Chapter 21 Brynn #2
She shook her head. “Oh goodness, no. Edward lived another eight years or so. That cat had, like, fourteen or fifteen lives,
easy. It was to the point that I was wondering if I needed to leave him to someone in my will. No, Jerry Maguire died.”
Laila had always named her pets after movie title names. In addition to Edward and Jerry, I’d known of Mrs. Winterbourne,
Ace Ventura, and Private Ryan. And then there had been the time in high school when Annie Hall, a stray calico she’d taken
in, had given birth to a litter. Her parents only let her keep one of the kittens, and she had promptly named her Hannah.
The rest of the litter she had to find homes for were affectionately known as Her Sisters, of course. (Even with the world
not as sensitive and aware then as it is now, we tried to caution her that naming pets in homage to Woody Allen was problematic.
She could not be deterred.)
I listened as Laila proceeded to tell me some of the insignificant details of the last two decades.
More cat deaths, the various jobs she’d worked around town, and what a whole bunch of other people in town had been up to.
Mrs. Stoddard’s husband had died seven years ago, leaving her all his money—some of which she hadn’t even known he had.
Cole, who had been adopted by his mom the day he was born, had spent some time a decade ago looking for his birth parents, without any luck.
Roland Cross had married and had a bunch of kids with Paula Peet.
She finally got around to telling me her parents had divorced fifteen years prior, but not until after she had filled me in on every detail of the weekend four years ago when Chris Pratt and some friends stopped at Cassidy’s for dinner, on their way through for a hunting trip.
And it all led us to the exciting culmination of the feline adoptions throughout the course of the last twenty years of, among others, Larry Crowne, Captain Phillips, and Florence Foster Jenkins.
Her version of twenty years of catch-up had taken approximately three minutes.
I shook my head and laughed. “Glad to see you haven’t changed. Mostly. Less glad to see you’re still naming cats after Woody Allen movies.”
She shrugged. “His moral character does not make the name Vicky Cristina Barcelona any less suitable for an orange tabby.”
There were so many more things I wanted to know. She was smart, beautiful, had a huge heart, and had always been really good
at whatever she set her mind to. I had to have missed more over the past twenty years than just cats and waitressing jobs,
right here in Adelaide Springs. But I was afraid to ask, because what if I hadn’t?
“Your turn. Get me caught up.”
No way. Not yet. I couldn’t possibly follow up the version of her adult life she had just shared with me. At least not honestly.
I’d lived more lives than Edward Scissorhands. How would that make her feel?
But then I thought of something I honestly couldn’t wait to share with her.
“I dated John Mayer for a while.”
Laila had launched a well-organized and extremely earnest campaign to get “Your Body Is a Wonderland” chosen as our senior
class song. When Mrs. Stoddard refused to allow it and threatened detention if she didn’t drop her crusade, Laila had settled
for “No Such Thing” from the same John Mayer debut album. That actually ended up being a pretty great choice—certainly better
than the pick Addie and I had advocated for (“Independent Women, Pt. 1” by Destiny’s Child, which had caused Wes and Cole
to threaten to boycott graduation), and the boys’ choice (“Ride Wit Me” by Nelly).
“You what? When? How? You... You what ? Tell me everything!”
Total nonchalance. Cool and collected as only B-R-Y-N-N could be. “It was no big deal. We went to a couple parties together. He made me dinner once. Portobello burgers because,
for some reason, I was pretending to be a vegetarian for a while there. I think I was sort of his Katy Perry rebound, so it
was never going to last. But he wrote a song for me.”
All the color left her face. “Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up.” I tittered as she pulled her iPhone out of her pocket and
attempted to pull up a music service. “Stupid Wi-Fi!” She let her phone drop to the table with a thud , and her eyes looked up toward the sky and darted from side to side as she began calculating in a way that reminded me of
Russell Crowe doing math in A Beautiful Mind . “Which song? ‘Slow Dancing in a Burning Room’? No, that’s too early. Couldn’t be ‘Shadow Days.’ That was about Jennifer
Aniston. ‘Love on the Weekend’? Oh my gosh, it’s ‘Love on the Weekend,’ isn’t it?”
I shook my head. “No, actually. It’s called ‘Brynn Don’t Like No Mayo on Her Burger’ and it’s sung to the tune of ‘Grandma
Got Run Over by a Reindeer.’ I never understood why it didn’t get more radio play.”
She wadded up her napkin and threw it at me, and we erupted into giggles, just as we always had. I was cool and collected
as I regaled her with the tale of my three dates with John Mayer, but the giggling? That was all B-R-E-N .
***
A few hours later, after I’d finally convinced Laila to walk with me to the inn so I could put on some real clothes and then walk back to the Bean Franklin, where the door was left unlocked for us though Andi had long ago gone home, we made brownies and ate half of them before Laila’s eyes flew open in a panic.
“What’s wrong?” I asked as I picked up stray brownie crumbs from the table and shamelessly licked them from my fingers.
“I have to go to work.”
“Oh. Okay.” I was sad the time was coming to an end. Undeniably sad.
Her excitement about John Mayer had spurred me on to tell her some more fabulous stories. And as I told all those fabulous
stories about places I had been and people I had met, I’d accidentally begun sharing the story of my life since she had seen
me last. The real story. The crappy college boyfriends. My struggles to find friends as good as the ones I had left behind,
and how I had eventually stopped trying. The career opportunities I had lost out on because I wouldn’t go out with a certain
local news producer or go up to a hotel room with some guy who was a member of the same gym as some network honcho. My feud
with Andy Vandy.
I told her about how I only learned my mom had died because I had set a Google alert on my phone for that very occasion. How
I pulled up her obituary while I was at dinner with Colton Passik, interviewing for a spot on Sunup3 , and when I got the job, I put away the fleeting thought I’d had about potentially attending her funeral.
But now, Laila had to go to work.
“You should come,” she said, standing from her chair and stretching her arms over her head.
“Oh... I don’t know.”
What, Brynn? What do you have to do that’s more important than spending more time with Laila?
I scrunched up my nose. “To Cassidy’s?” She nodded. “I don’t know, Lai. Who will be there?” I followed her lead and grabbed
my jacket after she had turned off all the lights.
“Cole, for one. Sebastian, for another.”
“Ooh, boy. I’m not sure how either one of them will feel about me showing up.”
“Sebastian is the nicest guy on the planet. You know that, right?” Of course most people are wonderful in the eyes of the
nicest girl on the planet. “And Cole will be excited to see you.”
“Will he?”
“He will be once I tell him he should be.”
We stepped out onto the sidewalk, and she locked the door behind us. She motioned for me to follow her to her vehicle, and
I did. Apparently I was going to work with her.
“Do you want to go by the inn and pick up... what’s his name again?”
“Orly?” I climbed in and buckled my seat belt. “Nah. He texted a little bit ago to tell me Mrs. Stoddard wore him out today
and he’s in for the night.”
His response when I asked him if he’d found anyone who had anything nice to say about me had been, “Colton only wants three
minutes of B-roll. I’m sure we’ll be able to piece something together.” Knowing that after an entire day out and about with
the people of Adelaide Springs, it was still going to take some effort to cobble together three minutes of nicety, I was relieved
Orly wouldn’t be accompanying us to Cassidy’s. As confident as Laila was that Cole would be happy to see me, I just wasn’t
so sure. And it wasn’t that I wanted to keep that from getting on air, it was just that I didn’t want to be distracted or
looking for open doors, as I apparently had with Cole’s grandfather.
In our little group, Cole had always been the defender and protector.
It was Cole who insisted on waiting until any of the three of us girls got inside before leaving when he dropped us off, and it was Cole who tried to be there for us whenever we received bad news.
In second grade, he’d written a poignant, beautiful eulogy for a hamster named Miss Daisy.
At eleven years old, he had been nervous to the point of nausea whenever he had to leave Addie’s side at her mom’s funeral.
On the rare occasions Addie and Wes fought, he was their mediator, reminding them of all the things they treasured in each other.
At sixteen he had flown into a rage and punched my mom’s boyfriend when he held on to my arm and wouldn’t let me leave.
He’d loved us. And he loved Laila most of all. So it wasn’t difficult to imagine that he might not be as ready to forgive
the pain I had caused. He might not be ready to forgive the pain I had caused her .
The short drive was over almost before it began, and she pulled into the parking lot of the old log-cabin bar. At least I
was pretty sure we were at Cassidy’s. That’s what the lit-up sign a few feet from the road said. But it looked less drab and
dull than I remembered it.
I glanced at the sign again. “Bar and Grill?” I asked her as we unbuckled and prepared to open our doors. “When did the Grill
part happen?”
“A few years back. His grandfather wanted Cole to stick around and run the place, and he said he’d only agree if he was allowed
to make a few changes.” We stepped out into the rapidly cooling early evening. “Cole’s quite the chef.”
I tilted my head in surprise. “Really?”
“Yep.” She shut her door and talked to me across the hood as I made my way around. “He went to culinary school and everything.”
We walked up the stairs of the porch but stopped short of the door. “Was Magic Mike Night one of the changes he wanted to make?” I asked with a laugh. “What in the world is happening in there?”
From the sound of it, Channing Tatum was in there doing his thing.
Women were hooting and hollering and yelling out things that were skating right on the edge of obscene.
The laughter from inside was riotous and rowdy, and it made its way through the transom windows, cracked open slightly, and bounced off the edge of the forest.
“Oh, goodie. I’d forgotten.” Laila wagged her eyebrows and opened the door. “It’s PTA Night.”