Love on the Rocks: A Heartswell Harbour Romance

by Mavis Williams

  “Vell… I would guess it is zee losing of your one true love, ya?”

  She blinked.

  Yes. Yes, dammit you Nordic God of Soul-Crushery, it is, fuck you very much.

  “Actually, my greatest sadness is that I can’t bottle you and sell you and become ridiculously wealthy and move into a condo I would build in your chest hair where I would live happily ever after.”

  She started crying. Tears slid eagerly down her cheeks like puppies let out for their first romp outdoors. Sven didn’t notice. He was, it seemed, whipping up a batch of bread to feed the hungry in Slovakia. All of the hungry, for the rest of time.

  “Vell,” he chuckled. Sven’s chuckle was the tinkle of icebergs dancing with each other off the coast of Sweden, with puffins and fat little baby seals bobbing in the waves. “I am thinking you would need a pretty big bottle, what do you say, ya?”

  “How big?” she waggled her eyebrows at him, wiping effusively at her tears with sudsy hands.

  “Heh heh.” Again, with the icebergs. “Lucy is naughty, ziss is what I say to Ruby-two-shoes. Naughty, but sad. Lucy is what we call, ensam.”

  “Ensam?” Lucy shook random bubbles off her hair.

  “Ya.”

  “I’m… ensam?” She decided the word meant incredibly sexy and desirable.

  “Ya.”

  “Thanks. I’m good with that.”

  “You should be nice to zee policier, yes?” Sven stopped mixing the manna for a dozen countries and frowned intensely at Lucy.

  “Zee… policier?”

  “Dorian.”

  Lucy paused for a moment, lost in contemplation of having a lover with an accent.

  “Dorian speaks English,” she said. Like it made sense. “Dorian doesn’t notice that I’m …what was it… ensam?”

  “Lucy,” Ruby stood in the doorway. Ruby the imperturbable. Ruby the empath. Ruby-two-shoes. “Ensam means lonely.”

  “Oh.”

  “And Ida needs you because her mother… her mother has a difficult life.” Ruby, the voice of reason.

  “Why?”

  Ruby moved to Sven who enveloped her in his massive floury arms, turning her so her back pressed against his chest, his arms looped around her middle. She practically disappeared inside his embrace as he rested his chin on her head. Lucy sighed, another tear escaping from the thin veneer of dish soap she had wiped across her cheeks.

  “Lu… Ida’s mum is Connie. Connie Durham? Connie who gets picked up for public drunkenness every other weekend?”

  The kitchen was so silent they could hear Lucy’s tears drip off her chin.

  “I’ve heard about Connie.” Lucy wondered if the town had heard about her as well. She and drunk Connie may well be soulmates.

  “Connie had Ida when she was about sixteen, and it’s only a matter of time before that poor child is put into foster care.” Ruby shook her head, causing Sven to burrow his face into her hair. “If Ida is visiting with you, it’s because she needs to. She needs a place, and a person, and if she has decided that you are that place and that person, then you have to get over yourself and be open to her.”

  “Please don’t tell me I have to align my chakras, or rub my empathy bone or something…” Lucy’s tears were still flowing, making her voice sound like it was deep inside a well, under several feet of mossy weeds. Like she was drowning.

  “That’s why you have to take the chicken.”

  “You has to take zee chicken, Lucy,” Sven looked like he might cry too.

  “I have to take the chicken,” Lucy repeated, like a good girl. “Will that stop me from being ensam?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “That is what zee policier is for, ya?” Zven waggled his eyebrows. She felt it was much more effective than her own brow waggling.

  “Fine. Whatever.” Lucy dumped the dishcloth in the sink and glared at her friends, her in-love, wonderful, bleeding-heart friends who would do anything to save her, and she stomped out of the kitchen. “Let’s get these stupid chicks then, okay? Chicks, children, cops, café. Mumsy should love this.”

  Lucy slammed the door open and strode into the feed store, mumbling under her breath as she plowed directly into a solid wall of man.

  Dorian.

  Zee policier.

  He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans and a manly chin and he smelled like a forest. Lucy convinced her jaw to remain firmly shut, when what she really wanted to do was lick him from stem to stern.

  She muttered an apology, patting him on the chest with both hands. She stood there, not moving, feeling his heartbeat under her hand and staring at his adam’s apple.

  “I feel like I’ve been here before,” she mumbled to his throat. His adam’s apple bobbed merrily in greeting.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. She could feel his words rumble under her hands.

  “Never better. You?” She kept her hands on his chest. His heart kept beating.

  “I’m fine,” he swallowed.

  “Nice weather.” She could do this. She could do this socially acceptable thing of making small talk as long as she could keep her hands over his beating heart. She wasn’t convinced that the unsolicited touching was socially acceptable, but no one was stopping her, and so.

  Ruby came into the store carrying a large crate that made peeping noises. She put the crate on the counter, then turned to look at Lucy with an eyebrow raised. Lucy looked at Ruby; she looked at Dorian’s throat; she looked at her hands still bracing his chest.

  “Oh,” she said. “I should unhand you, shouldn’t I? Probably rules about touching, you know, a man of the law. Such as yourself.”

  The manly chin nodded and she pulled her hands away from his chest like she was gently removing a bandaid. Wrists first, then palms, then fingertips giving him a gentle shove.

  She took a deep breath, sighed it out and turned to the counter. Why was she constantly embarrassing herself with this man? Rob, the probation case Ruby had adopted to serve his community service hours, nodded at her from behind the counter and offered her a piece of licorice.

  “More books, Dorian?” Ruby asked, poking Lucy in the ribs as she passed behind her.

  “I don’t know,” he mumbled. “I mean, yes, more books, but I don’t know if you want them? Maybe I should come back later? Maybe not… now?”

  Lucy looked over her shoulder at him and was amazed to see him blushing as he stumbled over his words. He held a canvas bag which she could see was full of paperback books and his face looked like he had just walked in on someone having a shower.

  “You can read?” she asked, hoping to put him at ease with her light-hearted banter. She was a champion of light-hearted banter. “And here I thought you were just muscles and a uniform.”

  “Lucy,” Ruby warned. “Of course he reads. In fact, he wrote these…”

  “I’ll just leave them here for you, Ruby,” Dorian interrupted. Lucy snagged a book from the top of the pile as he began to walk past her. He froze, his eyebrows leaping above his sunglasses like beach volleyball players on spring break.

  “Oooh, Vanessa Ryder.” Lucy read the author’s name off the cover showing a well-muscled torso and a damsel. “Mumsy loves this stuff.”

  “Really?” Dorian paused by her elbow, close enough for her to feel the warmth of his body beside her. She held the book carefully in her hands, turning it over in an effort to still her shaking. She’d been sober for a full day. Being this near to a large real-life fire-breathing man was doing a job on her nervous system.

  “Yeah, Mums devours this author. She has her books all over her house. I think she’s a closet necrophiliac.”

  “Your mother has sex with dead people?” Rob asked, looking like he was doubting the wisdom of being Lucy’s friend. “Like, ew.”

  “There isn’t much sex in these, with dead people or otherwise,” Dorian said. “In case you really meant nymphomaniac.”

  Lucy snorted, stifling a cackle behind her hand. Ruby rolled her e
yes.

  “Single. Forever,” Ruby whispered in Lucy’s ear, squeezing her arm encouragingly.

  “I didn’t mean necro… yeah… um…” Lucy stuttered to a stop. She looked at Dorian for help, but he seemed to be laughing at her. “You read romance novels?” she asked.

  “These are actually my…”

  Ida burst into the store followed by Sven. Dorian plucked the novel from Lucy’s fingers and crossed the room in two long strides. He put his bag down in a corner and turned just in time to catch Ida who leapt at him from three feet away.

  “Do-wian! We seen the baby chickens and Sven said I can go to his land and be a real Warrior Princess, ‘cause in Sven’s land they’s all Vikings!”

  “That sounds exciting,” Dorian said. “I think Sven’s land is Sweden. It’s pretty far away.”

  “We’se can drive there. Can Loocy come?” Ida twisted around in Dorian’s arms to wave her hand in Lucy’s direction. “Loocy can be a Viking too! You comin’ Loocy?”

  “I have always wanted to be a Viking,” she said. “I think they’re big on mead, aren’t they? Mead might just be the answer. Nothing like a drunk Viking, I always say.”

  Dorian frowned at her and Lucy immediately regretted her quick tongue. She shrugged, turning back to Rob who she hoped might just bury her under the floorboards behind the counter, but Rob was frowning at her too.

  “Right.” Ruby clapped her hands, coming to the rescue once again, as Ruby was wont to do. Lucy wished she was the kind of friend who didn’t need to be constantly rescued, but there it was. “Let’s load up these chicks for you and get you started on a life of animal husbandry.”

  “Mumsy will be thrilled,” she said. “Husbandry rhymes with husband.”

  “It actually doesn’t,” said Rob, the grammar tyrant.

  “Loocy don’t have a husband,” Ida informed the room. “Just Goat. Oh, and Dog.”

  Lucy stuffed the entire string of licorice into her mouth and chewed, goat-like, until the urge to scream went away.

  “I’m gonna come back, actually, later,” she said, snatching Rob’s uneaten licorice out of his hand and stuffing that into her mouth also. She moved toward the doors, trying not to drool as her small audience watched her in awe. Awe-inspiring, or aw-ful, she didn’t really care. “I’ll get the chicks, you know, later? Okay? Okay. Gonna go for a walk. Really, just… a walk. Maybe all the way to Sweden, who knows? Maybe just a long walk off a short pier, eh? Ha. Ha.”

  The cow bell over the door jingled as she exited, letting the door slam behind her. She spit the licorice onto the side of the road and stomped toward home.

  Nine

  “Jesus, Jesus, Mary, Jesus and Joseph’s dog, why? Why?”

  There was no one on the road with her, but Lucy felt sure that someone was watching her. Some nosey teetotaler judging her from their kitchen window as she stomped back toward the school.

  “Jesus, Joseph, Mary… why do I have to care? Why do I have to care about that stupid kid? She’s not my kid!” The conversation with Ruby had unsettled her. Here she was, unsettled. Miles from home with a stone in her shoe.

  OK, maybe not miles from home, but she did have a stone, and she was walking and she was definitely unsettled.

  “I don’t care. So there, hah! I don’t care about that stupid kid, it’s not my problem, and I am going home to have a drink, dammit, and you think you can stop me? Do ya?” she yelled at a squirrel leaping from tree to tree and chittering at her like a scolding aunt. “No flying rat gonna tell me what to do.”

  Lucy kicked at stones and limped and cursed at squirrels as the shadow of a truck forced her to stop swearing long enough to turn her head. She was eye level with the passenger window of a ridiculously jacked up pickup, black and shining, with a beaming freckled face leering at her from the open window.

  “I’m not leering, ma’am, just wondering if you need a lift?”

  It was Tom.

  Tom, of the wood stove installation.

  Tom with the young fiancée and the preponderance for unanswered questions.

  She chose to ignore him.

  The truck kept pace with her as she shuffled on, ignoring. Anywhere else in the world but here, the ignoring of a massive truck would mean the truck would get the hint and drive away.

  Not here. No sir.

  “It’s just that I’m going to the school… I mean… to your place… I guess we should call it your place now, what?”

  She began to jog. It hurt.

  The truck kept pace.

  “I mean, I’m going up there, because I got the wood stove here, don’t I? In the truck. I was wondering if this was a good time to maybe install it, wasn’t I?”

  “Who’s driving?” She congratulated herself on not gasping. It was only two words, but she hadn’t jogged for over two years and she felt herself fading fast.

  “Oh, that’s Jo, ain’t it?”

  “Is it?” Two more words. She was on a roll. As long as she didn’t die.

  “Yeah, Jo’s my girlfriend. We’re gettin’ married, ain’t we?”

  “Have you asked her?” Lucy grabbed the door handle and, quite nimbly, she felt, hopped onto the running board as the truck lumbered on toward the driveway to the school, sanctuary and scotch.

  “I guess he asked me, didn’t he?” Jo was blonde and busty and beaming. Apparently, a twin of Tom, with the questions and the plaid.

  “You’re like twins.”

  “Oh no, Ma’am. We ain’t twins!” Tom guffawed. He actually guffawed, like Goofy, but with smaller ears. “That’s be something now, wouldn’t it?”

  “Indeed,” Lucy felt the blood leaching from her fingers as she held onto the truck door for dear life. “Nice truck.”

  “Yup, yup, she is, ain’t she?”

  “Nice girlfriend.”

  “Well now, ma’am, yes she is!” Tom reached a giant paw over to Jo who twined her fingers into his, grinning.

  “We have a question for you, Miss Lucy, don’t we, Tom?” Jo turned the truck slowly into the school parking lot.

  “I don’t know, do you?” If you can’t beat’em, thought Lucy, you might as well just answer questions with questions. It seemed to be the norm.

  “What?”

  “Have a question.” Lucy let go of the door handle, her fingers curled with bitter permanence.

  “I told ya, didn’t I?” Tom asked, as he swung his long frame out of the truck. “I told ya she was piece-a-work, didn’t I?” Tom beamed at her like she was a newly minted coin he had just discovered at the bottom of a ditch.

  Jo appeared around the cab of the truck. She might have been four feet tall, Lucy couldn’t tell, but she definitely looked like she would get the part if she auditioned for Tinker Bell. Short spikey blond hair, full boobs, tight jeans.

  “You’re lovely, aren’t you?” Lucy asked. Lucky Tom.

  “No, no… I’m Jo,” she said as she thrust out a tiny hand which Lucy shook, surprised at how warm and alive it felt in hers.

  “Thanks for the drive.” Lucy moved away from the truck, determined to reach the whiskey before life made any more demands on her. She had already done the dishes today, dammit! Was there no end to the demands on her time? Jo kept talking. She shut her eyes tight.

  “I can’t do this right now,” she whispered.

  “We was wondering… um… you ask her, Tom.” Jo shoved Tom forward and there was an awkward tussle as the tiny woman tried to exert her strength on the beanpole that was apparently wrapped around her pinkie.

  “Can we have our wedding… here?”

  She heard the word, wedding.

  “Ick,” she said.

  “We’ll have it outside, and stuff, but if it rains we want to have it somewhere inside, and we both went to school here…” Jo was glowing. Frothing, even. Like she was having a seizure. Of joy.

  “Ugh,” Lucy said.

  “We could set up a tent, and a gazebo and a bar for the dancing afterwards,” Jo continued to fizz like a
whiskey sour.

  Lucy perked up at the mention of a bar. “A bar is a good idea,” she grunted, nodding as she agreed with herself.

  “I knew you’d say yes, didn’t I?” Tom thumped her on the back and slammed open the tail gate.

  “I’m not sure she said yes…” Jo whispered.

  “Sure she did, didn’t she?” Tom reached into the bed of truck and dragged out a huge box.

  “I didn’t say yes…” Lucy said.

  “Sure you did, didn’t you?”

  Tom and Jo tromped up the steps and into the school, bearing the box with her new wood stove between them. Lucy sighed, ready to weep for a glass of whiskey, but apparently having to settle for wedding planning and carpentry instead.

  Ten

  Dorian’s favorite table at the Lighthouse Café was nestled under a photograph that never failed to inspire him when he came in to write on his lunch break. The ancient black and white image of the original lighthouse keeper and his wife, posed stiffly beside the imposing slope of the lighthouse, showed a couple unsmiling and severe. They stood as if made of stone, but they were holding hands. That simple gesture lent a tenderness to the image that implied strength, unity and love in the face of hardship.

  It was a theme in every one of his novels.

  He ordered his usual, a coffee and a muffin, and sat with his back to the room, bent over his keyboard with single-minded determination. If there was only one thing he could control in his life, it was the words on the page.

  The bustle of the café, with its rustic decorations of driftwood and fishing nets, receded into the background as his fingers flew over the keys, the story coming to life as though willing itself to be written. He paused to take a sip of his coffee, going cold at his elbow.

  “Sven!” Dorian recognized the voice of Zoe Prophet, owner of the Lighthouse. “Perfect timing, we were just about to run out.”

  Dorian’s ears perked at Sven’s name. Sven regularly delivered bread to the Lighthouse Café, and as if on cue the warm aroma of fresh loaves filled the air.

  “I am having zee day of days,” Sven’s booming voice made Dorian grin. The giant Swede never did anything in half measures. “Firstly, I am having to make a million buns for you, and secondly I am having to make a million cakes for all the hungry ones who love the cakes of Sven! I am having my friend Lucy as loyal sidekick to help with all the million things, but Lucy is slow.”