Chapter 42
Jameson
Idrop off my things in Megan’s old bedroom, which is now a guest room/sewing room/junk storage, and get changed as requested.
Then we have dinner with her mom, who is weirdly not much at all like Megan, other than kind, and somehow a lot like Cole. Donna seems delighted to meet me in person, thrilled that I’m engaged to her daughter, and I’m not sure she even cares about my money.
The fact that I’m Cole’s best friend seems to have more currency with her. He must’ve said good things about me.
I’ll have to thank him.
She also doesn’t seem to have a clue about my arrangement with Megan. Which means, presumably, she thinks her daughter really fell in love with me, just like that.
I wonder if Megan told her it was love at first sight.
The entire time we eat, Daisy sits at my feet, staring up at me, like she’s deciding how much she likes me, while I sneak her food. I’m not above trying to win her loyalty with treats.
After dinner, we do the dishes together, me and Megan, while her mom plays Neil Young on her ancient stereo and Megan tells her all about our trip to Europe. Daisy sits at Megan’s feet while still staring at me.
When we say good night to Donna and leave the house, Daisy comes with us, happily trotting along at Megan’s side, on her leash. I follow Megan’s lead as we walk along the sad little roads past the sad little houses, Locke and Rurik trailing behind. The sky is dark and the mosquitos have come out, buzzing around my ears.
How is it dusty and yet muggy in the air at the same time? It’s hot and swampy, claustrophobic, even though the sky above us is wide open. There are no mountains, no massive, ancient green trees.
I already hate it here.
No wonder Cole and Megan left.
“Well, this is it,” Megan announces.
I look around the dreary landscape. It’s flat in every direction. The buildings sag, depressed and starved of funds. I can hear music playing faintly somewhere.
“Uh, what are we talking about?”
“You, Jameson Vance, are in for a real treat.” She waves a hand at some sad commercial buildings that are maybe some kind of storage facility and whatever else. A library? There’s a faded sign with a book on it. “Ta-da! Bet you didn’t know this one-horse town has a bar!”
In the direction she’s indicating, the same direction the faint music seems to be coming from, there’s an old building with a faded old sign that I can’t read in the dark. And a small, harsh spotlight shining over the door. I blink at the side wall, which faces a dumpster. “There’s a painting of Cole on the side of the building.”
“Yes, there is.”
We cross the street, where there’s zero traffic. We’ve seen no one on the short walk here from her mom’s house.
Near the bottom of the weathered and faded wall mural with the admittedly terrible likeness of Cole, words are painted by a sloppy hand.
Colton Hudson
Right Winger - Dallas Heat
The Heat was Cole’s college hockey team.
“Why don’t they list his other teams?”
Megan shrugs. “No budget to update it? The guy who painted it doesn’t live here anymore? Someone complained about it? It’s a small town with no money, Jameson. Things move slower than molasses, and they generally don’t get updated or repaired. They just drift into obsolescence.”
“Oh.”
We continue past Cole’s wall of glory—which I take a photo of and am definitely going to send to him with some kind of amusing remark later—and reach the shabby entrance of the bar.
As I draw open the weather-ravaged door beneath the spotlight, I recognize the song that pours out into the night. It’s “Boots or Hearts” by The Tragically Hip. A song I only know because I grew up in Canada and, you know, radio.
“You know you’re in Canada when…” I remark.
Megan snickers. “Let’s get a beer, eh?”
I take Daisy’s leash and hand it off to Rurik, so we can head into the bar with Locke; surprise contorts Rurik’s features for an instant before they resettle into a scowl. I know he loves dogs. He used to walk Sunny for me all the time, voluntarily.
“What year is this?” I inquire as we step inside the time warp. Not only is the music from decades past, so is literally everything else. Ancient pool tables that have never been upgraded. Glowing Molson Canadian beer signs that are just plain old rather than retro cool.
You can smell the decades of spilled liquor that’s seeped into the floors and the cigarette smoke embedded in the walls from like twenty years ago, before they banned smoking inside public places here.
“Come on now,” Megan says. “There’s nothing wrong with living in the past. We love the past here in Crooks Creek.” She takes my hand and leads me toward the bar. I try to ignore the way it sticks in my gut like a shard of rusty metal when she says “we.” Like she still lives here. Or will again, inevitably.
Instead, I focus on the relic television sets that hang precariously over the bar, playing commercials and some old movie. There’s hockey paraphernalia everywhere, though that, too, is outdated. Some of it might even be so old, it now has value. “My granddad would’ve loved this place.”
“Really?”
“He started out in bars. His very first business was a small bar he bought in Vancouver, when he was twenty-eight. Kind of a dive.”
“Huh. I turn twenty-eight next year. So you’re saying… I could still launch my empire?” She smiles at me as we lean on the bar.
I smile back easily. “You have to start somewhere. I’m sure your fiancé would spot you some seed money.”
“I do like seed.” The filthy expression she flashes tells me she’s not referring to plants.
And now I’m hard.
In sweats. In public.
I turn my hips toward the bar.
She frowns thoughtfully. “So how did he take a dive bar and turn it into billions?”
“Decades of hard work. In the eighties, he owned a chain of upscale sports bars that he revamped and from there it expanded to restaurants, hotels, a winery, alcohol brands. He went from buying and selling to developing. Buying Vancouver’s hockey team wasn’t even his biggest acquisition but it was his biggest dream. My dad branched us out into luxury resorts and condo developments, and the rest is history.”
The bartender finally comes over; some regular has been hogging his attention.
“Gentlemen first,” Megan announces, smiling at me again. “What would you like, Jamie? I’m buying, and don’t even think of arguing with me. I’m your host here.”
I frown, but relent. It’s cuter than cute when she calls me Jamie.
It takes mere seconds to peruse the entire beer selection in the dirty little fridges behind the bar. “I’ll have a Grasshopper.” The bartender grabs my bottle of Big Rock wheat ale from the fridge and opens it while I tell Megan, “And you’ll have a bottled beer as well.”
She lifts an eyebrow. “Will I?”
“You will.”
There’s a silent standoff that lasts about five seconds while she debates whether I’m seriously telling her what to drink.
I am. With good reason.
Then she orders a Moosehead and opens a tab. We clink the necks of our beer bottles and take a swig as we wander to find a table. She finds a booth to her liking on the side of the dance floor. The place is maybe half-full, and other than a few people who say a casual hello to Megan, no one comes over to us.
They’re definitely checking us out, though.
I suppose the local girl who disappeared in the night, leaving her job and her home and her boyfriend behind, made some waves. And returning with her new billionaire fiancé weeks later… definite gossip material.
By morning, maybe the whole town will know about that little scene in her mom’s driveway.
Maybe they already do.
Locke is also collecting stares where he sits at the bar, sipping his soda water.
Rurik will hang out just outside, keeping an eye on the entrance. At least I know that whatever happens tonight, Troy Duchamp won’t be wandering in.
“Hey, Jameson,” Megan says happily as we lean on our table, facing each other. It’s sticky. A waitress came by as soon as we chose it and dragged a dirty, wet rag over it that didn’t help. “Why are we drinking beer from the bottle? I’ve only seen you drink beer when you were looking to partner with the beer company. You know, in Germany.”
“Because we’re not risking anything on tap or by the glass. The glassware doesn’t look sanitized, and no way do they clean those keg lines properly.”
Her nose scrunches. “Ew. I never thought of that.”
“Think of it. Beer on tap is always a risk. You want to be sure you’re in a place that cleans their lines properly. Every two weeks, they need to be flushed with a cleaning solution. Many places do not.” I sip my beer, smirking a little as she absorbs that with horrified fascination.
“I’m never drinking beer from the keg again.”
“I know. Don’t even get me started on the lime wedges they leave out on the bar. Bartenders touch cash all night. Do you know how dirty paper money is? And the credit card machine? And then they dip their fingers in that bin of lime wedges and put one on your glass, and you’re supposed to squeeze it into your drink? Fuck, no.”
“I had no idea you were such a germaphobe.”
“It’s not a phobia. Just common sense and self-respect.”
“Even if we put aside that the alcohol probably kills the germs anyway?—”
“Maybe.”
“—you are ruining bar nights for me.”
“Then I’ve succeeded.”
“You don’t want me going to bars?”
“No. I want you home on my dick, where you belong.”
She laughs and smacks my arm like I’m kidding.
“So,” I say, ogling her perky cleavage in her little cotton eyelet dress for the dozenth time. “Who do we know here?”
For the next many songs, Megan points out every person in the bar she recognizes, which is all of them, and spills gossip on the ones she knows gossip on, which is most of them. Now and then, the waitress who looks, sounds, and smells like she’s been a pack-a-day smoker since 1973 comes by our table, bringing more beer, which Megan puts on her tab.
We hold hands and play with each other’s fingers while we talk.
Then we dance slowly to Kings of Leon, “I Want You,” like no one’s watching. They are.
We dance right by our table, pressed together, eyes closed. At least, her eyes are closed. I’m cheating and watching her the whole time.
When a faster song comes on, Megan pulls back and hands me my bottle of Grasshopper off the table. “Drink,” she says, a soft smile on her lips. “Locke will watch your back.”
Another hour later, I’ve had too much to drink and I’m passionately pep talking her on why she can never move back to this place, having lost all chill and every filter I’ve got. I may use the phrase “worst mistake you could ever make” at least three times.
Megan seems amused as she listens patiently, sipping from her bottle of Moosehead.
* * *
“What if Frodo never left the Shire? What if Luke never left the farm?”
The situation is getting dire.
I’ve trapped Megan in the booth with my body, both of us on the same seat. I can’t be sure how much time has passed except that they don’t clear your table throughout the night in this place, just keep bringing more beer, and there’s an army of bottles on the table. A few old friends of hers joined us for a while, but have long since wandered off when I turned out to be a complete buzz kill and Megan hog. “Can you imagine that?”
Megan rolls her eyes at me, but laughs. “I had no idea you were such a closet nerd. You’ve been holding back, Jameson.”
“Okay, okay.” I gesture wide with my beer, slopping it. “Maybe in those two examples the answer is that the known world might’ve literally ended, but still. What if Megan Hudson never left Crooks Creek? What kind of travesty would that be?”
She seems to be considering the answer to that, or just watching me try very hard to sip my beer like I’m not having trouble finding my mouth. I am. I’m drunk, and we both know it.
“It would be a fairly major travesty,” she admits. “For me.”
“Right?! And I don’t mean because you never would’ve met me.”
She blinks at me innocently. “But meeting you was the best thing that happened to me when I left the Shire.”
“Really? Thank you.”
She puts her drink down. “Are you really likening me to a hobbit? Am I that short?”
I ponder her tits, then her succulent lips. “You’re a luscious woodland fairy.”
“Nerd,” she teases.
“Why aren’t you as drunk as me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because that.” She sweeps her hand over the empty Big Rock bottles. Which is when I notice there are only three green Moosehead bottles in the crowd of them.
I squint at her.
She smiles wide.
I lean, or maybe fall, into her so suddenly, my lips hit her teeth. She laughs, and I take advantage of her open mouth to invade her personal space, delving my tongue into her warmth.
I moan involuntarily and her fingers curl into my shirt, her mouth meeting the demands of mine as well as she can, as I eat her mouth, deep and sloppy.
When I finally break the wet suction, she turns her head a fraction so I can’t do it again. “Everyone’s looking at us.”
“I don’t care.”
I grab her head and kiss her again. I’m mad for her. Ravenous for any scrap of her I can get.
And I’m pissed at myself for not being the man she deserves.
I know I’m hurting her by keeping this fucking secret, not telling her the full truth. I can never tell her about the damn game I had to play.
But I can’t let it kill us. Even if the light in her eyes dies just a little bit more every time we circle around it.
She knows it’s there, unspoken between us, a shadow that can never be washed away with light.
I’ll just have to find so many ways to make her love me, she’ll forget about it.
Yeah, that will work.
She pulls away, taking a deep, shuddering breath. She blinks at me, her eyes glassy. Arousal and alcohol.
Maybe she is drunk.
“I know I’m not really what you want, Jameson.”
“What?” I cling to her dress as she clings to my shirt.
“I know I’m not enough for you. I know you won’t change your stance on marriage for me. I’m not in your vision of your future. If I were… you’d tell me everything. You’d open up.”
“What are you talking about? I was never what you wanted. I was just a distraction along the way.”
She shakes her head. “What?”
I dig my hands into her hair, holding her face close to mine. “What you wanted was to start your life over. Your life. And you wanted to be able to count on your brother for once, even though you didn’t want to admit it?—”
“That’s not?—”
“It’s true. And you got that. Along with some help from me. But the rest of it… I didn’t offer you a new life. I offered you a distraction from the life you wanted.”
She draws back a bit, absorbing that, as her words from the night I proposed to her ring in my head.
You’re a terrible distraction, Jameson Vance.
“Well, tell me,” she says. “What is the life I really wanted?”
“You tell me.”
I blow out a breath and let her go, dragging a hand through my hair. I need to stop drinking. My gaze sweeps across the empty bottles; they have no answers inside.
“The thing is,” I tell her, “maybe I’ve distracted you so thoroughly that you’ve forgotten.”