Chapter 18
Tank
“Do you think they liked me?” I ask Rose.
My voice comes out sounding incredibly self-conscious. But then, that’s exactly how I feel.
It’s disconcerting, to say the least. As though I’ve been transported back to a much younger version of myself. I can’t remember the last time I felt nervous the way I have multiple times this week.
I hadn’t meant to stay long, not wanting to interrupt Rose’s visit with her friends.
The goal was to show up with food, make a good but quick impression, and then get back to Dark Horse and the planning for stage one of Wolf.
But once I was inside, the Emilys refused to let me leave.
I joined them at the kitchen island for a friendly dinner that quickly turned into more of an interrogation.
Still friendly, but Rose’s friends don’t pull punches.
Even Jacks, the only person I’ve met who I’d actually describe as jolly. It might be an accurate description, but she was just as intense with her questioning as the other Emily.
If Rose stays with me now, it’s in spite of some of the more humiliating things they were able to drag out of me with their questions.
“Are you kidding?” Rose laughs and places a hand on my chest. “How could they not like you? You are a good, good man, Theo.”
Without even thinking about it, I lift my hand to cover hers, holding her palm there, against my heart. We’re standing at the bottom of the stairs at the street-level exit to the loft.
“I like it when you call me Theo. Have I already told you that?”
“I like calling you Theo,” she says. “But I also like Tank. Is it okay if I call you both?”
“You can call me anything you want to,” I tell her. “But only you get to call me Theo. I like your friends, but I think for them and everyone else, I’ll just be Tank.”
“I like that. My Theo. They can all have Tank.” Smiling, she says in a little louder voice, “By the way, my friends are probably listening at the door.”
“We would never!” a muffled voice calls from above, and both Rose and I laugh.
“As long as you aren’t watching!” Rose calls up the stairs, giving me a look that has my heart beating a little faster underneath her palm. “Because if you are, this might make you a little uncomfortable.”
“Noted! And nice to meet you, Tank!” one of them calls through the door.
I think it’s the Emily they call Emily. She’s the one I left still wondering if she approved of me. With Jacks, there was no question—it was all right there on her face and in her smiles, even as she tossed hard questions at me.
They’re an interesting pair, and clearly, the best of friends for Rose.
Sharing a meal with them made me realize that I don’t really have anyone like that in my life. Other than my sons. To a degree, Chevy, and now, maybe Wolf.
With so many years spent fully invested in raising my kids on my own, I didn’t have the bandwidth for anyone else. Often, I barely had the bandwidth for myself. It’s entirely possible I sort of forgot myself. Now that my kids are settled, it’s only right for me to think about what’s next for me.
With the town, with my dilapidated house, and now, more importantly, with Rose.
I’ve had this on my mind, but so far, I haven’t made a terribly large amount of progress.
Maybe after we get through this thing with Wolf, I’ll be more freed up.
Although when I finish one project or activity, there always seems to be another popping right up in its place.
“I think they’re gone,” Rose says now, drawing my attention back to her. Specifically, to her lips, which are curved up in a smile and leaning closer. She’s two steps up from where I stand at the bottom, which means I don’t need to bend down.
“Any particular reason you wanted to get rid of them?” I tease. With one hand still pinning hers to my chest, I lift the other to cup her face, then trace the line of her jaw with my finger, trailing down her neck just in time to feel her swallow against my fingertip.
“I had some thoughts.” Rose’s eyes start to drift closed. “Some ideas.”
“I’d love to hear them.” I lean closer, brushing my lips against her cheek. Though I spent probably at least an hour or two kissing her earlier today, she still feels like completely new territory to me.
“Maybe I’ll show you instead,” Rose says, and then she’s got her free hand on the back of my neck, tugging my mouth to hers.
I am not anticipating the whoops and cheers that I receive when I walk into Dark Horse Brewery twenty minutes later.
Pausing inside the door, I glance around the room, confused.
I’m not the only one unsure what is happening.
Everyone in the room not related to me is glancing around, trying to figure out what’s going on.
Meanwhile, Collin and Pat are standing up, clapping and giving me some kind of hero’s reception that I don’t think I’ve earned.
Molly, Winnie, and Kyoko are all in on it as well—not making quite as much racket as my sons, but definitely contributing.
Only James is silent behind the bar, shaking his head with arms folded over his chest.
As I cross the room, I wave a dismissive hand, hoping I can get them to stop making such a spectacle.
“Is all this about Wolf’s thing?” I ask. “Because I already told you it was Rose’s idea.”
Stage one of my plan, which I outlined for Rose and the Emilys in detail earlier, is a surprise rally for Wolf that we’re going to host here on Saturday night. It will be less a show of campaign support and more a show of support for the man himself.
Which, if all goes according to plan, will bolster his confidence enough that he’ll abandon his plans to drop out of the race.
I’ve already invited him out for a beer at Dark Horse that night.
He just doesn’t know it won’t be just the two of us.
I was a little worried that he wouldn’t be able to because of Backwoods Bar, but he said he decided to take a full week off.
Which made me wonder just how hard he’s been taking all of this.
I can’t remember a single night that place has been closed since I first bought Sheet Cake.
Even on Christmas, I remember hearing about people out there, drinking and sharing a goose that Wolf roasted.
“Wolf’s thing?” Pat asks, then laughs. “Oh, that. Well, that is awesome, and now we know that we have Rose to thank for that idea.”
Collin slaps me on the back. “No, this is in response to a photo that was just posted on Neighborly.”
“Photo?” my stomach suddenly drops. “What photo?”
“Don’t worry,” Winnie says, holding out her phone. “I already took the post down. But screenshots live forever.”
The picture taking up her phone screen is grainy and dark, taken from a distance. But it’s very clearly a picture of Rose and me, kissing in the doorway of my loft, just moments ago when I went to leave. Rose has got a handful of my shirt in her fist and our mouths are fused together.
Trying to look nonchalant, I text myself a copy, then hand the phone back to a smirking Winnie.
“That was like … five minutes ago,” I say. “Someone posted to Neighborly that fast?”
Winnie shrugs. “You know this town. Gossip grows faster than a weed on steroids.”
“I don’t think steroids work on weeds,” Pat says, scratching his chin.
James reaches across the bar to shove him. “You know what she means.”
“Simmer down, Jamie.”
Winnie heads behind the bar to kiss James on the cheek. “Don’t listen to him, Boss. I love it when you defend my honor. Anyway, Tank, we’re all thrilled for you.”
“Rose is amazing,” Kyoko says, then glances around quickly. “I mean, I know I’m not part of the family and I don’t get a vote but—”
“Of course you get a vote,” Winnie says. “You’re, like, bonus family.”
Bonus family. I like that. And when I look around at this small group and think of the other people who may not be blood or officially married into the Graham family—Chevy, Val, Wolf, even Big Mo—it’s the perfect name for it. A big bonus family.
And, of course, Rose belongs in it too.
“Well, then, I’m very pro Rose,” Kyoko says with a smile.
“Me too!” Molly raises her hand. “Not only are her desserts amazing, but she’s funny. And nice. And beautiful. You couldn’t have picked a better woman.”
I honestly feel less like I picked her and more like we were fortunate enough to cross paths. However she made her way from Austin to Sheet Cake, I’m grateful.
“So, should we take bets on who gets married first—Collin or Dad?” Pat asks with a sly grin.
This makes Molly blush furiously, which makes Collin start a wrestling match with Pat, which makes James shout, “No fighting in the bar! Take it out back if you’re gonna be stupid!”
For me, Pat’s question echoes in my mind, then settles down somewhere deep in my chest. It’s a startling thing to think about in realistic terms: marriage.
It should be a silly question, given how new things are with Rose.
But it’s just as silly to enter into any relationship without thinking about where it’s going. I’m simply planning responsibly.
I mean, Collin and Molly got engaged after dating only a few months.
They haven’t set a date yet, but I suspect it will be soon.
Once my sons decide on something with their head, they go all in with their heart too.
It hasn’t surprised me just how quickly they’ve settled down.
A year ago, the boys were all single. Now, two of them are married and the last is well on his way.
They say when you know, you know, and I think my sons hold true to that adage.
Harper is more like me, in that she took more time to see what was right in front of her.
We all could have told her years before that Chase was the right man for her.
But I appreciate that about her, and though I couldn’t be more pleased with my sons’ significant others, they could certainly have used some of Harper’s caution in other areas.
For me, with Michelle, it wasn’t so quick.
At least, on my end. The first time we met, her friend had created a fake press pass and somehow gotten past security and into the locker room at our college stadium.
Because I wasn’t into the kind of women who chased after players, it was an immediate no, despite noticing how beautiful she was.
I can’t even remember her friend’s hair color now, but Michelle’s dark hair, bright blue eyes, and teasing smile caught my attention.
She told me later, a few months into our marriage actually, that she knew from the moment our eyes met that first time. Additionally, she explained that she was in the locker room because of her friend, not because Michelle was some kind of jersey chaser.
“But of course, I couldn’t tell you that,” she teased. “You’d have gotten even more cocky than you already were, and you probably would have had me arrested for stalking you.”
After the locker room incident, I kept seeing her everywhere on campus. Some of it was intentional on her part, but some of it seemed like we were just destined to keep crossing paths.
But she didn’t speak to me. We’d see each other, she’d smile, and that was it. And with every smile, it’s like my guard wore down just a little bit more until I couldn’t take it anymore and had to ask her out. By that time, it had been a whole semester since we’d first met.
“Maybe you’re right on the stalking. But I wasn’t cocky,” I protested, and Michelle only laughed.
“You weren’t insufferable,” I remember her telling me. “But you had that kind of swagger that comes from a college football player who knows how good he is. Or maybe thinks he’s even a little better than he is.”
This turned into a playful fight, which turned into kissing, which turned into something else.
With Michelle, it might have taken me some time to let myself fall for her, but once I did, everything else was quick.
We were engaged within three months. Married six months after that.
I was drafted out of college and I didn’t want to go alone.
And call me old fashioned, but I didn’t want to live together until we were married.
This time around, with Rose, it’s all different. I feel like now I’m taking a page out of my sons’ books, like watching them fall in love and commit fully to the women in their lives at an accelerated rate has shifted something in me.
Or maybe it’s just that now, I see time differently, and I have less of it to lose.
I realize suddenly that I like being able to think about Michelle and Rose in the same moment, to hold the memories of one and the thoughts of another like smooth stones, one in each hand.
Past and … hopefully future?
As strange as it might sound, I think Michelle would approve of Rose.
A loud clatter draws me out of my thoughts and back to the bar, where Collin and Pat have knocked over a stool. James picks up the soda gun from behind the bar and looks like he’s about to spray them down with soda water.
“Hey!” I put my fingers between my teeth and whistle, which stops the scuffle between Pat and Collin and makes a few people wince. James sets down the soda water sprayer. “How about we focus? We’ve got a lot to plan if we want to help save Wolf’s campaign.”
“And save Sheet Cake from Billy Waters,” James mutters.
Pat has already changed gears, from fighting one battle to fighting another. Hopping up on a nearby chair, he pumps a fist and shouts, “For Sheet Cake!”
And to my surprise, the rest of the bar patrons, who may very well have been eavesdropping on this whole conversation, join in as Dark Horse Brewery echoes with cries: “For Sheet Cake!”
After a moment, I’m cheering too.
For this little town’s future, and for my own, which suddenly looks a whole lot brighter.