The Plan

by Tawdra Kandle

She laughed. “Yeah, that’s one way of putting it. Nice to meet you, boys. Cooper, dance with me once. I want to make every other girl in this bar jealous.”

  So we’d danced, and then I went back to her hotel room with her. But this time, I didn’t blow her off. I invited her down to the Cove to see where I lived. Introduced her to my family and the posse. After spring break, I took a few weekend trips up to North Carolina to visit her, and one night, I asked her to marry me. To my utter shock, she said yes.

  We got married in a little church near her hometown, not far from the college, a month after Jolie graduated. When we went back down to the Cove to live, we both had high hopes. I’d found something I loved to do, and a woman to love while I did it. Jolie was excited to live in a beach town. She had a degree in history, and she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do with it yet. But I knew we’d be all right for the time being, even without her working. I was making a little bit of money, and it was easy to live cheap in the Cove.

  Jolie tried. We both did. She kept our tiny apartment spotless, cooked delicious food and made friends in town. Jude was sweet to her and tried to include Jolie in whatever she and her friends did, but Jude was also very busy with the Tide and with two babies.

  Jolie volunteered at the county history museum and talked about going back to school for her masters, so she could teach history at the state college. But before she could get started, she got pregnant.

  We hadn’t planned to start a family yet, but I wasn’t unhappy. I figured it couldn’t be that hard; Jude and Daniel seemed to have everything under control. But Jolie was devastated. She told me she wasn’t sure she’d wanted kids at all, and even if she did, she wasn’t ready yet. I had a panicked few days where I was terrified she’d decide to end the pregnancy, and I sighed in silent relief when she said she couldn’t do it.

  But it was hard on her. The hormonal changes made her moody and weepy and sick. For six months, she could barely keep down any food; it got so bad, she had to be hospitalized for dehydration. For the last three months, she was hot and uncomfortable, and she made sure everyone around her knew it.

  When Alexis was born, though, everything changed. I’d been afraid of how Jolie would react to labor and then to the baby herself, but after the nightmare pregnancy, the birth was fast and easy. And when I laid our daughter in her arms, I knew Jolie fell in love as much as I did.

  For half a year, things were good again. Lexie was a sweet, good-natured baby, and Jolie was an excellent mother. I was getting more work and spending more time in the workshop, but now that Jolie had the baby to occupy her, I didn’t worry about neglecting her so much.

  Jolie decided to go back to school when Lex was six months old. She’d found a reliable child care place, and she was determined to make it work. But whether Jolie had changed or I had, or perhaps we were both suffering under the strain of a juggling a baby along with my job and her school schedule, things between us got bad fast. We argued all the time. Jolie screamed at me, I yelled at her. She pitched a fit, and I left the apartment, peeling out on two wheels to drive off my mad. It was tense and uncomfortable all the time.

  Lexie was eighteen months old when Jolie came to me one day at the workshop. She’d left the baby with my mother, and she’d come to tell me that she was filing for divorce.

  “It’s ridiculous, Cooper. We’re making each other miserable. I don’t hate you, and I don’t think you hate me, but if I stay, we might end up hating each other. And that is not in the best interest of our daughter. Let’s have a happy divorce instead of an unhappy marriage.”

  Oddly, that’s exactly what happened. Once we weren’t married anymore, Jolie and I found we could be very good friends. We shared custody without issue, and Lex grew up in two warm homes with parents who respected and liked each other. Jolie met Alton, a financier from Daytona, about five years after our divorce. They eventually moved in together, but they never married. Jolie said she’d decided she just wasn’t the type.

  As for me, I’d dated here and there, but I didn’t get involved with anyone seriously . . . until Karlee. And Karlee cured me for good. We’d met when her grandmother came into the workshop to order a new banister for the historic home she was renovating. The older lady was well-mannered, smart and elegant, and I liked her immediately. Her granddaughter was pretty in an overtly sexy way—big boobs, long blonde hair and legs that went on for days. She was younger than me, but I figured she’d mature and become more like her grandmother. What I hadn’t anticipated was that she was certifiably insane.

  We’d gotten married on a whim, running down to the islands just the two of us. Within a month, Karlee was accusing me of cheating on her—I wasn’t—and begging me to move with her to California, where she’d always wanted to live. At first, I treated her like a spoiled child, firmly telling her no and waiting for her to understand that word. But as the weeks went by, I began to realize what a mess I’d gotten into.

  She wanted to get pregnant—she loved Lex and wanted to give her a little sister. And then the next day, she wanted to audition to pose for a skin magazine. She hated the Cove and the posse and wanted me to move away. Every day, she greeted me with a new idea, a new demand. I was quickly worn out. But the final straw came the day Jude called me from the Tide, to tell me that she had Lexie there, because Karlee had taken my daughter to the restaurant and then left without her.

  When I apologized to Karlee’s grandmother for the necessity of the divorce, the old woman just shook her head. “Not your fault, Cooper. We knew she was flighty. We hoped you’d ground her a bit.”

  Karlee was my final foray into relationships. After our divorce, I gave up on girlfriends—and marriage was out of the question. I had my daughter, whom I adored, an ex-wife whom I liked, friends who tolerated my anti-social tendencies and loved me anyway, and a career I enjoyed, that kept me more than comfortable. Asking for more was asking for trouble, and I’d learned the hard way to stay out of trouble.

  So no matter how much my night with Emmy Carter had rocked my world, there was no way it could ever be anything more than just that one night. I had to push aside the memories of her face as I made her come, and the touch of her hand on my jaw as she kissed me. The sound of her laughter and the image of her sweet little ass in those jeans.

  Yeah, those all had to go. So did the dreams I’d been having, where I was in Emmy’s bed again. In her body. I’d wake up hard and needing and cursing myself for a fool.

  All of this played through my mind as I began to attach the rocker to the chair. It was one of the final pieces; a final sanding, a few coats of paint, and I could put this damn project to rest. I thought about calling the bitch mother and giving her a new pick-up date, but the idea of talking to another human didn’t appeal today. I’d call her when I had a firmer idea of timing. God knew if I got held up at all, she’d scream her head off at me, and I had no time for that.

  The door to my workshop swung open, but I didn’t look up. I didn’t have any client meetings scheduled today, so the options for my visitor’s identity were limited to a walk-in customer, which was unlikely, given the number of signs in the driveway and yard warning that I saw clients by appointment only. Or it was Lex, who wasn’t supposed to be in the Cove today but had been known to persuade her mother to drive her down and surprise me from time to time. Or it was one of the posse, coming by to rattle my cage and shoot the breeze.

  When the rocker was secure, I allowed myself one glance up. “Hey, Logan. What’s going on?”

  “Not much. Just on my way back from a meeting about a new project and thought I might bounce some things off you.”

  This wasn’t unusual. Especially since Daniel had died, Logan often asked for my take on potential investments and new ventures. For one thing, I could weigh in early on how much of my work he’d need and how much it would run him. For another, after working with both of them for so many years, I had a pretty good grasp on some of the contractor details. Logan joked that I could channel Daniel, and
in a way, he was right.

  “Sure.” I jerked my chin in the direction of the upturned crate in the corner. “Pull up a seat and run it by me.”

  Logan wasn’t the least bit put off by the layers of sawdust and woodchips on the floor or even on the crate. He brushed it off and sat down, planting his elbows on his knees as he watched me continue to fine-tune the rocker.

  “So you remember the old Riverside Inn? Started out as a regular hotel, and then there used to be a restaurant there about twenty years ago. It’s changed hands three or four times that I know about.”

  I frowned. “On the Osceola River? Yeah, I know it. Hasn’t been open in at least ten years.”

  Logan nodded. “At least. And the last time was with some company that was thinking about making it into a timeshare, before the real estate bubble burst.”

  “You seriously looking at that?” I shot him a look that was supposed to convey skepticism, but he just grinned.

  “Yeah, I am. Or we are. I took Jude canoeing about a month ago, and we were on the Osceola. We went past that old place, and she got all excited. Wanted to look into it, find out the history, all that. The more I looked, the more interested I got. I had an inspector over there last week, and it’s structurally sound for the most part.”

  “Dude, you’re talking a shit ton of work. And for what? You want to go into the hotel business?” I shook my head.

  “I’m already in the hotel business.” Logan leaned forward. “The Hawthorne House is kicking ass. You know Matt always said we needed more places to stay right in the Cove, so we’re not sending people all the way out to Elson to find a decent hotel. He was right. We’ve got a long waiting list at the B and B. A hotel would work here.”

  I shrugged. “Okay, man. I trust you on the business stuff. You know how to run the numbers and all that.” I unwrapped a cotton towel, where I’d been storing the spindles for the rocking chair. “So what do you need from me?”

  “I’d like you to go over there with me one day next week and take a look, if you don’t mind. But first, I’d like you to come to dinner tomorrow night so we can talk all this over with Jude there. She respects your opinion, and I want to make sure we’re going into this with wide open eyes.”

  Casting my eyes up to the ceiling, I thought for a minute. “Yeah, I can do tomorrow night. Your place or the Tide?” The restaurant was closed on weeknights after five, but sometimes we had after-hours parties or dinner there.

  “Our place. Nothing fancy, I’ll just toss some steaks on the grill. Jude’ll make a salad, and I think we’ll have one of Emmy’s pies for dessert.”

  I startled at the mention of her name, dropping two of the spindles onto the floor with a loud clatter. “Fuck!” I reached down to pick up the thin dowels, making sure they hadn’t chipped. I didn’t see anything, to my relief. That was all I needed, to have to carve out these wood pieces again.

  Turning back to Logan, I scowled. “Is Emmy coming to dinner?”

  His forehead wrinkled. “No. Why?”

  I lifted one shoulder. “You said we were having one of her pies for dessert.”

  Logan nodded. “Yeah. Jude always buys at least one extra for us to eat at home when she puts in the order for the Tide. Why’re you so jumpy? Would it matter if we invited Emmy?”

  “Of course not.” I returned my attention to the task at hand. “Your house, you do what you want.”

  “I thought you liked her. Something happen between you guys?”

  I almost bobbled the damn spindles again. “What? No. Why? No.”

  “Did you have a fight or something? She can be a little opinionated, I know. But she’s really a nice person.”

  “No, we didn’t have a fight.” I decided the best defense was a good offense. “Why in the world would I have a fight with Emmy Carter? What would I even have to talk with her about? Pie crusts? How to serve drinks? The bartenders’ code?” Echoes from our flirting that first Saturday night rang in my head.

  “What’s the bartenders’ code?” Logan looked confused, and I couldn’t blame him. I was babbling nonsense.

  “If you have to ask, you don’t need to know it.” I paraphrased words I’d heard elsewhere. Seemed like they might apply here. “Anyway, why’re we talking about Emmy Carter, anyway?”

  “You brought her up.” Now Logan was looking at me as if he truly were afraid I’d lost my mind.

  “Yeah, well, whatever. Let’s not.” I straightened, stretching my back. “So what time for dinner tomorrow night?”

  When I told people I was anti-social, it wasn’t just talk. As much as I loved my friends, sometimes the idea of spending an evening of small talk, eating party food and drinking frou-frou drinks made me want to shoot myself. I tried to limit how often I said yes to those invitations, no matter who was hosting the party.

  But there were a few people who I didn’t mind hanging with and a few situations I almost never said to. Jude and Logan were in that select group; we didn’t have to dick around with small talk, because we already knew just about everything about each other, and I saw them enough that there was rarely breaking news to share. Plus, Jude was a damn good cook, and she knew how to feed men: none of these little tiny bites of food, the woman made a mean burger and potatoes.

  I pulled my Jeep into the driveway of what I still thought of as Logan’s house. He’d designed it and Daniel had built it early in their careers, and Logan had lived there alone for almost twenty years before Jude had moved in a few years back. It’d happened fast in one respect: they’d started seeing each other a little over a year after Daniel died, but once they’d realized how they both felt, Jude was living in Logan’s house before they were married that fall.

  Of course, on the other hand, Logan had been in love with Jude since we were all teenagers. He’d never let on, and none of us ever suspected, but after Daniel’s death, the two of them together seemed so natural for all of us. Jude’s effect on Logan’s bachelor pad had been gradual but undeniable, though she was wise enough not to touch the room that was the unofficial headquarters of the posse. The girls called it the man cave or the posse palace. The men just referred to it as the bar at Logan’s house. We didn’t need to give it a cutesy name; we all knew what it was.

  I jumped out of the Jeep and took the steps to the front door two at a time, pausing only to give a cursory knock before turning the doorknob. Up until Jude moved in, I wouldn’t have even done that, but I didn’t want to walk in on the two of them in the middle of something nasty in the kitchen. And I knew for a fact that wasn’t too far-fetched; though none of us tended to kiss and tell when it came to wives and long-time girlfriends, Logan had let slip to me that he and Jude had christened every room of his house, just so that she knew his home was now hers as well.

  I’d pretended to gag. “Dude, couldn’t you just have written it up in a contract or something? And seriously, this was not something I needed to know. I have to eat there, you know. Gross.”

  But I was safe today, since as I slammed the front door behind me, I could see through the open great room to the deck, where Logan was manning the grill. Jude had her back to him, leaning over the deck rail that faced the ocean. She was turning her head as though to look at something to her right, but I couldn’t see what it was from where I stood.

  I went on through the house, calling to them both. “Yo! Logan. Jude. I come bringing wine. I picked up a bottle of that Cab we all liked . . .” My voice trailed to nothing as I caught sight of a third person on the deck.

  Abby Donavan was sitting on the edge of a chaise lounge, holding a wine glass as she said something to Jude. She broke off when I stepped outside.

  “Coop. Thanks, man.” Logan set down his grill tongs and took the wine from me. “This is good stuff. The girls just finished up some of the white Jude likes, but I’ll open this now.” He glanced at the women. “Everyone want some Cabernet?”

  Jude smiled. “Absolutely.” She glanced over at Abby. “Logan, Cooper and I had dinner at a
place near Melbourne a few months back, when we all went to check out a house. The bartender recommended this new wine, and we all loved it.” She beamed at me. “I can’t believe you found it, Coop.”

  “Yeah, I’m a man of many talents.” I tried to keep annoyance out of my voice, but damn. I’d been looking forward to a laid-back evening with two of my best friends, the people who were closer to me than almost anyone else in the world. I needed that grounding after the last three weeks of being by turns shook up and uncomfortable over what I’d come to call in my head the Emmy situation.

  But now here sat Abby, looking for all the world like she belonged here, too. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the woman. She’d moved to the Cove . . . I cast my mind back. Hell, it was almost three years ago now. Logan and Jude had hired her to manage the bed and breakfast they’d opened together, and she’d rocked that job. Logan was right that the Cove had needed an upscale, elegant lodging right in town, but we all knew that it was Abby who’d made the Hawthorne House shine. She was a perfectionist, and I’d heard grumblings from some of the workmen who’d come to dread being called to do a job at the B and B. As far as I knew, Abby wasn’t a bitch so much as she had high expectations of the people who worked with and for her.

  Still, as much as I liked her, she was an outsider. She wasn’t one of us, and her being at dinner meant I had to be polite and a little more reserved than normal. I wasn’t sure I was up for that tonight.

  Jude was continuing to talk, telling the other woman about the house we’d seen in Melbourne the night we’d discovered the wine. That was the way of females, I knew; one thing led to ten more, and they’d be content to chatter about a night and a meal that had happened months back. I barely remembered it myself. I’d stopped for wine tonight on my way here, and I’d just happened to spy that bottle. We didn’t need to make it a big deal, and if it were just the three of us, no one would. I held back rolling my eyes as Jude began to describe the décor of the restaurant where we’d eaten. Sometimes I forgot Jude wasn’t one of the guys.