Close to the Edge (Huddling for Warmth Book 2)

1. Tess

It’s a Friday evening, the sun’s still out, and I’m two hours into my shift at Flint’s. It’s busy, and the air is muggy from all the bodies pressed up against the bar. The din makes my ears ring. Every booth inside is full, and most of the bench tables outside are crammed with sunburned tourists huddling over maps and splitting baskets of salty fries, trying to figure out their routes for the weekend.

My arms ache as I hold a tray aloft, weaving through the tightly-packed crowd, until I get outside into the lukewarm breeze. It ruffles the escaped frizz from my ponytail and wafts against my black Flint’s polo, tickling where the fabric is stuck to my sweaty back.

Four more hours to go.

A line of motorbikes gleam in the sunshine out here, driven off the road onto the scraggly grass, and their riders smoke and laugh together at their own bench table, all red-faced and sweating in their leathers.

They grunt and wink when I put their drinks down, but they’re harmless really. Bunch of old, balding fellas out for a mountain ride.

Seems a nice life to me.

Rock music floats from the bar out to the yard, and around the tables a few tired mutts are flopped at their owners’ feet, sighing against their paws. I bring the pups water in between rounds of drinks for the customers. They each perk up at the stainless steel bowl, tails wagging hopefully, then dive face first into the water and don’t come up until it’s gone.

Good. This long, hot summer is no joke, and the grass I’m walking back and forth across is parched.

My feet throb in my sneakers and my bra strap rubs, chafing at my shoulder, but those are minor irritations. The kind of things I can swat away like a horse with a fly.

Because I’m in the zone. Processing order after order like a pro, half lost in my own world as I work on autopilot, reloading the dishwasher and pouring whiskey sours. My hands move without conscious input from my brain, wiping down spills on the bar and plopping paper straws in tall glasses, and all the while my mind is halfway up the nearest mountain.

Rowan.

It’s been a year since my big brother came back to society, coaxed back to the real world by his now-wife Evie. Before then, he’d been living in a cave up near the peak, roaming barefoot and bare-chested like a wild man, chased away from Starlight Ridge by the demons in his head.

Chased away from me, too. His only family worth mentioning. Oh, our folks are still alive and kicking, so far as I know, but they were too embarrassed at their son’s wild man antics to stick around and try to help. They preferred to start over somewhere new, somewhere without the peskiness of having to love someone damaged by war.

Somewhere without their disappointing daughter, too, who never amounted to anything more than a perfectly made cocktail—and who certainly didn’t trap one of those rich men with the helicopters who vacation around here like they hoped.

Bleurgh.

“Eighteen bucks, please.” I slide a small tray of drinks toward an earnest man in his forties with smudged glasses. There’s a laminated trail map hanging from a string around his neck, and his nose is burned cherry red. “You have a good night, now! And put some aloe vera on that burn.”

The man nods and laughs awkwardly, then shuffles away with his tray. My eyes watch him go, but my brain is still halfway up the mountain at my brother’s cabin.

A year. One whole year since Rowan came back, clean shaven and shame-faced. Knocking on my apartment door to apologize for ghosting me like that, asking if I’d maybe want to catch up with him sometime.

As if I haven’t stayed here all these years for him. To be close.

To be here if he needs me.

And a year is a long time, but I still catch myself wondering. No: worrying. Fretting that it won’t stick, that it’s too good to be true, that no matter how head-over-heels my brother is for Evie, no matter how excited he is for their bun in the oven, no matter how many sibling walks we go on or drinks we share on his deck… something will happen that sends Rowan scurrying back up to that cave.

It’s my biggest fear. When I wake up sweating in the early hours, sheets twisted around my feet, that’s always the bad dream I’ve had: Rowan, back in that cave. My big brother, lost to me again.

“You look like the school bully just snatched away your candy.” Beside me, my best friend Jana works at lightning speed, scooping fresh ice into a glass before adding cola and lime. She looks effortlessly put together with her short hair and sparkling earrings, her smooth brown skin neither sweaty nor flushed. I’m trying not to feel self conscious next to her. “You need me to cover the bar for a while? You can take five, Tess. I can handle this.”

Jana can, too—she’s worked at Flint’s longer than anyone except the boss himself, and she can deal with anything this bar throws at her—but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna ditch her here doing all the work. Straightening my shoulders, I push my Rowan-worries to the back of my head.

“I’m good,” I say, shaking out my hands before tugging two more beer bottles from the refrigerator and popping off their caps for a pair of hikers. Jana is unconvinced, but she nods and tugs the dishwasher open behind us. A cloud of hot steam billows against the backs of my legs, and lord, what I’d give for a quick dip in the lake outside town right now.

Sometimes it’s good to get away from people. It’s nice to listen to the birds and the wind instead of the roar of a bar. I’m not saying I’d ever swear off humanity and live in a cave like a certain sibling of mine, but sometimes… I do get it.

“How’s the big bro?”

With the music and the laughter and the thumps of glasses against tables, it’s a wonder we can hear each other talk at all. But if we raise our voices, Jana and I can usually manage a steady stream of chatter behind the bar.

“Doing well. Evie’s due next month, then I’m gonna be an aunt.”

Jana whistles, racking up dirty glasses in the dishwasher behind me. “Life moves fast. Big things are happening, huh?”

They sure are. Maybe that’s why I’m wound tighter than a ratchet strap, waiting in pure dread for my big brother to snap.

“He’ll be fine,” Jana says, like she’s reading my mind, and her dark eyes are so kind I can hardly stand it. When she looks down at the dishwasher, I can finally breathe again. “Rowan’s a tough cookie, and he loves Evie so much. He’d never dip out on his wife and child. You know that really.”

But he leftme. The thought snakes through me, sour and sad, and I cover it up by taking another order.

I know it’s not the same thing. Know that we owe very different things to grown siblings than we do to a spouse and child, and that Rowan would never have chosen to hurt me if he was fully well. I know that the heaviness pressing on my chest is super unreasonable, and that this isn’t even my panic to have. Not anymore.

Because I waited here for years for my big brother, and now others have a better claim on him. He’s been my top priority for so long, and now I’m third on his list.

That’s fine—that’s right. It’s how it should be.

But it sure does feel lonely sometimes.

“How’s the apartment hunt going?” I ask, desperate for a change of subject. My stomach’s churning, and the sweat on my upper lip isn’t wholly from the heat.

“Oh man, don’t get me started.” Jana bumps the dishwasher closed with her rounded hip, throwing up both hands. “Every long term rental in this town is a complete dive. It’s all fancy vacation lets. I’m this close to pitching a damn tent out by the keg shed.”

Jana got notice last week that her landlord is doing her place up to rent as an AirBnB to the tourists, and she needs to be out by the end of the month. She’s lived there for six freaking years, never once falling behind on rent, and though she’s hiding it behind a lot of frustrated humor, I can tell she’s hurting too.

That place is her home. Or it was, anyway.

“Let’s burn it down.” My palm smacks against the sticky bar top, and Jana’s surprised hoot of laughter brings the first genuine smile to my face all evening. “If you can’t have it, no one can. That’s what friends are for, right? Bitching and arson.”

“Bitching and arson,” Jana agrees, fishing our water bottles from the shelf below and waiting for me to crack the lid of mine before tapping them together. “And talking sense whenever we crush on the wrong man.”

“Amen,” I say, though secretly I can’t imagine it.

No, when I picture the men around Starlight Ridge, I’m pretty sure I’m crush-proof.