Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
OWEN
I’m already stepping through the door of this middle-of-nowhere bar when Francie’s text lights up my phone.
Francie
Friday the 13th strikes again. ER is a nightmare. Rain check?
I groan. This is the first time in weeks that I haven’t had to worry about calls from patients, and I drove for damn near an hour under threat of an impending ice storm just so I could wind up in a dive bar by myself.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
Of course, I’ve got no right to be mad. Last time I was supposed to meet up with Francie, my ex-girlfriend turned best friend, I had to cancel because of a pink eye outbreak. And the time before that an entire fourth-grade class came down with COVID.
But just before Christmas, when a third bout of pink eye ripped through the elementary school population of Cardinal Springs, I finally broke down and hired another pediatrician for the practice. Dr. Fatima Adebayo just finished her residency at the Children’s Hospital of Atlanta. She’s smart and conscientious, and after training her on our office protocols for two weeks, I’m letting her take shifts on the after-hours phone.
But I’m only marginally relaxed about it, and the flickering neon lights in this place are already putting me even more on edge. The jukebox in the corner finishes playing the last clanging guitar riff of John Mellencamp’s “Hurts So Good” and launches into the clanging guitar riff of…John Mellencamp’s “Hurts So Good.”
“Dylan, I told you if you don’t cut that shit out, I’m tossing you out on your ass,” calls a grizzled old bartender with a gray beard long enough to braid. A young guy in a trucker hat surrounded by other young guys in trucker hats dissolves into the most undignified giggles I’ve ever seen.
I sigh.
Owen
How did you even find this place?
Francie
It’s halfway between you and Indy and the photos online looked delightfully sketchy
How is it? You’re not gonna get Deliveranced, are you?
If you hear banjos, RUN
I gaze around the dim bar that’s somehow smoky even though no one is smoking. But I spot a Pride flag hanging behind the bar next to a photo of a young Senator Obama shaking hands with a younger version of the grizzled bartender. I snap a photo and send it to Francie, then settle into a chair at an open table.
Francie
Oh good! Promise me you’ll stay and have a beer? I know your instinct is to go all introvert and bolt, but you’ve been working nonstop for too long. Stay and relax
Owen
Says the woman who just blew me off for a shift in the ER
Francie
Rude
But fair
Anyway I wanted to tell you in person but the medical gods keep conspiring against us, so…
A photo pops up of her left hand, her deep brown skin glistening in a golden hour sunbeam and a shockingly large diamond on her ring finger.
Owen
Holy shit! He did it! Congrats!
Francie
Thank you! You’ll be one of my bridesmen?
Owen
You don’t want me on Josh’s side?
Francie
Absolutely not. You’ll be wearing salmon pink with my sisters, you brat
Owen
Whatever the bride wants
Francie
Yay! Okay, now stop staring at your phone. Talk to a stranger! Get in some trouble! Have a one-night stand! Do something you’ll regret!
Owen
I’ll get right on that, Frank
Francie
Sarcasm is unbecoming, O-Town
“Whatcha drinking tonight, Doc?”
A low, sultry voice yanks my attention away from my phone. The first thing I notice is the pink streaks in her hair. Then my eyes drift to the tattered V-neck of her T-shirt and the swirling black ink rising out of her cleavage before landing on the devilish curve of her pouty pink lips.
Wyatt Hart. As if Francie conjured her. Because trouble?
Wyatt Hart is it.
Troublemaker, trouble-finder, just plain trouble .
She both turns me on and terrifies me.
“You work here?” I say, blinking like a fool and trying to reconcile the appearance of my sister’s tiny punk-rock best friend, bartender at the Half Pint, all the way out here at this place so remote I’m not sure it even has a name.
Wyatt rolls her eyes. “Yeah, Doc. I work full-time slinging drinks in Cardinal Springs, and in my spare time I drive thirty miles north to freelance at this shithole.”
“Watch your mouth, girlie,” the bartender calls, but he’s smiling.
Wyatt salutes him with her beer bottle. “I’m out drinking, just like you,” she says to me. “That is, if you pull your nose out of your phone and actually order a drink.”
I glance back down at the phone in my hand. When I walked in here, I was exhausted, the kind of tired that leaves you both heavy and jittery, somehow. I feel the absence of the on-call phone, which has spent the last couple of years living in my back pocket, interrupting every moment with its trilling ring.
But suddenly that exhaustion, that anticipation of disaster, all melts away. Francie’s directive to get in some trouble? Well, trouble is standing right in front of me with a devilish grin, an acid tone, and shit-kicking boots.
She looks like she gets into trouble on the professional circuit.
And I’m interested in getting into some too tonight.
“I was supposed to meet someone, but she just texted that she can’t make it,” I say, finally managing to talk to her like a grown-ass man and not some stressed-out puddle of exhaustion.
“ She? ” Wyatt asks, cocking an eyebrow. “You got yourself a secret girlfriend, Doc?”
“No,” I say, liking the nickname on her lips a little too much. “Francie’s just a friend. I mean, we used to date back in med school, but it didn’t work out, and we’ve been friends ever since.”
Wyatt lets out an exaggerated groan and melts down onto the open barstool next to me. “Are you seriously telling me you’re such a good guy that you’re actually friends with your ex?”
“She’s my best friend,” I add, even though I know this fact is going to wind up on the wrong side of whatever balance sheet Wyatt keeps about me in her head.
She takes a long swig from her beer bottle, smiling into the glass. I have to force myself not to stare at the elegant line of her neck. “God, Doc. They should study you in a lab. Figure out a way to clone you or something. Replace all the absolute dillholes masquerading as men.”
“Sorry you’ve had such bad luck,” I tell her, meaning it.
She shrugs, but I see the way her eyes flick over to the guys at the dartboard like they’ve all personally wronged her.
“So, what, you staying or going?” she asks.
I should go. If I’m not going to meet Francie, I should get in my truck and drive straight back to Cardinal Springs and crawl into bed, catch up on all the sleep I’ve missed since…well, since medical school. And there’s an ice storm coming and a flu going around. I’m willing to bet that the after-hours line at the practice is going to start ringing off the hook right around midnight. If I go home now, I can help Fatima out with calls. This is her first night on duty, after all.
But even as my brain is bullet-pointing all the reasons I should walk out of this bar, my eyes won’t stop drifting down to the flowers inked on Wyatt’s milky-white skin—what are they, roses? My fingers twitch with the urge to reach out and trace the lines, maybe dip beneath the black lace of her bra, visible at the neckline of her shirt.
“I’ll stay.”
She winks. “Good.” Then she turns over her shoulder. “Glenn, get this man a beer, would ya? He needs to unwind.”
My beer—a bottle of whatever she’s drinking—arrives quickly, and I’m glad to have something to do with my hands. Also something to do with my mouth that isn’t saying something stupid in front of this woman. I give myself till the count of five—plus three long sips—to formulate something cool, or even just normal , to say to her.
“So I came here because this place is halfway between Cardinal Springs and Indianapolis,” I finally say. “What brings you all the way out here?”
“Well, Eden’s colic has finally subsided, so Hazel booted me out of the house to get laid.”
I choke on a mouthful of beer, and Wyatt laughs. I have the sense that she gets off on making me nervous. Always has.
It makes me tempted to discover all the other ways I could get her off.
“Oh man, that’s fun,” she says, raising her beer bottle along with her eyebrows.
“What is?”
“Making you blush.”
“You’re pretty good at it,” I admit, feeling the heat in my cheeks.
She grins.
She’s playing with me. And inviting me to play with her. It’s giving me that familiar flare of adrenaline I used to feel when I’d stand on the pitcher’s mound back in high school, the thrill of hearing the thud of the ball hitting the catcher’s glove. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that zing of adrenaline, the kind that doesn’t come from panic or stress. The kind that comes with a delicious release.
Wyatt Hart is playing with me.
And suddenly, I want to play too.