Chapter 1
Non
Nine years later
Three more hours until I could get away from the smell of stale beer. The last time I’d have to endure it for another week, thank God.
It was a quiet Saturday night shift, which was a blessing and a curse. A blessing because I had to spend most of my shift sitting behind the bar doing nothing. A curse because a six-hour shift felt like I’d been working all day.
During the summer, it was always quiet on a Saturday night at The Pig The Pig’s loyal customers never failed to drink themselves into oblivion to avoid spending the evening with their wives.
My peace and quiet were quickly ruined by an empty can being slammed down on the bar, startling me so much that I almost stood in the dirty mop bucket to my left.
I didn’t need to look up to know what customer was waiting for his next drink.
The wheezing chest and the sausage fingers with a tip missing on the right hand told me it was my least favourite regular.
“Same again, Bob?” I tried my best to force a small smile, but his lack of teeth made me want to vomit in the mop bucket. To his credit, he had managed to keep three teeth hanging on for some time.
“Been back on any of those dating apps looking for a new fella?” He spat, followed by a croaky laugh. This was one of Bob’s persistent attempts to always steer our conversations to the topic of my love life, or lack thereof.
I didn’t respond, having learnt the hard way that if I entertained this conversation, I’d be stuck having it all night.
“Another can of your finest, please, love.” He threw the exact change across the bar, pennies rolling off the edge. “You can keep the change.”
Looked like it was just two teeth now.
Turning to the low fridge behind the bar, I pulled out a can of lager as quickly as possible so he had hardly any time to gawk and make a comment. Despite complaining to Kev, the landlord of The Pig, about his behaviour, sweet fuck all was done about it.
“Not seeing that skinny thing that drives the delivery van anymore?” Oh, that old chestnut again.
“Nope.”
It wasn’t a lie. I hadn’t seen that skinny thing, Elis, in over a month. Six weeks to be exact, but who was counting?
His weekly deliveries always coincided with my Saturday night shift, but since last month, he’d done everything in his power to avoid me like the plague.
Before things got awkward, he would kick open the back door with his steel-toed boot and scream my name until I came to help him unload kegs into the storage room. My version of helping meant I’d end up sitting on one of the keg’s flirting for an hour while he did all the heavy lifting.
Since our argument, he’d called The Pig’s landline instead and asked Kev to open the door and help unload the order, completely bypassing any interaction with me.
Bob’s wheeze pulled my attention back to him. “You’re too good-looking for a rake like that, anyway.”
Bob told me at least seven times a month how good-looking I was. Almost as many times as he told me how much I remind him of his daughter. Yep, Bob is fucking disgusting.
Just as I was about to tell him to go swing, he waddled back to his table, can in hand, to the other likeminded locals who have made a slew of misogynistic comments to me over the years. For some unknown reason, they all seemed to share a mutual interest in probing me about who I was shagging.
I picked up the damp cloth at the end of the bar and started wiping it down, cleaning any trace of Bob germs. Aggressive knocking from the storage room startled me, but I knew there was only one person who knocked on the back door like that.
Had Elis finally decided to come break down the storage room door and declare his love for me? Very unlikely, considering the last time we spoke, just my suggestion of going on a date was enough to warrant the cold shoulder for over a month.
“Kev’s not answering the landline; I’ve been out here for twenty minutes! Just open the ruddy door, Non, I’m sweltering!”
Seeing him for the first time after working a five-hour shift while stinking of beer and sweat wasn’t really the romantic reunion I had in mind. But from his pissed off tone, I had no choice but to open the door for him.
He pounded the door again. “Non! Stop ignoring me—I know you’re working tonight!” Kev was going to have a fit if he kept banging the door like that.
I quickly locked the till to stop any sticky fingers from swiping anything while I was gone. Kev was renowned for being a tight arse and would dock my wages if the till was down at the end of a shift. That was the last thing I needed.
Walking past the mirrored splashback of the bar, I caught a glimpse of my reflection; it was a disaster, but there was nothing I could do about it, and the last thing I was expecting was Elis changing his mind and coming here for some grand declaration of love.
The storage room at the back of The Pig was more of a storage annex, damp and really, really old. It was filled floor to ceiling with leaking kegs and usually the source of the stale beer smell that could take three shampoos to get out of my hair.
I unlocked and swung open one of the wooden doors that made up the back wall.
From the expression on Elis’s face, I knew I looked like an absolute idiot with my fringe plastered to my forehead from sweating so much.
I think my attempt at a casual ‘nothing has happened, it’s not awkward between us’ smile might have made me look like I’d shit myself.
“Bob muttering sweet nothings in your ear getting you flustered?” Thankfully, he was in the mood for joking. Progress.
As he pushed past me, stomping towards the empty kegs to clear some room for the new delivery, his hand brushed mine and lingered slightly. I knew I shouldn’t read too much into it, but he’d definitely brushed his hands up against mine intentionally. Maybe he was re-thinking the date proposition.
“Don’t just stand there like an idiot. Help me unload this so I can get home.
It’s a Saturday night, and unlike you, I don’t want to spend it sweating my guts out in The Pig.
” He opened the van door and started lifting the kegs out.
Not that I was one to judge, but his van absolutely stunk of whatever he had just been smoking.
Maybe that was why I was the lesser of two evils compared to Kev.
“I’m going to assume your new air freshener is the reason why you decided to ask me for help and not call for Kev?”
His hand slipped on the handle of the keg, and he narrowly avoided losing a toe. “You’re one to talk, Non Meredith.”
I took that as my cue to stop forcing the conversation and shut up. And he was right; I was certainly not one to judge about the recreational use of anything that made me forget who and what I am.
A few minutes of silence passed, and Elis managed to unload two thirds of the van while I pathetically attempted to move three kegs.
He took the final keg out of my sweat-slicked palms and leaned his face close to mine, dropping his voice to a whisper.
“Go sit in the van and wait for me to finish this. We can talk; I’m just not doing it here.
Beer garden is right there, and Kev’s office window is open.
I would rather the whole of Caerglan not know all my dirty secrets. ”
Ouch. Apparently, I was a dirty secret.
Caerglan was about as stereotypical as a Welsh village could come.
Small, tight-knit community, eighty percent of residents were related, and everyone knew everyone’s business.
It didn’t matter how discreet you tried to be; someone would find out.
Providing it was juicy enough, gossip spread like wildfire.
In the few moments of silence I had in the van alone, I readied myself for the conversation ahead.
The whole argument had started a few weeks prior after one of our usual weekend hookups.
Apparently, after eighteen months of sleeping with someone, the suggestion of a date was being a little pushy and things moving too quickly, in Elis’s own words.
He screamed, I screamed, doors were slammed, and we hadn’t spoken or seen each other since.
But a small part of me was proud for standing my ground and not crawling back into his bed, as much as I wanted to.
The last two years had consisted of countless one-night stands and meaningless trysts with men, women, and a couple of gender nonconforming people.
All had left me feeling more numb than the previous, but Elis was the first one who made me feel something.
The van door squeaked open, causing me to jump, and a flustered Elis climbed into the driver’s seat. It took all my willpower to not stare at his muscled chest through his white t-shirt, which had become see-through with sweat. This wasn’t going to be easy.
Elis wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.
“You’re staring.”
Snapping my mouth shut, I folded my arms across my chest. “I’m just trying to understand why asking to go for dinner or a coffee upset you so much. It’s a date, Elis, not a fucking marriage proposal.”
Elis furrowed his brow before brushing strands of hair out of his face.
The long hair was a new look, and one I was incredibly fond of; he was handsome with a shaved head but reminded me way too much of his younger self.
Kissing him used to fill me with so much guilt, so I was thankful when he decided to let it grow.
“Giving you the cold shoulder wasn’t the most mature reaction,” he said with a sigh.
At least we could agree on something.
“But I thought we had an understanding this was just a physical thing, Non. Making this official just makes it messy.” He shifted in his seat.