Chapter Eleven
Callum
Drew showed up at my place around sunset with a six-pack and the kind of grin that said I was about to regret answering the door.
“You’re not working,” he said, holding up the beer like it was a peace offering or a bribe. “You have no excuse.”
“I have laundry.”
“You don’t do laundry. You glare at it until it retreats.”
He walked in without waiting for an invite, standard, and made himself at home on my couch like it was his name on the deed.
“You ever knock?” I muttered, following him in.
“Not when I know you’re sulking,” he said, pulling the tab off a can and tossing it onto my coffee table with a clink. “Which, let’s be honest, has been your full-time hobby ever since the new landlady showed up.”
“I’m not sulking,” I said, grabbing a beer for myself. “I’m avoiding.”
“Same difference.”
We sat for a while in the kind of silence only brothers could manage—comfortable, half-sarcastic, and full of unspoken commentary.
Finally, Drew leaned back and took a sip. “So. Lydia.”
I didn’t look at him. “Nope.”
“You can’t ignore her forever.”
“Watch me.”
“She owns your building.”
“Which means I can absolutely ignore her.”
“You’re impossible,” he said, laughing. “She’s not even doing anything yet. You’ve just decided she’s a villain because she wears boots that don’t have mud on them.”
I scowled. “They were too clean.”
“God forbid someone shows up without hay on their shoes.”
“She had that look, Drew.”
“What look?”
“The look of someone about to slap white subway tile on everything and call it progress.”
He snorted. “You mean the look of someone with a plan? Yeah, terrifying.”
I rolled my eyes and leaned back, taking a long pull from my beer. I wouldn’t admit it out loud, but yeah…I’d noticed more than the boots.
I’d noticed the eyes, too. The way they crinkled at the corners when she smiled. And the soft fall of her hair when she leaned over her coffee like she wasn’t even trying to look good, and somehow managed to make my jaw clench anyway.
It was irritating.
And unhelpful.
And none of Drew’s business.
“She’s already making friends,” I muttered. “Had a whole town meeting in the damn coffee shop.”
“That’s not illegal, Callum.”
“She’s infiltrating.”
Drew shook his head, clearly amused. “You know, you keep talking like she’s some invading war general, but you haven’t once mentioned how hot she is.”
I looked at him. “Are you drunk already?”
“Nope. Just observant. And also, I was there when she smiled at you yesterday, and you forgot how to speak for a full five seconds.”
“That didn’t happen.”
“You blinked like you got hit by a tranquilizer dart.”
“She was holding coffee. It was disarming.” I frowned. “I didn’t want her to throw it at me.”
“Sure, man.”
We both drank in silence again.
He tried to hold in a grin and failed. “She called you a grumpy woolly mammoth, by the way.”
I choked on my beer.
“She what?”
“Yeah,” he said, far too gleeful. “I was picking up some groceries and ran into Melanie and Lydia.”
“I am not a woolly mammoth.”
“I don’t know. You kind of stomp around like one. And you make the same face when someone says the word renovation .”
I glared at him.
He waggled his eyebrows. “She’s not wrong, is all I’m saying.”
“She doesn’t even know me,” I snapped.
“But she saw you. That’s the difference.”
I didn’t respond.
Because what was I supposed to say? That I couldn’t stop seeing her?
That every time I closed my eyes, I saw her walking down Main Street in a floral skirt and easy smile, or hunched over a table laughing like she belonged here already?
Hell no.
“I’m miserable,” I said instead, which was safer.
Drew grinned. “Right. Miserable and definitely not checking the sidewalk when you lock up, just in case she walks by.”
I flipped him off.
“Adorable,” he said.
“You’re insufferable.”
He leaned forward, bracing his arms on his knees. “Okay, fine. Let’s pretend you don’t like her. But can you admit she’s not trying to destroy your world?”
“We don’t know that.”
“She offered Riley help with the coffee shop.”
“That fridge hums like it’s possessed.”
“And she said she might replace it since it came with the building. The horror.”
I grumbled into my beer.
“She’s not trying to erase the town, Callum,” he said, softer now. “She just wants to live in it. Maybe improve a few things. Doesn’t mean she’s planting a Starbucks in the cemetery.”
“She better not.”
“She’s not your enemy.”
“She’s a distraction.” My stomach tensed as nausea rolled through me. I’d had everything just the way I wanted it. Boundaries in place. Expectations set.
And then Lydia rolled into town, shifting my off balance.
I didn’t like it. Not one bit.
Drew gave me a long, slow look. “From what?”
I stared at the beer label.
He didn’t press.
That was the thing about Drew. He was good at shutting up when it mattered. He knew the difference between poking the bear and letting it sulk.
Finally, he said, “Melanie’s not bad, either.”
I glanced at him.
He was smiling at nothing in particular.
“You’ve got a thing for her.”
“She threatened you with a wine cork. I respect that.”
I groaned. “God help us all.”
Drew stretched, cracking his back, then stood and grabbed another beer from the fridge. “I’m just saying, you’ve been married to this bar for a long time. Maybe it’s time to date around a little. See what else life has to offer.”
I snorted. “You sound like a self-help podcast.”
He just laughed. “Maybe. But even woolly mammoths need love.”
I threw a coaster at his head.
He dodged and took a swig of beer.
And I sat there, staring at the bottle in my hand, wondering why the idea of someone like Lydia rooting herself in this town felt like both the worst-case scenario and the only one I couldn’t stop imagining.
And why the hell I cared so damn much.
Drew flopped back onto the couch with his second beer and propped his feet on my coffee table like he didn’t fear death. I shot him a look, but he just smirked, clearly daring me to say something about it.
“I don’t know why I let you in here,” I muttered.
“Because I’m the fun one,” he said, popping the cap and letting it land somewhere on the rug. “And deep down, you love me.”
I took a long drink from my bottle. “Deep down, I tolerate you. With conditions.”
“Touching.” He grinned. “You always were the poetic one.”
We sat in comfortable silence for a minute, the kind that only comes when you’ve known someone your whole life and no longer feel the need to fill every second with words. I stared at the grooves in the coffee table, the worn spots on the wood from years of our lives—beer rings, Dad’s old ashtray that I still hadn’t thrown out, a burn mark from a firecracker we thought was a candle when we were twelve.
“You ever think about him?” Drew asked, more serious now.
I didn’t answer right away.
I didn’t have to ask who he meant.
“Every damn day,” I said finally.
Drew nodded, quiet for a beat. “I miss him, too.”
I took another pull from my beer, then leaned forward, resting my forearms on my knees. “He was stubborn.”
“Understatement of the year,” Drew said, laughing dryly. “The man once refused to go to the doctor for a dislocated shoulder because he could still move the other arm .”
“Yeah,” I said, smiling despite myself. “And then he lectured me about common sense.”
We both laughed softly. But the edge of that memory cut deeper than I liked to admit, and it collided with the one of…her.
The love of my life…
“I catch myself sounding like him sometimes,” I muttered, staring at the wall. “When I talk to customers. When I fix something the hard way just because I don’t trust the easy one. When I snap before I think. It’s like… I became him without realizing it.”
Drew didn’t argue.
He didn’t have to.
He knew it was true.
“But he was proud of you,” Drew said quietly. “He loved that you took the bar and made it yours. He just… didn’t always know how to say it.”
“Yeah, well,” I muttered, throat tight. “That’s a family tradition, isn’t it?”
I felt Drew’s eyes on me. “You know you don’t have to be like him.”
I looked over at him.
“You don’t have to carry it all alone, Callum. You don’t have to grit your teeth through everything and pretend you’re fine when you’re clearly not.”
“I’m fine,” I said, a little too quickly.
He raised an eyebrow. “Are you?”
I looked away. “I’m fine.”
Drew didn’t push, but the air between us got heavier. We both knew I wasn’t.
Not really.
I hadn’t been since Dad passed.
Since my wife passed.
Since I found myself standing in the back room of the bar we’d built together, staring at the old photo of our family hanging above the register and wondering if I was living my dream or just clinging to his because I didn’t know how to let it go.
“I think you keep everything so close to the chest,” Drew said, “because you’re afraid that if you let one piece fall out, the whole thing will come crashing down.”
I frowned.
“Maybe you’re not wrong,” I said after a moment. “But it’s not like I’ve got time to unravel. Someone’s gotta keep things running.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But you don’t have to do it like he did. You don’t have to push everyone away and act surprised when you’re the only one in the room.”
That one stung more than I expected.
Because he wasn’t wrong.
And I hated that he wasn’t wrong.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I admitted, voice low. “With Lydia. With any of it. One minute I’m furious she’s here, the next I’m… distracted.”
“By how hot she is?”
I shot him a look, but he just grinned.
“I’m serious,” I said. “She walks in, and the whole bar feels different. Like she’s rearranging the furniture in her head without touching a single thing.”
Drew let out a low whistle. “Man. You’ve got it bad. ”
“I do not.”
“You do,” he said. “You talk about her like she’s an existential crisis in boots.”
“She kind of is.”
“Then maybe that’s exactly what you need.”
I leaned back against the couch, arms folded. “I don’t need anyone turning my life upside down.”
“You sure about that?”
I didn’t answer.
Because no. I wasn’t sure.
I was used to holding everything together, keeping the bar steady, the lights on, the memory of our family alive and well. I wasn’t used to people coming in and challenging me just by being in the room.
I wasn’t used to someone like Lydia…bright, bold, and frustrating in a way that got under my skin and stayed there.
“I like my life the way it is,” I said, more to convince myself than him.
“Your life’s a thirty-year-old jukebox and a half-functioning boiler,” Drew said. “Maybe it’s time for something new.”
“Spare me the metaphors.”
He stood up and stretched. “You’re stubborn as hell. But you’re not hopeless.”
“Gee, thanks.”
He headed toward the bathroom, finishing his beer. “I’m just saying, Callum. You can keep being miserable if you want. But maybe, just maybe… you’re allowed to want more.”
He clapped me on the shoulder on his way out of the room. “Try not to implode before you finish your drink.”
The door shut behind him, and I sat in the quiet.
The kind that wasn’t comfortable anymore.
The kind that crept in made you wonder if maybe your little corner of the world wasn’t as fine as you thought.
I looked around my place. It was home. It was mine.
But for the first time, I wondered what it might feel like if someone else were here, too.
Someone who didn’t care that I was grumpy. Someone who pushed back. Someone who laughed like it was her job and looked at me like I was almost worth arguing with.
Someone like Lydia.
Damn it.