RIVER

by Samantha Leal

  It was clear that Esme was trying to hide how she felt, but it was etched all over her face that the bear was troubling her. Without even showing it to the baby, she placed it down on the seat next to her and then focused on the orchid.

  “Is this for me?” she asked with a much brighter and more focused smile. “Oh Stacey, it’s beautiful, you shouldn’t have.”

  “Oh, come on,” Stacey laughed. “As if I wouldn’t get you both something, this is a huge event. You’ve just had your first baby, what an incredible experience to be having! So, tell me, I need to know all about it, how was the birth? Which hospital did you go into? Did you stay at the one in town or go further away?”

  Stacey didn’t know a whole lot about births, but she had noticed that Esme had been unnaturally cagey when it came to any details of how her child was going to be born. She didn’t answer her but shrugged her shoulders.

  “Oh, and the name?” Stacey asked, unable to contain her excitement. “What did you call him?”

  Esme smiled and looked over her shoulder toward Zeke who was still standing in the doorway. His eyes seemed to glint with pride and he nodded his head as if he were allowing her to continue.

  “We’ve named him Magnus,” Esme smiled proudly. “After someone very dear in Zeke’s family.”

  Magnus.

  It was an odd choice, but one that was unique and also one that would certainly make an impression. Stacey also couldn’t help but feel as if she had heard the name around town before… Maybe she had met this person in Zeke’s family at some point.

  “Wow,” Stacey smiled. “That’s a great name!”

  And it was, in its own way. It was magical and strong.

  Behind them all and down the hallway, the sound of something knocking against wood stunned them all into silence. Stacey jumped a little as she looked over her shoulder toward the doorway and Zeke scratched the back of his neck and yawned before he turned and headed back toward the front door.

  “Someone is here,” Esme said from behind a stifled yawn.

  “I bet you’ve had a ton of visitors?” Stacey asked as she sat down on the couch next to her and stroked the top of Magnus’ head. He made the cutest little noise as he breathed, and she couldn’t stop staring at him. His little nose was cute as a button, and his hair on top of his little pink head was thick and jet black.

  “Not really,” Esme said in a hushed voice. “We didn’t want to make a big deal around town. The only person I’ve told is you… And Zeke has only told the guys.”

  “Really?” Stacey asked.

  Esme nodded and smiled down at the sleeping baby in her arms.

  “Just until we get used to all of this,” she whispered, not wanting to wake him. “It’s such a big life change, and Zeke has a lot going on. We just want to keep things private for now and enjoy being together.”

  “Sure,” Stacey smiled. “I didn’t tell Mary from the gift boutique, but she kind of guessed when I went in to get this little guy.”

  She tapped the head of the teddy bear again and she noticed how Esme looked at it. She didn’t like it, she could tell.

  Oh man, good one, Stacey… Upset the new mother who is full of hormones, she thought.

  “Esme, I can take it back if you don’t like it?” she asked sweetly.

  “Oh, God no,” Esme said, almost embarrassed. “I do like it… In fact, I love it! And I know Magnus will. I’m sorry, I’ve just been so, so wiped out by all of this. I’m exhausted.”

  Stacey wrapped her arm around her and rested her head against hers.

  “I’m always here if you need any help,” she whispered.

  Footsteps began approaching them from the hallway and Stacey could hear that Zeke was no longer alone. Another heavy booted person was coming along with him.

  As Zeke emerged around the corner of the door, and the man who was with him also came into view, Stacey felt her breath falter a little and she couldn’t help but smile.

  It was River.

  River had come back.

  She cocked her head to the side and grinned widely.

  “Oh my goodness, isn’t today just full of surprises!” she said as she got to her feet and tucked her thumbs into the loops on her jeans.

  River stood there staring back at her with his intensely blue eyes and his wicked smile. He looked good, damned good. And she tried to rack her brain for the last time she could have seen him.

  It easily could have been over six months. She felt her cheeks blush a little and she looked away.

  “Hey, Stace,” he said as he walked into the room, he approached her and gave her a hug before he held her at arm’s length and smiled. When she looked into his eyes, she felt something ignite inside of her and her skin tingled. She stopped breathing for a moment and felt lost in the sea of blue.

  Had he always been this hot?

  He looked down at Esme and beamed.

  Stacey tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and bit her bottom lip. Of all the things she had been expecting today, River making an appearance had not been one of them…

  4.

  “Wow, River...” Stacey said again once Esme and Zeke left the room to go feed and change little Magnus. “Where have you been? It feels like I haven’t seen you in a thousand years.”

  She looked into his eyes and couldn’t help but smile at him. River cocked his head to the side and laughed, before he shrugged his shoulders and gazed into hers.

  “I’ve been all over the place,” he replied. “Here, there, and everywhere…”

  He always did have a bit of an air of mystery about him, but this was insane. He looked different, and his eyes seemed brighter and even deeper than she had remembered. She grinned and turned away so he couldn’t see that she was beginning to blush a little. She had known River for a long time, but he had never made her feel like this.

  Maybe she really had missed him.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” she said as she rose to her feet and swept her purse up into her hands and onto her shoulder.

  They stood there looking at each other for a moment and River got to his feet too. He was so tall and broad, and when he was in front of her and looked down on her, she felt like she was being looked down on by a giant.

  “You look really well, Stacey,” he said. “I’m glad you’ve been looking after yourself.”

  He was different.

  There was an air of caution around him, but also one of intense familiarity.

  She half-smiled and didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t seen River for months and months, not since Esme had found out she was pregnant, in fact, and now he was suddenly back in town and right there in front of her.

  “I better get going,” she said, feeling awkward.

  “Sure,” River smiled. “Are you in work tonight?”

  Stacey shook her head, although she was now wishing that she had been.

  She headed toward the door and looked back over her shoulder. River was now standing in the window and looking out toward the mountains as if he were carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

  Stacey didn’t even say goodbye, she just headed back down the hallway and called to Esme as she was leaving.

  “I’ll call you,” she said as she opened the door and slipped back out into the chill of the snowy air and wrapped her arms around herself.

  She had no clue what had just happened. Her head was spinning, and her mind was working overtime.

  Had she imagined all of that? Or had her best friend acted unbelievably strange, then Zeke, and then River… a man who hadn’t been around town in almost half a year.

  Stacey furrowed her brow and started to head for home. She had no clue what was happening, but she knew she just needed to be in her own space, with a cup of coffee and some time to think.

  “Weird morning,” she said as she kept on walking. “Really goddam weird…”

  River was part of Zeke’s gang, and another one of the bosses at The Nowhere Bar. He was one of the bad b
oys, one of the tall, dark, handsome brood that swaggered around town and seemed to rule the roost.

  Stacey had known him for a few years, and he was one of the reasons she had managed to get herself a job at the bar in the first place. River had always been on the edge of things for her. In fact, when she thought about it, he had pretty much been on the periphery for her entire life, but she hadn’t ever truly got to know him. He had always kept his distance. When her father had died, he had come to her at home and offered to help her. She had been touched but also confused.

  “Help me?” she had said.

  “Sure,” he’d replied. “If you want to keep busy, we have plenty of things you could do over at the bar…”

  She had thought on it for a while, and then, one day, it had hit her like a ton of bricks. He had been right. She needed to keep busy and a little job over at The Nowhere Bar was the ideal thing to take her mind off everything that had recently gone wrong in her life.

  When she had arrived there to find him, River had been aloof and stand offish, but she had gotten the job. He was a kind of contradiction. One moment he was hot, and then he was cold. And she had never been able to figure him out. In the end, she had just decided to keep him at a distance, but she had always been grateful for the fact that he had gone out of his way to ensure she was all right in the weeks after her father’s death, and that he had offered her a job she had grown to love.

  Seeing him wander in to Esme and Zeke’s living room, when he had been missing from the bar and as far as Stacey was aware, the rest of town, for the best part of a year, had shocked her but she had also been happy to see him.

  She slid the key into the lock and turned it as she let herself into her cabin. She yawned and flicked on the lights, even though it was only the afternoon, and then she wandered to her kitchen and began to make a big, fresh coffee.

  “River…,” she whispered as she thought of him again.

  There was something about him that had seemed different, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  She curled up on the couch and closed her eyes, cradling the cup of coffee in her hands.

  Esme had had her baby.

  But she was acting strange.

  River had come back.

  But he seemed different.

  She scratched the back of her neck and scowled. Her mind was racing again but she had to just shake it off and roll her eyes.

  “River could easily have come back to see the new baby,” she whispered to herself. “And Esme and Zeke are acting so weird probably because they’re exhausted and shell-shocked.”

  But her mind kept nagging away at her, and she knew she wasn’t going to rest.

  She chewed her lip and looked at the schedule on her cellphone. She wasn’t down to work for another two evenings, but there was no way she was going to be able to just sit at home this evening. Especially now that she knew the baby had arrived. She could only imagine how excited and happy everyone would be down at the bar. And River was home! Surely, there would be some kind of celebration there that very night.

  She put her phone back down and touched her forehead. She wanted to know what the hell was going on… But she also wanted to see River.

  She wanted to figure out what was so different about him.

  She looked up at the clock on the wall and thought for a moment. She had four hours until her shift would have normally started. If she had a little nap now, she could head into work as if nothing had happened. As if Blu hadn’t told her to have the night off and she could plead brain freeze when she got there. Surely, they wouldn’t send her home? They needed the cover, and if she was willing to do it, then she was pretty certain they would give her the hours.

  She jumped to her feet and went toward the stairs.

  She was going to nap, change, spruce herself up and then head down to The Nowhere Bar.

  She didn’t know why she felt so compelled to be there or why she had to find out exactly what was transpiring between them all, but her intuition was firing on all cylinders and she knew she wouldn’t be able to rest for a moment unless she had just a few answers.

  “You’re so nosy,” she told herself as she looked in her vanity mirror.

  She pulled back the bedsheets and climbed under them fully clothed. Her mind was in a spin, and the only thing she could see when she closed her eyes was the intense blue of River’s eyes.

  River.

  An acquaintance she hadn’t seen for months and months on end… but now, just like that, he was all she could think about.

  He was on her mind and he refused to leave.

  Am I going down to the bar to hopefully see him? Or am I going to find out the answers t0 all of my burning questions?

  She wasn’t even sure herself, and she slapped her forehead as she rolled onto her side and huffed.

  Out of nowhere, her whole world seemed to have gotten a lot more exciting… But she couldn’t even begin to explain how… it was just a feeling she had.

  An intense feeling, that was pulling her back to The Nowhere Bar. And this time, she wasn’t going to fight it.

  5.

  As she walked along Main Street, Stacey had to button up her coat extra tightly. The night air was cold and biting, and she was truly feeling the cold for the first time in months. She walked along and smiled at people she passed on the sidewalks, her eyes alert and alive, wondering if she would bump into River.

  She was heading straight toward the main intersection in town, and then she would be turning left and heading on down toward The Nowhere Bar.

  As she got closer, she could already feel the thump, thump of the music under her feet and she started to feel nervous. She was heading into work on her night off, and she was going to try and pretend that she thought she should have been working it.

  Would it be obvious she was there for other reasons?

  Would it look like she had gone searching for answers?

  Surely not…

  And she didn’t even know what answers she was truly looking for.

  She turned left and saw the big, long line of people waiting to get inside. It was Friday and most likely going to be there most crowded night of the week, and Stacey already knew they had several bands playing, which would be starting around 1opm.

  She walked across the street and waved to one of the security men who was keeping the crowd at bay as she headed in through a side exit and slammed the door closed behind her. She was in a darkened hallway and she realized that her breathing was fast and sharp.

  She felt like she had done a marathon, and it was then that she realized she had pretty much run the whole way there.

  She reached along the wall and flicked on the light when she found the switch and leaned back against the wall to catch her breath. She was nervous, and her palms were sweating.

  She had no reason to be so on edge, but her whole being was telling her that something was happening right in front of her. And even though she was still pretty much blind to it, she had seen something so different about Esme that day that it had worried her.

  She stepped forward into the illuminated hallway and unbuttoned her jacket and unwound her scarf. At the end, she could see the doorway that led into the main section of the bar, and she was planning on going out there just as she did every night and act as if she were heading straight to work on the downstairs bar.

  She took a deep breath and pulled her shoulders back as she began to walk toward it. As she pushed the door open, the rage of music hit her right in the face and she winced as she acclimatized to all the noise. It was a complete onslaught of sounds, bright lights, different smells, and as she maneuvered her way amongst the crowd that had been lucky enough to get in early, she smiled and dipped her gaze down shyly.

  She had walked into The Nowhere Bar easily around several hundred times, but this felt different. She didn’t know why, but it was making her nervy.

  She saw the long bar stretching out in front of her, and she made her way toward it quick
ly, she pulled her purse from her shoulder and slid it into its usual hiding spot, and then she unzipped her jacket and tossed it into the corner.

  “Hey,” a voice came from the side of her. She turned and saw Blu walking toward her with confusion on his face. “I thought I gave you the night off?”

  She thought about pretending that she didn’t know she was supposed to be there as she had planned, but realized it was pointless.

  “I know,” she said. “But I remembered we had the bands on tonight, and I knew it would end up being crazy. I thought you could use the extra pair of hands.”

  Blu smiled at her and raised his eyebrows.

  “Dedication,” he said with a wry smile. “I like it.”

  She smiled back and turned to face the bar and her heart almost stopped when she was immediately pulled back into the most intense pair of eyes she had ever seen.

  It was him.

  River was sitting right in front of her on one of the high stools, cradling a glass of whiskey and smiling at her warmly.

  “Hi,” she said.

  He took a long, drawn out sip from his glass and drained it. The ice clinked in the bottom, and he put it down on top of the counter and slid it across to her and nodded his head.

  “Hi,” he said finally. “Couldn’t stay away, huh?”

  She swiped the glass up and grabbed a bottle of whiskey from their collection of spirits along the back wall and started to pour him another.

  “When can I ever…” she mused as she looked up and caught his eyes again.

  She was trying to figure out what was so different about him. Was it his hair? Was it his eyes? Was he more tanned than he had been when he had left? Where had he even been?

  “So, you met the lovely little Magnus?” she asked.

  River smiled and nodded.

  “I sure did,” he replied. “Gorgeous kid.”

  “He’s perfect,” Stacey smiled. “And they both look so happy.”

  River held her gaze and she felt her heart begin to race a little faster. How did he suddenly have this affect on her? She had never been drawn to him like this… It was unnerving.