Chapter 3
Riley
There's something about my adrenaline running wild from that earlier interaction atScarlett LeBlanc's house that left me antsy and unable to stay still. I felt like a caged animal in my own home, and that made me hate the woman just a little more than I did when I left her house covered in soup.
When I step outside of my car in front of The Hairy Frog, the local tavern, I swear the wind hits me just right, and I can still smell gazpacho despite having showered for over half an hour and washing my hair twice. What happened earlier today is something I'd expect to see on a staged reality television show. It's nothing I ever would've guessed would happen with such a high-brow woman. Don't they teach those people how to behave in front of others at their elite finishing schools?
I lift my hair and sniff, but it smells just like my hair products. I swear the soup is somehow stuck in my nose, or maybe it's just still alive in my anger, and it's something that will fade with my memories of today.
There's no better way to get a jump on forgetting than a drink or two. Maybe interacting with others will knock off this restless, nervous edge that seems to be coming alive under my skin.
As much as I want to not be alone, I'm grateful to walk into the bar and see that it's not packed wall to wall with patrons. I arrow toward the bar, needing something else burning the back of my throat than bitterness from today.
"Hey there, Riley," Walker, the bar owner, says when he spots me. "What can I get you to drink?"
"Do you sell whiskey by the bottle?"
"I do," he answers with narrowed eyes, as if he can't tell if I'm being serious or not. "But if you don't finish it, you have to leave it here. It's illegal to take it out of the bar."
"Of course it is. Getting arrested is just what I need. I can see the headline now," I say, swiping my hand in front of my face as if indicating something written there. "Police Chief Cash Tucker was seen dragging a drunk caterer out of the bar."
"I imagine Bobby John Pritchard would have a field day posting that," he says with a laugh.
"He'd do it under that anonymous feature like we don't know it's him," I mutter. "I'll take a diet and Jack."
As he makes my drink, he flags me down closer to Mac Hammer.
I've spent much of my adult life avoiding this man, and that's a feat considering how small Lindell is.
Reluctantly, I get up from my seat and take the one directly beside him.
"Mac, this is Riley. Riley, this is Mac," Walker says, as if we're both new to town and trying to make friends.
"We've met before," I say, sarcastically holding my hand out to him.
He looks down at it for a long moment, like it might bite him or something before he lifts his hand to shake mine.
"We've met?" he asks, and I swear I can feel all the damn color drain from my face.
It seems my memories of him take up a larger part of my past than his does of me.
I roll my eyes as a long-suffering sigh escapes my lips and decide to pick up my drink and damn near drain the thing in one swallow.
"Not very memorable, am I?" I say when I know better. If my feelings are already hurt, I shouldn't prod the man, but I've already been disrespected once today, and that seems to be my limit.
"That's not what I meant at all," Mac stammers, his cheeks pinking slightly as if he's embarrassed for being called out. "I just... my memory is shit."
"Is that why you didn't take my advice about reaching out to her about that catering job you needed?" Walker asks him.
"Oh!" he says, snapping his fingers and pointing at me. "You're that Riley. I left a message, and she never called back."
He says the words to Walker instead of directing them at me, and that chaps my already sore ass a little further. I'm just getting it from all damn directions today.
My eyes narrow to slits as I turn every ounce of my attention to him. "You wanted me to cater chicken and dumplings. If memory serves me correctly, you urged me to kidnap Ruth and make her give me the recipe before saying that it didn't matter because no one could ever make chicken and dumplings the way Ruth does. Then you burped and told me never mind. All in the same message. Did you really expect a callback?"
The man has a lot of nerve turning it back on me as if I'm the one who was unprofessional after getting that message.
"Wow," Walker says, taking a step back like he regrets even bringing it up. "That's a lot to unpack."
"Clearly, I was drunk," he mutters, as if that makes a difference.
"Mac," Walker says, full chastisement in his tone.
Mac shrugs as he looks at Walker. "Are you going to tell me that you think she can make better chicken and dumplings than Ruth?"
I can feel half a dozen eyes turn in our direction, making me regret bringing it up. Ruth's chicken and dumplings are famous in this town. People have standing carryout orders at the café every Monday because that's the only day she makes them. I can only imagine the trouble we'd get into if someone even hinted that her food wasn't good.
"Ruth makes the best chicken and dumplings I’ve ever tasted," Walker says very diplomatically. With that declaration, some of the patrons turn their attention back to whatever they were talking about before the challenge arose.
“See!” Mac says as if Walker's opinion is the end-all-be-all of opinions.
"There is more to food than sauce and lumps of raw dough," I growl.
"You take that back!" Mac snaps, sounding like a child arguing with a sibling. "You expect people to eat escargot and crap like that. The only people in town willing to eat that mess are junior high boys on a dare."
My eyes widen. I don't know that it would've hurt worse if he'd actually slapped me in the face. "Mac Hammer!"
I swear the man grins around the mouth of his beer bottle before draining the damn thing and asking for another.
Walker gets him another beer, looking grateful when the door opens to a group of rowdy college guys.
I sip my drink, considering I might need to get out of here after just one because my irritation has done nothing but triple since I walked in here.
Hearing Mac mention he was drunk when he left that message reminds me of the summer before my junior year in high school.
Mac was drunk then, too.
More times than I'm comfortable admitting, I've closed my eyes and let the taste of whiskey on his lips take over every thought .
Does that make me wrong? Have I felt this mild hatred for him all these years because when school started back that fall, and he was senior, he passed me in the hallways like I didn't exist, like those seven minutes in heaven at that party never happened?
I felt invisible. I considered that he regretted it, but I never once thought he didn't even remember it. Did I take advantage of him?
The idea of it makes my stomach turn. I think it has more to do with that consideration than the exorbitant amount of gazpacho I ate out of spite when I got home from the failed attempt at getting a true catering job at Mrs. LeBlanc's house.
I sit and stew, ignoring him entirely as I do a little soul-searching in the glass of whiskey and cola.
How can he not remember something that was so life-changing for me?
I probably could've been considered a prime candidate for institutionalization for how many times I wrote his and my name in my notebooks and how many times I wrote Riley Hammer. Maybe all teen girls do that with their high school crush.
I just knew when the new year started, he was going to make it known that he liked me too.
I never considered that he'd walk right past me as if I didn't exist. It was the biggest blow to my ego, so of course I internalized it.
I considered he regretted it, that he only kissed me in that closet because the bottle linked us together. He hadn't been crossing his fingers the entire time it was spinning like I had been. I should've known when he gave me a simple dip of his head, walking toward the closet, with his friends giving him a hard time, that he was only doing it because he didn't want to be called names.
I figured I was good enough to kiss, good enough to run his hand up my side, barely skimming the bottom curve of my left breast, but not good enough to face me in the light.
I blamed the chubbiness around my middle, those fifteen extra pounds that the other girls didn't seem to struggle with.
I fought to lose that extra layer, so sure he'd tuck me into his side on that first day of school, and I wanted to fit there perfectly.
But instead of even lowering his eyes to mine, he held a hand in the air, shouted one of his friend's names, and walked right past me as if he had never even seen me.
After realizing I wasn't going to spend my junior year and inevitably the rest of my life as Riley Hammer, those fifteen extra pounds turned into twenty.
Now, it's been so long since I got on the scale that there's not a single chance in the world that Mac Hammer would look twice at a woman like me.
I wouldn't say I have self-esteem issues, but certain men have certain preferences, and from the looks of Mac Hammer in his work clothes, massive arms testing the limits of his t-shirt, I'm not the type of woman he'd ever go looking for.
And I have to be okay with that.
What I don't have to be okay with is being disrespected, so for the first time in as long as I can remember, I choose the low road.
"So you're an alcoholic, huh?"