by Sam Crescent
“No,” I agree. “I’ll leave them to the cowboys and coal miners.”
Steve salutes me with his glass. “Good. Because there’s a new chick in town. Been chattin’ her up down at the Wheel for weeks. If you scoop her, I’m kicking your ass.”
“The hell are you doing taking that long?”
“Getting to know her? It’s a novel concept for you, but some of us like knowing a woman before we dip in. Saves the shrieking crazy phone calls later on if you find out she’s batshit before you go out with her.”
“Don’t judge my dating life by Serena.”
“Bro, I’m judging your dating life by you. She’s just caught up in your crap.”
“Thought you’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I am. Don’t mean I’m not going to tell you when you act like an asshole. You know you could’ve told her your plans changed a lot nicer than that. You just don’t give a damn.” He sips the bourbon, his dark green eyes judging me across our grandfather’s liquor.
“She never earned it.”
“You never gave it either.” He finishes his drink and gets up to pour another. “You want to hit the Wheel with me? See the old town?”
“Do I have any other options?”
“Netflix. Porn. Both.”
I could stay here, finish boxing up some of our grandfather’s ledgers. But we’ve worked on the house for three days, and I’m tired. I wanted movers to do it, but Steve reminded me that I’d have to hire them out of the city, and we didn’t need strangers opening old family documents. Grandfather hadn’t always been the upstanding, clean-nosed citizen of latter years, and his father was a bootlegger. “Fine. I’ll go.”
****
The breeze wafts around us, full of cigarette smoke, cheap perfume, honeysuckle, and dust. I hear the distant train whistle and rub sweat from the back of my neck.
“How long does an appearance have to be?” I ask Steve, who’s chugging his beer like it owes him money.
“Few minutes. I want to catch JT. You remember him, right?”
I remember them all. I spent every summer here and the last two years of high school— the rose-tinted days before I had my other grandfather’s last name and the full weight of who I am. Jack “Jax” Delaney became Jackson Hargrave II. West Point, five years with the army, then Stanford and the boardrooms of Hargrave International. For the best, my mother said. This is a chance your father’s family can’t give you.
Nine long years stretch between me and Jax Delaney, who had a cousin close as any brother, a gang of friends he ran with every weekend, and a girl he loved more than life itself. I remember sophomore homecoming when Steve asked Harper Keith to dance with me because I was too shy to speak when she was anywhere in a sixty-foot radius, and the way she caught my eyes when she said yes.
My fixation on Harper wasn’t healthy. I’ve had enough counseling to know that—adolescent fixations are rarely good. But goddamn, was it addictive. She was my first kiss, my first sexual partner, my first love. Maybe the only one in the last category. I eye Steve shot-gunning a third beer and wonder if I could ask about her.
I haven’t Googled, checked social media. I won’t. I don’t dare. I’ve spent nine years with the sweet summer memories and the gut-wrenching nightmare of our last contact. It needs to stay buried.
“I can’t make it. But have fun!” her voice urged me, so tinny and hollow through the uncertain phone line. Then she’d been gone. Smoke in the wind. Unanswered texts, disconnected phone number. Vanishing out of our mutual friends’ lives like a ghost.
****
“Hey, babe! When did you get in?” The voice sucker-punches me across nine empty years. I turn. She’s standing at the bar. Fuck my life. She’s gorgeous. Harper’s dark hair cascades to mid-back in heavy waves, her vibrant blue eyes sparkling in the light. She’s put on weight, filling out from the skinny 16-year-old in my memory to a curvy hourglass, but the slashed t-shirt stretched taut across her chest bears the bar’s logo.
She works here?
Here?
Harper Keith, model, hopeful artist, honor student … is a waitress. In a dive. In our old hometown.
I should feel elation. The girl who broke my heart is here, stranded hundreds of miles from civilization. Harper picks up a fifth of no-brand vodka and starts mixing drinks, and my chest hurts. I don’t give a shit about Serena’s tears, my ex-wife’s tantrums. I can’t remember their faces as my eyes lock on a scar half hidden under Harper’s bangle bracelets. Her little cousin had swung a sparkler and it’d landed on Harper’s forearm, right across her wrist. She’d squeezed my hand so hard in the emergency room I worried she’d land us both in a cast.
“Hey!” Steve bellows, plowing toward the bar without looking at me. “Harper! We need another round.”
She turns, smiling. Her crystal eyes flit right past me to fix on Steve, and her full lips part in a warm, familiar laugh that flashes a dozen memories across my mind and flays me down to a gawky teenager. Fuck whoever said time heals anything. She teases Steve, banters with a handful of other patrons, wiggles her shapely hips in time to the music. I stay at the table, locked in this hell loop. The girl I almost gave up a fortune for doesn’t even recognize me.
Of course she doesn’t. Money’s all that buys love, and I didn’t have shit back then. I was just her high school boyfriend.
“You didn’t tell me Harper was here.” My voice is quiet and bitter when Steve drops into the chair across from me.
“She’s always here.” He stares at me, glances over his shoulder at Harper, then back at me. “Oh, fuck me. You two used to date, huh? I forgot all about that.”
“Forgot what?” Steve’s best friend, Carl, saunters over, handing me another beer.
“Jax and Harper back in high school. Don’t worry, bro. She don’t got any ten-year-old kids to fit up a paternity test to.”
“Damn you get all the luck.” Carl let out a low whistle, his eyes lingering on Harper. “She had to be hot as hell back then. She’s cute now, too, but I ain’t never seen her date anybody. Figured she was battin’ for the other team.”
“Isn’t JT supposed to show up?” I ask to change the subject. Steve and Carl turn their attention to complaining about JT and his new car ‘til the object of their jibes shows up. I put up with all three of them for another hour, avoiding the bartender until I’m sober enough to get back to the house. Grandfather’s dead, and Grandma’s in a care home for recovery, so I have the place to myself. The idea of a whole night to myself should get me into the car at lightspeed, but I linger in the parking lot to check my phone and get a few texts returned to my stepfather and assistants.
Harper
Of all the bars in all the world… That’s how Humphrey put it, isn’t it? I keep myself busy as I finish Trixie’s shift. I’m going to strangle her when she gets back Monday. I could have been chilling on my couch with Netflix, not running around behind the bar, trying desperately not to trip over my high school boyfriend.
Jax is gorgeous—he always was, but money and power suit him better than Levi’s and motor oil. His gold hair is just the right level of disheveled to be GQ stylish, and his button-down shirt looks like it was made for him. His shoes are probably worth more than any car I’ve ever ridden in. And his aqua eyes are just as stormy and moody as I remember. It’s a good thing he’s not drinking much, or I’d be handling a bar fight. Unless West Point taught him restraint. That thought makes me laugh. What do men who wear tailored shirts and artisanal leather shoes know about restraint?
Nine years ago, he left here to be his grandfather’s golden boy heir. And I took a check from that same grandfather to stay the hell out of his way. Sounds materialistic, even to me. But I was seventeen, my father was out of a job, and I wanted to go to college. Nobody ended up with their high school sweetheart anyway, and what was the point of competing with East Coast debutantes when I hadn’t had braces and couldn’t afford the nice conditioner? Not to mention inheriting my grandma�
�s hips and my great-aunt’s chest. My twenties have proved I was never built to be anybody’s trophy wife. Debutantes don’t have curves, Harper.
I avoid the massive reunion happening in his corner. I don’t engage his cousin or any of the others in conversation. I’ve never wiped down the back of the bar so thoroughly. Even the tap handles get polished. By the time the group’s breaking up, I’ve resorted to taking a mid-month inventory my boss didn’t ask for.
And then I find his wallet on their forsaken table. Shit. I pick up the leather item like it might contain smallpox. Heavy, and monogrammed. JH. Jackson Hargrave II. The boy I remember is long gone. Jax Delaney would’ve never carried a monogrammed, hand-stitched, calfskin wallet. I let my fingertip linger on the J and look out the back.
Steve is out there trying to get his tongue down Sherri Walker’s throat. Ugh. No way am I interrupting that. I dash out the front door instead, hoping to catch JT or Carl, but they must have gone across to Big Al’s BBQ. Nobody’s in the gravel lot. Only a Lexus SUV and… Oh. Someone standing beside it. Someone tall, with a hard jawline and…
Damn it.
Jax
“Jax!” She calls my name across the parking lot, and I turn to see her rushing toward me, my wallet in her manicured hand. “Hey! You forgot something.”
“Not enough,” I mutter even as I make myself smile. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” She hands it back to me. “I wanted to come say hi before you left anyway.” No, she didn’t. Her left eye twitches a little when she lies. Her career in poker was doomed from the outset.
“You didn’t know who I was ‘til you saw the ID.” Shit, did that just come out of my mouth? Since when does cheap beer make me sound like a teenager?
Her brows rise, and she laughs. I vividly remember her giggling when I’d pin her down and tickle her right side. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’d recognize those broody eyes anywhere.”
“You didn’t say hello.”
She studies the gravel-strewn blacktop between us. “I didn’t know if you’d want me to. I … I didn’t handle things so great back then.”
“You were seventeen. Nobody handles shit well at that age.” Magnanimous, if I do say so myself. Considering she ghosted me.
“You were so much more mature.”
“Yeah. Nineteen-year-olds always come off as souls of wisdom. If you’re seventeen.” Why the fuck am I excusing her? My chest still aches with her smile. I saw a goddamn therapist for two years to stop dreaming about her. He said I’d made her a symbol—that it wasn’t Harper I wanted, but the world she represented. He didn’t wake up with the weight of her hand lingering on his heart. He wasn’t here, catching a hint of her perfume and saying things just to make her smile.
Christ. It’s junior year all over again.
“Anyway. Your ID is safe.”
She smiles. I smile. The moment will pass. She’ll walk back into the bar, I’ll get in my SUV, and our lives will go on separate paths. This is over.
“You hungry? I was heading to Derry’s.” The old truck-stop diner is still open, in defiance of all logic. “Figured it was safer than Big Al’s this time of night.”
“I could eat.” She pauses, eyeing my car.
“I know it isn’t the Mustang. I got old.”
“Putting away childish things?”
“I got a Lambo back home. But it’s shit for road trips.” I wave toward the passenger side. “I’ll drive.”
“I … guess. Yeah. My shift’s up anyway. Carla can handle it.”
I’ve been less nervous negotiating billion-dollar deals with foreign governments, but we make small talk on the five-minute drive. Derry’s is just as greasy and strange as I remember, decorated in an uneven mix of Western kitsch and Hollywood memorabilia. The overhead lights betray that Harper has aged a little—a line between her brows, around her lips when she grins. It also highlights her perfect skin, crystalline eyes, and gorgeous figure. Maybe I’m not sober, because even while we talk about my job, her artwork, Grandfather’s funeral, part of me is thinking of her lips and those creamy breasts.
“Not a lot of gallery showings out here,” she admits, shrugging off my question about her art. “And I could only be a starving artist so long before I had to get a part-time gig somewhere.”
“So you went with the bar? No office jobs?”
“I get better stories from the bar. When I did the office thing, I just didn’t find the inspiration anymore.” She shifts in her seat and lowers her eyes. “I probably sound ridiculous.”
“No. I get it.”
I’ve sat across from hotter women without having to fight my own libido. The problem is, Harper’s not just gorgeous. She’s smart, funny, well-spoken. I find myself confiding about my regrets—that I didn’t take off more time the last two years and get back to see my paternal grandparents more. I waited too long. I procrastinated.
And then, as we’re walking out, I admit why. “I never wanted to come back here.”
“I figured.” She glances up at me through her lashes. “Nobody ever wants to come back.”
“You did.”
Her brows draw together. “Yeah. Well, I didn’t get a choice either. School didn’t work out, and—”
“How?” I stop walking to stare at her. “You were so damn smart, Harper. I figured you’d be getting a PhD. Not…”
“Back home? I get that a lot.” She laughs, the sound hollow and uneven as the pavement. “Let’s get the AC cranked, and I’ll tell you about it.”
She leans against the leather seat and rubs her thigh. “When you left, I focused on college.”
I almost interrupt—I know she didn’t finish high school here. I called half the class looking for her when her phone went dead, and everybody said she’d just packed up and moved. Overnight. Gone to her dad’s, or an aunt, or run off with a truck driver… The rumors got wilder by the week until I decided she’d call me if she wanted to talk. She never called.
I stare across the car at her, but keep that quiet. Listen. If she’s playing me and doesn’t know what I know this is a good time to find out.
“Figured it was my only way out of here. Almost worked. But I got sick sophomore year, had to drop out. Come home. Figure things out.”
“Sick?”
“A bad flu went around campus. The vaccine didn’t catch it. Turned into pneumonia, I was too stupid to get it treated fast enough… Spoiler alert, there’s a shitload of ways for that to kill you, and recovery meant dropping a semester. So I lost scholarships, and by the time I felt human shaped enough I was just … too tired to go back. I concentrated on my art instead. Anyway, Mom got sick, and Charlie’s heart gave out, and every time I think about leaving, I just…” She trails off in a shrug.
“I didn’t know Charlie was gone.” Her uncle—he’d been more like a foster dad to half of us idiot boys back then. Scout leader, owner of a garage who’d let curious kids play around with scrapped cars before they got hauled off. I hadn’t thought of him in years.
“Turn here.” She points ahead, but I recognize the road, and my own laughter startles me.
“You want me to take you to make-out point?”
“Why not? We never made out there. It was more conversation and innuendo point. If I wanted to revisit where we fucked, we’d need a 1998 Mustang and my grandma’s old house.”
“I think ‘fucking’ is a pretty loose interpretation of what happened.” But I make the turn and then the next, navigating with her direction and my memories through a tree-lined maze of the past. “We didn’t have the skill required for that.”
“Enthusiasm though. We had that.”
“Hormones and boredom. I’d call it excited fumbling and emotional exploration.”
Harper makes a face. “That wouldn’t fit in a country song.”
“You liked emo better anyway.”
“Says Mr. Death Acid Rock or whatever that screaming Icelandic howling was.”
“I forgot about that band. I think
I listened to it just to piss you off.”
Harper
I can’t do this. My hands are shaking, even if it’s too dark for him to notice. Passenger seat, music turned down, moonlight and headlamps catching those high cheekbones and the stubble on his jaw. Nine years vanish out the cracked window as I flick a dropped French fry into the void. I want him. Maybe if I offer him a blowjob, I’ll get it out of my system. I’m only here because it’s different. A single, shining exception to my routine, which has stretched out for months unbroken: work, home, microwave dinner, sleep, get Mom up, housework or errands, work, home, microwave dinner…
My sister’s here this week to help take some of the load off, so I can wander into the night with my high school boyfriend. He’ll be gone tomorrow, and I can scratch apologizing to him off my bucket list. I ghosted him. Anxiety, youthful uncertainty, a check from his grandpa… I know I hurt him. Not that it’s held back his career or kept him from at least one society page divorce. But still. I’ve had guys throw my trust back in my face. I did the same thing to him, once.
Every time I try to explain myself, another bad joke or stupid topic comes out. Maybe outside, away from everyone else…
Maybe then.
Or I’ll find out he’s a serial killer here to murder me. As bad as this month has gone, that doesn’t seem implausible. At least if I get murdered, no one is going to ask me about next month’s mortgage…
I grin at him and swing the SUV door open. “Come on. The stars are gorgeous out here, city boy. When was the last time you just hung out and found constellations?”
“It’s been a while.” His voice sounds heavy, but he follows me out of the car.
Jax
I’m staring up at the stars from the grass. She’s on her back beside me, and the spire of a ruined church silhouettes itself in the moonlight as I roll onto my side to stare at her. “Why are we out here, Harper?”