Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Zander
Ipace in front of the library almost a week later, which likely makes the people of Beaver Creek believe I’m as much of a lunatic as they think I am.
This would be the perfect moment for Lucy to drop her stubborn butt on my feet and calm my nerves, but I left her at Gran’s. I regret this decision now.
I should not be this nervous. And I know I tell myself that frequently when in town.
I have as much a right here as anyone else, and luckily some of that angst has slipped away.
But today, we’re going on a double date with Addie’s best friends and fuck if that isn’t nerve-racking.
Not even the socks Addie made for me make me feel better.
It usually gives me some comfort to have a little piece of her on me at all times, but seeing as how she’s about to join me, the socks don’t technically need to do anything.
A group of older women walk down the front steps of the library, laughing and brandishing their embroidery. I check my phone. Right on time.
Addie walks out with my grandma. Her red hair catches the golden hour sunlight, making my stomach flip.
Her striped tank top fits her perfectly, moulds to the curves I love so much, complemented perfectly by the colours in the embroidered flowers on her jean shorts.
The sunburn from last Wednesday has turned into even more freckles dotting her skin.
I love the constellation of her. She shakes her head at something Gran said, smirking, then snapping her fingers.
She pulls that bright pink notebook out of her bag, stops in the middle of the sidewalk, and scrawls something out.
I find myself dazed, with a stupid little grin on my face. I’m rooted to the spot. I feel fine.
“Hey, Zander, sweetie,” Gran says, spotting me first.
Addie looks up from her notebook, stuffs it back in her bag, then pulls out something yellow and precisely folded. I don’t expect the speed at which she runs at me from only a few feet away. She jumps into my arms and attacks my lips.
“Hi,” she says when she breaks from the kiss. She brushes hair from my eyes. “You look cute today. I made you something.”
Addie steps back and unfolds the shirt in her hands. It’s my size, pale yellow, with a sunflower embroidered over a breast pocket. Yellow.
“You got me the shirt.”
“I told you I’d get you in a yellow shirt. It’s for your book signing.”
I don’t have the words to tell her, once again, how much this means to me, so I just wrap her in a hug. I close my eyes and breathe her in. I could stand like this for hours if she let me.
“I’m heading home,” Gran says, eyes twinkling. I stutter out something that doesn’t make any sense and she laughs. She taps my shoulder as she passes. “Keep this up and you’ll live a full life. You dropped Lucy off?”
“Yeah,” I say, swallowing back emotion. “She curled up on her favourite couch as soon as I got there. I’ll swing by after dinner.”
Gran leaves and Addie takes my hand. Though no words are spoken, we start walking toward the pub. Addie squeezes my hand until I squeeze back, then leans into me. I exhale, place a kiss on her forehead.
“You don’t have to worry,” she says. “Tabitha is all in on team Zander. Your little heat exhaustion act really won you some bonus points.”
“It wasn’t an act. I was genuinely—”
“I know.” She nudges my hip with her own. “You just being yourself is endearing. You’re sweet and people are stupid.”
“What an insightful statement.”
“Shut up.” She laughs and it’s like listening to my favourite song. I smirk. She nudges again. “It’s not my fault if people choose to be ignorant.”
“No, no, it’s not. Inability to move beyond the past says more about them than it does about you.” I sigh. “Not that anyone should gloss over what I did, just—”
“You made a mistake.” Addie glances at The Glass Pond, a stained-glass warehouse that’s been in Beaver Creek since its inception, as we pass.
“Stones at glass houses and all that. They better not have made a bad choice in their entire life if they’re holding onto something you did thirteen years ago.
Especially if they knew what your parents were doing. ”
Her eyes flash. My whole body reacts. My fingers twitch, my stomach muscles tighten, my throat goes dry. Something fierce, somewhere between pride and disbelief grips me. This woman would burn down the world for me.
I loop her in to me, twirling her until her body is against mine. Under the sign of The Dam Drunkard, I kiss her absolutely senseless. Her arms slowly drop around my neck. I feel her smile into the kiss.
“Thank you,” I whisper against her lips.
“Anytime,” she says and smacks my ass. “Now, let’s go.”
She doesn’t give me time to think about my nerves, just drags me into the pub. A laugh bubbles out of me as I stumble behind her.
Dammit, Addie.
Addie walks in confidently, scanning the booths on either side of the bar that encompasses the middle of the pub. It doesn’t take her long to spot her friends and drag me with her once again. I credit her with my ability to break into a careless grin as we sidle up to Simon and Tabitha’s table.
“Addie!” Tabitha exclaims, pushing Simon off the edge of their booth. Simon chuckles as he regains his balance and Tabitha hugs Addie fiercely. “You’re alive!”
“You’ve seen me within the last six days. You knew I was alive.”
“Yes, but now your boyfriend is here and I had to make a big deal about it.” Tabitha pulls back and meets my eyes.
She gives me a quick nod. “Thank you for taking care of her.” I’m not quick enough to stop my face from displaying the instant confusion that hits me.
“God, you’re so sweet that you don’t even know why I would say that. ”
Addie shimmies into our side of the booth and shoots her friend a wary look. I sit down next to her. The two friends have a whole unspoken conversation through history I’m not privy to yet. Even Simon wrinkles his nose, moving his glasses up by an inch.
“Of course I’d take care of her. Who wouldn’t?”
Addie scoffs. “My mom. My ex from university. Honestly, Willow would probably leave me to rot as well.”
“I could see Willow doing that,” I mumble, picking up the menu. Addie mirrors my movements, squints down at the words in the dim light, then sighs. She digs in her bag until she finds her glasses. “The others are inexcusable.”
“You’re fully correct,” Tabitha says. “Addie fractured her wrist when she was doing her master’s degree.”
“Writing is a dangerous subject,” Addie says with a smirk. Her eyes sparkle behind her frames.
“She needed, like, a pin to help it set right—”
“Uh huh,” Addie interrupts, only half focused on the conversation now, her eyes trained on the appetizers. “I’m also a robot now, didn’t you know?”
“The asshole she was dating never showed up. She had a whole fucking surgery and hospital stay, absolutely loopy on pain meds, and he didn’t show up.”
“And then I broke up with him the second I wasn’t high.”
I stare at the side of Addie’s face, pissed off on her behalf. Her lips lift in a little smirk, as if she knows what I’m thinking. I reach for her arm. She upturns it and shows me the white line where the pin lives. I run my fingers over it.
“Dick move, I agree,” I say, then glance at the menu as if someone treating her that way doesn’t eat me up. “Do you have any video of her high, though? I somehow doubt there’s much of a difference between normal Addie and loopy Addie.”
She lets out a gleeful cackle. “You wish.”
Oh, I do. I can almost picture it.
Adelaide Ramsay, as she is, but with a tiny bit less self-control.
“Is that an occasion when you swear as well?”
“You’ve heard Adelaide swear?” Tabitha asks. She drops her menu. “It took me, like, fifteen years to hear you swear.”
“I’m a woman with layers,” Addie says with a shrug. “What can I say?”
A waitress appears at our table before I have a chance to look over the menu. I order a water and go along with what the rest of the group decides for dinner. A feast of appetizers seems like the best option, especially when it’s pub fare.
I can’t recall the last time I was in a place like this.
When I restarted my life all those years ago, I made a conscious decision not to go into any bars. It wasn’t because they were too tempting or made me violent. It was largely due to the memories being too painful.
The Dam Drunkard blends the line between bar and pub.
I can tell a lot of the customers are here just for a drink.
And while I’m happy for them, a part of me wishes I could exist without thinking about my past, or how they’re going to get home tonight, or if someone here is dealing drugs, or if a fight’s going to break out and I’m somehow going to get caught in the crossfire.
Our drinks get set down on the table. Mine the only boring one, and Addie with an extravagant chocolate milkshake.
“You want some?” she asks, turning the straw my way. I take a sip as Addie’s hand slips beneath the table and squeezes my thigh. She mouths, “You okay?”
I nod. I’m better with her.
We slip into a natural rhythm of conversation, Simon and Tabitha talking about how they met, their love of Beaver Creek, a less-than picture perfect wedding day, and Tabitha’s plans for world domination—Bed & Breakfast style. I find myself laughing easily, making jokes like I do with Addie.
In an unexpected turn of events, I even find myself getting along with Simon.
Not that he’s hard to get along with. I just assumed my reputation would precede me, and maybe he wouldn’t even want to try.
But as we break off from the larger conversation and fall into two separate ones, a friendship forms.
“I hate the journey, though,” Simon says when we start talking about work. “You’re going back and forth a lot. How’s it feel?”
I reach for a loaded potato skin and add it to my messy plate with remnants of wings, spinach dip, and onion ring batter.
“I haven’t been going during rush hour, if you can really call it that here.”
Simon groans. “You’re right. I went to school in Toronto and nothing is as bad as Toronto traffic. I guess that’s why I moved back home to a small town.”
“But it’s still a half hour to Guelph.”
“That’s exactly the issue. I’d much rather just roll out of bed and walk to work like Tabby.”
“Be glad you don’t have to drive to work and then do hours of manual labour in the sun,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I don’t miss that part of carpentry.”
“But you do miss something about it?”
“I miss the creativity, which might sound dumb. What’s the creativity in that?”
Simon takes a bite out of his mozzarella stick and comes away with a long cheese pull. He nods as he chews, then wipes marinara sauce from the corner of his mouth with a napkin.
“No, I get it,” he says and swallows hard. He clears his throat. “You made decks and stuff, right? There’s creativity in that.”
“I’m glad you say that. Some people think, or thought, I haven’t really talked about it in a while…anyway I got a lot of comments back then about how I was just laying down wood. But it was more than that. I liked building things with my hands. Everything I build now is mental.”
“That must be quite a switch,” he says. He chews the remainder of his mozza stick, then tilts his head. Straggly black hair falls over his glasses. “But from what I hear you’re doing pretty well. Book five just came out, right?”
“It’s out tomorrow.”
“And your launch is on Wednesday!” Addie singsongs, invading my personal space and hanging herself off of me. “It’s probably a really good book. I don’t know. I’ve read the first one and it was a banger so I assume this one’s just as good, but cannot confirm.”
“Wow, thank you,” I deadpan.
“Anytime. I’ll tell everyone at the launch exactly that as well.”
I snort.
“It’s in Guelph?” Simon asks, and I nod. “Okay, I’ll swing by after work. Tabby, do you want to meet me? You could go with Addie and then we’ll head home together.”
“Absolutely. I love a good launch party.” Tabitha holds up her Beaver Brew, a special Beaver Creek beer, and motions for the rest of us to do the same.
“To my new friend Zander, the potential best friend of my best friend, Addie. May he sell out of his books at his launch and enjoy every minute of it with his fans and friends.”
It’s the best toast of my entire life.