Ten first dates, p.16
Ten First Dates, page 16
“Greg the Wall,” he says. “It’s a pretty funny story actually.”
“I’m sure it’s hilarious,” I say. “But something tells me it’s a you had to be there kind of thing, so if you told me now, we really wouldn’t be doing it justice.”
“You’re right. I’d have to start at the beginning, and that’d be a much longer story.”
Good God. I have all weekend to think of another topic of conversation for Sunday, so I say, “I can’t wait to hear all about it on Sunday.”
The waiter comes back, and I sign the check.
I stand and grab the cake box. “I’d say this was fun,” I tell Auggie, “but it’s Thursday night, and I only lie on weekends. See you later.”
He gives me an awkward hug and then runs off to the bathroom to fix his face.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the first time I’ve seen my father since I wore my hair in braids.
A few minutes ago, all I wanted to do was go home and eat, like, the whole cake, preferably with a chaser of more wine. Which is why I’m confused that my feet bring me somewhere different—to the annoying asshole who’s sitting at the bar and has watched all of this go down.
CHAPTER THREE
Cole
“You look like you need a drink,” I say as Holly stops behind the stool next to me holding a cake box in her hands. Along with everyone else in the restaurant, I just witnessed the three-car pileup that masqueraded as a family reunion. Holly may be wearing a cocky expression, but there’s something off in her eyes. Like she’s a wild animal that has been chased to the edge of a cliff and is either going to get eaten or leap.
So am I the predator or the cliff?
The encounter at her table has left her more shaken up than she wants to let on. Then again, she’d be more like the computer programs she used to write back in high school if it hadn’t affected her.
“Why aren’t you gloating?” she asks in a tone so dry it would shame the Sahara Desert.
“Gloating?” I ask in surprise. “I prefer to reserve my gloating for non-disasters.”
Like hell I’d gloat over this.
Her dad is a piece of shit. Or at least he was back in the day, and based on that pathetic attempt at a reunion, he hasn’t changed. Holly didn’t talk about her parents in high school, but most people knew that her and Bryn’s dad had left town when they were little, and everyone knew their mother was a piece of work.Then one afternoon early in my senior year, to my shock, I found Holly crying in the woods over her dumbass dad. She’d reached out to him, and it hadn’t gone well. Tough as balls Holly, who’d single-handedly eviscerated an asshole two years older than her in the school parking lot after he disrespected a fellow classmate, was crying. In front of me. We spent an hour talking, and I walked her home. I almost kissed her too—almost being the important word.
I pull out the stool next to me. “Here. I’ll even buy it for you.” I lift a finger to flag down the bartender.
Holly tilts her head as she eyes me suspiciously.
I understand why. We’ve been adversarial since that afternoon in the woods. It’s at least partly my fault. I wanted to ask her out back then, before I started dating my future wife, but something held me back. I didn’t want to be the next asshole who made Holly Mayberry vulnerable. Besides, I looked at her and saw a woman who would blow Highland Hills the moment she could. I figured she’d be running Google or something by now. It hadn’t occurred to me that someone like her, talented and driven, would stay back and work at Mayberry Matchmakers. So I avoided her, and apparently she didn’t like that, because she grew claws.
These days we bicker every time our paths cross. The whole feud seems even more stupid since we’re both in our thirties—Holly just turned thirty-three as evidenced by the number on her cake—but it seems to have only gotten worse since my wife died six years ago.
“Look,” I say with a sigh. “You’ve had a shitty night. I’m having a shitty night. What do you say we call an hour or two truce?”
“You think I’m going to be here for two hours?” she scoffs.
I hold my hands out to my sides. “Just covering my bases.”
Her face softens, but she still looks wary as she sets the box on the counter and sits on the stool next to me.
The bartender walks over. I’ve seen her in Ziggy’s, the brewery I own, but I don’t know her name, nor have I ever talked to her other than to take her order when she came up to the bar. At least before tonight. She’s made it very clear she’s interested in me, but I’ve played like I’m clueless. Even if I were interested, I wouldn’t fuck her. She lives in Highland Hills, and I have a hard and fast rule to never screw any woman who lives within a fifty mile radius. I’m not interested in a relationship, and it’s a hell of a lot less messy this way.
Holly orders a bourbon, and I tell the bartender to put it on my tab, earning a look of disappointment before she goes off to fix the drink.
“I can buy my own drinks, Cole. I have a dumb father. I’m not broke.”
I lift a shoulder into a lazy shrug as I turn in my seat to study her. “Sounds like he hasn’t changed much.”
Her eyes widen slightly. She turns away from me, just an inch or two, but enough that I notice. “So you remember that.”
“You telling me about your derelict dad back when we were in high school? Of course.”
For a moment, I think she’s going to get up and leave, but the bartender shows up with the glass. Holly snatches it from her, chugs it down, then hands back the empty glass. “I’ll take another.” She shoots me a smirk, then turns back to the waitress. “On him.”
The bartender—is her name Lacy? Loretta? Something with an L—shoots Holly a disapproving look before turning to comply.
“Not wasting any time getting shitfaced, huh?” I ask sarcastically, but I’m concerned.
“Hey,” she says, facing the wall behind the bar. It’s an interesting wall, covered in tiny marble tiles in gray, white, and black, but I know that’s not why she’s pretending to stare at it. “I’m not the sort to say no to free drinks.”
She’s not fooling me. We may not have had a single cordial conversation in years, but I’ve noticed things. I know she doesn’t let many people see this side of her, dejected and a little broken. Somehow she’s let me see it twice.
“So Bryn’s pissed because your dad dropped by to surprise you two?” I say. “That hardly seems fair.”
She rests her chin on her hand. “I told him where we were.”
“Did you send him an invitation?”
She snorts. “We didn’t have invitations. And that’s not the only reason she’s pissed. I told her—” She stops herself, swiveling her head to face me. “Oh, no. Not this time.”
“What does that mean?” I ask in confusion.
“You’re not getting my secrets out of me this time.”
“Are you talking about when you told me about your dad when we were in high school? I never told anyone, Holly.”
She seems to consider this, then turns her attention to the bartender, who has Holly’s refreshed drink.
“This is the last one I’m serving her,” Maybe-Lori says, holding my gaze. “We don’t serve drunk patrons and this is her fourth drink.”
I nod with a grim look, because I get it. I don’t serve drunk people either. “That’s fine. How about you bring us a carafe of coffee.” I give Holly a sarcastic look. “Or would you prefer something fancier, like a cappuccino?”
“Fuck you.”
I laugh. “Make it a cappuccino and a black coffee.” When the bartender looks confused, I add, “I speak fluent Holly.”
The bartender walks off as Holly sneers, “I’m not drunk. I know how to handle my booze.”
“And your liver must be very proud, but they have a four drink maximum, and you just hit it.” The maximum is a lie, but she’s been cut off, so technically it’s true. “Besides, you’ll need to sober up if you have any intention of driving home.” Not that I plan on letting her drive home, but maybe it will keep her here longer, because, idiot that I am, now that she’s sitting next to me, I don’t want her to go.
There’s just something about her…even when she’s in her antagonistic mode, which she almost always is around me.
She picks up her drink and takes a sip. “So what made you switch up your modus operandi? This isn’t your usual place, and the pickings seem slim on this side of town.” Her head tilts to the side, and a challenging look fills her eyes. “Unless you’re here after Laura.”
Laura. Damn. At least I was close. “Sometimes a man just wants a good piece of prime rib.”
She nods slowly. “So you decided you wanted to go more upscale. Hard to find high-falutin’ women in Highland Hills. You might want to try a Labelle.” The last part is said in a sneer, but as soon as the words leave her mouth, horror fills her eyes. She knows she’s gone too far.
While I have more reasons than anyone else in Highland Hills to dislike my in-laws, ones that go far beyond them being snooty and rich, my wife was still one of them. Something Holly clearly wasn’t thinking about. Still, I nearly get up and leave, especially since the Labelles are part of the reason I’m here tonight.
My expression must be thunderous because she immediately grimaces.
“Millie. Shit. I’m sorry.”
“What’s there to be sorry about?” I ask as I lift my drink to my lips and take a generous sip. “It’s true. I already got the one good person in the Labelle family. The rest of them suck.” Millie was nothing like her parents and sisters.
Something deep in my chest stings like it’s been pierced by a knife, and I still consider leaving to go home and deal with the pain in private, but something keeps my ass planted in my chair. Maybe it’s Holly’s regret, which seems genuine. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts.
“So you keep track of where I go?” I ask with a smirk. When her eyes narrow in confusion, I add, “You said you know this isn’t my usual place.”
She rolls her eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself. People talk.”
“You know what they say about rumors.”
Some of the sparkle returns to her eyes. “That they’re mostly true?”
I laugh but don’t answer. My dating preferences have made me somewhat of a white whale with the local women in our small tourist town—every woman wants to be the one to land me. I see no reason to try to sway anyone’s mind. “When I said I was here for the prime rib, I was being literal.”
She considers this for a moment. “Okay, that’s fair. I’ve heard it’s good. I’d heard all of the food is good.”
“I guess asking if you liked the food is akin to asking Mrs. Lincoln if she enjoyed the play.”
She laughs. “Yeah. Something like that.”
Laura brings over the cappuccino and my coffee. After studying Holly for a moment, she sighs and heads to the end of the bar.
“You said you were having a shitty night,” Holly says. “Since you know the source of my shitty night, it’s only fair that I know yours, even if it wasn’t accompanied with public humiliation.”
I smirk at her. “How do you know it wasn’t? I was here before you were.”
Grinning, she shakes her head. “There’s no way Laura would have turned a proposition down, and unless you walked out of the bathroom with your pants at your ankles, there’s nothing you could have done to compare.”
“Fair. My problem wasn’t accompanied by public humiliation, but I’d almost prefer it if it were.”
She leans closer, interest burning in her eyes. “Now you have to share.”
I don’t, and we both know it. Still, I find myself saying, “Funny you should mention the Labelles,” I say, breaking eye contact to stare at my drink. “They’ve suddenly shown an interest in my daughter.”
Honestly, I know I’m probably making too big a deal out of this, but thinking about them makes my chest feel tight, like I can’t catch my breath.
“Wait,” she says, her nose scrunched. “Aren’t they her grandparents?”
“In name, mostly. They wanted to take Jane after Millie died, saying she was a baby and I was a clueless man, but I’d been an equal partner in raising her before Millie died. Besides, Millie hated her parents and never wanted them anywhere near our daughter. So I told them to fuck off, just like she would have wanted.” I take a breath. “They’ve sent her ridiculous gifts for birthdays and Christmases over the years, but they’ve mostly stayed in the background…until recently. They want to see her now that she’s older. They say it’s their right.”
“You can still say no,” Holly says sympathetically. “You are her father.”
I pause. “She wants to see them.”
“Oh.”
Holly’s right. I could still tell her no, and while I’ve told Jane her mother didn’t get along with her parents, I haven’t told her much else. I’m a firm believer that sometimes you need to form your own opinion, even when you’re a child, but it’s hard to bite my tongue. So I’ve stuck to telling her that Millie cut the Labelles out of her life for reasons Jane’s too young to understand. I agreed to one Sunday afternoon a month, but then Jane begged to go to Asheville with them to see an ice skating show that she’s been begging to go to and I couldn’t get away to see. So I agreed, reluctantly, which is where they are now, probably sitting in some front row seat while I drown my sorrows in steak and whiskey. I can’t help but wonder if this is the beginning of something nefarious.
Because I don’t trust them for a fucking second.
CHAPTER FOUR
Holly
Goddamn, Cole Garrison and I have been talking for several minutes, and neither of us have thrown out a “fuck you” or made a “your mother” joke. Of course, the latter would be pretty inappropriate because his mother, God rest her, is dead, and mine is like the Real Housewives shoved into a blender with the Bachelorette.
More than that, he’s shared something personal with me. True, he may have only done it because he just witnessed a very cringe-worthy moment in my personal life, but even so… This thing with Cole…
It’s surprising.
It’s nice.
Even if he is sort of an asshole.
“Well, you know what they say,” I hedge, not entirely sure where I’m going with this, “kids can sense evil. No, wait. That’s dogs. Anyway. I’m sure kids can too. She’ll realize they’re assholes. I mean, she can hardly help it. An acquaintance at the post office told me that Evelyn Labelle ordered a several-foot-tall rooster sculpture from Italy.” I waggle my brows. “Guess old Bertie’s cock isn’t doing it for her.”
He laughs at me, something twinkling in his eyes. “You’re shit-faced.”
“You take that back,” I say. I consider taking a sip of the cappuccino, but I wasn’t born yesterday—Laura has been giving me the stink-eye since I sat down next to Cole. She probably made the design on top by spitting into it. “We Mayberrys have an excellent ability to drink.”
He gives me an uh-huh look. “You know, I own a brewery. Dogs might be able to sense evil, but bartenders can sense drunk people.” To my shock, he reaches out and taps me on the nose. I must be demented, because that single point of contact seems to singe through me.
“You’re treating me like a dog,” I say, arching an eyebrow. “Does that mean you’re going to give me a treat?”
I hear a snort behind the bar, but I don’t give Laura the time of day. My attention is on Cole. There’s heat in his eyes.
“I don’t kiss drunk women,” he says, rubbing his mouth. There’s something rueful about him. Good. He’s not immune to me.
“Who said anything about kissing?” I say, but I can’t deny my heart is beating double-time in my chest. Well, not double-time. That would probably suggest some sort of cardiac issue.
Turning toward the bar, I tell Laura, whose face is so sour she’s probably been back there sucking on lemon rinds, “Two forks, please. We plan to eviscerate this cake.” I nudge the box.
She sneers at me. “We don’t allow outside food. This is a restaurant.”
“Yes, I’d noticed,” I say.
“It’s her birthday,” Cole interjects, his tone as smooth as a good aged bourbon. “And she already made the arrangements for the cake with the waitstaff.”
She complies and hands over the silverware, but let’s be honest, it has nothing to do with it being my birthday and everything to do with the sexy-as-sin man who asked her.
Damn him.
I open the cake box and lift my fork, but Cole doesn’t reciprocate. “Come on, don’t leave me hanging.”
“Maybe I don’t like cake,” he says, his mouth twitching.
“I knew you were a psychopath.” He laughs, and I add, “Besides, we both know you like getting into women’s skirts.” I gesture to the princess cake. “Consider this your golden opportunity.”
There’s amusement in his eyes as he says, “It’s terrifying.”
“Obviously. But it’s still cake. You can close your eyes while you sink your fork in.”
It’s just asking for a that’s what she said, but he just gives me a small smile and says, “You make a surprisingly coherent argument for a woman who’s had four drinks.”
“Like I said, we Mayberrys can hold our liquor.”
He lifts his fork, and maybe I am a little tipsy, because I tap mine against it in a cake cheers. We both fork up some cake, and the slight moan he makes shoots straight between my legs.
“Don’t eat cake a lot?” I ask.
“I think I just had really low expectations for a princess cake,” he says, his eyes twinkling, “and it’s surprisingly good.”
“It’s the crunch layer,” I say, happy to speak about my favorite topic. “Life’s too short for bad cake. If I were the kind of person who wastes time crafting, I’d stitch that onto a pillow or something.”
