Chapter 15
MAE
“What are you doing here?” I asked, realizing Beck was a bit of a workaholic. “Thought you were taking the night off?”
Jules was sitting at the bar with a writer friend of hers who was staying in town for the weekend.
I’d heard a lot about this guy, Boo, who dressed like a washed-up Oxford professor with Caribbean-blue eyes.
Jules told me about his checkered past, including the time he was kicked out of book camp for having sex with the captain’s daughter.
Although I think she’d phrased it differently.
“Porking the captain’s daughter,” if I remembered right.
She’d also left out one important detail…
his good looks. I wondered if there was something more than friendship simmering beneath the surface with these two?
“Couldn’t stay away,” Beck replied.
Jules nearly spit out her drink. Giving her a hard stare, I turned to Beck, who was joining me behind the bar. It had been a bad idea to spill the beans to Jules. She could barely keep a straight face.
“You met with the printer already?”
He jumped right in, refilling a customer’s beer without missing a beat.
“Yep. It won’t be ready until Saturday morning at eight, but that should be plenty of time. If we’re at the park by eight thirty, that gives us two and a half hours of setup.”
I’d have preferred to be there sooner, but it would have to do. We’d have a lot of the prep work done already, so as long as we were set up by ten thirty, I’d feel comfortable.
“Hey, Jules.” Beck slid past me as she introduced him to Boo.
Only one thing had saved my sanity this week.
The distraction of figuring out why my feelings for Beck were complicated as hell had overshadowed my desire to wallow in the black hole that was my life plan.
Late this morning, while contemplating Beck’s words from Sunday for the umpteenth time, it hit me.
I hadn’t thought of Mathieu once today. It was a far cry from tossing and turning all night only to wake up, unrefreshed, to stare at the ceiling and think of him some more.
Run through the disastrous dinner that changed everything, again.
Wonder how I could have been so blind to his narcissistic tendencies, again.
With me, there’s only pleasure.
“You-hoo? Earth to Mae?”
Beck waved his hand in front of my face. He looked good in navy blue. Always had.
“Sorry, was just thinking of all the things we have to do before Saturday,” I lied.
“I’m meeting the suppliers tomorrow morning. If there’s anything we can’t get or are missing, I’ll grab it before heading in.”
“I can do that,” I said. “You’ve done so much.”
“No such thing. We’re a team. Like Tom and Jerry.”
I laughed, about to counter that Tom and Jerry were not a team. They were, in fact, enemies. But that was exactly what he wanted me to say. Beck’s favorite pastime was goading people.
“Not playing right into your hands,” I said instead.
A look flitted across his face, so brief, I could have imagined it. Except, I hadn’t. I may not have had the vast experience Beck had with the opposite sex, but I knew enough to be able to decipher that look.
I smiled as if I’d won our little battle of wits, but honestly, that round went to Beck.
I could feel a fluster making its way to my cheeks and slapped him on the chest with the rag in my hands to cover for it.
Then, promptly heading back to Jules, I ignored the fact that Beck was behind me.
Talking to a customer. Looking hotter than hell.
“So that’s the famous Beck?” Boo asked. “Jules did a good job of describing him.”
He’d moved from the bar to the floor. Not that I noticed.
“What did she tell you?”
“She said he was hot, if you liked a cross between surfer dude and Ralph Lauren model type of guy.”
That was a fairly accurate description of him, actually.
“But that he knew it, wasn’t cocky exactly but didn’t turn away from attention. And he got lots of it. And also funny, but with a chip on his shoulder about his family who are filthy rich. Something along those lines.”
It was all true. But I knew a Beck most didn’t. He was also extremely intelligent and more thoughtful than he let on.
“Sounds about right.”
“And that the two of you are in the middle of a”—he cleared his throat—“rediscovery.”
“Big mouth.”
“As if Boo is going to say anything.”
“I wouldn’t call it so much of a rediscovery as…” What would I call it? “Maybe me having a midlife crisis.”
“At the ripe old age of twenty-six? Pretty sure that’s a quarter-life crisis,” Jules said.
“Whatever.” I wiped the bar under their glasses without much more to do. It had rained most of the day, keeping tourists away. Mid-week it was mostly locals, and they weren’t venturing out today.
“So I’m a neutral third party. Give me the scoop. Clearly there’s chemistry between you two.”
Beck was nowhere to be seen now. Probably in the back.
“There is?” I asked, innocently.
“A hundred percent. I thought the bar might go up in flames a few minutes ago.”
Chemistry. Between me and Beck. What was the world coming to?
“The scoop?” What was the harm in laying it all out?
“Well, first, we are good friends, and I don’t want to ruin that.
But more importantly, the reason I never saw him as boyfriend material before, and still don’t, is that he has literally slept with half of Cedar Falls and beyond.
Beck’s a bit of a man whore. On the other hand, I get too emotional, too quickly.
It’s something I’ve learned to accept about myself.
We’d never work. Also, I was just engaged a few months ago and don’t want to jump from that relationship into another one.
Especially with someone in the service industry who makes a living being around pretty women.
My ex cheated,” I added, realizing it was an important point.
“I’d like to avoid having my heart broken, again. ”
“Wow,” he said, taking a final sip of his rum and club soda with lime. “That’s a lot of negatives.”
I took his glass. “Another?”
“Please.”
“Bacardi?” I teased.
Boo looked as if he wanted to throttle me.
When I’d asked earlier what kind of rum he wanted, lifting up the Bacardi, Boo had a visceral response that made me laugh when he’d replied, “Jesus Christ, not fucking Bacardi. Mount Gay will do.”
I sighed.
There really were a lot of negatives. If Beck was anyone else, I might have agreed with Jules’s “get over a guy by getting under another one” advice. Although that would be taking a page more out of Beck’s playbook than my own.
Tattoo. Contemplating one-night stands. I couldn’t decide if this new Mae was liberated or just repressing her heartbreak in one unhealthy way after another. There was no rulebook on this thing called life. Which was where I started when I returned back to Jules and Boo.
“I wish there was a rulebook on life that could tell me what to do. On one hand, I’m feeling… free. As if I could do anything in the world. On the other, part of me thinks it’s just self-destructive behavior to cope with the whole Mathieu thing.”
“A rulebook on life.” Boo shook his head. “Don’t have mine with me, but if you want mine, I’m happy to give it.”
“Shoot.”
Beck was back. He was talking to Cedar Falls’ mayor, smiling up a storm and… Shit. Caught me looking.
“Never get just one tattoo. And as for you and Beck… memento mori.”
“Memento, what?”
He never got to answer.
I nearly fell to my knees at the sight in front of me.
Impossible.
“Mae? What’s wrong?” Jules asked, her voice slightly panicked.
“I…” Gripping the edge of the bar, I stared at Mathieu, unable to respond. What the hell was he doing here? In the States? In this bar? I hadn’t spoken to him since I blocked his number out of self-preservation when he kept trying to apologize and get me back.
She and Boo turned on their stools just as he approached the bar. Dressed impeccably, as always, he demanded attention… and got it. Every person at the bar was looking at him.
Including Beck.
He wasn’t watching Mathieu, though. Beck’s eyes were glued to me as he strode toward us. He’d seen pictures of him before, and if there was any doubt Beck knew who he was, it vanished when he stood beside him.
“Are you Mathieu?”
His answer was immediate. “I am.”
Without another word, before I could intervene, Beck’s arm swung back and then forward, straight into Mathieu’s face.