Chapter 11 #5
Closing the laptop, she stuffed it under the front seat and went into Bilbee’s. The ancient building leaned a bit, the porch creaky and in such disrepair she strongly suspected it was last painted in 1788, the year the tavern was established, according to the sign.
Bilbee’s Tavern, it read, with the motto: “If we don’t have it, you shouldn’t be drinking it.”
A goat was stomping on a red heart.
Great. If Kell was grumpy, his cousins were downright scary.
The bar smelled like woodsmoke and sour beer. Every floorboard groaned as she stepped on it. Patrons were sitting in booths and at tables, and a group of guys were playing pool in one corner.
“Rachel,” said a guy at the bar. He was tatted up and looked like he’d lost an eye in a fight with a bald eagle, huge, long-healed scratches around an eye patch. “What can I get you?”
“How do you know my name?”
“Because I spent the last day listening to people gripe about you.”
“You must be a Bilbee.”
“Rider.”
“Hi, Rider. I’m here to get your falafel plate, to go.”
“Cool. You know, you could have ordered ahead with the app.”
“You have an app?”
“Yep.”
“I had no idea.”
“Kenny didn’t put it on his little Airbnb suck-up page?”
“Excuse me?”
“Kenny’s trying to impress all the trailer tourists. Thought he had it on there.”
“I might not have read the whole thing.”
“Okay. Get the app. A lot easier.”
He began keying her order into a shockingly modern system as Rachel looked around.
“What’s the deal with your sign out there?”
“What about it?”
“The goat? Stomping on a heart? What’s it mean?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. Some version of that sign’s been there since 1788.
Started with the goat, and I think old Randall Bilbee added the heart when the Love Committee required everyone to have a heart on their sign.
The old version had the goat eating the heart, but my grandpa softened it up.
Got some complaints from locals who said it was too harsh and scared visitors.
” He peered at Rachel with his one eye. “Maybe I should change it back.”
“Charming,” she said under her breath, handing him her credit card to finish the transaction.
“If you want charm, go to the hot springs. We’re not about charm. Be about five minutes. You picked a slow time.”
Rider disappeared into the back, leaving Rachel to look around.
There was an antique authenticity to the place, with low ceilings and windows crooked in their frames.
Two small wood stoves on opposite sides of the bar gave the air a cozy feel, and an array of television screens mounted on the wall showed four different games at once.
Eight college guys were in a giant horseshoe booth in the back, cheering each other on through tequila shots.
Her phone buzzed.
It was her mom again: By the way, Tim’s part of a team that designed a new machinery part for spaceships! Isn’t that amazing?
“Does it involve using recycled pee to cure cancer?” she muttered to herself.
Rider appeared with a to-go bag, giving her an evil eye.
“Here.” He plunked it on the counter. “Utensils are in there. Need water? Something else?”
“Got any disguises handy?”
“Hah.”
He abruptly turned away and that was that. She got the distinct impression that Rider Bilbee was a man of few words, negative opinions, and suffered fools about as well as Kell did.
The container smelled amazing. Walking back to her car was torture, but once she was settled in the front seat, she opened the top and–
Ahhhhh.
Finely chopped lettuce. Eight pieces of falafel, the smell of cumin greeting her like an old friend. A small plastic container held hummus, another some baba ganoush. Lemon slices made it all perfect, and as Rachel filled a pita and began to eat, she actually moaned.
Every part of her felt the vibration shoot through her, the luxury of being alone in a dented rental car, sitting in a parking spot behind a bar, eating takeout turning into the second best moment of her time here in Love You.
Kissing Kell was the best.
Each bite nourished her, the falafel feeding more than her stomach, giving her a different kind of sustenance. Fortitude was in short supply for her. She’d weathered the day, taking the hits as they came, but now she let the food give her a much-needed break.
Who knew macronutrients could be so loving?
The sun was setting as she sat there, slowly savoring every bite. Double-tapping the starter button, she found a radio station, WLUV, that played the love songs the town piped through the streets.
“You’re with us tonight at WLUV. Listen. Let go. Love. And now, an oldie but goodie from Percy Sledge. 1966 was the year, but the sentiment is eternal. Here’s ‘When a Man Loves a Woman.’”
Soothing notes began, the sound soulful and true, the lyrics washing over her as the familiar melody entered her consciousness without words.
Every bone in her body melted, the memory of Kell’s hands on her shoulders earlier turning into a montage of all his touches, from first handshakes, to hugs, to sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on his couch in D.C. five years ago, reading through the scrapbook his mom made for him.
Fast forwarding to being broken down on the road, his feet between her legs, then their hands glued together, the embarrassing–and oh, so arousing–ride into town, in his lap, their position so intimate as the emotional gulf between them was narrowed by physical circumstance.
Running out of the trailer after her shower, clad only in a towel, escaping Satan the squirrel. Being held by his protective arms as he helped her avoid turning into a frostbite victim.
Then there was the hot springs, Kell caring enough to throw her in.
She reached down and scratched the raised, red area on her ankle, no bigger than a quarter, that was emerging.
A quick internet search had told her it could get bigger, but she’d clearly escaped the dreaded third degree burns that could have happened, all because of Kell’s caring–if unorthodox–response.
And then there was that kiss. Oh, that glorious, magical kiss.
So close, but yet so far.
Yesterday had been beyond wonderful, being with him, edging into a casual hanging out that felt like they were meant to be together.
No one else in the world could make work disappear from the endless obsessive looping in her mind, the worry that she wasn’t doing enough fading when she was with him.
Just… was. All she needed to do was be.
Kell didn’t expect her to achieve. To dominate. To crush the competition, or to break records. Not that she did often, but Rachel had chased accomplishment for so long that she knew every detail on its back, every mole, every fold in its rumpled shirt.
Accomplishment was hard to catch. Life felt like an eternal game of monkey in the middle, with her brother, Tim, and her dad, Stan, on either side of her, lobbing it far over her head, unattainable.
Unreachable.
With Kell, she never felt that way.
Ever.
Not back in D.C. Not here.
And that thought was what made her burst into tears, surrounded by empty food containers, the glow of her laptop pushing her to achieve, sitting in a rental car in a bar parking lot because it had better high-speed internet than anywhere else in the middle of Nowhere, Maine.
“Screw it,” she said, using the heels of her hands to wipe away her tears, her mouth opening in a surprise yawn.
It was only four fifty-six p.m., yet the sky was dark.
Tucked away here with no other cars coming in, she knew no one would see her, so she made a decision: one more hour of work. Just enough to keep the hounds at bay.
And then she was going to indulge.
For that next hour, she answered emails with quick responses, not overthinking anything, taking care of a few text messages from Orla and Dani the same way. Once she reached Inbox 72, she stopped worrying about zero, because who was Markstone's to own so much of her life?
“Screw them,” she muttered, closing the tab, opening a new one to Netflix.
The screen beckoned like an old friend.
Come on, it said. Watch alllllll you want.
The Vampire Tracker was a new Nordic noir mystery set in Finland, about a preschool teacher accused of murdering a group of Roma who settled on the edges of a small northern town.
The only thing that would make watching this better would be Kell.
Watching this with Kell would make her decade.
But he wasn’t on the table. This would have to do.
As she clicked Play, she eased the seat back and marveled at the internet, fast, smooth, and with zero problems.
And then Rachel Hart did something she hadn’t done in five years.
Smiled and enjoyed herself fully.
Tap tap tap
“Mmmmm.”
Tap tap tap
“Unnnh.”
“Rachel.”
Her eyes felt like two pieces of extremely dry sandpaper.
Blue sandpaper.
And why did her neck hurt so much? She couldn’t move it or a stinging sensation, tingling and horrible, radiated down her left arm.
Tap tap tap.
“Rachel!”
Opening her eyes, her mouth wet with drool but dry in other places, she startled, her laptop sliding to the right, nearly crashing down at her feet. Twinge in her neck be damned, she lunged to rescue it and gasped in pain.
The world was gray and white.
The door handle rattled, and fear spiked through her. Was she being attacked? Where was she? Had she been kidnapped and her blood sucked dry, like in the show she just watched?
Wait…
Show.
Car.
She was in her car, behind Bilbee’s Tavern.
And when she turned to look out her window, a very worried face met hers.
Kell.
“Rachel, what are you doing out here?”
“Whaa?”
“Are you okay? Did something happen? Talk to me.”
Snow was falling in large flakes, ethereal and lovely. Rachel wanted to stare at them and lose herself for hours.
The tapping began again.
Condensation had formed on the windows, and she realized she was cold. Very cold.
She rolled the window down an inch.
“What are you doing here?” she asked him.
“What are you doing here? I live here!”
“I know you live in Luview, Kell.”