Chapter 8
Amos
The Cozy Bean was quiet on a Friday night in a way the Bear Den never was.
Low lighting warmed the brick walls and mismatched chairs crowded around small wooden tables.
Holt was on the small corner stage playing acoustic guitar while Sara, a woman from Deer Springs, sang a folk song, her voice low and unhurried. Something about a mountain and a man who’d stolen her heart.
“So this is what a quiet Friday looks like,” I said, wrapping both hands around my coffee mug that Aster had just delivered to our table.
Shelly smiled at me, her eyes lighting up. “This is what it looks like, yeah.”
I’d never been anywhere near the Cozy Bean on a Friday night in my life. The vibe was mellow instead of raucous. And I actually didn’t mind it.
“You look very civilized right now,” Shelly said, her eyes dancing as she leaned forward across the table toward me, her elbows propped on the edge, her chin in her hands.
“I am civilized. I’m practically a gentleman.”
“You’re practically something,” she agreed.
I reached across the table and took her hand where it rested near her mug, lacing my fingers through hers the way she’d shown me, easy and unhurried.
She looked down at our joined hands for a second, then back up at me, and her eyes softened.
“That,” she said quietly, “is what I mean. Small touches. That’s what makes a woman feel like she matters.”
“You do matter,” I rumbled, and I wasn’t pretending anything when I said it.
She went very still.
Like she didn’t know what to do with that.
Like she didn’t quite believe me.
And I didn’t know how to prove it yet.
Her cheeks went pink, and she looked down at her coffee. We sat like that for a while, listening to Sara ease into a slower song.
The coffee shop held a quiet flow of conversation from the other tables, and something about the atmosphere felt intimate.
It was the most settled I’d felt in longer than I could remember.
“Can I ask you something?” Shelly asked.
“Always.”
“Why do you go to the Bear Den every Friday?” She tilted her head. “And I don’t mean that as a criticism. I go too. But for you, it’s like clockwork.”
I shrugged. “Pool. Friends. Charlie plays good music. You’re usually there.”
She gave me a look that said she wasn’t done with the question yet.
“Okay, and yeah, sometimes I end up talking to a woman,” I admitted.
“Talking to,” she repeated.
“What?”
“Amos. You always end up walking one out the door. And I’m not judging you for it. But if that’s your Friday night every week, you’re never going to find yourself in with someone real. That’s all I’m saying.”
I turned that over in my mind. “I mostly just go to play pool and see friends.”
“Yeah, but at the end of the night you’re always dragging a woman out of there who only wants one thing.”
I frowned at her. “One thing?”
She gave me a patient look. “There are women who go out specifically to find a man for the night. They’re not looking for anything past sunrise.
And your whole vibe, and the way you fill out a shirt,” she waved her free hand vaguely in my direction, “makes you the perfect candidate. You’re the bucking bronco they want to check off their list.”
Something about the way she said it sat uncomfortably in my chest, because I’d heard that before.
From Shelly herself, the morning after we’d slept together. She’d called me a one-night rodeo.
“Isn’t that what women want?” I asked.
“Not all of us. The ones you choose always have hungry eyes. They go out stalking the hottest guy in the bar. And frequently that happens to be you.”
I studied her, listening.
“But the rest of us women,” she said carefully, “the ones you might not notice past the throngs throwing themselves at you. We’re the ones quietly nursing our drinks at our tables.
Waiting for someone to actually see us. If you tried talking to one of us, you might find yourself in a relationship before you knew what hit you. ”
“How do you tell the difference?”
She was quiet for a moment, and then she said, “Well, just look at me. I’m not exactly the woman who lights up a room when I walk in. I’m a little dumpy. My candle doesn’t shine the brightest.”
She said it plainly, without bitterness, but I hated every word of it.
“You’re not dumpy. You’re hot as fuck.”
Shelly ignored that and continued, “You’ll find me chatting with friends, being mellow, or tucked in a corner somewhere with a book.” She cleared her throat, and her eyes went shy in a way that hit me somewhere low and warm. “I’m not out chasing men. Although I wouldn’t mind catching one.”
I stared at her.
She cleared her throat again and kept going, faster now. “In contrast, take the woman in the pink shirt. The night we, um… the first night. She was making a display of herself, coming on strong. All she wanted was a wild ride with the wildest mountain man she could find. And you fit the bill.”
I thought back to that night and realized she was right. I hadn’t thought about that woman since. Didn’t even know her name. I only knew she wasn’t local because I hadn’t recognized her face.
But I remembered what Shelly’s face had looked like as we passed her on our way out the door.
The woman had been sneering at Shelly Bear.
And… Shelly had been sneering right back.
“Why didn’t you like her?” I asked.
Shelly looked surprised. Then she stammered, “She, um…”
I waited for her to finish.
After sitting there in silence for a minute, Shelly quietly said, “When I was coming back in through the front door, she and her friends walked in at the same time and she elbowed me into the railing.”
Shelly frowned. “Then she looked right through me like I wasn’t even standing there. No apology. Nothing. It was rude. And I didn’t like the idea of her sliding her body all up and down you after she was nasty to me.”
Something went very still inside me.
I thought about Shelly standing outside the Bear Den, getting knocked into the railing by some woman who didn’t even have the decency to say sorry.
“Shelly,” I growled. “I would never go home with someone who disrespected you like that.”
She picked up her mug, staring into it. “I’m not trying to cock-block you.”
And there it was. I finally understood.
Shelly was the one who always friend-zoned me.
It didn’t come from my end.
Even right now, while we were supposed to be fake-dating each other, I was still in the friend zone.
“You don’t get to talk that way while we’re fake-dating,” I rumbled. “I’m not supposed to be your friend right now. I’m supposed to be your boyfriend. Would you say that to a boyfriend?”
The blush that moved across her face told me she heard me loud and clear.
“Is she why you came on so strong that night?” I asked.
She sighed. “Yeah. It was all because of Pink Shirt.”
“Pink Shirt?”
“That’s what I started calling her in my head.”
I laughed, and then Shelly laughed too, and the tension between us eased back into something comfortable. I kept Shelly’s hand in mine and thought about the fact that we had less than a week left of our thirty days.
Shelly slipped off to the bathroom while I thought about our whole experiment.
The end date was killing me.
The biggest problem with our fake relationship was that it didn’t feel fake anymore.
And the even bigger issue was that I didn’t know if she felt the same way… or if I was the only one who’d forgotten this was supposed to end.
I’d dropped hints.
More than hints, if I were being honest.
I’d told her she could be my number two for life.
I’d told her we should date forever.
I’d even taken her to my momma’s Sunday dinner table, which I’d never done before in my life, and my momma had looked at Shelly like she’d hung the moon.
But Shelly had laughed every time I’d said something real, like I was just tossing a joke out there between us. And I had no idea what it was going to take to make her believe I actually meant it.