by Tijan
“Are you coming?”
“I’m going to sit tight for a little while.”
Dani took a second look and saw exhaustion. He either didn’t want to be seen appearing beside her or he wanted a moment to collect himself. The Jake she knew always liked those brief seconds before. He liked to ready himself.
“Okay.” Dani nodded and turned the corner.
As she appeared, a sudden lull in the conversation spanned the room. It seemed like a collective hush, and Dani knew the cause. Then someone laughed in the corner and exclaimed, “The rumors are true and our mysterious brethren has returned home!”
Focusing through the low lighting, Dani thought she recognized Aiden Bannon as she stood up and started a slow clap.
Oh seriously.
The rest of the beer gardens picked it up and before long, Dani’s ears were ringing from the crowd clapping for her.
She waved both hands in the air. “Okay. Stop. Please.”
It took a little bit, but when it was quiet enough someone yelled out, “Where you been, Dani?”
“Looking good!”
“Damn good!”
A few wolf whistles and laughter broke out, but Dani ducked her shoulders and moved to the back corner where she thought Aiden was located.
She was right.
Around a table in the back, she made out Aiden with her husband (his massive bulk hadn’t changed or gotten softer over the years); Kate sat alongside who Dani figured was Robbie Gray. (Kate was right—tall, dark, and gorgeous now.) And another guy with a medium build and dark hair pulled into a ponytail.
“Hey, Dani!” Kate called out and hooked her elbow, pulling her closer to the table. “Let me introduce and re-introduce.”
These people had never been her friends. Dani couldn’t help, but think that and yet they seemed to want to be her friends now.
“Dani,” Kate pointed to ponytail guy, “This is Stilts. I told you that he migrated from Northway—”
“I’m not geese or a bear, Katey. I didn’t migrate. It’s not like I come down during the summers and go north for the winters.” Stilts took offense.
“You’re my big teddy bear, Stilts.” Aiden laughed as she tipped her chair into his lap.
“Then you can say I migrated, but not you, Kate. I’m not a damn goose.”
“Everyone from Northway should migrate to Craigstown. You’re just the only goose in the town with a brain.” Kate laughed.
Robbie reached around her laughing form and extended a hand. “Hi, Dani. Remember me? I know we weren’t the greatest of friends, but times have changed. Thank goodness, right?”
“Hi, Robbie. I do remember you.”
“Take a seat.” He pointed to the empty stool on Kate’s other side. “It’s good to see you again.”
“Dani!” Kate wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “Please tell Stilts that he kinda looks like a goose. See,” she pointed, “his mouth and chin could be a beak, you know, one of those long black beaks.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Dani.” Stilts offered his hand. “Kate, if you’re going to liken me to poultry, at least let it be something cool. Like—”
“A turkey!” Aiden shouted, giggling.
“This is going from bad to worse.”
“I know,” Bubba leaned forward and everyone quieted, “You could be one of those flamingos.”
Aiden and Kate shrieked, throwing their hands back.
“The goose was better.” Stilts groaned.
Robbie thumped him on the shoulder. “Chin up, mate. Kate told me I was a possum the first five months I got back.”
“She has to be an animal.” Stilts pointed to Dani.
“Uh…” Dani was caught. Half-amused and half-horrified.
“She’s a swan!” Kate smiled. And Dani blinked at the sincerity in that smile.
She also noted the eight empty glasses left on the table.
They’d gotten here earlier than expected, apparently.
“Jonah!” Aiden shrieked as she launched herself at her brother’s form as he drew abreast their table. He was followed by three other guys. Dani remembered Hawk from high school. They’d been the bad boys that everyone wanted to be or be with. Jonah had been their leader with Hawk as his best friend and best enforcer. With the same Mohawk, an even bigger muscular build, and tattoos loitering up and down his neck, Dani shuddered—he looked like he was still the best enforcer.
“Oh,” Jonah grimaced as he caught Bubba’s gaze, “My little sis is drunk. Good piss job, brother-in-law.”
Bubba shrugged and grinned. And took a large gulp of his own drink.
“Oh.” Aiden swatted at her brother and missed. “What are you all crabby about?”
Jonah looked up and caught Dani’s gaze, but he answered, “Nothing.” He shrugged off her hold. “Take my sister, Bubs. I gotta get a drink.”
Kate gasped. “How many tonight, do you think, Aids?”
“What?” Jonah asked, confused.
“Oh.” Aiden scrunched her face, concentrating. “I’m thinking…five girls tonight.”
“Yep.” Kate gave Jonah the once-over. “Definitely five—at least. He’s got the trendy jeans on tonight with his white t-shirt. He can get at least five tonight.”
Jonah rolled his eyes and left with Hawk and the rest behind him.
“I hate my brother. I hate how he got the genes in the family.”
“Excuse me?” Kate asked in disbelief. “Do you not see yourself? You’re gorgeous, Aiden. You know the one girl that is so beautiful that she’s above scrutiny from anyone else? That’s you.” She snorted. “Thank god you’re nice, otherwise you’d be a bitch.”
“Oh please.” Aiden rolled her eyes.
“Dani,” Kate looked to her. “Tell me that you agree.”
“Kate’s right.”
“Please, have you looked in the mirror, Dani? You’ve got one of those exotic serene looks that make men just drool, literally.” Aiden stuck out her tongue. “I’m not like that.”
Bubba wrapped his arms around his wife and murmured something into her ear. Aiden blushed and turned to whisper back.
Kate shook her head.
Robbie laughed and finished his drink. Standing up, he asked, “So, Dani…what do you drink?”
“Oh, nothing. Thanks though.”
“Come on. That’s why we’re at the beer gardens. Fair only comes around once a year,” Kate cajoled.
“So says the cop.” Dani grinned, but her eyes caught a glimpse of Jake looking around the place. He looked stiff. Jake stiff never meant good things. “On second thought, I’ll take a whiskey.”
Dani felt the knot start. She knew what was coming.
“All right.” Robbie nodded his approval and Stilts whistled. “You have changed, Dani.”
Kate barked out a laugh. “Says the one that never knew you.”
But Dani was still watching Jake…and a moment, as he held his hand around the corner Dani understood why he was stiff.
Julia hadn’t gone to some clinic for the weekend.
Another hush fell over the room. Dani smirked. She watched as Julia looked up confused, glanced to Jake, and followed his gaze over to…Julia went stock-still. Both sisters stared at the other.
“Oh.” Kate hung her head.
“Dani.” Aiden laid a hand on her arm.
But Dani just waited and a second later, she saw Julia tug Jake closer. When he bent his head down, glanced to Dani, she went into motion. Dani pushed through the crowd and said, her voice clear and concise, “Oh no, you don’t. You do not hide behind him.”
Julia snapped to attention and her eyes widened, seeing Dani quickly covering the distance between them. She looked panicked, but Dani didn’t care. It was going to happen sooner or later. Dani’d rather have it done now. She wanted a fight.
The beer gardens remained quiet.
Julia tried to hide behind Jake, but Dani reached and hauled her in front. “You have a whole hell of a lot of nerve.”
“Like you would’ve even noticed.”
“Excuse me? Excuse me? Excuse me?!”
“You’re excused!”
“You can’t come home and expect everything to be the same—”
“When?” Dani demanded, standing her ground. “When did I demand things to be the same? Because I’d rather be gone again to have things the same. So when did I, in your imaginary conversation with me, demand things to be the same?”
“Excuse me? Excuse—”
“Not that again.” Dani cut her off with a careless wave. “We’ve established that you’re excused. Moving on—Aunt Kathryn. I have as much right to see her as you do.”
“You do not! You so do not!” Julia shouted, one arm in Jake’s grasp.
“Why not?”
“Because you left for five years. You weren’t here,” Julia spat out. “When Erica died—you weren’t here. I needed you and you weren’t here.”
“I didn’t know and I couldn’t have been here if I had known.” She’d been fighting for her own life.
“I didn’t know where you were. We couldn’t have told you about Erica because we didn’t know where you were.”
As fights went, this one was dwindling, fast.
“I left, okay?” Dani clipped out. “I don’t regret leaving. And I don’t really regret not telling anyone where I was. No one would’ve come anyway and I probably wouldn’t have even gotten any letter you sent so that’s all null and void. In my opinion, anyway.”
“We thought you were dead,” Julia cried out. “And then Erica was diagnosed. You have no idea what we went through.”
“I do know. You can’t send Jake to tell me that I can’t come out to the house. That’s petty!”
“NO. What’s petty is you expecting things to be the same and for it to be okay. You have no right to step foot in that house again. No right. You forfeited it when you left.”
“Oh.” Dani saw red as she shot back, “Excuse you? Excuse you? Excuse you?”
No one dared laugh anymore.
Dani pressed, “I forfeited nothing except any relationship that was non-existing with you or Erica when I left.”
“That’s not fair. Not after what you put us through—”
“Put you through? Five fucking years, Julia. I went through twenty-two years of torture from you and Erica. Twenty-two to your petty five? I win that war, hands down!”
“It was a selfish, thoughtless act that you did. You told no one—”
“I told Kathryn!” Dani shouted, then cursed—she hadn’t ever meant to let that slip.
“What?”
“I left Aunt Kathryn a letter. She knew that I was going and she knew my plans.”
“What?” Julia had gone pale.
“It doesn’t matter anymore. You can’t bar me from my own home.”
“I can and I will. It’s not your home and it hasn’t been since you left.”
“Technically, it wasn’t even before that because you and Erica dominated that house.”
“You don’t go there. You do not go there. Excuse me? Excuse me? Excuse me?”
Dani rolled her eyes, but intercepted, rudely, “I’ll go there because I’m starting to get sick and tired of how everyone pretends Erica was this perfect little princess—she wasn’t! She might’ve changed at the end, but she wasn’t perfect. She was far from it.”
Julia paled. “You don’t even think—”
“She stole boyfriends.”
Julia gasped.
“She cheated on her own boyfriends.”
“Shut up.”
Dani pressed, “She lied. She backstabbed. She called the cops on at least six of her friends’ parties.”
“She totally did,” someone exclaimed from the room.
Dani added, “She stole money, from you, Aunt Kathryn, and me—she probably stole from friends. She sent one girl to a psychiatric hospital. Erica wasn’t a saint and I’m tired of people thinking she was.”
“Dani, that’s enough.” Jake placed a hand on her arm.
She wrenched her arm free. “Don’t even get me going on you.”
“Dani!” Julia gasped again.
“What? Are you going to bar Jake from talking to me too?”
“Dani, really—” Jake stepped in between them.
Dani poked her head around him. “What if I’m drunk and driving home? What if Jake’s the only one on duty? Am I going to get away with it because you’ve ordered him not to talk to me? How can you arrest someone if you can’t read them their rights?”
Julia looked away and Jake murmured, in a low voice, “Come on, Dani. That was below the belt.”
Dani shoved back from him. “She went below the belt the instant she sent you as her errand boy. She went below the belt the instant she sent the message that I couldn’t go to my own home. She went dirty a whole hell of a lot longer than me.”
“You went dirty when you disappeared for five years!” Julia screamed around Jake’s back.
“That’s on Aunt Kathryn,” Dani retorted. “Aunt Kathryn went dirty for whatever reason she wanted. I told her that I was leaving.”
“We all know why you left. You ran away.”
Dani stood straighter and asked, “Excuse me?”
“We might as well just cut the crap. We both know what this argument is about.”
“Do we, now?”
Jake closed his eyes and breathed.
“And what is that?” Dani asked. She wanted Julia to say. She just wanted for her to say it, for it to be out on the table.
“Please. We both know. Everyone knows.”
“Then tell me. Say it, Julia. I want to know what this is really about.”
“Dani. Don’t.”
“Come on, Julia.”
“You’re baiting her, Dani. Leave it alone.”
“You want him to fight for you? To fight your fights? Is that what you want, Julia?”
“Fine!” Julia snapped. Her eyes wide, raged. “This is because I am with Jake. Erica took Jake from you—that’s why you left and now I have him. He loves me and he stopped loving you five years ago. That’s what this is really about and everyone knows it! The whole town knows it!”
“All they know is the pile of crap that’s been recycling in the air.”
“Whatever, Dani,” Julia shook her head. She tried for sympathetic, but Dani saw her hands tremble. She tucked them inside her elbows as she crossed her arms again.
“Jake was the only thing that kept me here,” Dani stated. “That’s why I left. Not because I lost Jake, but because I lost the only thing that kept me here. And, believe it or not, but this