Chapter 2
SAM
“Sam fuckin’ Keefer!” Groom-to-be and my best friend, Colin, yells when I walk into the Horned Goat Pub. His thick brogue is heavier than usual, which means he’s at least four pints into the night.
“Lads,” I say, greeting each of my old teammates with a one-armed hug or handshake.
“Been out of the country for two years and still knows the lingo,” Dougie jokes with a hard thump on my back, making me wince. If he keeps that up, I’ll need another round of reconstructive surgery on my left shoulder before the week’s through.
“Well, if you numpties can remember it, how hard can it be?” I throw back while signalling to the bartender.
The first sip of the room-temperature beer pulls me right back to my first pint sixteen years ago, surrounded by three of the guys here tonight, including Colin.
Colin and I lived together in our rookie year and have been inseparable since.
Well, until my retirement and move home.
But he came over for my dad’s funeral and then three weeks later for my mom’s.
He stayed for two months after Mom died, helping me sort out estate stuff and keeping me from slipping into a deeper depression than I’d already been dragged into.
We knew my dad was going to die. It was literally in the calendar along with the date and time of the funeral.
My mom’s heart attack had been a shock to everyone other than my aunt, who claimed to know it was going to happen.
My parents loved one another too much. There’s no way either one of them would be able to go on without the other.
Dying of a broken heart is a far more romantic way of looking at it. I’m not sure I’m enough of a romantic to buy it, though. But maybe I’ve never loved anyone enough to get it. My last long-term girlfriend would certainly agree with that assessment.
“How was your flight, mon ami?” Pierre Leroy asks, slinging a thick arm around my shoulders and dulling the burn from Dougie’s thumps.
Cramped, I want to say, but Pierre is nearly twice as wide as I am, and so every flight he is on, no matter the class, is cramped. “Good,” I go with.
“Good, like, joined the mile high club, or good, like, the food was edible?” he jokes, dropping his arm and leaning back on the bar top.
Pierre, who uses his French charm to its limit, has famously had sex on multiple flights.
When our team flew to New Zealand five years ago, he ended up in the bathroom with someone on both the flight there and back.
I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t witnessed the entrance and exit of both instances.
The desire to fuck in an airplane bathroom is lost on me.
Having someone climb on top in first class, on the other hand, now that I could get on board with.
“Food was fine. I only mean it was drama, hassle, and turbulence-free.”
The hopeful look on my friend’s face falls when he realizes he’s not about to get a sordid story about my sex life. He’d be even more disappointed if I admitted that my sex life over the last six months has only involved my hand.
“We’ll find you a willing and available bridesmaid.” He elbows me, accompanied by a wink, and I offer a tight smile in reply.
Wedding hookups never end well. Either it happens because someone is being pressured to land someone, or someone gets way too caught up in the whole wedding thing and believes maybe they’re next.
I’m not hooking up with someone at any wedding, let alone one thousands of miles from home.
Some may argue that the distance thing makes it the exact kind of hookup I should want.
But I’m not immune to catching feelings.
I may not buy into every romance cliché, but I understand that connection between two people can be intense, especially in the beginning.
My goal on this trip is to avoid any intense connection with another person and to make sure Colin doesn’t drink himself stupid the night or morning before the wedding.
“How about we find you one, eh?”
He laughs, shaking his head. “I found one already, you’ll meet her tomorrow. It’s only you.”
“And I like it being only me.” I pat him on the back and make my way over to where Colin is swaying with a dart in his hand.
I stop well back, in case he releases the thing on the drawback, but he shocks us all by not only hitting the board but landing the damn thing a little shy of the bullseye.
“Did you fuckin’ see that?” He whips around, pounding his chest. It’s the same thing he does when he gets a try.
“Bet you can’t do that again, Collie.” One of the other guys shouts.
“Oh yeah? And what are you going to give me if I do it again?” he hollers back as he reaches for another dart and heads to the throw line again.
“I know,” he grins over his shoulder at the guy and then over at me.
“Convince that single sister of yours to go to the wedding as Sam’s plus one.
Only bloody groomsman without a date,” he grumbles and throws the dart at the wall without taking his eyes off me, hitting the fucking bullseye dead-on.
“Make sure you grab a fresh box of rubbers, mate. The lass is frisky.”
The guys all burst out laughing, except the brother in question, who throws up both middle fingers that keep his deep scowl somewhat hidden.
“You willing to say that kind of shit in front of his sister?” I challenge, feeling a bit of joy when regret flashes across Colin’s face.
"You’re better than that, Colin. I’m here for the wedding, and that’s it,” I say, throwing back the last of my pint.
“Besides, I’ll be too busy babysitting your sorry ass to be getting up anyone’s skirt. ”
“Yeah, but only until I’ve got that pretty ring on this finger.
” He grins, the mood shifting back to levity.
“Then I’m Sarah’s problem. Besides”—he turns fully to me, a mischievous smile hijacking his face—“you’ll be in a skirt too, real easy access.
” He mimes being jacked off and another round of laughter fills the room, drowning out the music and sound of conversation from elsewhere in the pub.
“Consider lettin’ her have a go, a wedding gift.
If she wants to of course,” he adds quickly.
“You never know, maybe she’ll be the one that finally gets you to settle down. ”
I glare back at my best friend, debating whether to ignore him or punch him.
Seeing as how he’s getting married in four days, I opt to ignore him in order to avoid the ire of the bride and likely all the bridesmaids.
Colin is the same as he’s always been except now that he has Sarah he’s hellbent on all his single friends settling down.
It’s just not something I’ve ever had much of a desire to do and up until Sarah, he seemed to get that without me having to come up with a reason.
“Why don’t you want to get married, Sam?
” “Why don’t you want a house full of kids, Sam?
” I don’t know. I come from a family of happily married people who all had kids, apparently I should want that too.
Yet, here I stand, a man with no interest in either thing.
“I’m going to head out,” I say, rapping my knuckles on the table.
We’re heading up to the wedding location early tomorrow, and I’ve been up for nearly twenty-four hours.
Seeing the state of all the other guys right now, I have a feeling I’ll be tapped to drive because I’ll be the only one who’s not hungover.
“Don’t stay out too much later, or Sarah will rip you a new one. ”
Sarah and I have never met in person, but she has popped onto FaceTime now and then when I’ve been chatting with Colin.
She’s not the hardass we seem to be painting her as, but she did send me an email without Colin knowing, asking for my help to keep the guy in line, at least until the vows have been said and rings have been exchanged.
Various halfhearted insults meet my back as I walk out of the pub and across the parking lot to the hotel, picked because of its proximity to the airport, not because of its quality. Grand accommodations come tomorrow when we get to the estate Sarah and Colin have rented.
Hamilton House was built in the seventeen hundreds by Lord Hamilton and his family.
The estate sits on seventy acres of rolling hills with a loch perfect for fishing at the north end of the property.
I’d practically memorized the information from the website, looking forward to the downtime between wedding activities.
Colin gave us the option of securing a room in the main house or taking one of the three cottages dotted around the border. I jumped at the chance to be off somewhere on my own. Turns out, I was the only one to choose that option.
During my rugby days, I’d often rent a cottage in the middle-of-nowhere at the end of the season. It was my favourite thing to do, a gift to myself for a job well done. I’d stop at the store and grab the essentials, then be surrounded by no one and nothing for seven days.
Since I retired, I’ve been stuck in downtown Vancouver, running my parents’ bookstore and trying to decide how badly I want to keep the place going.
Keefer’s is an institution in the city, a must-visit destination for readers from around the world, and I haven’t had it in me to close up shop.
But I also resent the place because it keeps me from escaping.
I often find myself loathing the books I once loved, as they seem to be the only way I can get out of the hustle and bustle of the city.
The fact I’m back in Scotland for two weeks instead of one is only because my aunt threatened to burn the store down if I didn’t take more than a couple of days away.
I have a feeling she is capable of going through with it, so I didn’t bother arguing the point with her.
I am also supposed to use this trip to decide whether or not I want to sell the store or if it is something I can learn to live with.
Learn to balance with a life of my own away from it.
Learn to trust someone else to manage things if I’m not there.
“You’re a control freak, like your father,” my aunt told me before she threatened arson. And she isn’t wrong. I like to be in control. Hell, I switched seats on the plane as a way to control the intermittent kicking that was going on against my back.
As I’m washing the last hours of travel off my face, I find myself smiling when I remember how flustered the little girl’s mother had been. Big blue eyes and pretty rosy lips both parted in surprise at my offer before trying in vain to decline it.
As tired as I am from my full day of travel, I have to admit that I’d do it a thousand times over if it meant I didn’t have to do a single flight alone with a kid.