Tiebreaker

by P. Dangelico

  My gaze slides to the well-developed backside belonging to the chief. Goodness gracious, it’s big. “He’s hot,” I mouth, tipping my head in that direction.

  Bebe’s smile drops. “If you like extra trash in your trunk.”

  Chapter Six

  Maren

  After breakfast I hit the local supermarket, stocking up on food for the long haul. I have a sneaking suspicion I’ll be here longer than I want to be.

  The quandary I’m in does not hit me until I park the truck. It was easy enough at the store when I had three young employees trailing after me, ready to do my bidding, offering to load my bags and the case of bottled water. Now that I’m back at my grandfather’s place, it dawns on me that I have only one working hand. And even that one is not doing too hot from overuse.

  My cell phone rings as I sit in the cab of the truck pondering my predicament. I snatch it up, expecting it to be Oliver, and see Bebe’s name flashing onscreen instead.

  “So I forgot to mention there’s a concert tonight at Rowdy’s,” she says as soon as I answer. “That band from Austin is playing––”

  “No.”

  “It’s in honor of Grandpa. You have to come.”

  “Mmnooo.”

  “It’s going to look real bad if you don’t show. He’ll know you’re avoiding him, that you’re still hung up on him, that you’re still that pathetic girl who followed him around everywhere.”

  Nobody is better at smack talk than Bebe. She’ll find your weakness and go after it without mercy until there is nothing left of your composure. This is how we ended up in a hair-pulling fight on the golf course.

  “I hate you.”

  “I’ll pick you up at nine.”

  “No way. I still have PTSD from the last time I let you drive.” When my grandfather’s health took a turn for the worse and Oliver and I came to visit, she picked us up at the airport. That’s all I remember. I have no recollection of the fifty-minute car ride because it was so traumatizing my mind blocked it out. Oliver still won’t speak of it. “I’ll pick you up.”

  “Later, hater,” I hear right before the line goes dead.

  The grocery bags sitting next to me on the bench of the pickup taunt me. My good hand is aching, and every time I try to close my fingers around something with my injured one, a shock of pain zips up my arm, a clear reminder that I cannot use it.

  With my father at work and my mother at her part-time job at the library, there’s no one coming to my rescue. It will have to be multiple trips.

  I get out and pop the hatch of the flatbed. While I’m contemplating how to get all the bottled water in the house, the roar of tailpipes drags my gaze down the street.

  It’s Noah…riding a Harley.

  He pulls into his driveway and cuts the engine and it’s like a starter pistol goes off. Every nerve ending in my body stands at attention.

  While he gets off the bike, I run a not-so-covert assessment from my hiding spot behind the truck. Jeans. A white t-shirt that shows off the colorful tattoos on his arms. He removes his helmet and runs a restless hand over his black hair. He looks…good. Healthy. Nothing like the man in my memories.

  And then it occurs to me, I’m in town two whole minutes and fall right back into old habits. Somebody needs to kick my ass. I’d do it myself, but as it stands I can’t even get the groceries in the house.

  He places the helmet on the seat. A helmet? Mmm. That’s new. The Noah I knew would sooner wear a paper bag over his head. I guess some things do change.

  When he spots me, I duck into the cab of the truck and pretend to organize the bags. He’s probably smirking. I can practically feel his eyes on me and my skin starts to itch. It’s like I’ve developed an allergy to him. Then again, everything about him is an irritant.

  “Still watching me, huh?” comes from directly behind me, humor in his voice as usual.

  Asshole.

  Well, this is definitely not the comeuppance I’ve been dreaming of for the last ten years.

  “Just checking to see if you’re wearing your scarlet letter. Wouldn’t want any unsuspecting females thinking you’re a stand-up guy. Better yet, why don’t you get that tattooed on your forehead.”

  “How’s the wrist?”

  “None of your business.” I fumble with the groceries some more.

  “At least you’re talking to me. Although I’m not surprised, you never could resist my charms.”

  The edge of my vision turns crimson, similar to the blood I’m about to spill. I’m really not in the mood to be the source of his amusement.

  “Say another word and I will rip off your charms––”

  “Later, killer.” He smiles crookedly. “Let me get the groceries first.”

  Leaning in, he reaches inside the cab of the truck and I’m immediately assaulted by the scent of laundry detergent, and a bunch of sweaty, sticky memories I’d love nothing more than to permanently forget.

  The bare skin of his arm brushes against mine and I jerk back. No doubt that was on purpose, devised to get a rise out of me. And the bastard is succeeding. Problem is, as much as I’d enjoy telling him to take a hike, I need help.

  Once he’s grabbed the bags in the truck, he goes for the ones in my hand. “I’ve got it,” I bark, trying to hold onto them.

  “Don’t be stupid. You’ll set your recovery back if you keep trying to use it.”

  We exchange equal glares and both hold on and while that goes on, it happens––I’m transported back in time. I swear I’m ten and he’s thirteen and standing on his lawn. As different as he looks, the rest of him, the essence of him, is exactly the same.

  I let go and he transfers all the bags to one hand while hoisting the water over his shoulder as if it weighs nothing. Without looking back, he walks into the house. Meanwhile I hang back. To figure out what to say. Gather my wits, if you will. Basically, I’m stalling. I actually have to force my legs to carry me inside, toes dragging the entire way.

  I hear him moving around in the kitchen and poke my head in. He’s putting the groceries away, moving around as comfortably as if he owns the place. He certainly knows it better than I do.

  After he places the carton of almond milk in the refrigerator, he turns to face me. There’s enough static in the room to make my hair stand on end like a lab experiment gone bad and yet his expression is the very picture of calm.

  I don’t believe in soul mates. Not anymore. Not since that awful night so many years ago. Chemistry, however, I believe in. Mix one agent with another and you can generate one heck of a powerful reaction, explosive even if you’re not careful. Chemistry is what makes it easy to mistake lust for love, and attraction for something deeper. This crazy thing between us––the snap, crackle, pop that never goes away. That hasn’t dulled, not even a little. Chemistry. Nothing magical about it.

  “Do you have a key to this place?”

  He walks around the kitchen counter and leans back against it. Crossing his arms, he takes his sweet time answering, “Yes.”

  “I want it back.” The itch under my cast acts up. My attempt to scratch it proves both futile and frustrating. And the assessing stare fixed on me isn’t helping matters; it’s making me fidgety and nervous. Which aggravates me to no end because I don’t get fidgety. And I sure as heck don’t get nervous.

  I stare down balls coming at me at 100 monster miles per hours without flinching––fluorescent ones, not scrotums. I lean in. That’s who I am. He’s right, I am a killer. Not here though…and full disclosure, if scrotums were coming at me at a hundred miles per hour I would probably do more than flinch, I’d run.

  “It’s for emergencies.” He exhales loudly. As if bored with the conversation. “In case anyone in the family needs to get in.”

  I hit a sore spot. Despite that his face gives nothing away, I know I have. I’ve always had an uncanny ability to know his thoughts and I’m surprised to see that hasn’t changed.

  “I want it back.” He watches me for a while,
expression stern. The sands of time pass. I’m growing white hair when he finally pulls a set of keys from the front pocket of his jeans. Unclipping one from a silver keychain, he places it on the countertop.

  “And I’d like to go to the lake day after tomorrow.” I know I’m pressing my luck but at this point I have nothing to lose.

  He’s shaking his head before I can even finish. A piece of hair falls over his eye and he rakes it back. “I can’t. One of my managers quit and I’m too busy at the club…been neglecting it the last few months. Maybe next week.”

  Right. I don’t intend on staying another three days let alone another week.

  “I’m not staying another week. I’ve gotta get back to my life.”

  “Suit yourself, but I can’t go to the lake this week. And you know it’s a two-day trip, which means camping.”

  Nuts. I forgot about that.

  He advances on me in a lazy stride, the charge between us building with each step he takes. Molecules about to collide. Nuclear fusion imminent.

  I take a not-so-casual step back. My ass meets the wall. While my heart thunders inside my chest, my mouth goes bone dry. Regardless, I do my best imitation of a woman that has her shit together. Not one that can’t make up her mind whether she wants to throw her arms around him and hug him tightly, or stab him in the eye with a screwdriver. Phillips head in case you were wondering.

  His brow wrinkles in confusion. “Who’s Phillip?”

  “Who?”

  “You said something about Phillip.”

  “Oh, nobody.”

  His gaze flickers to my mouth for a brief moment and I nearly go into cardiac arrest. I watch as he reaches out and gently takes my right arm, curls his big, warm, hands around the skin above my fiberglass cast. It’s too much, too fast, and it feels too damn good. The minute he touches me I start to panic.

  “What are you doing?” I try to take my arm back and fail.

  Lips quivering, he turns my hand to face up. The rough pads of his thumbs press and knead my clammy palm. He grabs the sunglasses hanging on the collar of his t-shirt, takes a hold of the stem, and wedges it under my cast.

  A sigh of relief hisses out of me. Our eyes meet and for a split second I forget that I hate him. I forget that he hurt me. I forget that he ruined everything. Instead I fall into his burnished bronze eyes and find myself in the past, standing before the boy he once was. Selfless and sweet. Thoughtful and always ready to help. My best friend, my safe place, my everything.

  “Noah,” a woman’s voice drifts from the open front door. “Noah.”

  Until he wasn’t.

  The fragile bubble around us bursts, the spell broken. He pulls the sunglasses out from under my cast, and hangs them back on the collar of his t-shirt. His eyes leave me, shifting to the open doorway. Without another word, he backs away and stalks out while I remain plastered against the wall with only a familiar sense of loss to keep me company.

  Chapter Seven

  Maren

  It’s a little after nine by the time I pull up to my parents’ house and honk. Bebe struts out in a tight black top and jeans, her long hair blown out. She even has eye makeup on. Bebe dressed up is a rare sight so I can’t help but stare and smile.

  “Get in, hot stuff. Let’s get this thing over with.”

  She slides onto the passenger side and cranks up the music, Halsey singing Bad at Love. She mouths every single word in perfect timing.

  It’s been a long road to recovery for Annabelle. Years passed where she wouldn’t even go to the supermarket, too self-conscious as she learned to identify with this new person life forced her to become.

  She deserves someone who can appreciate how spectacular she really is. But that would mean Bebe would need to let him in first, and by the looks of it that ain’t happening any time soon.

  “What the hell was Grandpa thinking buying this thing?”

  My grandfather was as far from flashy as you can get and this truck is meant to draw attention. I’ve been garnering strange looks all over town when I drive it.

  “I think he lost his ever-loving mind and you guys did nothing to stop him.”

  My sister shrugs and goes back to singing along with the radio.

  A short time later we pull into the very packed parking lot of my grandfather’s country western bar slash nightclub. It’s a beautiful old building, which once served as a hat-making factory around the turn of the century.

  Music drifts out as I study the familiar weathered red brick and big windows on the second floor––take stock of all the changes, and there are many. A colorful mural of my grandfather riding his favorite bull, Goliath, spans the front of the building. Rowdy’s glows in hot-pink neon above the rusty iron door.

  A tide of mixed emotions surges and crests. It breaks over me hard and fast.

  Rowdy is gone.

  His place is different.

  So different I hardly recognize it.

  These are the cold facts. I knew Noah had made improvements over the years, but this place looks like it belongs in Dallas, even L.A., instead of small town Oklahoma.

  When I was a kid, my grandfather would bring me down here if he had inventory to do, or some other business to attend on the afternoons that my parents were working. It didn’t look like this, though. Nothing like this. Any sentiments I may have had about revisiting childhood memories evaporate.

  “Pretty cool, right?”

  “It’s alright,” I mutter, both impressed and a little sad.

  “I knew you’d like it.” Bebe beams a big white grin. “Come on.”

  Inside, from the stage in the middle of the club, the band is playing a cover of Sweet Home Alabama with a hard rock edge.

  The interior has been completely remodeled as well. The smell of stale beer is gone. Although the exposed brick remains, the booths are covered in cracked red leather to go with the retro look. The bars have an industrial feel to them. Copper and nickel paired with dark distressed wood. There’s one on each side of the massive room and both are packed four rows deep, the club filled to capacity.

  “It’s like this every Wednesday to Saturday,” Bebe informs me, shouting over the live music.

  I recognize some of the new guys on the PBR circuit amongst the crowd, here to pay their respects to my grandfather I’m guessing.

  Bodies bump and brush past us. “Hey, isn’t that Maren Murphy?” I hear more than once and ignore them as we weave our way through the crowd to get closer to the bar.

  My hands are sweating viciously. I wipe them against my jeans as I survey the crowd.

  “He’s at the bar,” the busybody on my left announces.

  I send a warning glare in my sister’s direction and she bats her lashes innocently in return. “Whatever is going on in that messed-up head of yours needs to stop right now.”

  “Think of the hate sex. How intense would that be? And you could finally get him out of your system.”

  In a temporary moment of insanity, I picture myself as Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, straddling Noah and plunging an ice pick into his chest.

  Yeah, it would be intense.

  “I don’t have him in my system. He’s nowhere near my system. And I have a boyfriend, remember?”

  A boyfriend who wants to marry me.

  I haven’t told anyone yet. Mostly because I’m not sure how to explain why I’m not engaged.

  Bebe rolls her eyes, which impels me to continue. “And for someone that has yet to pop her cherry, you sure are concerned with my sex life.” My sister’s mouth slams shut and her lips thin. “That’s what I thought. You stay out of my business, and I’ll stay out of yours.”

  My head turns and my eyes crash into Noah’s unblinking stare. The crowd shifts, blocking my line of sight for a moment. When it parts again, he’s still watching me.

  Leaning back with his elbows resting on the edge of the bar, the black t-shirt with the Rowdy’s logo he’s wearing stretches across the wide expanse of his muscular chest. I ca
n’t help taking note of all the changes––the paint covering his arms, the sharper lines of his face, the thick bulk of his thighs beneath his jeans. The fact that he looks even better with age proves that there is absolutely no justice in this world.

  In an alternate reality that actually makes sense, his chest is concave and he doesn’t need a costume for Halloween because some woman he messed around with decided to rearrange his face to resemble the Joker. Not in this one, though. In this one he gets to ride off into the sunset looking better than ever.

  He gives me a wry smile. The same smile he would give me when he was in the mood for sex. One I’d love to slap right off his annoyingly handsome face right now. I flip him the bird and he throws his head back in laughter. I hate him.

  “I need a drink.” My lips are moving but I’m not sure sound is coming out. I can’t feel my face. It’s numb. I think there’s a song by the Weekend about that. It sounded weird when it came out but I get it now. “You want a drink? Let’s drink.”

  “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we get a drink?” the wiseass next to me suggests. I snap out of my Noah trance and level my sister with a look that says mess with me and I’ll pull your hair out.

  “Brussels sprouts, right?” Be says with an obnoxious grin.

  “Exactly.”

  Up on the stage, the lead singer taps the mic. “Everybody shut the fuck up.” Then he chuckles. The chatter dials down. “Good…now listen up. We’re all here tonight to honor a legend.” The crowd explodes into whistles and cheers. “Rowdy, wherever you are––” The singer points to the ceiling, eyes skyward. “This one’s for you.”

  The music starts up. The guitarist strums a melancholy tune. I recognize the song almost immediately because it was one of my grandfather’s favorites, Ain’t No Grave by Johnny Cash. The lead singer is good, really good, weaving a magic spell with his distinctly raspy voice that adds an original touch to the cover. Everyone goes completely silent in awe of his skill.

  Not everyone is lost in the music, however. Noah’s scrutiny is hot enough to slap some color on my cheeks. I ignore him as long as I can, which to be honest is not very long at all. Our eyes meet again. This time he’s standing next to the woman with the tattoos I’ve seen come and go from his house.