Chapter 3
Greyson
Wisteria Creek always had a way of holding onto people; its roots ran deep, like the oak trees lining Main Street and the weathered wooden beams of The Hollow Tap.
I’d spent my whole life here, and after my parents passed away in that car accident four years ago, leaving town felt impossible.
My mom used to say this place was stitched into our bones. She wasn’t wrong.
I inherited their house, their debts and more heartbreak than I knew what to do with.
But what kept me going was this bar. My dad used to bring me here when I was just a kid, sitting me up on a stool and letting me “help” refill the napkin dispensers while he talked fishing with the locals.
When it went up for sale, I cashed in everything: savings, insurance money, and even sold my dad’s old boat to buy it.
The Hollow Tap wasn’t just a business. It was a lifeline.
Some days it felt like I was keeping the memory of my parents alive with every drink poured and every neon light buzzing overhead. On other days, it felt like I was just hiding behind the bar to avoid dealing with everything else I’d lost.
Then Blair came back into town.
I hadn’t seen her in over a decade since she disappeared during college without a word.
Not even a goodbye. Back then, she was the girl with wild ideas and a notebook always tucked under her arm.
She wasn’t loud or flashy like the other girls.
She didn’t need to be. There was something about her; calm, focused, and always looking out the window like her mind was somewhere else. Somewhere better.
I used to watch her when she wasn’t looking. Not in a creepy way. Just curious. I wanted to know what she was always thinking about, where her mind went when she tilted her head, or bit the corner of her lip while reading.
I remember one day I ran into her in the hallway of our senior year. We cracked jokes and she would laugh. Damn, I couldn’t get that sound out of my head. And I swear to God, I thought about that smile and laugh for the rest of the week.
We spent that whole week in the library.
She always brought highlighters and snacks.
She always smelled faintly like coconut and ink.
And she laughed once, when I made some stupid joke about Maddox hugging people too hard.
He was my best friend in school, and has now become my number one customer at the bar.
It’s been nice having a friend who still lives in town, especially after Blair left.
I had no one, yet Maddox has always been there for me.
I didn’t think she noticed me a lot in class. Not really. I was just the guy who played football and worked after school at his dad’s bar. She was going places, writing stories, and dreaming big.
But once, at her locker, she looked over her shoulder and said, “You’re not as much of a jock as people think, Greyson Shaw.”
It wasn’t much. But I held on to it for a long time.
I was the guy who never had the nerve to tell her how I felt.
Now she was standing in the middle of my bar; older, sharper, guarded, but still her.
Still beautiful. Still magnetic. Something in me stirred, a flicker of something buried and old and still very much alive.
I should’ve left it alone. But Wisteria Creek?
It never lets you leave your past behind. Not really.
And maybe, neither did I.