Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
“Lifter,” Dawson said.
Wyatt kept checking.
“Lifter,” Dawson said again.
Wyatt wiped his hands on a shop rag and tossed it on the bench. “Owner says he’s been keeping up on maintenance.”
“Owner’s full of shit.” Dawson didn’t look up from the Silverado he was working on. “Once you’re done proving me right, call for the part. He’s not getting it back today.”
Wyatt nodded once and headed for the office, phone in hand.
The three brothers had everything worked out so they could play to their strengths.
Wyatt took care of scheduling, ordering, and the books.
Ethan floated wherever the day needed him, kept the radio on, kept the mood loose. Dawson put his head down and worked.
He’d been walking into this building since he was a kid, trailing behind his dad. The rhythm hadn’t changed much.
The Silverado needed new brake pads and rotors. Dawson pulled the caliper and set it aside. Grease in the creases of his knuckles, black under the nails, calluses layered over calluses. He’d stopped apologizing for his hands a long time ago.
Ethan rolled out from under a Chevy on the creeper, grease on his forehead. “Hey. You hear the Stags got a new guy? Trade from Florida or something.”
“I met him.”
Ethan sat up. “You what?”
“He came into the Box yesterday.” Dawson didn’t look up from the Silverado. “Ordered a drink, talked to Gunnar, left.”
“And?”
Dawson’s wrench slipped. He adjusted his grip and kept working. “And nothing. He ordered a drink, talked to Gunnar, left.”
Ethan was quiet long enough that Dawson knew he was grinning without looking. “What’s he like?”
Dawson shrugged. “Seemed like an arrogant shit who thinks he’s too good for where he’s at.”
Ethan’s grin spread slow. “Since when do you meet Stags players? You don’t even watch hockey.”
“He was already there when I walked in. That’s not meeting someone, that’s being in the same room.”
“You talked to him though.”
“He talked to me. There’s a difference.”
Ethan laughed and grabbed his water bottle. “Dawson Mercer, socializing with a professional athlete. Somebody mark the calendar.”
“I don’t even know what position he plays, Ethan.”
Ethan slid back under the Chevy, still grinning. “What kind of car does he drive?”
“Audi.” Leo had mentioned it. Dawson hadn’t asked.
“An Audi. In Port Haven.” Ethan’s laugh echoed off the undercarriage. “That thing’s gonna last about one winter.”
Dawson could hear Wyatt through the door. “Yeah, I understand that, but I need it by Thursday.” The voice he saved for suppliers and customers. Never raised it. Never had to.
He ate lunch on the tailgate of his truck. Sandwich from home, an apple that was a few days away from being a mushy mess. Ethan sat beside him with a gas station burrito.
“So, you coming to Sunday dinner?” Ethan asked between bites. “Becca’s on some nesting kick. Wyatt said she wants to cook for everyone.”
“She’s barely showing.”
“Tell her that.” Ethan wadded up the wrapper and lobbed it into the bed of Dawson’s truck. “You know, you could bring a date one of these days. Thirty-six years old and you’ve never once—”
“I’ll be there.”
Unlike Wyatt, Ethan didn’t keep needling him about his dating life. Their oldest brother could be insufferable at times, insisting it was because he worried about Dawson’s disinterest in finding someone to spend his life with.
Wyatt’s wife Becca had made pot roast. The good kind, with the carrots soft enough to fall apart and the potatoes browned on top because she knew Wyatt liked them that way.
Dawson sat at the table between Ethan and the empty chair where their mom usually sat.
She and Dad were in Green Bay for the weekend, visiting their aunt.
Becca watched him push a potato around his plate. “You gonna eat that or just rearrange it?”
“I’m eating.”
“You’re not.” She pointed her fork at him. “Eat.”
Dawson put a forkful in his mouth and chewed while she watched. She nodded once, satisfied, and turned back to her own plate.
Ethan reached across Dawson for the salt. “Becca, this is better than Mom’s. Don’t tell her I said that.”
“Your mom’s pot roast is dry, and you all know it.” Becca tucked a napkin onto her lap. “I love her, but that woman overcooks everything.”
“She really does,” Dawson said.
Wyatt pointed his fork at all three of them. “Nobody’s telling her that.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Ethan said, already salting his plate for the second time.
Wyatt carved another slice of roast and passed it to Ethan without being asked. “So what happened with that girl? Lauren?”
“Lindsey.” Ethan took the roast. “Nothing happened.”
“Nothing happened, or you don’t want to talk about it?”
“Both.”
Becca caught Dawson’s eye across the table and raised her eyebrows. He almost smiled. Wyatt pressed for two more questions before Becca put her hand on his arm and said, “Leave him alone,” and Wyatt did because Wyatt always listened to Becca, even when he didn’t listen to anyone else.
The conversation moved to the shop. A trucking company out of Sheboygan wanted to contract their fleet maintenance, and Wyatt had been going back and forth on the numbers.
Ethan thought the money was worth the headache.
Wyatt thought they weren’t set up for it.
They’d had this argument twice at the garage already.
Dawson ate his pot roast and let them go.
“What do you think?” Wyatt asked.
Dawson looked up. Both brothers were watching him. “We’re not set up for semis. Not in the current shop.”
“So we expand,” Ethan said.
“Or we service on-site in Sheboygan. Less overhead.” Dawson shrugged. “Either way, Ethan’s not wrong about the money. But we can’t take it on as-is.”
Ethan threw a roll at him. Dawson caught it and took a bite.
After dinner, Becca tried to stand to clear the table, and all three of them said “Sit down” at the same time. She dropped back into her chair with her hands up. “Fine. But the leftovers go in the glass containers, not the plastic. Wyatt, I mean it.”
“I know.”
“You say that, and then I find pot roast in a Cool Whip tub.”
“There’s nothing wrong with reusing a perfectly good container.”
“There’s BPAs in the plastic, Wyatt. I sent you the article.”
“You sent me four articles.”
“And you didn’t read any of them.”
Dawson ran the water and started on the dishes.
Ethan dried. Wyatt packed up the leftovers—in the glass containers—and wiped down the table.
They moved around the kitchen without talking, the same way they moved around the garage, each one filling the gap the others left.
Ethan flicked water at Dawson. Dawson shouldered him into the counter.
Wyatt told them both to grow up while he wrapped the leftover rolls in foil.
Becca watched from the table with her feet up on the chair Dawson had been sitting in, hands resting on her belly. “I love you, idiots.”
“We know,” Ethan said.
When the kitchen was clean, they moved to the living room.
Ethan grabbed a throw pillow off the couch and dropped to the floor without being asked, leaving the couch for Becca to stretch out.
Wyatt settled in beside her, her feet in his lap before he’d even found the remote.
Ethan leaned against the recliner and started arguing about the Brewers’ starting lineup.
Dawson leaned against the doorframe and watched them for a minute. Wyatt’s hand resting on Becca’s ankle. Ethan tossing the throw pillow at the TV when the pitcher walked someone.
“You staying?” Wyatt asked without looking away from the game.
“Nah. Early morning.”
“Drive safe.”
Ethan tilted his head back. “I’ll be home after the game.”
Becca blew him a kiss.
In his truck, Dawson sat with the engine running and both hands on the wheel. The house glowed behind him, warm and yellow through the windows. Becca laughed at something inside, loud enough to carry through the glass.
He put the truck in gear and pulled out of the driveway.
Dawson parked on Main Street a few nights later and walked the half-block to The Penalty Box with his book tucked under his arm.
The evening was still warm, August holding onto the last bit of summer.
The only notable difference was the lack of kids still out riding their bikes around now that school was about to start.
He nodded at Mrs. Olsen as she came out of the hardware store, and she asked about Wyatt’s baby.
He said Becca was doing well, and that was the whole conversation.
As much as Dawson sometimes hated how nosy everyone in this town could be, he also couldn’t imagine living somewhere neighbors didn’t talk to one another.
He’d walked this stretch of Main Street ten thousand times.
Knew which sidewalk squares were cracked, which door stuck at the hardware store if you didn’t lift the handle.
Port Haven might not be much to look at, but it was home, every square inch of it, and that counted for something, even on the days it felt like a cage.
The Penalty Box at seven on a weeknight was exactly what it should be. Half-full, warm, Brewers murmuring from the TV above the bar. Dawson’s stool—third from the end, near the corner where the bar met the wall.
He settled in with his book and a beer. He was halfway through the latest Bosch novel, deep enough in that the pieces were starting to click.
Dawson went through crime thrillers fast, two or three a week when he was on a streak.
The used bookshelf at Second Period kept him supplied, and the stack on his nightstand never got any smaller.
Within two pages, he’d started picking at the label on his bottle with his thumbnail. Slow strips, peeled without looking down.
A few nights ago, he’d walked in, and his routine had snagged on something unfamiliar.
Leo, sitting at the bar with Gunnar, wearing clothes that cost more than anything in the building and nursing a drink like it had personally disappointed him.
They’d exchanged a few words. Dawson had given him nothing.
He’d been trying not to think about it since. Didn’t want to look too closely at why this one particular hockey player was stuck in his mind when he couldn’t name any other players on the team except the ones who were also locals.
Behind the bar, Gunnar restocked the cooler while Wes worked the other end, talking to regulars, his laugh cutting through the noise.
When Wes reached past Gunnar for a bottle on the back shelf, his hand landed on Gunnar’s back.
Low, brief. Gunnar shifted a half-step to give him room without breaking rhythm.
They’d only been together a few months, but watching them now, Dawson wondered how long they’d been moving around each other like that before either of them did anything about it.
Years, probably. All that time behind the same bar, both oblivious to what the other was feeling.
And nobody in the bar had blinked when they’d finally gotten together. Most of Port Haven had accepted them without making a big deal out of it. The regulars shrugged and moved on. The team showed up every week and never treated the bar any differently.
He watched Wes’s fingers trail the bar top as he passed. Watched Gunnar’s eyes follow him across the room without his head turning. A raised eyebrow from Wes meant they were running low. A chin lift from Gunnar meant he’d handle it. No words needed.
Gunnar set a fresh beer in front of him without being asked. Dawson nodded. Gunnar leaned against the back counter, drying a glass.
“Busy week?” Gunnar asked.
“Same as always.”
Gunnar’s mouth moved. Not quite a smile. “Stick around tonight. Got a new pale ale from a brewery up in Door County. Need someone who’ll give me an honest opinion.”
“Last guy you asked said everything tasted great, and you kicked him out of the bar.”
“Because he was lying to my face. You won’t.”
Gunnar moved off to fill an order, and the bar settled around Dawson. He opened his book to the dog-eared page.
No matter how hard he tried focusing on the story, his mind kept drifting to Leo. He never paid much attention to most of the players that walked through the door, but there was something about this one that stuck in his head and wouldn’t let go.
The label on his bottle was half gone. He peeled another strip and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. Took a drink. Set it down. Stared at the page.
He caught himself glancing at the door. Twice. Three times. Wondering if Leo was still at the Lakeside Inn or if he’d found a place. He hadn’t seen him at the bar, but that wasn’t unusual; most players didn’t spend their off time tossing back beers in a small-town bar.
He didn’t want to give Leo this much of his mental energy.
Didn’t want to be wondering if he’d figured out that the diner on Main Street had the best coffee or if he was still drinking whatever gas station shit tourists bought on the highway.
Didn’t want to care whether some arrogant city kid who thought Port Haven was beneath him was adjusting to a town that would chew him up and spit him out if he didn’t drop the pretentious edge to his attitude.
He closed the book and left it on the bar. Finished his beer standing up and dropped cash next to the bottle. He needed to go home, shower, and stop thinking about a guy he’d spoken ten words to.
Gunnar watched him go but didn’t say anything.
Dawson sat in his truck in the parking lot for a long time, hands on the wheel, engine off. When he finally started it, he drove home the long way, past the lake, windows down, hoping a drive would clear his head.
The only thing it did was give him more time to think about everything he’d show Leo if given the chance to prove Port Haven was slower paced but worth his time.