Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Joe
I must be out of my freaking mind.
I peer through the windshield, looking for something—anything—familiar. Woollybooger’s Roadhouse is still in business, its beer-guzzling bigfoot mural more faded than I remember. The gravel lot has a sprinkling of trucks and cars already, although it’s not quite dinner hour. There are more buildings between it and the outskirts of Galway than there used to be. A Target, a gas and convenience station, a small neighborhood. The town itself seems less changed, brick and stone and wood familiar, the trees taller.
My breath and my heart are doing funny things in my chest. I could point my truck toward July’s on the town square, floor the gas pedal, and not stop for signs or lights until I’m at the restaurant. Race inside and sweep her off her feet. Carry her away to somewhere where we can find our home in each other again.
Or I could act like a normal person with some sense. Follow the traffic rules, find my building, give some actual thought to how to approach her now that I’m here.
Because I’m here.
It wasn’t untrue, what I told Mom before she died. I really had been restless for a while. I thought opening the second restaurant might take care of that, but soon they were both doing well in the hands of a great group of people, and I was itching to do something else. I came up with a plan to sell the restaurants to my employees and go back to school. Specifically, a social work program.
So the night Mom told me what she and Dad had done, I added Western Carolina’s MSW program to my application list. Stayed up late into the night doing my most thorough web search yet for July. No obituary, thank god, and no wedding announcement either. Just a million news tidbits about her being on some board or other. I found the restaurant on Instagram and Facebook, but nothing personal under July’s own name.
After Mom died, there was nothing keeping me in Colorado that didn’t feel like a burden. I was ready to move on. And July deserves to know what happened, even if her response is, “I’m sorry, who are you again?”
But now, as I ease into Galway, I’m in pep-talk mode. Sure, this change was quick, but that’s not necessarily bad. It’s decisive . And maybe it wasn’t wise to commit to this move before I talk to July, but I didn’t have a way to reach her except through the restaurant’s phone number. I did try calling, twice, but chickened out when I heard the chirpy, definitely-not-my-girl voice call out, “July’s!” over lively, clattering background noise.
After two decades of believing she didn’t answer my letters, maybe it’s understandable that it didn’t occur to me until this morning that I could’ve tried snail mail again.
So I can rationalize or explain away those things.
Buying a building three blocks from July’s, sight unseen, though? That was nuts, even if it does have empty commercial space below and living quarters above. Don’t know what I’m going to do with my MSW—just got a vague idea that I want to work with young people in trouble—but by god, I’ve got me a building to do it in.
At a stoplight I don’t remember, I wonder what my army buddy Gabe would do in this situation. He used to laugh at my impulsiveness, say it was gonna get me killed if I didn’t become the boss of it.
Gabe would lay low for a bit, get a feel for things. Make a plan.
It’s thanks to Gabe that I got through school and made a success of the restaurants. It’s due to him that I’m not coming to July empty-handed. That would’ve been just great, me knocking on her door saying, “Hey, July, it’s me! Sure, I disappeared the day after we made love, and you haven’t heard from me in two decades, and well, no, I’m not working right now, but I’m back, baby!”
Chances are she’ll murder me outright when she sees me.
Assuming she remembers me.
I have lost my freaking mind.
I count down the street numbers, find my “new” old place, and park.
This would be a bad time to go look for her at the restaurant. It’s almost dinner rush. Very bad time.
I fish out the key the Realtor sent me and make my way into my tired brick building. Been empty for a while. Smells like old mildew and dust. The big front window is cloudy with dirt. Cobwebs up high, bits of leftover office stuff on the floors. Plastic trash can, a couple of pens. The fluorescent ceiling fixtures flicker and blink slowly, noisily to life when I flip the switch. That’s good. But there are holes punched ( kicked ?) in most of the walls. Shit.
Besides the main room, there’s a small office, a restroom, and a storage closet on the ground floor. Up dark, creaky stairs is an equally dirty front room with two tall windows and a kitchenette with ancient fixtures. Behind that, a smallish bedroom and bath. The water pipes groan and spit out rusty water for a minute before it runs clear.
It all needs a good scrubbing, and it’ll be night soon. As I step back out onto the street, I can’t help glancing toward the square, where I imagine light and laughter and music spilling from the restaurant that was once just my girl’s dream.
I’m halfway there, picking up speed, before I get hold of myself and skid to a stop. A young couple passes me on the sidewalk, glancing over, eyes cautious, skirting wide around me.
I can’t go to her now. If she’s there, she’ll be swamped with work.
And I need a plan.
***
“So you’re not here to apply for a grant?” Rose Barnes, the representative I’m meeting with from the Galway Brown Foundation, leans back in her seat with a frown. She’s a short, round woman with flyaway hair and big brown eyes in a sweet face.
“No, I’m just at the information-gathering stage.” I explain my schooling plans and my desire to work with kids in trouble. “I looked up youth programs in the area, but I couldn’t get a feel for what other services might be needed. I’m hoping you can tell me what’s here, what’s in the works, what gaps still exist… Maybe I can focus my coursework on some of the gaps.”
“That’s…very proactive of you.” She describes the nonprofits working with kids in Galway County. “I’ve got some materials I can copy for you. Just a sec.” She squeezes past me in her little office and goes out to the reception area.
Some wise part of me scheduled this appointment with the foundation before I left Colorado. They fund a lot of nonprofits in this area. Made sense to meet with them right off, to give me something to think about no matter what happens with July.
And it gives me something concrete to do with my morning, because I still haven’t come up with a plan for approaching her.
It’s a miracle I kept myself from going into the restaurant last night. Walked by when dinner rush was in full swing. Place was crowded, drawing me close, fifty different conversations and laughter I could hear from the sidewalk. I glanced in the windows when I went by but didn’t see her.
So I walked around the square, had a beer at Lindon’s, went back to my building, and worked on cleaning the living quarters and lugging my stuff in from the truck.
It was weird walking the streets. Didn’t see a single person I knew from my few months here before, and nobody seemed to recognize me. Felt kind of like a ghost floating invisible through his former haunts.
Rose Barnes comes bustling back in from the other room and thrusts a fistful of copies at me. “Here you go. This will give you some idea of what we have already. Most of these have websites listed, if you want more information on them.” She settles back in her chair. “So you just moved to Galway?”
“Got in last night.”
“Do you have questions about the town? Did you find a good place to stay?”
I half laugh. “Actually, I bought a building before I came. Empty retail space on the bottom, apartment on top. Needs work, but it’ll do.”
She perks up. “What kind of work?”
I haven’t given that much thought. “It’s got kind of a someone-might-have-been-tortured-under-this-bare-bulb vibe to it. And an old tub with no shower. Gotta have a shower. Also, it’s only got a little bitty kitchenette. Appliances older than god.”
She glances at her computer screen. “Got time for an early lunch? I can introduce you to my husband. He does reno work, and he knows everybody else in town who does too. We can find you somebody.”
“Well…that’d be great. Thanks.” I was right, remembering Galway as friendly.
So I get in my car and follow her…and she leads me right to July’s corner of the town square.
“I’m taking you to my favorite place,” Rose says with a big smile as I climb out of my truck and walk over to where she’s parked, just two blocks from my building. “Hungry?” She glances down, and I realize I’m rubbing my stomach.
Having trouble getting my gut to stop doing nervous flips.
“Uh, yeah. Skipped breakfast.” Half-true.
I peer in the restaurant’s tall side windows as we walk to the corner. No July in sight, but I can sense her there, just like last night. My blood is humming in my damn veins, wanting to burst out of me and go to her with little messages from my heart.
Rose and I round to the front of the building, and I tug open the door with cold hands, pretty sure this is a terrible idea. I’m nowhere close to knowing the right words to say to ease July into seeing me for the first time in twenty years.
Seems to be our pattern, me doing things that will be hard on her without giving her any warning.
Inside there’s music and laughing conversation and air scented with fresh baked breads and spices. My empty stomach would be enthusiastic if I weren’t scared out of my mind.
“There’s Angus!” Rose has been up on her tiptoes, scanning the room, and now she waves at a huge guy flagging us down from a booth on the inside wall.
Dude’s a giant. Gotta be nearly six and a half feet tall. A wall of a man with a wild, curly beard. He gives Rose a sweet smile, ushers her into the booth beside him, and then turns to raise an eyebrow at me.
“Angus, this is Joe Anderson. He’s new to town. I asked him to lunch thinking you could help him get his place fixed up. Maybe recommend somebody if you don’t do it yourself.” Rose settles in the booth, and his expression softens again as she drops a kiss on his enormous biceps. “Joe, this is my husband, Angus Drummond.”
We shake. I scan the room again before I slide in across from them.
Angus squints at me, his eyes a surprising bright blue-green. “You look kinda familiar. Why’s that?”
“Lived here a few months when I was sixteen. Liked it. That’s why I wanted to come back.”
He nods, points, and shakes one big finger at me. “Yeah…sophomore year? You had long hair?”
One of many things Dad had hated about me. “Tail end of sophomore year and most of the summer, yeah.” A flash of movement catches my eye and I glance to the right and—
There she is. My beautiful Amazon. My lungs squeeze up like I just slammed into a wall.
She’s still tall and strong and solid, still golden and laughing as she lowers a tray to serve the lucky bastards a few tables over. I hear snatches of her words: “…only bringing this out ’cause it’s your birthday, Frank. How y’all doin’?”
I don’t give a shit about Frank’s answer. My senses devour her . Snug orange T-shirt and jeans skating close along her thick curves, her shiny all-shades-of-blond hair caught back in a swinging ponytail, her voice the warm honey I remember. I wonder if she still smells like soap and baby shampoo.
Once in school, before I met July, I heard some dipshit call her fat. Her friends—she’s always had good friends—looked him up and down, and then turned to her. “You want to kill him or can we?” July’s cheeks were pink, and she could definitely have taken the asshole apart with her bare hands, but she just said, “Not worth it. He could probably use an escort back to fourth grade, though…” and swept on by, leaving him sputtering.
Fucking magnificent.
“You know July?”
I’d forgotten all about Rose. She and Angus are watching me, his brow quirked again.
I suck in some air—apparently I also forgot about the body’s need for oxygen—and consider my answer. “Used to, yeah,” I say finally. “Haven’t seen her in twenty years though.”
Birthday Boy says something, and July laughs that laugh that always made me feel like I was warming myself by a fire. My gut twists. “God damn,” I hear myself say, and realize that Rose and Angus are looking at July now too.
She must feel it. She turns, meets my gaze, and—
All the color drains from her face.
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