by Quinn, Taryn
Ally sipped from her mug. “No.”
“No what?” Sage asked innocently.
“No, you are not setting them up. I saw that look.”
“I didn’t do anything.” Sage sat back in her chair.
“Macy doesn’t seem like the type to need a fix-up.” I chopped my straw through the logjam of ice. I’d finished the drink way too fast, but I felt much better.
“She’s new in town. I would be doing a public service.”
I laughed. Before I could ask for more, Macy came back with a square plate of cookies and a pitcher of gloriousness.
“Here you go, ladies. Vee is boxing up your goodies now. I also made up a thermos of the leftover Watermelon Crush for you, Kelsey. Keeps you hydrated. I’ll do some more research on pregnancy drinks and shoot you a text to try another few if that’s okay.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that.”
Macy shrugged. “When in Rome.”
“You’re spoiling me.”
Alex picked then to wake up and wail out his displeasure.
“So much for that forty-minute nap.” Ally sighed. “He’ll be a bear all afternoon.” She swung the baby up on her shoulder with ease and hummed to him absently. He wouldn’t be deterred. “Okey doke, looks like that’s my cue.”
“Aww, really?”
“Yeah, I need to get back home anyway.” She smiled up at Macy. “Thanks for letting us come and crash for a bit.”
Macy’s eyebrows were beetled together at the scowling baby. A minute later, Alex let out an even louder bellow. “Is he okay?”
“Oh, yeah.” Ally took another drink from her coffee. “One more, because hello, this is so good. Okay, pal. We’re going, we’re going.” She stood up and settled him back into the carrier.
Sage hefted herself out of the chair. “Thanks, Macy.”
“Do you want me to drive you home?” I asked Sage.
“No, I’ll go with Ally. You go on up and relax. You look like you’re going to drop on the spot.”
The two of them swiftly packed up and headed out. Sage was happily picking through the large bag of goodies on her way out the side door.
I was tired, but even more than that, I was restless. I had Sage’s doctor’s phone number burning a hole in my planner. And an ache in the pit of my stomach I didn’t know how to fix.
I wandered over to the counter where Macy was talking to Gideon, but I backed away before I could interrupt. Macy spotted me and patted the bag in front of her. “I’ve got some stuff for your kids.” She screwed up her lips. “You know, the ones in your classroom, not the one you’re brewing up in there.” She made a little circle in the air.
Gideon’s eyebrows went up. “Congrats.”
I pasted on a bright smile. I’d come from a pretty small town, but it had nothing on the very involved Crescent Cove. God, I needed to talk to my mom about this too.
I just wanted to hide in my apartment.
“Got anything super chocolatey?” I asked brightly.
“Lava cake?”
“Sold. Or begging, whichever. Just hand it over and no one gets hurt.”
Macy gave me her usual sardonic grin. “You got it.” Her eyes trailed over Gideon one more time before she disappeared into the back.
“I’m getting the feeling Macy isn’t sure what to do with the kid thing.”
“I think you’d be correct. I teach them and I’m not sure what to do half the time.”
Gideon shoved his hands into his pockets. “Right. Me neither.”
Before I could say something else regarding that little nugget of information, Macy came sailing through her swinging door with a little white box. “Fresh from the oven. Hope you like cherries.”
My stomach growled. “I do. Let’s see if the new intruder does too.” I accepted the box with a little wave. “Thanks, Macy. Can’t wait to see what else you come up with for drinks. I’m your happy guinea pig.”
“Well, we’ve got two weeks until opening day so I’ll be sure to be extra annoying, don’t you worry.”
Before I was a few steps away, the deep timber of Gideon’s voice lowered and I heard a smoky chuckle from Macy in reaction. At least those two were finding their way.
And that made me miss Dare even more. I wasn’t supposed to. And if I did miss him a little bit, it was supposed to be the womanly flutters kind of missing. Okay, so they were a little more than flutters. More like my own version of lava cake where he was concerned.
The man could tend my gardens like a master…well, gardener.
Nope, now I had a snake in the garden. Or was he the snake? God, this metaphor was going off the rails. Like my life.
I trudged up the stairs and set the bag for my class on the entry table because something was also wrong with my memory since I’d become a new fledgling member of Babyville. I needed my planner for simple things I’d been doing most of my adult life. Because I could not keep a thought in my stupid brain.
Except one.
The one that was on a loop when I tried to sleep. How much I missed Dare calling me darlin’.
How much I missed Dare, period.
I pulled out my phone and stared at the last text I’d sent to him on Sunday. The one that said it was delivered on my screen, but had not been answered.
Please talk to me.
Fourteen
I over-cranked my socket wrench and banged my knuckle into the radiator I was trying to replace. “Goddammit.” I shook my hand with a hiss and made a fist to see the damage.
“You keep busting up those knuckles, you’re not going to have a hand left, boy.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I’d turned into a walking disaster zone in the shop lately. Hell, I hadn’t been this messed up when Katherine walked.
Jerome sighed. “Good thing it’s nearly five. Get the hell out of here. I’ll finish that up. I’m tired of you adding your DNA to every car we service.”
I hung my head. “I was hoping for a few extra hours tonight.”
Jerome jammed his rag into his back pocket. “Nope. Maybe next week. Go out and have a good time. It’s Friday night, for God’s sake.”
I was a single dad. I didn’t have a good time. I accidentally stuck my dick into a kindergarten teacher twice and got her in trouble. Probably. Maybe. Hell, that would be why I looked like I’d been on the wrong end of a Ginsu knife demonstration.
It was the maybe part that was killing me more than the baby. What the hell did that say about me? Analyzing shit to death wasn’t my thing. The fact that I was still fucked up about this almost a week later was ridiculous.
I dug out my phone, flicking away from Kelsey’s text that I still hadn’t answered.
I sent a text to my friend who owned the furniture store across the street. I needed a goddamn beer.
Before I finished washing up, I got a hell yeah reply. Evidently, August was feeling just as glad for the end of the work week as I was. My mother was already expecting me to work late tonight, so an extra hour wouldn’t matter.
It was a quick drive to The Spinning Wheel and a relatively thick crowd for Crescent Cove made for some creative parking. Even after I got inside, it took me nearly five minutes to find him.
He waved at me from one of the pool tables at the back of the bar. There were already two glasses on the shelf behind our usual table. That wasn’t a good sign.
I took down a pool cue. If I’d known we were going to play, I would have brought my stick, but it would do to kill some time. Running the table against August was a normal night.
It seemed like it had been ages since normal had been anywhere in my sphere.
We didn’t even really talk. Our competitive natures made all the bullshit crowding my brain empty out for twenty minutes—then thirty as we went head to head on a a final third tie-breaker game.
A flash of red hair distracted me enough to scratch my last shot.
“What the fuck, Kramer?”
I thumped my head on the bumper and swore. Especially when I looked again an
d the girl didn’t resemble Kelsey at all. I definitely deserved to lose my game.
If that wasn’t a direct correlation to my life, I didn’t know what was.
August snapped a beer down on the green in front of me. “Obviously, you need that.”
I stood up, grabbed my beer, and set my stick back into the rack. August nodded to the next set of guys waiting on a table.
“Nice game, man.”
I grunted at the kid who barely qualified as legal. He slung his arm around the redhead who had killed my concentration. She was cute, but too hard-edged to be my girl.
Fuck.
Not my girl.
My hand curled tighter around my pint glass.
August clapped his hand over my shoulder and pushed me toward a table away from the jukebox. “You are wound tighter than Sister Linda over at that school your kid goes to.”
I dropped into a chair and caught the waitress’s eye. I lifted my beer and flashed two fingers. “Yeah, it’s been a shitastic week.” I scrubbed my fingers through my freshly shorn hair. “It was picture day at school.”
August snorted. “Is that why you’re all pretty?” He tapped his own head of wild, spiky hair.
“Well, if I was going to get Wes in a chair, I had to go first. Of course then he decides to see how long he can get his cup to suction cup itself to his mouth.”
“Uh oh.”
“Yep.” I drew a circle around my mouth. “Unfortunately, my kid doesn’t have a beard to hide the bruised ring.”
“Sucks, but not like you to get wound up over something like that.”
“Nah. Just one more thing for my ma to yell at me about. Add in work shit and…other shit. Yeah,” I lifted my beer and drained it, “I definitely needed this.”
“I hear that. Kinleigh—the new chick upstairs?” At my obviously blank look, August sighed. “The clothing store above my shop?”
“Oh, right. My mom likes that store.” I shrugged. Chick clothes kinda went over my head.
“Yeah, well, she’s driving me insane. Dude, she plays K-pop at a decibel that would make a dog shriek.” August kicked out his big feet and crossed his ankles, then smiled warmly at the waitress when she brought over our beers.
“Hey, guys. Want anything from the kitchen?”
August glanced at me, then back up at the pretty redhead. Again, not as pretty as my redhead, but since when did we have so many of them in the goddamn Cove? “Two cheeseburgers with everything.”
Man, I must look like shit if August was trying to feed me. He definitely wasn’t the mothering type.
I nodded at our waitress with a tight smile as I twisted the short stem of my Stella Artois glass on the scarred table. Though my mind was elsewhere, I attempted to click into the diatribe of complaints out of August.
I wasn’t sure what K-pop was, but figured it was close to dance music of some sort. When he mentioned this Kinleigh’s skirt, heels, and scent repeatedly, I couldn’t help but laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“You like her.”
“No, I don’t.” He lifted his beer and took a long swallow.
“Well, if you don’t like her, you at least want to get in her pants. Or skirt—whatever. Because dude, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you mention clothes so much in the entire seven years I’ve known you.”
August tipped his head back. “I sound like a fucking girl.”
“Maybe.”
“Christ,” he muttered. “I do. My man card is going to get stripped away from me.”
“Already was,” I said as I sipped my beer. “The minute you mentioned K-Pop.”
“You haven’t heard that shit. It’ll make your ears bleed.”
I laughed. By the time our burgers arrived, we’d moved onto football as a topic of conversation. It was easy and didn’t require concentration. I even texted my mom to check on Wes. He was doing a puzzle with my pop, and wouldn’t care if I stayed out another hour.
When we killed another hour arguing about the state of our teams—My Patriots and his shitty Giants—I finally felt like myself for the first time in weeks.
The happy hour crowd had moved on and the bar was full of regulars when I signaled our waitress for the check.
“I got it.” August snatched the receipt.
“Since when do you pick up a tab?”
He shrugged. “Since you never text me to get a beer.”
“Sure I do.”
“No, I text you—not the other way around.”
I frowned. “That can’t be right.”
He waved it off. “Not a big deal. You have a kid. Hanging at the bar isn’t exactly your scene anymore.”
“Makes me sound shitty.”
“Now I know something’s up. You and self-analysis don’t belong in the same room together.”
I couldn’t disagree there. I laced my fingers behind my neck and popped each knuckle. “Fuck, man.”
“That good?”
“I sorta hooked up with this girl.”
“Sorta? What, you trip and your dick fell in?”
I snorted. “Closer to the truth than not. It was a random hookup.” I shrugged. “You know how it goes. Sometimes there’s that itch.”
“Well, we’ve both had plenty of one-nighters over the years.”
“Yeah, but not with women from Crescent Cove.”
August winced. “Ahh. Yeah, no.”
“Oh, and Wes’s teacher.”
“Hello. That hot redhead?”
I didn’t realize I’d snarled until he held up his hands.
“One-nighter, my ass.”
“That’s why I don’t mess with people from town, man. It gets weird.” I stared hard at the table. That was a fucking lie. It would have been fine. Maybe even more than fine if I was still just hooking up with her.
I could handle that.
It was the rest. The army of tests that had sealed my fate.
“I might need another beer.”
August leaned back in his chair and waved at our waitress. “Two more, sweetheart.”
She nodded.
“Come on, Kramer. Pull the tampon out. What the fuck’s the problem?”
“Asshole.”
He waggled his eyebrows. “You love it.”
“Shithead.”
“I love when you talk sweet to me. Makes me all tingly.”
“Why am I friends with you again?”
He folded his hands on the table. “Because I saved you in that mosh pit in Albany.”
“Pantera,” we both said in unison.
“Good times.” I leaned back when the waitress put down the beers and a new ticket.
“No rush, but new bill just in case. I’m taking a quick break.”
I smiled up at her. “Thanks.”
“So…” August frowned. “Is this the chick you got the bed for?”
I stared down at the table, trailing my finger through the condensation on my glass.
“Oh, shit. You’ve been holding onto that favor for three fucking years. That bed was the best in my stock, you fucker.”
I took a long drink of my beer, draining it to almost half.
“Jesus, you’re gone for this chick.”
“No. Maybe. Fuck, man. She’s pregnant.”
August slumped back in his chair. “Oh, shit.”
“Yeah.”
He pushed over his beer. “I’ll drive you home.”
I laughed and pushed his beer back over to him. “I’m good. It’s not even the kid thing. It’s worse. Even saying it out loud sounds like it should be on one of my mom’s shows, for fuck’s sake.”
“How about you get off that bush you’re beating?”
I flashed him my middle finger. “I don’t even know. That’s the problem all around. We hooked up twice, a couple of weeks apart. But…” I trailed off.
“Don’t say it.” August groaned and drained half of his own beer.
Every guy’s worst nightmare. His silence was enough commiser
ation. “Yeah. What the hell am I going to say? ‘Oh, it might be my kid you’re having, but maybe not. See ya at the ultrasound’? Fuck me.”
“Yeah, that’s shitty. I’ve never met her. I mean, I’ve seen her around. She’s right across from my store. She hangs out with the newly minted Hamilton girls.”
“Yeah. Seth’s kid is in Wes’s class and we got to be friends. And I’ve helped out with a few house things for Oliver. Sometimes he flips houses instead of just playing realtor.” I shrugged. “You know how it goes in this goddamn town. Everyone’s in each other’s business.”
Why I stayed in my own lane most of the time. It was just too fucking weird.
Kelsey was a perfect mistake.
“Does she have a boyfriend?”
“I don’t know, man.” It didn’t feel right though. Kelsey didn’t seem like someone who’d have a few guys on the hook. Then again, we weren’t much on talking when we were together. We were too busy getting naked.
Or she was getting feisty and then I wanted to get her naked.
“Sounds like you need to talk to her.”
The phone burning in my pocket backed up that statement. “Yeah, she blew me off.” I took a sip of my beer. “Sort of. We had a fight and we haven’t talked since the pregnant thing happened.” Except for the texts she’d sent me as a white flag and I’d been ignoring.
It was way too much to go into.
“That’s fucked up.” August cracked his knuckles. “Is she…you know, keeping it?”
I hadn’t even thought about that. I dragged my hands under the table and fisted them on top of my knees. Fuck, I hadn’t even…
“I don’t know.”
“Obviously, you’re a little more than messed up about her. Is this where I have to tell you to man up and talk to her? Or you got this?”
I bounced my fist against the wood twice. “No, I got this.”
“That’s what I thought.”
I pulled out my phone and fired off the text before I could stop myself.
Think we should talk. I’ll pick you up for dinner tomorrow?
My gut stopped twisting when I saw the bubbles not even a minute later.
Yes, I’d love to talk. Dinner sounds great.
Fifteen
