50. Fifty
Fifty
Libby loves Christmas; it’s something I never would have guessed if it wasn’t for the scene in front of me. Standing in the parking lot of her bar that’s now completely covered in strings of lights the Friday before Thanksgiving, I laugh when she steps next to me.
“Christmas lights already?” I ask, squinting from how bright they all are. There are so many bulbs on the roof, Libby’s Outpost is probably visible from space.
“If I didn’t think it would hurt business, I’d keep them up all year,” she says with a wide, red-lipped smile. “Huck with your dad?”
“Yep—first sleepover with Grandpa.” My heart warms as I say it. Huck was so excited when I dropped him and George Strait off with a casserole dish of meatballs.
“You ready for this?” she asks, tilting her head toward the bar as we start to walk to the door. “You look hot as hell, by the way. ”
I snort a laugh at her compliment, tugging at the sleeves of the black sweater I’m wearing. I wore my best jeans, fitted and flared, black heels, and enough mascara for an entire fleet of models at a fashion show. My hair is up, because though it’s cold, I’m so nervous I’m sweating.
“Does nervous as hell count as ready?”
She laughs as we stop at the door. “Always.”
I bite my lip, rubbing my palms on my jeans. “Is everything ready? Is he here yet?”
“It is and he is,” she says, squeezing my arms. “And Mabel,” she adds, raising amused eyebrows.
She hugs me before slipping inside.
I take one final deep breath. “Here we go, Veda.”
When I started my thirty-seventh year, I knew that the best thing for me was to keep my head down and cling to routines and lists. Alone. I thought living meant having a body that didn’t have cancer. When I met Bo, I realized I had grossly misunderstood what I knew. About everything.
After adopting Huck in a room full of people, I knew I never wanted to be alone again. I want to spend the rest of my days—however many I get—with people that make me feel alive. I know why Veda ended her own pain and prevented Bo from seeing it, but my heart aches every time I think of her last breaths being taken without him. Or anyone .
When I talked to Mabel in the parking lot, she smiled when I asked, Does the story always end with the man engineering the big gesture?
She let out a thrilled, That’s what I’m talking about! and we got to work—with Libby’s help.
Now, as I stand hiding behind a Christmas tree that’s stuffed in a corner behind the bar watching Bo—who’s sitting on a barstool scrolling his phone with a toothpick rolling across his lips—I want to call the whole thing off and just go to him.
But I don’t.
I wait.
“Whatcha doin’?” Libby asks him, leaning on the bar with a sinister smile that almost makes me laugh.
He drops his phone on the bar with an unamused sigh. “Nothing.” He pauses as the DJ announces the next karaoke singer, earning a small applause, then, “Why am I here?”
She scoffs. “Rude,” she says over the atrocious rendition of Willie Nelson. “But you’ve been a hermit, and John pissed me off.” She wipes the bar in front of him with a rag. “Him having an extra kid seems fair.”
Bo laughs, lifting his beer to his lips. “Christmas lights?”
“He wouldn’t know holiday cheer if it bit him in the ass!” she defends.
I bite back my own laugh—because I can imagine the whole scenario between the two of them.
“Seriously, Bo. You laugh, but you kn—”
A man taps Bo on his shoulder, pulling him from Libby’s rant.
“You Bo?” he asks.
“That’s me,” Bo responds, lifting his beer toward him.
“Dropped this.” The man hands him a blue sticky note then walks away.
Bo’s eyes drop to it, eyebrows pinched. I can’t see it, but I know what it says.
On a scale of 1-10, 10
“What’s that?” Libby asks, leaning over the bar to read.
He looks around the room—almost confused—then back to the note.
“I don’t know,” he says, showing her before sticking it on the bar.
“Bo?” Another tap on his shoulder, a woman this time. “I think you dropped this.”
He takes the next blue sticky note, which I know says Personality, 10.
Tap.
“Bo, this is for you.”
Single? Yes.
Another.
Lives alone? No, but kid is cute and can sleep through anything.
With every tap on his shoulder, he looks around the crowded bar, slow-to-grow smile widening, and I have to put my own hand over my mouth to physically stop myself from calling for him as I watch from behind the tree.
Tap .
“Some girl told me to give this to you, hot stuff,” a woman says. Not just any woman.
He snorts a disbelieving, “Mabel?” then looks down at the note, grinning wide.
Puts Mabel’s smut to shame.
“You’ve got main male character energy, Bo. Romp her socks off,” she says with a tawdry wink before dancing away from him with hands over her head, one holding a gin and tonic, the other a notebook, cheetah-print covered hips rocking to the music.
When Bo told me he loved me in the grocery store, he told me he’d give me a hundred reasons why if I wanted him to. I know he was just saying that, but I really did. I easily came up with one hundred reasons why Bo makes my life better and I never want to let him go. So I wrote them down, passed them out, and they are now being hand delivered to him by the people around Libby’s.
“If it doesn’t work out with her, I’m single,” I hear the dark-haired woman say, biting her lip, handing him one that makes him laugh loudly, which I know must say, Does dirty things to my ear.
They keep coming, one after the other, in perfect order.
His eyes are up, scanning. He stands. A line of people around him, arranging themselves numerically by comparing notes. I laugh at the chaos of it all.
“Where is she?” he asks the woman who’s reaching the next sticky note toward him.
She shakes her head adamantly. “We aren’t allowed to tell you. We were told to give these directly to you in order. ”
“Wha—” His eyes catch on Libby, leaning behind the bar, Cheshire grin on her face.
“Sit down, Bo. Pam Beesly is about to rock your world.”
He looks around again, I swear seeing me—feeling me—but does as she says, ridiculously handsome smile on his face.
He takes the notes, reading every single one. The ones I don’t need to see because I know what they say.
You dance to George Strait.
You learned to talk to Huck.
I’m happier when I’m with you.
Your cabins feel like castles.
You know how to see people.
You love me with my scars.
Repeatedly, his eyes lift, scan the room, and he laughs.
Then come the final few:
Bo, I love you.
You showed me a life I didn’t know I could have.
I’m sorry for not seeing it.
But what I’m not sorry about…
Is what you’re about to do…
Because you love me too.
One hundred sticky notes cover the bar, and between his smile and the way I see him looking for me—with joyful desperation—it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever witnessed. More amazing than a summit that overlooks the mountains I’ve grown up in or a field set ablaze by an unexpected late season bloom of wildflowers .
Then right on schedule: “Alright, folks, next up we have Bo Monroe. Bo, come on up,” the DJ says, tonight wearing a blue polyester shirt with his hair pulled back in a low ponytail.
Bo shoots Libby with a leveling glare, but she’s enjoying it too much to care. Hands cupping her mouth, her long, loud, “Wooo!” whips the bar up into a frenzy, and I laugh—louder this time.
I hate you , he mouths to her, taking off his coat and dropping it on the back of his stool.
When she laughs harder, he waves his middle finger at her.
“That’s my wife, asshole!” a familiar voice jokes. John.
“Who’s watching our kids?” I hear Bo ask, again looking around the room, no doubt for Lucy this time.
“My mom,” John says. “You think I’m missing out on this mushy bullshit, you pussy-whipped bastard?” He slaps Bo’s back and gives him a final shove toward the small stage.
With that, I slip out from my hiding spot behind the tree, shoot Libby a grin, and move toward the crowd.