Chapter 26
CHAPTER 26
WYATT
The next morning, I’m alone in the bar, swapping kegs and prepping glassware in anticipation of the Sunday sports crowd.
But my mind is back in the wings of that cavernous arena, Owen at my side.
My Wyatt .
The words ping around in my brain like a pinball, lighting up parts of my body I didn’t even know were erogenous zones.
My Wyatt .
I want to have those words tattooed on me, just above my hip, where Owen rested his large, warm hand. I want to turn them into a song and listen to it for the rest of my life.
We said no commitments, no labels, but my Wyatt feels like something else entirely.
And it scares the shit out of me.
My spiral is interrupted by a grumble coming from the back.
“You talking to me, Ernie?” I call, dumping my bucket of soapy water down the sink and going to check on him.
“I said I need some help,” Ernie barks, rubbing the shoulder supported by a sling. He managed to take twenty-four hours off before he got bored out of his fucking mind (his words) and came back. But he’s under strict orders to lift nothing .
He’s thrilled, clearly.
“Which one?”
“The summer shandy.”
“On it.”
I leave Ernie to wipe down the bar, but when I get back with the keg wagon, he’s doing something absolutely bizarre.
He’s smiling.
And that’s because he’s got the rag tossed over his shoulder, his good elbow leaning into the bar, as he makes conversation with Romy Maxwell.
“Watch out for that one—he’s trouble,” I say when my best friend turns on her stool and spots me.
And instead of snapping at me, Ernie just blushes.
My mouth hangs open. “Ernie, are you starstruck ?”
He shakes his head, but then he turns to Romy and says, “I love that one you do about the blue dress.”
Romy lights up like a disco ball. “ ‘Tears in Chiffon!’ That’s a B-side. You’re a real fan!”
He shrugs, but he warms to the praise like a preschooler presenting an art project. “I like country. The classic stuff, not that pickup truck shit,” he says. “You remind me of Linda Ronstadt.”
Romy’s mouth drops open. “Holy shit, that is the biggest compliment anyone has ever paid me.”
“Ernie, you old flirt.” I’ve literally never heard my boss talk to a stranger this much. But I’m proud of Romy and thrilled to watch her get her flowers.
“Let an old man have some peace,” Ernie grumbles with a wave of his hand. He snaps the towel off his shoulder and goes back to wiping the bar.
The same spot he was cleaning when I left.
I pull Romy into a hug and then heave the keg into place. “I’m so glad you came,” I tell her has I tap it.
She glances around the quiet bar. We don’t open for another hour, so it’s clean and doesn’t smell like stale beer and body odor yet.
“Wyatt, I love this place,” she says. “Yours?”
“No, I just work here. Chatty Cathy here owns the place,” I say, snapping a bar towel at my boss. I brace for a snappy retort, but instead he just shrugs his good shoulder.
“Couldn’t run it without you,” he says, his voice gruff. He eyes me. “I’m heading out to do my stretches with Corianne. You good here alone?”
“I’m not alone,” I say, nodding at Romy.
“I’m happy to jump in. Wyatt and I tended bar together a lot back in the old days. I can pull a pint like you wouldn’t believe.”
Ernie looks like he might fall over at the thought of Romy Maxwell tending his bar, but he manages to school his face back into the lined grimace I know so well. “Jonah should be here in about half an hour. Call me if his ass is late, okay?”
I give Ernie a two-fingered salute and get back to my side work, the memory of what it felt like to do this alongside Romy rushing back.
“I’m glad to see you behind a bar still,” Romy says. “You’re so good at it. You always seemed so at home there.”
It’s true. When I moved to Cardinal Springs, the little brick ranch house was supposed to be home, but I didn’t really feel at peace until Ernie hired me. Bartending’s hard work, but I love it. It’s physical, never dull, and I’m a people person, so I love the customers. Well, not all of them, but my regulars are like my second family.
“Speaking of home, you looked pretty dang comfortable on that stage,” I say as I refill the toothpick dispenser.
Romy sucks in a breath, her eyes going wide with news. “Sienna’s negotiating with the label to get me my own tour.”
I drop the box of toothpicks, sending them skittering across the bar. “Seriously? Romy, that’s huge!”
“Not stadiums, obviously. More like large clubs and small theaters. Jingle Ball and music festivals and that sort of thing. But people would be coming to see me .”
“Well, after seeing you last night, I’m not a bit surprised.”
“I gotta get off Griffin’s tour. It’s such a redneck frat party.” She takes a toothpick from the pile and starts strumming it across the bar like it’s a lap steel. “I nearly cried when Sienna told me about his offer. Partially because I couldn’t believe I was finally going to get to do it—travel around the country playing my songs. And partially because it’s him . It felt so icky to join up after what he did to you. To us. He was the reason I lost my best friend, and now I had to choose between my career and that ?”
“Well, I’m glad you chose your career, because now you get to show his audiences what a true artist sounds like. I’m glad you’re using that dull mirror to reflect your own shine.”
“You’ll be happy to know he fumbled the bridge to his biggest hit last night.”
The song about me: “Burning Heart.” It was his first big radio hit, topping out at number two on the country charts and even crossing over onto the Billboard Hot 100. He wrote his own narrative of that night and everything that came before it, recasting me as an evil temptress out to destroy him or any other poor man who fell for my seduction. It’s full of the most obvious kindergarten rhymes—no shit, the second verse pairs love and dove . It has a mind-numbingly boring melody and sounds like it was written in crayon on the back of a Longhorn menu. The title sounds like a symptom of a venereal disease. The worst people you know love to blast it from their lifted trucks.
Just the thought of it makes me want to shatter every glass in the bar.
Another perk of listening to most of my music on cassette in the truck? I never have to worry about accidentally hearing “Burning Heart” by Griffin Stone.
And I don’t want to spend one single, solitary second of my time with Romy thinking about that asshole. Which she can obviously tell, because she changes the subject.
“So tell me about this Dr. Owen,” she says in a syrupy, singsong voice like we’re fourth graders on the playground. “He’s a strapping fellow.”
“He’s …”
But I don’t have words to describe him. Pineapple started out as a joke, but now it stands in for all the things I can’t say, all the things I won’t let myself feel. He’s so good, and I’m such a disaster. I can’t cast him in the role of one-man cleanup crew. I’ve always made sure my mess is mine to handle, but it’s getting harder and harder to keep it from him.
Still, something shifted last night at the concert. Something feels bigger. That “4Now” doesn’t quite cover it all anymore.
“Wyatt, you’re blushing.”
I duck my head, as if keeping her from seeing it will make it not real. “Well, he’s a very good lay,” I tell her.
Romy tosses the toothpick at me, and it lodges itself in my curls. “Don’t do that,” she says.
“Do what?” I ask, swatting at my hair to shake the toothpick loose.
“Diminish the things in your life that are good.”
“I’m not!”
“You used to do it all the time back in Nashville, and it seems like you haven’t changed. You neg yourself like you’re ready for the floor to drop out. I think that’s why you were with Griffin to begin with. You knew he was going to be a disappointment, so you didn’t have to be surprised when he showed his true colors. You’ve always gotta be big tough Wyatt Hart, ready to muscle through disaster.”
“That’s a load of shit.”
“Yeah. It is,” she says, leveling me with a look. “Nobody’s ready for disaster, for heartbreak. But when you try to prepare yourself like that, you just experience the misery twice. You can’t enjoy the good parts.”
I sigh. “But how can you call them good parts when they end in misery?”
Romy’s eyes go soft as she studies me. “Oh, honey. That’s just life. You take the good with the bad. You lean on the good to deal with the bad.” She reaches across the bar, taking my hand in hers. “But you’ve got to let yourself be happy.”
Then she swipes her thumb across my cheek, wiping away the tear I didn’t even realize was falling.
I grab for a bar napkin, sniffling and trying to smile. “I don’t want to be like this,” I say. “I just don’t know how to be any other way.”
She smiles. “Maybe start with that very handsome doctor who looks at you like you invented orgasms?”