Chapter 2
“The axe forgets, but the tree remembers.”
Shona Proverb
“I never knew what I wanted to do, but I knew the kind of woman I wanted to be.”
Diane von Fürstenberg
Cece
“Cece Taylorrrrrr!”
My name booms around my bar like it’s being announced over the loudspeaker at a boxing match.
I turn and search for the voice as one of the behemoths wearing a unicorn headband peels himself away from his group and heads towards me, finger outstretched.
He’s at least six-three with the physique of someone who bench presses BMWs for fun.
“I knew it was you!” Jake Graves-Holland shouts happily. “How the hell are ya?”
Jake went to school with me and Ada. He was the captain of the first-XV and now he plays for the All Blacks. That’s better than being prime minister in New Zealand, where rugby isn’t so much a sport as a religion.
I shoot a glance at the booth where Ada was hanging out.
She’s vanished, which isn’t surprising. No one has less desire to hang out with our ex-schoolmates than she does.
Especially the all-popular rugby crowd. At least I get to make money off their debauchery; the best she’ll get is ’Nam flashbacks.
I give her a mental salute before returning my attention to Jake.
“Hi, Jake! I’m good. How are you?”
“Great.” He beams at me, grey eyes twinkling.
JGH, as he was known at Pukekohe High, is the kind of good-looking that only seems possible via AI-generated fairie smut, but nothing about him gets my heart racing.
Maybe because I sober-drove him and my brother home after a rugby court session when I was sixteen, and he helped me hold Tristan up while he vomited into Mum’s rose garden.
Vomit is attraction’s antidote—a lesson my customers could benefit from learning. Anyway, Jake might be a big shot rugby player with an endorsement deal for undies, but he’ll be forever cursed with that association in my mind.
“How’s Tris?” he asks, because, of course he does. My entire identity growing up was ‘Tristan Taylor’s Sister.’ Not even ‘little sister’, even though I’m a year younger. Being six feet tall by the time we started high school put paid to any kind of infantilising.
“He’s good,” I say. “Living in London. Got a wife and kid.”
I pull my phone out of my pocket and flash Jake my home screen. It’s a picture of my niece, Maisie, decked out in ballet gear, her blonde curls in bunches.
“Cute as,” Jake says, earning himself a discounted drink.
“Totally,” I agree. “She’s so adorable. Beer?”
“Perfect.” Jake pulls up a barstool while the rest of the stags shout various drink orders at my staff.
“So,” he says. “What are you doing working the taps at Stabbies? I thought you were a nurse?”
My smile tightens, and I try to relax my cheeks.
Jake doesn’t know I’ve had to justify my decision to leave pediatric nursing approximately eight thousand times this year.
Or that my mum still calls my Afterglow ‘Cece’s passion project,’ or that Tristan straight up said I was having a midlife crisis.
Fuck you, Tristan. I’m only thirty-two, and nursing gave me enough counselling fodder for eternity.
Maybe I want a job where it’s not literally life or death for a while, huh?
Maybe I want a job where I’m in control of my success?
Where I’m not reliant on the steadiness of a surgeon’s hands as to whether I ever see the smile of a gorgeous kid I’ve helped for the last four weeks ever again…
“I own this place now,” I say, trying my best to sound proud as I hand Jake a pint of IPA. “I’m what you might call ‘A Girl Boss.’”
Jake flashes me the heartthrob grin they slap on every pre-game rugby promotion. “Fuck, that’s all right, hey?”
I eye him suspiciously, and he laughs. “I mean it! It’s awesome you’re running your own bar. Are you gonna brag about it at the reunion next month?”
I wince. I’d forgotten about the Pukekohe High School Centenary, but I’d rather have a train run on me by the entire cactus section at Bunnings than go.
Only I can’t tell Jake that. Popular guys are always chock-full of school spirit, especially when it’s not warranted, i.e.
a one-hundred-year celebration of ugly uniforms and playing touch rugby in the rain.
But even if I did go to the reunion, I don’t know if ‘bragging’ is what I’d be doing. Not with the bills stacked a mile high on my office desk.
“Can’t, I’m afraid,” I lie. “Gotta keep this place running.”
“Too bad,” Jake says. “It’ll be nice to see everyone again. I think they’re organising some stuff just for our class.”
“Cool,” I say, with what I hope sounds like sincerity.
Behind Jake, the stag guys are chanting something as they demolish the two trays of tequila shots Krissy, my best bartender, is holding.
Davis glares at my ex-classmates, but I can’t let him kick them out.
As long as they’re not swinging around the stripper pole with their dicks out, I need the money.
I remind myself to get Davis a fresh can of Coke Zero and start mixing a ‘Sorry this is happening to you’ margarita for Ada.
With extra lime and salt to ward off the scurvy she’s at genuine risk of developing.
As soon as I touch the tequila bottle, my best friend reappears as though summoned by her favourite spirit.
Heads turn as she floats past in her lace crop top and jean shorts, ice-mint vape in hand.
The stags, soley focused on their quest for booze until now, do a collective spit take.
Ada doesn’t so much as glance at them. Maybe she doesn’t recognise anyone. Maybe she’s too tequila’d up to care.
The stags on the other hand? They’ll be lucky if they survive the night.
Ada could cause any one of them heart failure, depending on whether she wants to sit near or drink with them.
She’s usually too lost in her head to talk, but sometimes she feels the vibe and challenges punters to obscure drinking games she learned in Europe.
She’s always the last man standing. For that reason, and a million others, I’m worried about her.
She’s still sweet and hilarious, but she came back to New Zealand with her switch firmly flipped to self-destruct.
Despite my mothering the shit out of her, it still hasn’t flipped back.
I don’t know what to do. If I push too hard, she’s the type to up and leave.
But if I don’t… I guess I don’t really know.
“Cece?”
I smile vaguely at Jake. “Sorry, there’s a lot going on tonight.”
“That’s cool. Want me to leave?”
“No, you’re good,” I say, squeezing fresh lime into Ada’s marg. “Since you’re so tapped into the home crew, what else is going on?”
He laughs. “Lemme see… You hear Miss Erwing got married?”
I gasp. Miss Erwing was the stuffiest teacher I’d ever met. Being in her calculus class was enough to turn me off math for good. As a business owner, that might have been shortsighted of me. “To who?”
“Penny Lipson from the post office. She’s still rocking that 80s perm. I think that’s what did it for Miss. Erwing.”
“Huh…”
That might explain why Miss Erwing was so mad all the time. Being forced to be a closeted lesbian in rural New Zealand had to be a rough gig. Almost as rough as teaching high school calculus. “Who told you that?”
Jake ducks his head. “My nan. I call her every Sunday.”
“Oh, you big sweetie. What else you got gossip-wise?”
“Well…” He leans forward over crossed arms. “Roger from the pharmacy got done for insurance fraud, and while they were investigating, the cops found he was boning his German au pair.”
“No! Not Roger!”
Roger’s reputation as the judgment-free provider of the morning-after pill was legendary.
Pukekohe girls loved Roger, even though the only thing I ever needed from him was electrolyte gel and emotional-support ear piercings.
Every hole in my body that wasn’t put there by nature was punched in by Roger the Pharmacist.
“Yup. Roger. And not only that, but the au pair’s boyfriend found out and told everyone he’s been fucking Jenny Sharpe on the sly. It’s divorce all round.”
My heart stops dead in my chest. “Will and Jenny are divorced?”
“It’s in the works. They’re officially separated, though. He’s moved out.”
My brain boggles under the surge of fresh information. Will Sharpe. Officially separated...
“How long ago was this?” My voice is super-high, and I clear my throat.
“A couple of months ago. It’s gonna be awkward as fuck at the centenary because Jenny’s the organiser, and Will’s car yard is a major sponsor, so they’re both gonna be there the whole weekend.”
Will Sharpe. Officially separated. At the centenary. The whole weekend.
“Everything okay, Cece?”
Davis has appeared out of nowhere, his hazel eyes darting between me and Jake.
“Fine,” I say weakly.
Davis’s thick brows rumple adorably. I’m sure the huge crowd of female uni students we draw for Karaoke Wednesdays come for Davis’s eyebrows.
Or maybe his jaw. Or the way his black Afterglow T-shirts stretch across his chest. A chest that just screams of the metabolism of a mere twenty-four years, eight months and nine days.
Not that I know his exact age on purpose.
I had to put his birthday on his employment forms when he started working here.
Plus, Ada keeps pointing out his status as a late-term child every time he offers to look at my accounting system.
“Are you sure?” Davis asks. “Is this guy bothering you?”
Jake stops bobbing his head to the Gang of Youths song blaring from the jukebox and turns to look at him. “Sorry?”
“I asked if you were bothering her.”
Jake squints. “Bothering who? Bothering Cece?”
Davis practically bares his teeth, and Jake looks even more confused. To be fair, since he made the All Blacks, I doubt anyone’s done anything meaner to him than offer to buy him a beer or blow him. And to be fair to Davis, he doesn’t know I’m as sexually attracted to Jake as I am a bean bag.
Will Sharpe, on the other hand…