6. Brooks
SIX
Brooks
“ H ey! Isn’t that Indie?” Nick says, nodding out the front window with coffee in hand.
Rolling my eyes, I wander over toward the window. “Yup, that’s her.”
I turn to walk back behind the bar, and Nick catches my arm.
“What was that?”
“What was, what?”
“That sneer. Oh! She’s gotten under your skin, hasn’t she?” He grins, and I scoff, shrugging off his hold to escape.
I can’t help but think back to when I spotted her and Taylor at Duke’s Diner down the street. Her awkward wave and warm grin were a stark contrast to how she acted toward me last night in the truck when she stared out the window and didn’t utter a fucking word.
I was ready for a full-on assault. She seems to have diarrhea of the mouth. Then, nothing. Radio silence. I don’t know why it pissed me off so badly that she froze me out, but even thinking about it now has my temper rising.
“No,” I snap back, letting my eyes wander back toward the redhead, who is right in front of the window like she knows I can see her, her head tossed back in an enormous laugh that I bet fills the entire shop.
“Oh, you’re a fucking liar!” Nick shakes his head, his shit-eating grin growing larger on his face.
“Am not!”
“And now you sound like a five-year-old,” he accuses.
I grumble under my breath as I stalk to the bar and snatch up my truck keys. “I have to go get fitted for my tux rental,” I tell him as an excuse to escape, even though I have hours until I meet Spencer for the fitting.
“Sure you do. Hey, why not say hi to Indie while you’re at it? Seeing as she’s just across the street and all.”
“Smooth,” I say dryly.
He shrugs.
“I’ll be back around nine. Spencer mentioned grabbing a bite afterward. You’re sure you’re alright opening the bar?”
He rolls his eyes. “Of course I am. Go! Have fun! Be a normal adult, for once. And for fuck’s sake, turn your hat around or take it off.”
I reach up absently, shifting my hat on my head but not bothering to turn it around.
I nearly make it to my truck before the laugh that’ll haunt my fucking dreams, and nightmares filters out into the street as the door to the dress shop opens and bridesmaids barrel out in a gaggle.
“Brooksie! Twice in one day, aren’t we special,” Taylor jokes, elbowing Indie as they share an awkward smile. Indie clears her throat and tips her lips up in a forced smile.
“We are,” Indie agrees, her voice very sing-song, and my gut churns as if alarming me to something I can’t quite figure out.
“How’d the fitting go?” I ask, trying to be normal, as Nick called it.
“Great! Everything’s set to go, and there were no mishaps,” one of the girls says, and Indie and Taylor gasp, their eyes swinging toward the girl in horror and shock.
“Take it back right fucking now! Knock on wood!” Taylor commands, and the poor girl looks panicked before she practically rushes around on the side of the street, looking for anything wood.
I sigh, moving to the back of my truck and waving her over to the wooden tailgate I added after Butch crashed his drunk ass over his motorcycle and into my tailgate last October.
He’s lucky he’s alive, though; I think it knocked something loose in his brain.
The frantic bridesmaid rushes over, knocking on the tailgate before finally taking a deep breath and looking back at Indie and Taylor. “Sorry, guys,” she offers.
My eyes wander over to where Nick is still occupying the window, shooing me with his hands toward Indie.
She spots him, and her smile turns genuine as she waves. Nick’s eyes widen at being caught before he returns the gesture.
“So, what’s next on the agenda of fun-filled activities?” I ask Taylor, and she looks between Indie and me and clears her throat.
“Actually, I have somewhere I need to be, so I’ll be going.” Before even saying goodbye, she wanders off, but not before winking at Indie.
I can’t help but feel I’ve stepped right into the middle of something between them, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.
“There’s nothing else on for today. Unless Taylor jam-packs the schedule while I’m not looking,” Indie tells me, rocking back and forth on her heels.
I’m a brood, and every bit of my attitude proving that fact had come out last night, and it seems she’s now uncomfortable in my presence.
“Hey, listen, about last night,” I start, thinking she’ll stop me and tell me all is forgiven.
Instead, she stops rocking and crosses her arms over her chest. “Go on.”
I swallow over a building lump in my throat, not fully prepared to go forward with my half-ass apology. “I can be a dick, but last night was a bit too far, and I’m sorry. I had a really shit day, and then I came out to see you sliding across the bar, and I lost my shit.”
“Well, I’m sorry you had a bad day. I’m not sorry I slid across your bar, though. It was fun.” She smiles, and I can’t fucking help myself. I answer it with one of my own.
“Does he need you or something?” she asks, and I look in the direction she’s pointing to see Nick looming closer to the window now.
I wave him off, shooing him like a dog that’s done wrong.
“A life is what he needs,” I answer, turning around and catching the tail end of a light chuckle she lets slide free.
“So, all is forgiven, then? We start fresh now?” Indie asks me as I spot Kurt, the town oddball, barreling toward Indie on his bike.
We’re on a slight decline, and I know he’s usually pretty steady on that thing, but still, I keep my eyes trained on him.
“Yeah, sure,” I mutter absently as Kurt peddles harder when he should be coasting down the hill.
“I just mean, if we’re going to survive this week, we should at least be on the same page, you know?” she continues, but I lurch forward and tug her toward me just as Kurt says ‘whoa’ and loses some control of the front end of his bike, nearly taking Indie’s ankles out from under her.
I lose my footing, falling backward into my truck, feeling the moment both our weight causes the exterior to dent inward as the wind gets knocked out of me, and Indie screams.
“Sorry!” Kurt calls over his shoulder at us, not bothering to stop. “New wheels! Trying to break in the wear pattern!” He rings his bike bell and continues down the street as Indie and I watch after him, stunned.
“What the fuck is wrong with this town?” she mutters, turning in my arms as we still lean against the side of my truck.
“Fuck if I know. I’ve lived here my entire life, and I’m still studying the people here.”
“What are your theories thus far?” she asks, placing her hands on my chest as if she’s going to push off, but she doesn’t.
I don’t like the warmth spreading through me, but I allow it to pass. I can’t focus on anything other than the flecks of yellow and brown that blend beautifully within her hazel eyes.
“I—theories?” I ask, snapping to attention.
“For why the town’s weird? You said you were studying them, remember? Oh, did you bump your head when we landed? Let me see.” She tugs my baseball cap off, and I reach up and pull it back down.
“I’m fine,” I grumble.
She smiles. “There’s the surly bar owner I know and tolerate. You are fine, after all.”
I try not to focus on her words as she straightens and dusts off her clothes.
“My theories range from radioactive spiders that bit the entire town, save for a few, or aliens, that are running experiments on us all.”
“Mm, I like those theories. I’d have gone for a poisoned water supply before I leaped to aliens or radioactive spiders.”
I laugh, and Indie stiffens in my arms before relaxing a bit. The moment stretches between us and grows awkward.
“Did they leave you again?” I ask her.
She looks in the direction Taylor and her bridesmaids ran off, leaving her in the dust.
“Yeah, it seems they did.”
“Well, I can take you back. It’s no problem. I have a little time to kill before I have to meet Spencer for the tux fitting.”
Her hazel eyes seem to mull over the idea before she bites her lip and nods. “Sure, yeah, that would be nice.”
I follow her around the truck, and she looks over her shoulder several times as if she doesn’t know what I’m doing. Opening the door for her, I nearly hit her with it. She catches it before it hits her face, backing up as she laughs awkwardly.
“Sorry,” I tell her.
“No worries. We’ll get better at this, yeah?”
I nod, not fully understanding her meaning. Even after I crank the truck and we’re on our way, I wonder what she thinks we’ll get better at.
T he truck has been silent for the last few miles as I drive toward Freedom Inn on the outskirts of town.
“Surprised you didn’t stay on the estate,” I tell her, toying with the radio dial to have something to do with my hands.
If she was unnerving last night, she’s even more so today. There’s an energy about her that has my entire nervous system firing on full cylinders.
She huffs. “Privacy is big in my book. I don’t want to stay with a million bridesmaids and groomsmen.”
Solid reasoning, but now the line of conversation I thought would get her to fill the ringing silence with words has failed.
“Why aren’t you staying there?” she asks, and I grin as I look over and see her realize why and regret her question.
“I live here, Indie.”
Her earthy amber eyes lock on mine as there’s an electric moment between us. I realize it’s the first time I’ve said her name.
“I’d have thought, with your winning personality, they’d want you to stay there with everyone else. With all that charm oozing from you, you have to be, what, the best man?”
Shifting my lower jaw back and forth at her jab, I shake my head and look forward. A lot of shit in my life has turned me into a grouch, but I’m not all that bad. She caught me on an off night but won’t let me off easy.
“I am, actually.”
“Stop!” She laughs.
“Spencer and I have been best friends since elementary,” I add dryly.
Her laugh drifts into a cough. “Oh, well… good for you. Friendship is hard.”
Friendship is hard? That’s all she’s got for me?
It seems she’s grasping at straws to keep this conversation alive, too.
“Well, you seem close to Taylor, and your bag of party tricks and treats would mark you as the maid of honor, would it not?” I toss back, gripping the steering wheel a bit too tight, hearing the leather warn me with a creak.
“Yeah, it would. I was just saying a friendship that long has to be hard.”
“Mm, not in a small town where options are limited. Not that it’s a friendship of convenience or anything. It just always has felt... easy. Even when he left for his big city college and came back.”
“One hell of a guy,” she mutters.
“What?”
“Nothing. It’s just… marrying his one true love, friends since elementary school with his bestie. Either I’m in a Hallmark film, or this town is perfect.”
I scoff, releasing a breath fraught with tension. “Nothing around here is easy . Sure, Spencer’s a great guy, but we’ve had some fights…” I trail off, actually trying to recall one.
“Oh, yeah?! Name one.” She crosses her arms over her chest.
I’m coming up empty until I remember when he pummeled me at Duke’s. We’d both had to do dishwashing for an entire summer to pay for the damages.
“One time, he beat my ass at the diner. Both of us got into a shit ton of trouble over it. Him, more so, being who his family is around here.”
“What did you fight over?”
I grin, remembering that this probably wasn’t the right story to tell her, but once I actually tried to come up with a time Spence and I fought, I realize we don’t.
“It’s something small-town and stupid, isn’t it? Go ahead, out with it.”
Her answering grin makes my smile spread wider. “He stole a handful of fries off my plate with his dirty ass hands from football practice. I don’t care where you’re from, that’s fucked up!”
She busts out laughing, and the pressure in the cab between us dissipates.
I pull into Freedom Inn’s drive, turning with the winding curves until we reach the small, ten-car parking lot.
“I agree,” she says after stowing her laughter, “I’d have been pissed too. That’s disgusting!”
After a moment of staring at her with a stupid smirk on my face, I realize how light I feel. How calm.
“Oh, let me get the door for you,” I tell her, swinging my door open as it groans against my efforts.
“I can open my own door!” I hear her shout as I slam mine and hurry around the front of the truck.
She shakes her head and swings her door open. I grab it and pull it open more. This one sticks from where I got a bit too close to a pole at the bank and dented the door inward.
“Allow me some of my small-town-man pleasantries, will you?” I huff, looking down as she bounds off the bench seat and nearly collides with my chest.
Suddenly, it feels as if I’m breathing through a straw as I stand in her way and stare down at a piece of her hair that has fallen free from her messy bun.
Reaching up, I curl it around her ear, hearing the moment her breathing hitches. Her eyes are investigative. Searching.
“Hey, want to do dinner tonight?” she asks me, and I’m taken aback slightly by her forwardness, but it is nice to have someone who speaks their mind in a town full of veiled smiles and politeness.
“Dinner?”
“I mean,” she shifts on her feet, “you don’t have to; I was just thinking we have things to discuss, you and I.”
“Do we?”
“Of course we do. Maid of Honor, Best Man shit.” Her brow quirks in my direction like I should’ve known that.
“Oh, right.” I deflate a bit that her offer’s all business, but try not to let my disappointment show. “Yeah, sure.”
“Maybe something other than Duke’s?”
“Only here a day and hating on our five-star cuisine.” I shake my head, a mocking simper on my lips.
“If Duke’s is five-star, I’m an elephant’s uncle.”
I step out of her way as she takes a step forward. “Oh yeah, what’s their name?”
“Who?” She turns back, stepping blindly as I see her foot headed for the mother of all mud puddles.
“Indie, watch out!” I lunge for her, but her foot lands, her leg twists slightly, throwing her off balance, and down she goes.
Mud covers us both as I grab her under her arms and lift her, trying to save some of her from getting covered in dirt and instead sending us both toppling to the ground in a spray of the stuff.
Her shriek and my groan mingle as we hit the ground together.
“Fuck! Are you good? Your ankle?” I ask her as she’s beside me, laughing her ass off.
“I’m fine,” she wheezes out.
“What is so funny?” I grumble, sitting up and tossing mud off my hands in a flick.
“I don’t know, really.” She breathes, watching me fight mud off myself.
Our feet are still lying inside the puddle, and water filters over the top of my boots, filling the insides.
“Are you alright?” she asks as I turn and look at her.
She’s covered in muck, and it’s endearing. It makes no sense, but somehow, she’s cuter this way. Her guard is down, and the inner rays of Indie are shining outward, nearly blinding me. In a moment of ignorance, I lift a hand to her right cheek and lean inward, crashing my lips to hers and silencing her chuckles.
Fuck, there’s no going back from this.