Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
LUKE
I closed my car door gently and quietly outside of Panini Jack’s diner and leaned against the cold metal for a second.
Morning sunlight glinted off the snowdrifts and icicles, making kaleidoscopic strobe-light flashes against my closed eyelids, and I knew exactly how the Rusty Spike had come by its name because every flash of light did, indeed, make me feel like my skull was being impaled.
Hooray for truth in advertising.
Too bad every cell in my body was crying for mercy.
My phone dinged in my pocket several times in quick succession, and I flinched at the sound. I flinched again when I realized who was messaging.
Mom
Morning, LukeyLou!! *sunshine emoji*
I saw online you’ve got a high of 28* today and another day off!!! *snowflake emoji*
Are you stuck at home with all the snow? Did you put dental floss in your survival kit, like in that article I sent you?
If you’re stuck home, let’s FaceTime later! I want to see your fairy-tale house and meet my grandchildren. *sheep emoji* It’s been months and months already!
Oh dear Lord.
I loved my mother so, so much. I loved her enthusiasm. I loved her positivity. I loved that she was invested in my life in Vermont. I even loved her stubbornness… sometimes.
But I was not going to show her the reality of my “fairy-tale house,” no matter how often she asked, especially now that it had an unintentional skylight in the living room. And I was not gonna show her me when I was all puffy and bloodshot.
I typed a reply with one eye shut.
Morning! Signal’s too weak to FT, remember? Busy now. Call me later. Love you!
I couldn’t say I regretted the previous evening, exactly… but that was only because I couldn’t remember all of it. Trying to recall specific events was like trying to see through muddy water.
That was probably a good thing, because every once in a while, a crystal-clear memory would rise to the surface, and my entire body would flinch in mortification.
Had I actually begged Webb Sunday to teach me about hockey?
Had he done it?
Had he accused me of being a con artist before or after he said I was trying to steal his orchard?
At what point had I mentioned to him the thing about—dear God—carrying my sheep?
Had I actually licked his bulging biceps? I was pretty sure that had been a drunken fantasy. But what about me smiling at him like he was the best thing since blueberry pie and him—oh heavenly freak—smiling back?
And tiny newborn baby Jesus, had we really ended up blowing a bugle in the middle of the town square, where my bosses and the parents of my students could see me being drunk and disorderly?
Don’t worry, townsfolk! Your impressionable youngsters are safe with me!
Pay no attention to the minor incidents involving brass instruments and misplaced children.
As of this morning, I was done with drinking for another decade at least.
I’d been sorely tempted to stay in bed and ignore reality for the rest of the day, but I knew from past experience that the best way to handle a challenge was to meet it head-on, with a smile and a can-do attitude.
Besides which, I couldn’t stop worrying that I’d done something worse than the bugle blowing and the longing looks. There was a memory on the tip of my brain that kept taunting me. Had I danced the two-step around the gazebo naked? Or compared Webb’s eyes to moss agate?
Better to know the worst.
Probably.
I took a deep, fortifying breath and pulled open the glass door to the diner. My stomach only revolted a tiny bit at the smell of cooking food, but the promise of life-giving coffee made it worthwhile.
I summoned a polite smile for the woman behind the hostess stand, which wasn’t hard to do. Katey Valcourt was one of the only people in town who always had a friendly word for me.
“Morning, Katey. Could I please—”
“Full house today. You’ll have to sit at the counter or join a table.” She snapped a plastic menu out of the holder. “I suppose you’ll want to sit with the Sundays.”
“Uh…” My stomach flip-flopped. Sit with the Sundays? Me?
Did I?
Damn. Word of the bugle blowing must’ve spread quickly.
I looked over her head to the packed diner. Sure enough, Webb was sitting at a horseshoe-shaped booth at the back along with his sister Emma, their uncle Drew, and a guy named Marco, who I was pretty sure was Drew’s boyfriend.
Webb didn’t look nearly as gravely injured by the Rusty Spike shenanigans as I felt.
In fact, he looked… good. Really good. His hair was neatly combed, his Henley—a gray one this morning—strained across his muscular shoulders, and his eyes had lost a little of the tightness they usually carried in the corners.
He grinned at something Emma said, then balled up his napkin and threw it across the table at her, and I couldn’t help smiling dopily, remembering him looking at me like that the night before.
I wished I could remember how much of Webb’s warm, friendly demeanor from the night before had been real. Given how long and heartily he’d disliked me, I figured it had mostly been the alcohol.
A memory surfaced of Knox driving us home in my car—with all the windows rolled down despite the subzero temperatures, just in case anyone felt sick—while Emma and Hawk followed behind us, driving Webb’s truck.
Webb had sung an unforgettably terrible, tuneless rendition of “Sweet Caroline” nearly the whole ride, while Gage and I did the ba-ba-ba’s in the back seat, and Knox muttered, “Jesus Christ, Webb,” every time Webb attempted a high note… which was often.
I wanted that. That feeling of friendship. That feeling of fitting. Badly.
“M’kay, you’re gonna need to ogle him on your own time,” Katey snapped, which was rude and vaguely horrifying and not at all what I’d been doing… was it? “Let’s go.”
She stomped around the podium, clearly expecting me to follow, so I did, trailing after her through the restaurant with all the speed of a reluctant, arthritic tortoise.
“Good morning, Luke!” a woman called from a nearby table.
I blinked and turned my head slightly to see if there was another, better-liked Luke standing behind me, but no.
“Uh. Morning?” I offered.
“Morning, Mr. Williams,” a woman I recognized from the town hall permit office said… which was funny since I’d seen her at the store the other day and she’d walked right past me. “I meant to thank you for the book you sent home with Jasmine the other day. She loves it.”
“Oh. Hey.” I raised a tentative hand. “That’s… great to hear.”
“Luke, my brother!” A guy I recognized from the bar the night before stood, grabbed my hand, and pulled me into the kind of dude-bro handshakey-back-thumping-hug ritual I’d seen other guys perform my whole life but had never actually participated in.
“Habs gonna beat the Pens tomorrow night or what?”
“Wow, okay, that’s my lung. Yeah, we… we sure are,” I agreed. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was agreeing to, but the guy seemed to approve, judging by the way he set his hands on my shoulders and shook me like a maraca.
“Fuck yeah. See you at the Bugle tonight for the football?” he demanded. “Rusty Spikes on me!”
“Oh. Ha. Maybe not quite so soon? Gotta forget the last round first.” I pressed a hand to my head, which was ready to explode like a shaken soda can from all the unexpected jostling.
“That’s the damn truth! But you’re a Hollowan, Williams,” he said inexplicably. “You’ll learn to love ’em.” He lovingly thumped me twice more before I managed to extricate myself.
I was a Hollowan? Was that actually what people here called themselves? And was it the drinking that made me a citizen? Or the hockey?
This town was so weird.
By the time I caught up to Katey, she was already standing beside Webb’s booth, twirling a lock of her blonde hair as she batted her eyelashes at him. Webb nodded and smiled along.
See that? He’s perfectly friendly. This is gonna be fine, I chastised myself. Get a grip, Luke.
Except then Webb caught sight of me over Katey’s shoulder as I sidled up to the table, and his green eyes darkened with some emotion I couldn’t quite identify. Not anger, not at all, but for sure not let’s-blow-a-bugle friendship either.
Awesome.
It was too late to turn back, though, so I put on a big smile and moved forward, because that was what I did.
“Hey,” I greeted softly, directing the word to the condiment caddy in the center of the table.
I hated sounding so unsure. I hated being so unsure. I straightened my spine. “Is it okay if I sit here?”
“Luke!” Drew’s genuine smile made his face crease beneath his tie-dyed headband. “What a treat.”
“Of course you should come sit,” Emma invited, pushing down around the horseshoe so I could take a spot on the end of the booth across from Webb. “You look like you need some coffee.”
“You look like you might keel over,” Marco corrected with a kind of waspish fondness. “Much like this one did a little while ago.” He elbowed Webb, who grunted.
Webb lifted his eyes to mine. He looked… cautious, I decided. But that was fine. That was great. I could work with cautious. I was feeling pretty cautious myself.
Katey snagged an empty coffee mug from a nearby table and thumped it down in front of me. “Pot’s there.” She pointed toward the carafe in the middle of the table.
“Okay. Thank—”
“Everyone else already ordered. What can I getcha?”
“Well, I—” I darted a glance at my menu, which was still tucked under her arm.
“Pancakes?” She tapped her pen against her order pad like she was writing a period. “Figures.”
“I… I guess it’ll be pancakes, then,” I called after her. “Great! Thanks!”
Emma pushed the coffeepot toward me with a grin. “Don’t mind her. Katey likes flirting with Webb,” she explained. “She doesn’t like that Webb doesn’t flirt back.”
“Em,” Webb warned. “Leave it.”
Emma grinned back, unrepentant. “Just sayin’. You could throw the woman a bone every now and then, for the sake of—”