Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
AUbrEY
The mirror hanging on the wall in my storeroom was a lying bitch.
I should’ve taken it down years ago, or covered the damn thing, like people do with furniture when they leave their East Coast mansions after the summer season, but I had this maddening need to check my face every ten minutes.
Was I really that old? Inside, I felt twenty-six. Outside, I felt like Blanche from the Golden Girls , just with longer hair and less sex.
Fuck. Is that a chin hair?
First hot flashes and now whiskers? And why did they have to be so dark! The rest of my hair was graying; why couldn’t my whiskers get lighter too?
Just great. Add onto that a failing business and the fact that I hadn’t had a good orgasm in more years than I dared admit, even to myself—oh, and don’t forget my twenty-three-year-old twins who wouldn’t know the meaning of the word responsibility if it slapped them across their faces—and you could say life wasn’t going exactly as planned.
Since they’d moved out of the house and gone off to school at Montana State in Bozeman, where they subsequently failed and quit, Micah and Benji called or texted for money about once every two weeks. Pizza delivery didn’t afford them much past rent and their phone bill. Benji was usually the sacrificial lamb because Micah was too much of a mama’s boy, but the result was the same. I paid their damn bills, and then I had to live off of generic microwaveable oatmeal for the rest of the month.
The death benefits from Tommy’s service in the military hadn’t gone as far as one might think. At least the boys’ college and the house was paid off. Maybe I should’ve been thinking about selling it. The twins and I could’ve certainly used the money, but I’d been impatiently waiting for them to get their shit in gear. If they ever grew up and took life seriously, maybe I wouldn’t feel utter panic at the thought of handing them a big wad of cash that they’d probably use to invest in beer and video games.
If wishes were fishes. If wishes were fishes, I could eat something other than oatmeal for a change.
My small, woman-owned business was just booming in little Wisper, Wyoming.
Yeah, right.
Most of the other businesses in town were having way better luck, but in the last week, I’d sold three books. Three! And not even hardbacks. I really needed to dip my toe in that whole foil-embossed/sprayed-edges trend. But jeez. They were so expensive! I’d have to front the cost to order them, but if they didn’t sell, I’d take another loss. Sure, there were some customers I might be able to entice into buying them, but not that many, and probably mostly the ladies from book club at the library. Then what the hell would I do with the rest?
There were a few bookstores in the city. Jackson offered a lot more to draw tourists than Wisper did. I needed to figure out how to get those customers to our little town, but I had no idea how to tie my store or its location to tourism. Why would a customer drive forty minutes to my store, just to see the same books they could find closer to their hotel?
An online shop might be the way to go. Maybe it could be popular on social media if I could figure out how to bully a blogger or two to share the store and hype it up. We could get eyes on Your Local Bookie outside of Wisper. But then I’d have to master social media and learn how to make a website. Who has time for that crap? And there was no way I could afford to hire someone.
It all came down to taxes. I hadn’t paid mine in two years. It was only a matter of time until the IRS came knocking on my door. I had four weeks to come up with nearly ten-thousand dollars, and if I didn’t, well then, I’d be screwed, and not in the good way. The five grand I’d miraculously managed to stash away in a savings account would only pay it down by half.
After giving up trying to untangle my frizzy mop of hair in the mirror, I plucked the midnight-black whisker using the tweezers I’d never again leave home without and heard voices outside my shop.
When I peeked around the corner and looked out the front window, past the display of mystery classics that hadn’t sold for shit, I saw Devo Mescal, my friend Abey’s fiancée, and Rye Graves walking past the store on Main Street.
Sneaking closer, I was hoping for a better look at Rye in his jeans, just as long as no one noticed me looking. Especially not Rye. I was still blushing from the time he asked me out, eight months ago!
But good God that ass.
I tried to duck and hide behind a shelving unit stacked full of cookbooks, but when he halted on the sidewalk out front, I stopped dead in my tracks in the middle of the store and stood up straight, completely conspicuous and frozen like Frosty.
Rye looked in at me.
I looked out at him.
My heart rate doubled, my palms began to sweat, and when he tipped his tan cowboy hat at me and flashed me a stupidly sexy grin, a hot flash hotter than the infernos of Hell took over my entire body.
They kept walking, and I was left hyperventilating.
Jesus. That man.
But compared to me, Rye was just a boy. Tommy’s best friend’s little brother. He may’ve been in his mid-thirties, but I was… twenty-nine. If anyone asked, that was my answer. My auntie always said to “leave them guessin’.” And no way would I admit to anyone I had reached well into my forties.
Aw damn. Who was I kidding? Three years away from fifty was a far cry from twenty-nine.
Somebody should probably come and put me out to pasture, which was exactly what would happen if Ryder Graves got his way.
All his nods and tips of his hat couldn’t make me forget about my chin hairs, the ever-expanding menopausal spare tire beginning to encircle my midsection, or the fact that my neck was getting shorter and my jowls longer by the hour. I kept getting a pain in my big toe and was convinced I’d inherited arthritis from my dad and it had set in, and soon the whole house of cards would collapse around me. I wouldn’t be able to walk anymore and my boys would have to put me in an old folks home I couldn’t afford.
And those tight jeans Rye wore—Every. Goddamn. Day? Yeah, they couldn’t make me orgasm any more than I could do it myself. I hadn’t had one in, oh, let me think… five years. Give or take five. Okay, so that was a bit of an exaggeration. I’d had what one would technically call an “orgasm,” when I spent the hour it took for me to work myself up to it, but I wouldn’t call them * orgasms .* Not the mind-bending, “exploding all over some guy’s cock” kind of orgasm. The kind of orgasm that made a woman scream and mewl and beg.
Who didn’t want one of those? Or ten.
After their father died overseas and I’d been left alone to raise two thirteen-year-old boys, it felt weird having “sexy me time” with them in the house, so it wasn’t like toys had been an option. Those sneaky little shits went through everything. Nothing was sacred to them, certainly not dildos, and then when Benji and Micah moved out, I’d gotten out of the habit.
Oh sure, there’d been a few men since then, but one of them was ten years older than me and couldn’t get it up, which caused all kinds of self-doubt. It lingered still so that every time I looked in the mirror, all I saw was an unattractive oaf with a graying frizz ball on the top of her head. Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. I did have good hair, even with the grays peeking through. It was one thing peri- and now full-on-menopause hadn’t stolen from me. Yet.
The second guy was younger than me, and he came so fast, he probably could’ve medaled in the Olympics, which made me think he hadn’t really wanted to have sex with me. He’d probably been thinking of some young woman he’d met at a concert festival, but I was there and would do for five minutes. And the last guy had just gotten divorced when we went out, and he cried through the entire sexual debacle.
So, yeah, you might say I’d gotten over the whole thing. And it was fine. I was fine on my own. Sexless. Husbandless. And about to be businessless and possibly homeless.
At least I had my books. And when the IRS came to take my store and my house away, I could use them to build my funeral pyre.
Ugh, Aubrey. Get out of your head!
Fine. Grabbing my cell from the checkout counter behind me, I tapped on the screen till I saw my best friend’s face, then clicked Call.
“Aubs? Everything okay?” my soul sister, Roxanne, asked. Thank God she’d taken the open deputy job with our local sheriff’s department because, since she’d shown up in town eight months ago, it felt like we’d never been apart. Our standing Thursday lunch dates and the romance book club we’d both joined were the only things getting me through some weeks. “I thought you were meetin’ me at the library?”
“You’re not on duty today, right?”
“No, I’m off. Dan and Frank have the station covered.”
“Good. Screw book club. Come pick my ass up. Let’s go eat fries and get sauced at Manny’s Bar.”
“What about the store? You don’t usually close for lunch this early.”
I groaned into my phone. “Who gives a crap? I haven’t sold a book in three days. I’ll just put up the ‘Pop a squat, I’ll be right back’ sign. No one will care.”
“Aubrey—”
“Please, Roxi,” I whined. “I need a drink.”
“Okay, bestie. Be right there.”
“What the hell is that?” I asked, pointing to the two six-packs of hard lemonade sitting on the front seat of Roxi’s truck when she picked me up half an hour later.
She lifted one and reached behind her to set it on the back seat. “You said you needed a drink, but, girl, it ain’t even noon. So I compromised. You get your drink, but we’re goin’ to book club. If you’re havin’ a bad day, you need the whole group. Not just me. We’ve all got your back.”
Grabbing the second six-pack, I plonked my butt in the seat and set it in my lap. “Fine.”
As I clicked my seatbelt into place, Roxi hit the gas. “What’s got your nipples in a twist today? The twins gettin’ in trouble again?”
“No. Well, probably, but if they are, I don’t wanna know about it.”
“So what then?” Roxi flipped her newly highlighted waves over her shoulder and wiped a finger under her lined lip.
She was on the hunt for a man, so she never left her house without a full face of makeup and her hair teased and twisted into soft, beachy waves. Too bad there wasn’t a beach in sight or an eligible guy over the age of thirty for fifty miles in any direction. Wisper, Wyoming was the small-town equivalent of a cellular dead zone— nobody got a signal—but at least with Roxi around, I didn’t have to endure my forties and fast-approaching fifties alone.
“It’s nothin’. I’m just… God! I’m sick of myself. I’m sick of my life, and I’m sick of complainin’ about it.”
“So, do somethin’ different. Take a chance.” She peeked over at me. “I saw Rye Graves this mornin’.”
Rubbing at a dirty spot on my jeans, I licked my thumb and tried to scrub it out. “Oh, yeah?” Fuck, was that oatmeal? It was dried and crusty and looked like baby puke.
She scoffed. “I know you saw him too. I was catchin’ up with Abey at the station before you called. We saw him and Devo go for coffee at the café, and then they walked right by your shop on their way back. He came to town to see his uncle again. That’s why you called me, right?”
“What? Why are you and the sheriff spyin’ on Rye Graves? And no, that’s not why I called.”
The knowing smirk on her face made me want to stick out my tongue at her. “Sure about that? Listen, we’re officers of the law. We have to keep ourselves apprised on the people of Wisper. You can’t be mad at us about that.”
“Sure I can,” I said under my breath. “My bad mood has nothin’ to do with that kid , who by the way, doesn’t live in Wisper, so I dunno what you’re apprisin’ yourselves of. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t give Rye freakin’ Graves a second thought.”
Roxi rolled her eyes. I hadn’t fooled her, and even I could hear how testy I sounded. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
“Kid? He’s in his thirties. And maybe not him, but I bet his ass in those jeans gets lots of your thoughts.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I argued. “And he’s a hell of a lot younger than me, so he’s a kid. He’s Tommy’s best friend’s little brother. I’ll always see him as a kid.”
“Yeah, well that kid has a hard-on the size of Wyoming for you, and you know it. I’m not tryin’ to be a bitch, but Tommy’s gone. It’s been a long time, Aubs. And Rye’s brother may’ve been Tommy’s friend, but he doesn’t even live around here. Who cares?” She shook her head, and her hair tumbled over her shoulder again. She tucked it behind her ear. “I’m bustin’ my ass here, lookin’ for any man I can find with a job and a half-decent personality, and you’ve got the perfect specimen breathin’ down your neck. I don’t get it.”
When she parked in front of the library, she shut off the truck. “Seriously, why won’t you give him a chance?”
Because! Because he’s a baby compared to me. And because people would talk. I’ve had enough gossip in my life. I was the focus of the town gossip before Tommy died because I was a doormat to him, and after, everybody talked because I didn’t grieve him the way people thought I should. And the twins never help the situation with all the trouble they get into.
And because I’m scared.
I’m terrified to let someone into my life who sees me as a woman. Not a mom. Not a widow. Not an old woman.
Just a woman.
Because then maybe they’d see that I’m not. If you don’t have a uterus, if your body quits doing all the things that made you a woman in the first place, are you one, really?
And besides, my boys would probably sacrifice me at their father’s alter if I dated some young cowboy. They’d never be okay with it.
“Dammit, Roxi, because… because technically, he hasn’t said a word to me in months, and I— You know what? Because I said so. That’s why.”
Roxi laughed. “You are such a mom.” But then she speared me with a look so full of disapproval, I felt it in my Keds. “And we are not done with this conversation.”