Chapter 6 #2
A quick walk to the stock room reveals that we are not fine. I don’t need to grab Aunt Rita’s old clipboard from the nail on the wall to see that we’re woefully short ahead of the Fourth.
My eyelid is twitching as I spin around and stride to the office, where I stand in the doorway, waiting for Clay to look up.
He makes me wait, which is irritating, but whatever.
“There was a heatwave in the late 80s,” I say when he finally looks up, keeping my voice calm.
I’m telling him a story, after all. Not threatening him with bodily harm yet.
“That’s not unusual. We often have a few streaks of scorching hot days in the summer, but this one was relentless.
Aunt Rita was still in high school, but she was bartending with her mother over the summer.
No one paid close attention to that back then. ”
I pause, and he motions for me to get to the point, his face a picture of boredom.
“No one at the time realized that Loretta’s memory lapses might be early-onset Alzheimer’s.
Rita certainly didn’t—she was just a high school student trying to figure out what to do with the obscene amount of margarita mix and a severe lack of light beer ahead of one of our busiest weekends of the summer. ”
“Let me guess,” he says dryly. “She made margaritas.”
“Rita’s ’ritas,” I say with a nod. “She priced them cheap and pushed them instead of beer—even served them in tumblers so as not to hurt the delicate feelings of the men, who back then could not be seen drinking from something so girly as a thin-stemmed margarita glass. She ran out of tequila and had to use rum and vodka. Not that anyone cared. All they wanted was something ice cold. Gallo’s made some good money.
So the next year, Rita’s ’ritas made an intentional comeback.
And every year since, people come to drink Rita’s ’ritas, eat wings and burgers, and watch the fireworks across Haven Lake. ”
“Ah.”
“Tomorrow is the Fourth. Want to know how much margarita mix we have?” Can he see my eyelid twitch? I hope he can.
He waves that off. “So make some. It’s basically a simple syrup and lime juice.”
I restrain myself from mimicking him. The mix might be basic, but getting the quantity I’ll need before tomorrow is anything but. “Did you fuck this up, or was it Travis? Because I placed the order before I left.”
Something in his expression darkens. “Does it matter?” he finally says. It doesn’t feel like an admission of guilt, and I doubt he’d cover for Travis’s stupid ass—so why not tell me?
Because I lumped him in with Travis and Hayden the other day? Christ, was I hoping he’d tell me it was Travis who fucked this up?
“No, it doesn’t matter. I’m going to need cash for sugar and limes.
” I doubt I can find enough limes or bottled lime juice in Havenwood and Pine Point.
I’ll have to use lemon, too. And anybody hoping to do some last-minute baking who discovers there's no sugar in the pantry is going to be shit out of luck after I buy up whatever the grocery store has.
Clay gets up and walks over to the old wall safe.
Seeing a stranger enter the combo when I can still see Rita spinning it with her slender fingers irritates me.
It’s mine. This place is mine. And maybe this man has fucked up the Fourth, or maybe Travis has, but I’m not going to let either one run Rita’s legacy into the ground.
He saves his balls from a swift but painful divorce from his body by stepping aside and waving at me to take what I need.
“And I’ll need to borrow your car,” I say. I don’t. I could use some of the cash I pocket to fill the tank in my Buick, but I want to push my luck.
“How long have you had that junker?”
I scoff. That junker was Rita’s before it was mine.
Sure, the passenger door doesn’t open, and I’m one pothole away from losing the muffler again, but that boat of a car is still running.
It’s black and rust-free, and the rosary hanging from the rearview mirror was my great-grandmother Marcella’s.
It hung in her vehicle in the forties when she turned her back on the church, in Loretta’s car in the sixties, and in the Buick since the eighties. “Since I was fifteen.”
He pulls his keys from his pocket, but when I reach for them, he holds them back. “You break it, you buy it.”
He’s going to let me take his shiny red sports car? I nod, perhaps a little too eagerly, because his eyes narrow. But he sighs.
The keys are still warm from his pocket when he drops them into my hand, and I barely refrain from skipping out of the office before he can change his mind.
“Wait,” he says, beckoning me back.
Dammit. Too eager. He’ll take the keys back. “What?” There’s bite in that one word to hide my disappointment.
He beckons again. I grit my teeth, walking up to him and giving him my best, “Well, what?” look.
The backs of his knuckles skim the bare skin of my stomach. I suck in a sharp breath at the unexpected touch and the fire it leaves behind.
“Don’t be greedy,” he says in a low voice, his honeyed eyes on his hands as he undoes the knot I tied in his shirt. “You can borrow my car, but I’m taking this back.”
His fingers are quick, dexterous. By the time it crosses my flustered mind to stop him, he’s already undone the two buttons and is sliding the shirt back over my shoulders.
He’s not shy about touching me, either. Palms, fingers—they graze my skin, lifting all the soft hair on my arms with their gentle warmth.
There’s a calm disinterest in his expression, but his eyes burn as they drift over the rose tattoo climbing my arm.
My nipples pebble as I fight the exhilarated shiver back down.
“That’s all, Ms. Gallo,” he says, stepping back with his shirt in hand.
Dammit. Did I come out the loser? But he’s holding his shirt over his groin, so maybe not. “No jerking off in my office while I’m gone,” I say lightly as I walk to the door.
“What did you call your desk?” He snaps his fingers. “Vebjorn, that’s right. I’ll be sure to wipe Vebjorn clean when I’m finished.”
Oh, no. I’m not losing this one. “Wish I could say the same for the upholstery of your driver’s seat,” I jingle his keys with a smile.
His jaw starts to drop, but he quickly rubs his hand over it. He can’t hide the way his eyes darken, though.
It’s enough to make me cackle five minutes later as I whip around the curves in the highway, the windows down. It fuels my mirth all the way to the grocery stores in both Havenwood and Pine Point.
And because I can only be me, I reprogram all his radio stations to country under the assumption that he’ll hate that most. I change the settings so his navigation is all in Croatian, and when I finally return to Gallo’s, I make sure to pull the driver’s seat far enough forward so it hurts if he fails to put it back before he gets in.