back of the cabin door: Gone into town!
Maybe there had been a time in my life when I’d been able to get completely smashed the night before and still be up bright and early to face the day, but that felt like a fever dream right now.
I checked my phone after I checked her note.
It was almost eleven, and that still felt too early.
If the couch had been slightly more comfortable and not a medieval torture device, I might have gone back to sleep.
Instead, I showered, shaved, and dressed in yesterday’s clothes.
They didn’t smell too much like liquor and regret.
I looked for my car keys, but when I couldn’t find them, I opened the front door to see the car was gone.
Of course Miranda had driven to town. I considered sending her a text asking her to come and get me but decided against it.
This was meant to be her weekend away with her girlfriend, and I was already the awkward third wheel.
It was only fair that she stole my four, I supposed.
The day was pleasant enough with a whisper of a breeze, and there was a hint of pine in the air.
A bird swooped and sang overhead, and the sights and sounds of the outdoors were novel enough to remind me that I didn’t spend nearly enough time outside, so I decided to walk into town and see if I could find coffee and breakfast—although by the time I got there it would be lunch, I guessed.
I stopped to look out over the lake. The water lapped softly at the shoreline, and for a moment I was tempted to take off my shoes and wade in, but then common sense took over just like it always did.
I set off along the gravel road that led to the main road, the stones crunching under my shoes, and as I walked I thought about Bobby and how somehow he’d become the heart and soul of this small town.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d ended up running the place—he’d always been full of big dreams.
The problem for me had always been that I suspected Bobby’s big dreams included things like us dating—and that was never in the cards for me. The very thought of it had terrified me back then, and even though times had changed, it was still unthinkable now.
I reached the turnoff to the main road, and I’d gone maybe a hundred yards when a battered old truck pulled up next to me and a familiar voice said, “Need a ride?”
Bobby was wearing his weathered Stetson and sequined rainbow suspenders over a Goose Pride T-shirt. He should have looked ridiculous, but he made it work somehow. I stood there while I took a second to register what he’d said, and he cocked an eyebrow and said, “Well? You gettin’ in or what?”
And then he gave me one of those smiles of his that had always set my heart racing, and just like always, I was helpless to resist the temptation that was Bobby Merritt.
I got in the truck.
The engine rattled to life and Bobby drove us toward town. I sat in silence for as long as I could stand—about seven seconds, for the record—before I said, “You’re the last person I expected to see here.”
Bobby laughed, a sharp sound with too many jagged edges. “Yeah, well, same. I mean, a Pride event ain’t exactly your thing, is it, Granger?” A moment’s silence passed before he glanced over and said, “Sorry. That was mean.”
“Maybe, but it’s also true,” I said. “And honestly? I don’t blame you for holding a grudge.”
“Who said I’m holding a grudge?” he demanded. From the rear of the truck’s cab there came a loud honk of agreement. I hoped the goose was well secured.
“Aren’t you?” I asked him, suddenly a little hurt that maybe he wasn’t and that it was all water under the bridge for him. I should have been pleased, except it didn’t seem fair that I was still carrying that old ache around and he wasn’t.
“Nope,” he said as the truck made a terrible grinding noise, and he changed gears. “You were just a dumb, scared kid back then, and what sort of man would I be if I hated a dumb, scared kid?” He shot me a narrow look. “Mind you, that ain’t an excuse for being a dumb, scared man nowadays, is it?”
“We weren’t… we weren’t exactly kids,” I said, choosing to avoid the second question, which cut exactly as close to the bone as I was sure he intended. “We were twenty-five, Bobby.”
“Yeah, and you’d never lived a goddamned day without your daddy’s money, and his plan for your career and your life, and all that bullshit about what it meant to be Granger Kelley.” He said it like a curse. “Have you yet?”
“My father died three years ago,” I said, still avoiding the question.
“Huh. Well, I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Are you?” I wasn’t sure I had been, which was an awful thing to think.
My father hadn’t been a cruel man. He’d never said a mean thing to me, let alone raised a hand to me.
But my siblings and I had always known exactly what was expected of us, and the threat of disappointing our father had loomed like a shadow over every choice we’d ever made.
Me more than Charles and Annabel, but maybe that was only because I’d been aware of exactly what I’d been hiding.
“Course,” Bobby said. The goose honked again. “What are you doing in Goose Run anyhow? Like I said, Goose Pride doesn’t seem much like your thing.”
“I brought my niece and her girlfriend.” I stared at a crack in the windshield as we drew closer to town. “I’m more interested in how you ended up back here.”
“Back?” Bobby asked. “I never left.”
“What?”
“Yeah, funny how things work out,” he said with that same easy smile as always. The same smile that hid how smart he was and what he was really thinking. Not many people saw that. It had taken me a while, even back when I’d been paying him more attention than was prudent.
“You never left?” I asked, my brain trying to wrap around it. “Why the hell not?”