Chapter Fifteen
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And boy is it entertaining.
Leora
Despite living in October, Tennessee for several years now, and despite October, Tennessee being not that big, there are still a few places I’ve never gotten to experience firsthand. The most notable such place is Blackwood Brew, Fox Blackwood’s bar.
I know the lore behind it. Everyone knows the lore behind it, and I happen to have gotten a closer look at the story, as I have Wolfe’s POV on the matter tucked neatly in a box of letters atop my desk at home.
Once belonging to the Blackwood parents, there were hints that they planned to pass it down to him some ten years ago so they could retire. They wanted the bar to stay in the family, and with Wolfe and Almond already well on their way to their own budding careers, Fox was the obvious choice.
Unfortunately, Fox wasn’t quite ready for the responsibility, so he hopped on his bad boy motorcycle, said his bad boy goodbyes, and went on his bad boy way. For years.
As an adult child who also ran away from the responsibilities a parent was trying to thrust on me, I get it.
As Wolfe’s friend who’s heard accounts of how hurtful and hard Fox leaving was for him, I have more than once considered shaking my friend’s dark-haired twin.
Even if he has come back and done his whole redemption arc thing, I don’t like thinking about Wolfe being hurt—past, present, or future.
Popping some hindsight sense into the man might not matter at all for Fox at this stage, but it sure would make me feel a little better.
When he (finally) returned home, he accepted the bar, allowed his parents to retire, and paid Wolfe a boatload of money for a massive back-slash-double-sleeve tattoo depicting large crow wings across his shoulder blades and down his arms. The boatload of money supporting his brother is the sole thing that stops me from attempting to pop hindsight sense into him.
Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy my silence if not forgiveness for past sins committed against my friend.
In the time since Fox has taken over the bar, his tattoo has grown increasingly more detailed, and his clientele has flourished just as much as when his parents owned the establishment.
The only time I’ve ever heard of the bar being anything but full was when Fox punched some guy and everybody cleared out for a day or two.
They came back when word spread that Fox and Poem had started to get into the meat and potatoes of their enemies-to-lovers romance.
Nobody wanted to miss that. Including me.
Alas, the risk of running into Wolfe was way too high, so I stayed away and got my updates on the situation mostly via texts from Almond—an unreliable narrator if ever there was one.
She hadn’t even mentioned that Poem’s house was flooded, and nearly all of the details I got from Wolfe had been missing from Almond’s version of the story.
Being completely honest, Almond’s version was less about Fox and Poem and more about the fact that Poem was being horrifically mean to her by not jumping on the opportunity to be her legal sister, and horrifically mean to her by thrusting her and Emerson Wright together any time Almond tried to intervene even a little bit in the budding romance.
Getting Wolfe’s version of the love story had been rather eye-opening, even with me filling in some of the gaps in Almond’s version with the snippets of town gossip I’d managed to grab ahold of.
Town gossip that it seems has moved on from Fox and Poem even though the shine on her gigantic engagement ring hasn’t even begun to dull.
Which is precisely why I’m laughing.
“Oh. My. Stars,” I gasp. “This is the best introduction to the bar I could have possibly gotten.”
Wolfe rolls his forehead on the table in distress while Sterne’s lips twitch in humor.
“There, there, buddy,” Sterne coos, rubbing a large, rough hand on Wolfe’s back. “It’s going to be okay. Look, Leora doesn’t even care that the entire town is here to watch you two gawk at each other.”
“Not one bit,” I agree, letting my laughter settle into a wide grin. It might have bothered me if Wolfe weren’t so clearly having the worst time. Luckily for me, he is, which turns this might-be-nightmare into something a whole lot more amusing.
Wolfe groans, right on the edge of a whimper.
My grin softens, and I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help but find his misery to be adorable.
I like that he’s taking steps to be a more assertive man.
I like it immeasurably more that, as he takes those steps, he is not pretending that he already is that man.
He’s experiencing growing pains, and he’s letting them be seen.
There is something particularly attractive about a man who does the hard thing without a front of false nonchalance as he does it.
In order to get over his emotions, Wolfe is feeling them. He’s stopped internalizing his bad emotions and started embracing them.
Mentally, I run a black dry-erase line through one of his whiteboard cons. Goodbye, Doesn’t feel his feelings.
Pleased with his progress, I reach out and pat his ruffled white locks. “I’m going to order something,” I say over his suffering groans. “Be right back.”
Before I can pull my hand back to my side of the booth, let alone slide my rump out of the bench, Wolfe grabs my wrist. His head lifts, and ocean blue eyes bore into me with equal parts desperation and solemnity.
“Don’t go out there,” he cautions me. “They’ll eat you alive, and then they’ll come over here and have me for dessert.
Please. I’m a father, Leora. Think of what this sort of trauma will do to my bloodline. ”
Somehow, I think that Amia won’t suffer too much from a town full of people who care so much about her family that they would come to watch, hopeful, as her father merely speaks to a woman at a bar.
I don’t believe for a minute that all these people are just here for gossip.
Some of them, sure, but most of them? They’re here because they love Wolfe and, just like with his brother, they want to see him find a slice of happiness that’s thus far evaded him.
Despite what the town thinks—and what my heart might foolishly hope for—I know that the To Lovers portion of his story is unlikely to happen with me, so I’m able to find this situation amusing rather than the existential disaster Wolfe is taking it as. It’s not my love life they’re interested in.
As such, I’m able to tease the man in crisis, ignoring the pitter patter of my heart wishing the crisis were shared between us.
“I’d like a drink,” I say, squinting merrily down at him.
“Those can be acquired at the bar, yes? Meaning I need to get up and go get one if I am to have the full Blackwood Brew experience?”
Wolfe shakes his head vehemently. “It’s not worth it,” he assures me. “You’ll never make it back.”
Sterne, again, snorts. Then, he asks, “What do you want to drink?”
Ah. A compromise. Sterne will get my drink, and Wolfe will have his peace.
“A gin and tonic,” I answer. “Extra lime, please.”
Sterne nods. Then, he yells. “Poem!”
The bar quiets.
“Leora needs a gin and tonic, extra lime, and a Guinness for Wolfy!” he continues to holler, eliciting a flush-faced look of horror from Wolfe.
“On it!” Poem yells back in the silence, already grabbing a highball glass.
“Stop yelling across the bar!” Fox yells, huffing and puffing at his fiancée and Sterne. Neither of them pay him any mind. Wolfe sends him a commiserating grimace before returning his forehead to the table with a moan.
“I really like this bar,” I declare, shifting happily in my seat. “It’s so fun!”
Sterne concurs with a lift of his glass, followed by a sip of the amber liquid within.
Wolfe laments into the table.