Chapter 18
Chapter eighteen
Lou
“Notice anything different?” Clay asks when I walk into the bar.
I pause to take him in.
His usual flawless white dress shirt beautifully sets off his newly sun-kissed skin. His blond hair is styled but only slightly tonight.
There is something else, though. It’s in his expression, his posture. He looks pleased with himself. Is it because he enjoyed himself today despite all his doubts?
Fuck, it was so easy to convince myself that getting involved with Clay would be a bad idea, but something about seeing him out on the lake, all golden and beautiful in the sun, has me mixed up inside.
I can still feel his hands on my hips, his lips on my palm, from when I straddled him on the pontoon.
Am I reconsidering?
“Well?” he prompts.
“You’ve undone another button in your shirt,” I finally say. “And used a different product in your hair.”
He raises an amused eyebrow and points toward the kitchen door.
I turn to look and gasp.
The longhorn skull is back, the golden cornicello charm dangling from the horn on the right. I’d assumed he’d thrown them away, but he’s returned them.
My eyes well up, and I blink away the tears.
“And over there.” He points to a spot on the bar's back counter.
Rita’s prayer candles—George Michael, Cher, and Dolly—are back, lined up behind the photo of a young Rita and Loretta.
I’m behind the bar in a flash, throwing my arms around his neck. “Thank you.”
He freezes, but then his arms come around me, pressing me close. “It’s nothing.” Two seconds later, his arms drop away.
I’m a fraction too slow to release him, and now it’s awkward. He brushes the front of his shirt, scowling at the imagined wrinkles left by my embrace like the asshole he is.
“You’re right,” I say lightly. “Putting my stuff back is the bare fucking minimum.”
His bark of a laugh catches him off-guard, and he quickly snuffs it out. “Don’t expect more from me,” he warns.
I lean against the counter. “The bar is so low it’s in hell, sweetheart.” I’m trying to be flippant, but fuck. It’s true.
“Bring it up,” he says as he walks away. “You deserve more.”
You deserve it but forget about getting it from me. That’s the message. I’m not stupid. I know he doesn’t plan to stay here and that he’s trouble—what does he think I want from him?
What do I want? It plagues me the rest of the night as I pour beers. And every time I step into the kitchen, I reach up to brush my fingers over the small cornicello, like I can absorb enough good luck to counter a generational curse.
Clay doesn’t avoid me. He doesn’t crowd my space or toy with me in the stock room. He touches me lightly on the back while we work behind the cramped bar, but this time the system works. No collisions. Our communication is better, too.
We even have fun, trading banter and quips. At the end of the night, he walks me to the camper and leaves with a simple goodnight. And I still don’t know what I want.
“The next one of you two to make a sausage pun, a sausage joke, or a sausage innuendo has to deal with the clogged sink in the men’s room,” Clay threatens as Briar opens her mouth.
It’s hardly our fault that Cheryl is raffling off an obscene quantity of sausage to raise money for Havenwood’s adult literacy program.
The woman is firing off innuendo after innuendo, with an expression that says she has no clue she’s doing it—a bald-faced lie.
She knows what she’s doing. Everyone in the bar is sniggering, and Cheryl breezes on by like they aren’t.
Briar closes her mouth, takes the bucket of Coronas on ice Clay set up for her, and walks off with a tight-lipped smile.
Clay looks at me, his face already etched with disappointment.
As much as I’d love to disappoint him more, I have no interest in fixing the plumbing, so I give him my sweetest, most innocent look.
One corner of his lips starts to slide up, but he shuts it down before it reaches a full smile, his focus shifting to wiping up a small spill on the counter.
“All sausage, no sizzle,” I say pityingly, shaking my head.
Clay’s shoulders tense, and the cloth stills. I don’t have to see his face to know his eyes are closed, his lips pressed together into a grim little line like he’s counting to ten. Or trying to lock down a smile.
I want that smile, and when I don’t get it, I’m more disappointed than I should be.
Since Clay and Briar have everything under control at the moment, I slip out from behind the bar, heading toward the office. There’s something I need to do, but mostly I need a break from a certain blond and his mixed signals. And my mixed feelings.
The hallway is empty, but to my horror, the supply closet door is ajar.
Ugh.
This is usually a Saturday night problem.
I didn’t expect sausage night at the meat raffle to inflame passions enough to lead to a hook-up in my supply closet, but I probably shouldn’t be surprised.
I knock on the door and push it open, covering my eyes with one hand so I don’t see anything that will traumatize me.
No screams of mortification greet me. Only a sucked in breath and a startled “Lou!”
The voice belongs to Travis’s friend, and after a brief hesitation, I lower my hand. He’s not playing with his trouser snake, thank god. “Reed? What are you doing in here?”
His eyes widen a fraction on the slow side, and he turns to the nearest shelf. He lifts a urinal cake. “Looking for this.”
“A…urinal cake?”
He nods. “Yeah. The urinal is out. In the men’s room.”
Doubtful. I cross my arms. “What are you really doing?”
He waves the urinal cake at me.
Okay, clearly, he’s either here to steal toilet paper or he’s looking for something to get high off. Or— “Travis doesn’t own the bar anymore, so there’s no point in using my supply closet to hide or hand off drugs. Whatever you’ve secreted away in here needs to go.”
“I swear, I’m not—”
I don’t have the energy for this. “That’s right. You’re not.” I snatch the urinal cake from his hand and toss it on the shelf.
“Ow!” he says when I grab his arm and drag him out.
“Order a drink or some food, or go home,” I tell him, letting the supply closet door swing shut and pushing him back down the hallway toward the bar.
“Okay, okay, I’m going,” he says, hands up in surrender.
One of the perks of Travis taking off is that I haven’t had to deal with his loser friends as often.
Reed and a few of the others have come in since I’ve been back, but they haven’t been after free drinks or food, and they haven’t tried to overstay their welcome beyond closing time. It’s been refreshing.
Hanging out in my supply closet, though?
That’s weird.
I’ll have to make sure he isn’t hiding something in there, but the search can wait. I retreat to the office, drop into the chair, and take out my new phone.
Yesterday, after we docked the pontoon, Milo pulled me aside to tell me he suspected Clay was laundering money through Gallo’s, warning me to be careful. It annoyed me that he thought I wouldn’t know what was happening in my own bar. I lashed out, telling him to mind his own business.
He’s finally seen the message I sent apologizing. His response is a thumbs up, which is so infuriatingly Milo of him.
You should come by tonight.
Me
Three dots appear immediately, which is very un-Milo. He never responds right away.
They stop. Then start again. And stop.
Just say it.
Me
No more hook-ups.
Milo
Is that what he thinks I want? But I guess I’ve only ever messaged him for sex or once opossum removal.
Yeah, we’re through.
But Keith is showing off his 12-inch kielbasa
Briar looks impressed.
Me
Three dots appear. Disappear. Start up again.
Milo isn’t someone who messages beyond the bare necessity, so I stare at those dots with anticipation.
If Briar wants Keith’s kielbasa, she’s free to have it. It has nothing to do with me.
Milo
She might prefer yours.
Me
Not happening.
Milo
I should let it go. My relationship with Milo centered on fucking, not talking. But picking on him about Briar makes me feel a little better about Clay somehow.
You like her.
Me
The dots continue for a long while, stopping occasionally, only to start up again. They finally stop, and about thirty seconds pass in which I stare at the shiny new phone screen before the message suddenly pops up, like he finally worked up the courage to hit send.
I’m not getting involved with someone who will drag me into trouble. And you shouldn’t either.
Milo
I narrow my eyes at the phone. I can take care of myself, and that includes any bad decisions I might make regarding my money-laundering business partner. But I don’t want to have this fight right now.
So you’re not coming by?
Me
He doesn’t respond, but as I leave the office, I can easily picture him reaching for his keys with an irritated sigh.
I saw the way they looked at each other on the pontoon.
This business about Briar being trouble is a bullshit excuse for him to remain the closed-off hermit he’s always been.
She’s an angel. I doubt she’s even hiding ten million in that RV.
And I doubt Milo’s sour-tongued grandmother would refuse to sell him and Gina Happy Lake Lodge and Campground over him dating a woman with purple hair and a pedigreed cat.
I’ve all but forgotten Reed when I walk back into the bar, but there he is, lifting a frame off the wall and looking behind it. I march up behind him and tap him on the shoulder.
“Now what are you doing?” I ask in exasperation when he turns to look at me.
“It’s crooked,” he says, putting it back.
As far as Travis’s friends go, Reed is the cream of the crop. The quiet, shy, likely-smarter one in the rowdy group. The one most likely to be invisible and unobtrusive, and therefore, up until today, my favorite. “Reed, do you work here?”
“No.”
“Then stop it. Get a beer or go home.”
He nods. “I’ll have a beer.”
I point. “Bar’s over there.”
He mutters, but he goes, and I adjust the now-crooked black and white photo of my great-grandmother, Marcella, standing behind the bar.
Most of the old pictures hanging on the walls are from around Havenwood.
My grandmother, Loretta, went through a photography phase.
While many of the photos aren’t particularly interesting—there’s more than one photo of a mailbox without any artistic merit—there are a few older family ones that have value.
Why would Reed be interested in that photo of Marcella, or in straightening it if it was crooked?
Maybe he’s high. That would explain the urinal cake.
A nearby booth has been recently vacated, so I sidle up and start stacking plates. Some cruel twist of fate makes me look up and out the window in time to see the truck.
It slows as it passes Gallo’s, and I glimpse the face I’ve spent days and miles searching for. His eyes meet mine for half a second, and everything comes rushing back. Every single breath gasped in that cab, every whisper, every goddamn lie of a promise.
Hayden.