by J. R. Rogue
I don’t know how to talk to him like a friend, and maybe we have never spoken to each other as friends. Just two people on the fringes of something more, neither bold enough to take the next step when the other has their arms open.
I bypass the wine, bumping into Hunter as I avoid the endcap full of vodka. When I look up at him, he winks.
“I wish I hated you.” I groan. “It would make things so much easier for me. For you.”
“You know, I have other friends in Nashville. When we get back to the house, I’ll tell Chace and Sera I got a call, and we will leave if this is all too much for you.”
“No,” I say. “You’re not leaving. I’m not leaving. We’re both going to be adults. We aren’t even exes. Shit, did you and your ex-wife ever have to be in the same place after you split? Did you act like this?”
“No. But the way I feel for you and the way I felt for her, they’ve never been the same.” He walks away with the cart.
I scurry after Hunter. “You can’t say shit like that when we get back to the house, you know that?”
“Why not?”
“Your daughter—”
“Harper’s almost eighteen,” Hunter interrupts, “and knows I’m a grown-ass man.”
“Then why have you treated her and her sister as if the very idea of them seeing you with a woman that isn’t their mother might break them?”
“That’s not what I was doing.” He stops the cart, faces me. I know he’s exhausted with this. I’m exhausted with this. With us.
“I know. I wouldn’t understand,” I say, suddenly wishing I had a few bottles of wine. Because the truth is right there, on the tip of my tongue. The reason why it buries me and why I want Hunter to dig my heartache up. I want to tell him about my father. About the night he found me crying outside the bar, but I can’t.
It’s Christmas, and I want one good thing from this year. So I pull Hunter into a hug. My arms go around his waist before my cheek hits his chest. When I feel his arms wrap around me, I sigh. “You’re right. I’m always trying to fight with you. How about for the rest of the day, I don’t do that?”
His chin rests on the top of my head, his voice rumbling beneath my ear when he says, “I’ll take that offer.”
She’s Every Woman
Sonnet
I’m not a great cook. I can think of a million other things I’d like to do with my time. But baking? I love to bake.
When Hunter and I return to the house, I retreat to the kitchen and he goes back to the den. I assemble all the cans on Sera’s huge island as she and her best friend, Kat, pull out flour, sugar, and various spices.
As Sera and Kat flip through pages in the various cookbooks spread out on the counter, a young girl walks into the kitchen with her face in her phone. She nearly walks into a barstool but looks up just in time.
“Shit,” she says in her Georgia drawl.
“Hey, Harper.” Kat laughs.
I’m a deer in a headlight. I knew I would have to meet the girl, but I feel caught. Like she’ll take one glance at me and know I’ve slept with her father. That I’m pining over her father.
The girl shoves her phone in her pocket and pulls the barstool she nearly ran into out, taking a seat. “Hey. What are you guys doin’ in here? I’m done with pool. And I feel like my dad is talking in code when he’s with his guy friends. It’s annoying.” She rolls her eyes, and I smile.
“Well, your dad is annoying.” Sera laughs. “We’re making cookies. It’s dessert duty in here. Chace is handling the turkey in the basement kitchen oven, so I’m on sweets.”
“Cookies and pies. That’s the agenda,” I say.
The girl looks at me, large blue eyes and blonde hair. She has to take after her mother. Hunter is dark; she is fair.
“Hi. I’m Sonnet.” I offer an awkward wave. I also might be sweating. Jesus Merry Christmas.
“Hi,” she replies, her smile wide. Then she turns her gaze to Sera. “What can I do?”
For the next hour, Hunter’s daughter helps us turn the kitchen into a cinnamon-and-vanilla-scented haven. She mixes, measures, and rolls dough into balls. Sera has an industrial size oven, so we can bake dozens of cookies at once.
As the cookies rise and expand, we sit around the island. When Sera offers me a drink, I decline, and she raises an eyebrow at me. Harper drinks a massive glass of grape juice, while playing on her phone. The short songs filling the room and the smile on her face make me think she’s watching TikTok videos. I feel ancient.
“Look at these goons,” Sera says, next to me. I look at her phone, finding a picture of Hunter, Chace, and Andrew posing by the pool table in the den.
“Whose is that on?” I squint my eyes and see it’s Hunter’s Instagram.
“Hart’s,” Kat says, over my shoulder.
“My dad’s social media is lame,” his daughter grumbles.
“You follow him?” Sera remarks.
“No way. His jokes are weird and not really what a daughter wants to see her dad posting.” She scrunches up her nose, and we both laugh. “My mom, though, I follow her. She’s normal.”
“Your dad says you’re his twin, so I’m surprised you don’t like his humor.”
The girl looks at me, assessing me. “I like his humor in person. Not on the Internet,” she deadpans. “How well do you know my dad?”
I knew mentioning him mentioning her would be a bad idea. I’ve given myself away as more than just Sera’s friend. I redirect. “I went on a girls’ trip to Nashville years ago. I saw him singing, and we kept in touch.” Not a lie.
“How many years ago?” she asks.
I see Sera and Kat watching us from the corner of my eye. “Like ten or something like that.”
“What’s your name again? Song?”
I laugh. She isn’t throwing shade. At least I don’t think she is from her tone. I wouldn’t know what a teenager throwing shade even sounds like. “Sonnet.”
“What’s your last name?”
And now I really am sweating. I give her my pen name because it’s what people know me by. “Rosewood.”
“Like the bar he used to play at? Yeah, I know you.” Harper smiles, and I can’t read it. Not at all.
“You know me?” My books? The fact that I’ve seen her dad naked? More sweating. I’m going to need to change clothes by the end of the night.
“I’ve heard my dad talk about you. He thinks I’m not listening, and he calls you by your last name. Same as he does with all his friends.” She grabs a cookie from the table, and I see Sera and Kat resume their movement.
Relief floods me. Friends. That’s fine. That’s okay. That’s all we ever will be.
When dinner is over, and the sky is full dark, we all sit in the living room. I find a seat, a large oversized chair by the window. The glow of my phone keeps me company when anxiety takes me close to the edge.
Hunter sits on the edge of the fireplace, near a guitar.
In the kitchen, Andrew and Kat talk. She’s on the counter, and he’s between her legs, pushing her hair over her shoulder. It would look a little risqué if not for the fact that he had his other hand on her growing belly. Their family will be growing by one soon. And so will Chace and Sera’s when they adopt a child.
I look at Hunter, then his daughter. His youngest daughter is almost grown, almost ready to make her way into the world.
Across from me, Sera leans back on her husband’s shoulder, rubbing her belly full of dinner.
“Anyone wanna play?” Chace asks, pulling his wife closer to him.
Hunter leans back against the brick of the fireplace. “Maybe you should play. I haven’t heard that in a while.”
“You sing?” I ask.
Chace shakes his head. “I can carry a tune, but no.”
“You sing for me sometimes,” Sera says, looking up at him, and I see memories between them. Private moments no one else knows about. Monuments to their love.
Chace kisses her forehead and winks at her.<
br />
I reach for my water as Kat and Andrew walk into the living area. “Hart. Play.” Andrew snaps.
Hunter grabs the beer at his feet, and eyes the guitar next to him. It’s his. “You’re next then.” He nods.
“I can follow you—easy.” Andrew smiles.
I glare at him, only half-forgiving him for the stunt he pulled downtown with Hunter.
“What do y’all wanna hear?” Hunter asks.
“No covers,” his daughter says, face in her phone.
“An original? That’s fine.” He clears his throat. We all sit quietly as Hunter strums his guitar.
It’s what I love about music. We’re all silent and sated, and he hasn’t really started. I don’t know the song he starts singing. But, he stopped sharing songs with me before they released a while ago.
We all listen intently as Hunter sings about a girl with brown hair. A girl who remains elusive. When he sings of her blue eyes, I try not to roll mine straight out of my head. Every song is about a blue-eyed girl. Brown-eyed girls get the shaft. It’s something we have discussed both sober and drunk.
I take a page from his daughter’s book and go back to staring at Instagram posts. It’s very casual, our little concert. When the song ends, Hunter rolls right into a cover.
When I look up, my attention moves over to his daughter. Harper’s watching her father, warily, her brows furrowed when she glances at him.
When Hunter trails off, Andrew claps, so the rest of us join in.
“Dad, why’d you change it?” his daughter asks when the clapping stops.
“Change what?” he asks. But I know the tone. He isn’t asking because he wants to know what she means. He knows what she means. The hairs on the back of my neck tingle again as Hunter stands, acting distracted, setting his guitar down.
“The eyes part. They’ve never been blue when you sang it before,” she says, sitting up straighter in her chair.
I feel a chill.
Brown Eyed Bird
Sonnet
“Blue eyes are popular,” Hunter replies. All eyes are on him.
“Since when do you care about writing what’s popular?” She sounds so much like her father.
“You have blue eyes.”
“But you weren’t singing about me, Father.” The title is drawn out, sarcastic. She probably only calls him that when she’s annoyed. She really is his twin.
Harper turns to us in her seat. “I’ve heard him sing that song in the kitchen a million times while I do my homework. It’s always about a girl with brown eyes. Always.”
Hunter looks at me just as I look at him. He’s blushing, and Hunter Hart does not blush.
I’m blushing, but I’m always blushing. “A million times, you say?” I ask, sitting up straighter as well.
“Oh, yeah. I have that song memorized. So one word changes, and I’ll notice.” She snaps her fingers.
“Who’s the song about?” I’m asking her, not anyone else in the room. When we got back, Hunter and I acted like two people who know each other through mutual friends. We never spoke directly to each other, and I know it was me. Hunter was feeding off my energy, following my lead.
“Who knows, he never dates. It’s lame.” His daughter rolls her eyes, then settles back down into her chair.
“How can I date when I already have two beautiful women in my life?” Hunter cheeses. I want to groan, but I surpass the urge.
“You’re as bad as Mom.”
“Your mom doesn’t date?” Andrew asks.
“She hasn’t been on a single date since these two divorced. And I was still watching Saturday morning cartoons when they split.”
“So, both Mom and Dad don’t date,” I say out loud, heart hammering. It’s one thing to hear Hunter say he doesn’t know what’s going on in his ex’s personal life, another to hear it straight from his daughter that her mother is in the same holding position. I feel sick. My mind whirls with reasons for this. I knew his ex-wife wasn’t remarried, or with a boyfriend, but why doesn’t she go on dates at all?
“Nope,” she replies.
I stand, saunter around the chair. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” I stare at Hunter, and he nods. The room is quiet.
My feet carry me out of the room, through the kitchen, to the den. I don’t stop walking until I’m as far away from the living room as I can be, with the pool table in the center of the room between us.
Hunter’s arms are crossed as he enters. “Yes?”
“I need you to help me understand something.” I pinch the bridge of my nose, inhale slowly.
“The song was about a brown-eyed girl, yes,” he says, placing his large hands on the pool table, staring at me.
I shake my head. I’d forgotten about the song already. “No, not about that.”
“Okay,” he says, confused.
“You don’t date, and neither does your ex-wife? At all?”
“You know I had one semi-girlfriend. And other than that, I…hang out with girls.”
“Whatever, yes, but you won’t settle down. And she won’t either.”
“Where are you going with this?” he asks, catching on.
“Are you sleeping with your ex-wife?”
“Excuse me?” For the first time in a long time, I think I’ve stunned Hunter Hart.
“You know, when people don’t answer questions after being asked, it normally means they’re lying.” I know the tactic; I’ve used it before.
“I’m sorry, I’m just a little thrown here. Why are you asking me if I’m sleeping with my ex-wife?”
“She doesn’t date.” My pitch is rising. I guess I don’t need vodka to get out of hand.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“I just…” I stammer, “I just have a hard time believing she’s abstaining from men. And I have a hard time believing you two are both just swearing off love.”
“What does love have to do with sex?”
“Everything, for some people. Is she still in love with you?”
Hunter laughs. “Doubtful.”
“Have you slept with her since your divorce?”
“Yes.” His hands leave the table, but his eyes don’t leave mine. It’s so unnerving to be under his microscope when a smile doesn’t dance on his face. He sees me.
With this answer, my heart breaks into something ugly and black. “Okay. Okay. It makes sense now.” The last word catches in my throat.
“What does?”
“Why we could never work.”
“What does that have to do with anything? I slept with her one time since we split, years ago. We have mutual friends, and we were at a New Year’s Eve party. You know where you were? With your husband.” He’s so matter-of-fact. And the facts hurt.
I start shaking my head. The tears are immediate, and I curse my emotions. I can never hide them. I can never hide the shame and fear and broken hearts. “I just hate it. I hate it all.”
“Hate what?” he asks.
“Us. The jealousy. The exes.”
“I’m not jealous,” Hunter says. “I don’t care about your ex-husband and the fact that you married him. You can’t really be jealous of a relationship you know will end. I knew it the whole time you were together. And I don’t know why you’re getting worked up over my ex. It was a one-time thing. I don’t love her. I haven’t loved her for years, but I respect her. We have a friendship for our daughters. I can’t help that she isn’t dating. I don’t know if she’s still hung up on me or what. The only person I know who’s hung up on someone is me.”
I can’t speak, and I don’t have a chance to.
His daughter walks in, knocking on the doorframe. I see her over Hunter’s shoulder. My face relaxes, slowly starting to resemble one a little less shocked.
“Dad, are we still going to get ice cream and head to Heather’s like you said?” she asks.
I don’t know who Heather is, and I don’t know how much longer I can carry on this way. I need to start dat
ing. To move past this and the fragments of us.
Hunter turns, looking at his daughter. “Yeah, we’re still going. I’ll text Josh and let him know we’re on our way now. Get your things, say goodnight to the Holloways, and I’ll meet you in the truck.”
When she walks out, I try to follow, to escape, but Hunter blocks the way.
“I have to go now, but we need to talk some more. I promised her we would go to my buddy Josh’s house because she’s friends with his daughter,” he says.
“Okay,” I say, wanting him to just let me leave, let me sit with what I know.
“We’re driving back tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I repeat.
“Sonnet.” He reaches for my hand, and it feels like it’s been forever since he touched me. “I want you to come visit me in Georgia.”
“What?” I don’t pull my hand away. His touch is calming, grounding.
“We never finished that song.”
“There’s never going to be a song between us,” I say, defeated.
Hunter takes my other hand. “You know what I don’t want, Sonnet Rosewood?”
I startle at my full name.
“I don’t want to be your friend. I don’t want to do this song and dance anymore. I don’t want to wait, and I don’t want to put life on pause. I want you to come to visit me in Georgia. Next week.”
“I already told you, I’m not moving there. I’m not leaving Nashville. I like it here.” Do I believe that? I’ve been putting off my entire reason for settling here. The one I’ve been in denial about.
“I’m not asking you to. I just want you to visit. Spend New Year’s Eve with us.”
“Us?”
“Me. And my daughters. Both of them.”
Both of them. It feels so…scary. But who will I be there? How will he introduce me? My daughters have met my friends before. Same as he does with all his friends. But didn’t he just say he didn’t want to be my friend? “As what?”
“As whatever you’ll let us be. You wanted me to ask you to come to Georgia. This is me asking.”