by Soraya May
“Yeah, all that money and guaranteed employment.” Ryan made a mock grimace. “Sounds terrible.”
“Ryan, money’s not much good if you’re never around to spend it.” My face was serious. “If you’re working 16-hour shifts, and all weekend, having a nice apartment doesn’t mean much. I got to know my bed really well, and the coffee-pot. The rest of the apartment? Not so much. Kirk and I would run out of bathroom tissue for a week, and no-one would notice, because we never even went to the damn bathroom in the place.”
“Sheesh. I can see what you mean.”
“Our relationship was like that, too; mostly absent. Kirk was a decent person. This isn’t some tale of woe where I ran away because my fiancé did me wrong. It would have been easier if it had been. I’m the bad guy in this story.”
“Cat, listen to me.” He came close to me again, and I felt his lips brush my cheek. “You are no kind of bad guy. If you weren’t happy with what you were doing, then you weren’t wrong to leave. It would have been worse for everyone if you’d stayed there, pretending you were happy.” His voice was low and soft, in my ear. “And although it might be selfish, I can’t pretend that I’m not very glad you did come here.”
I smiled, despite myself. “I am, too.”
“Are you happy here in Cable Bay? Now, I mean.” Ryan’s eyes were questioning.
“Now?” Now you’re here, Ryan Sanders, waking up next to me, and holding me when I fall asleep, everything fits just right. But you won’t be here for long, will you? “Yeah, I am. At least for the moment.”
“Good. I—good.” His face changed for a moment, and I thought he seemed almost a little sad. Before I could say anything, he smiled. “You have to take your happiness where you find it, I guess.”
I squeezed his hand again. “You sure do. Come on, let’s go for a walk.”
“Sure thing, boss. Where to?”
I stood up. “Don’t call me boss again, or I’ll fire you. We’re going up on the ridge above town. It’s about time you saw a bit of the countryside, basement boy.”
His face clouded. “Basement boy?”
The trail above Cable Bay lead through temperate pine forest, winding up the mountain ridge for about half an hour, before breaking through into low grasses and scrub on the top of the ridge. Although it was a little cold, we were both warm from the climb. Part-way up the trail, Ryan had offered his hand to help me over a boulder, and I’d taken it. When I’d climbed over, he didn’t let go, and we carried on hand-in-hand up the trail.
The crisp afternoon air was sharp in my lungs, and I relaxed into the warm sensation of Ryan’s hand in mine, and the steady rhythm of our progress up the trail. As we made our way higher, we talked about the surrounding countryside; I described my arrival in town nearly six months ago, and Ryan told me about the geology of the area, showing me rock and earth formations, and explaining what they meant for the time, millions of years ago, when the land was pushed up from the sea.
“So, wait a minute,” Ryan said as we neared the end of the forest cover, “you went camping up here, on your own, the first week you were in New Zealand?”
“Yep.” I nodded. “I’d come to the end of the earth, and I wanted to get away from everything. So I thought I’d buy a tent, and a gas stove, and just come up here for a few nights. Can’t get more ‘away’ than that, can you?”
“I guess not. How did it go?”
“Weellll, the first night I spent cowering in my tent, terrified of snakes.” I scuffed my boots on the trail as we rounded a corner.
Ryan’s face was confused. “But—”
“THEN, on the second night,” I continued loudly, “I remembered that the nearest snake is fifteen hundred miles away, on a different continent.”
“Yeah. That’s…yeah.” Ryan took a look at my face, and remained diplomatically silent.
“After that, things got better, until the third night when a thunderstorm broke, and I discovered that my second-hand water-resistant tent wasn’t so resistant.” I looked around with a rueful expression on my face. “Or maybe I just didn’t pitch it properly. Anyway, I got soaked to the skin, and spent a miserable night boiling water to keep warm, and drinking endless cups of coffee. Between stomach ulcers from the coffee, and asphyxia from running a propane stove inside a tent, it’s a miracle I survived.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, that’s a pretty good summary. Anyway, the next morning, I packed up, came back down into town, and threw the tent away. So much for the great outdoors. That afternoon, I was walking down the road to the beach to read my book, and I saw Wunderbar.”
“When it was for sale?” We stopped and looked at the ridge in front of us. The ridge trail weaved between more large boulders, buried deep in the earth. Among them, tufts of grass sprouted, and a few thin trees struggled for a foothold. Now the forest had cleared, we could see the town down below, laid out like a child’s toy.
“That’s right. It was pretty dilapidated, but I could see how long it had been there. The owner wanted out, and—well, I didn’t have any other ideas. So, it just seemed like a shame to let it fall apart, you know?” I laughed, with a little edge of hurt in my tone. “The bar wasn’t going anywhere, and I had nowhere to go. We were a perfect fit for each other.”
.
We worked our way slowly along the ridge, until we came to a rocky outcrop. From this point onward, the path curved and dropped away, back down to the treeline, but from here we could look down at the town.
“See, there’s the park where the farmer’s market is held, and there’s the school. That road out of town down there,” I indicated with my hand,“ leads to Farrah’s vineyard. I should take you there soon; you’d love it.”
“I’d like that.” Ryan put his arms around me from behind, and we listened to the sound of the wind in silence for a moment. “Tell me about the bar. I’d like to know what happened to you before I came along.” He snorted. “And complicated it.”
I leaned my head back on his chest, feeling his heart beat. “Buying Wunderbar was the first unexpected thing I’ve ever done in my whole life. Before I came here, I’d never expected to do anything like running a bar; I had no hospitality experience, and medical school doesn’t exactly teach you much about how to run a business.”
“I guess not. So what did you do?”
I shrugged. “Well, I made a lot of mistakes, and we nearly went broke. But I also did a lot of research, and asked for a lot of people’s help. Bob had his wages delayed to buy stock more than a few times; he never once complained. I get the feeling he works for me mostly to give him something to do. I wouldn’t have been able to make it this far without him.”
“You’re really lucky to have someone like him around. You should be proud of what you’ve achieved here, Cat. This is a wonderful town, and the people here like you. You’ve done something positive in their lives.”
I twisted around in Ryan’s arms to face him, and reached up to kiss him gently on the lips. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of serving beer to people described as ‘doing something positive in people’s lives’. You make me sound like Mother Teresa.”
He smiled. “I guess so. Maybe not in that skirt, though.” He kissed me back, and this time it lasted for quite a while. “I am serious, though. When I talk to people in Cable Bay, I can tell how much it’s meant to them to have you here, and to have the bar running again.”
“I hope so.” I sighed a little, and looked at his face, strong brows and clear jaw, that slight dimple in his chin I’d kissed a few times to catch him by surprise.
“So what about your own happiness?” His arms around my waist tightened, and I snuggled into him, not noticing the wind any more. “I’ve seen you make other people happy, Cat. And you’re pretty darn good at it. Even,” he smiled, “present company included.”
My heart beat slightly faster, and it wasn’t just the climb. “That’s really sweet, Ryan, but—”
But what we have can’t last, can i
t? Just the thought made my throat tighten, and I said nothing.
He closed his eyes for a moment. “Tell me what you’d do if you didn’t have the bar. Is…going anywhere else something you’d do?”
I held on to him. “Honestly? I have no idea what I’d do. You know that being here and running the bar has been the first time I’ve ever felt like I was doing something for myself, because I chose to do it?” The words came out easily, but I still remembered my father’s self-assured voice. “Now, Catherine, you know this isn’t a serious long-term prospect, don’t you? When you’re over it, come back, and you can get on with what you ought to be doing.”
Ought. Sometimes I Goddamned hated the word ‘ought’. “Being here, I haven’t been living up to anyone’s expectations, I haven’t been fitting in; I’ve just been choosing my own path. I didn’t realize that was what I was missing until I found it. So I don’t know what I’d do without the bar, I really don’t.”
Ryan’s face was a study in anguish. “Cat, I—”
“I know.” I put a finger to his lips. “I understand, okay? I’m not trying to torture you, or make things hard for you. But whatever happens, I want you to know why it was important to me. Because,” I took a deep breath, “because you’re important to me, too.”
“Cat, I’ve never met anyone like you. I wish—” He took a ragged breath, and I could feel it in his chest. “I wish we’d met under different circumstances. In a different place, maybe.”
I’d go somewhere different with you, if you asked me. Would you do that? I couldn’t tell. “I do too, Ryan.”
On the descent from the hills, Ryan led the whole way, and I couldn’t see his face.
27
Ryan
In front of me on the street, a minor traffic jam was building. After we got back from our walk, I’d told Cat I needed to go to the library and look for some old records about the bar; if it really had stood there for a hundred years unaltered, then it was potentially pretty important itself. The truth was, I couldn’t look at her face right now; the needles were red-hot and painful on my conscience.
I should have told her what I know about the fossils already. I should have asked her to come with me. But I couldn’t. This was the only place she’d found her own happiness on her own terms; she’d said that herself. Why would she go anywhere with the guy who was taking that from her?
I wasn’t the sort of man to brood—brooding was for teenage vampires and Edwardian rakes—but if I were, I’d be having a Triple-A Brood right about now.
My chest tightened, and the thought of going away and not seeing Cat again gave me a flush of anger; not at her, but at myself for being so Goddamned stupid as to get involved with someone I was never going to see again. I remembered my Mom’s voice on the phone, quiet and insistent.
“Find a solution. Make it work.”
I can’t, Mom. As much as I wish there was one, there isn’t.
As I got closer to the traffic jam, I could see the cause; a battered Ford truck was stopped in the middle of the intersection. Other cars were carefully pulling out around it, but it had evidently stalled halfway through a turn, and not started again. While I watched, the door opened and a short dark-haired woman in overalls got out; I could tell from her body language even at this distance that she wasn’t happy. She braced herself against the door, and began to push, but despite her square shoulders and athletic build, she wasn’t heavy enough to move it easily, and the vehicle began to roll with glacial slowness.
“Hey, want a hand? What happened?” I jogged up alongside her, bent forward with her shoulder to the door, and she looked up with a frown.
“What?” She paused; I could tell she wasn’t really used to accepting help from people, but in the end common sense won out. “Yeah, that’d be good. I was on the way back from the hospital, and she died on me. Get to the bumper and see what you can do.”
I went to the back of the car, and braced myself. The old Ford had seen better days; the bodywork was dented, and the back seats had evidently been removed some years ago to make room for storing tools and car-parts. I leaned into the truck, and with our combined strength, it started to roll more quickly, out of the intersection, and up onto the curb.
Steering the car with one hand, she called back to me. “Keep going! I want it up on the grass over there.” After a final push, the car rolled to a stop on the grass, and she reached inside, popping the hood and rummaging for tools. Wiping my hands on my jeans, I came around the front.
In a moment, she emerged from the truck, holding a toolbox, talking to herself. “Dammit. I knew I should have done something with that fuel pump.” She looked up at me. “You’re Ryan, right? The egghead guy? My little brother told me about you.”
Egghead? “Yeah, I guess I am. You must be Beatrice Macfarlane? Andy’s sister?”
She frowned at me. “Just Bea will do.” Opening the hood, she leaned into the engine, hands moving quickly, still muttering.
I watched her for a moment, not saying anything. I had a suspicion that she wasn’t as scary as she liked to make out, but I was prepared to humor her. After a few minutes, she spoke, although she didn’t stop working.
“You know I’m pretty pissed at your girlfriend, right?”
I thought carefully. “Yeah, so I understand.” Is Cat my girlfriend?
“Don’t try and tell me otherwise.”
“Wasn’t going to.” I had to suppress a smile, although she couldn’t see me.
“She should have told me what was going on. Andy never damn well takes care of himself, and I would have told her that if she’d asked me.”
“Bea,” I chose my words carefully, “remember that Cat was in an impossible situation. If she’d told you, she would have felt like she was betraying Andy. He came to her for help, and she helped him as best she could. You know she made him promise that he’d see a doctor, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” Her voice was noncommittal.
“Cat tries to do good for everybody, but it doesn’t always work out that way.” And it doesn’t seem to have helped her much, I thought.
“Sure. Whatever.” There was a clank noise of metal on metal inside the engine, and a grunt from Bea. “Got you, you bast—” She stopped. “No, wait. That’s not it, because there’s still fuel in the line. Must be further up.”
“So,” I tried to change the subject, “how did you and Andy end up here, anyway?”
Clank, clank, from inside the engine. “We just ended up here. Had a job in a garage in the city; didn’t like it. We were driving in the car on a trip, and we broke down just outside of town. Realized there was no garage.”
“And you figured there was a demand for one?”
“Yeah, and someone who knows machinery generally.” One hand emerged from the hood. “Pass me that wrench, will you?”
I handed it to her, and it disappeared. “And you got the warehouse cheap?”
“It was basically abandoned. We tracked down the guy who owned it from council records, and he’d forgotten it was there, so now we have a five-year lease for basically beer money. Good deal. So we just stayed.”
“Do you ever think about going anywhere else?”
“No. Didn’t have anything to go back to the city for anyway.”
Scratching my chin, I squatted down to look at the engine. Although the rest of the vehicle was beaten-up, I could tell that the engine had been carefully maintained; what grease there was, was in the right places, and the hoses were shiny and new. “I guess it’s good when you feel like you belong here.” I’d never felt that way myself, but I was beginning to understand how others might.
“Belong?” There was an audible snort from beneath the hood. “Beats me. I don’t really care about belonging places. We’ve got work and no-one telling us what to do. That’s all I care about.” She backed out of the hood, carefully, and looked at me.
”So no men?” I said, with a grin. Bea’s eyes narrowed and she slapped the wrench into my hand. “D
on’t go getting ideas, Egghead. You’re not my type. Besides, if Andy’s really sick, I’m gonna need your girlfriend.” She dived back under the hood. “Where’s that—oh, there it is.”
“She’s going to need you too, you know.”
“Yeah, the oven. I get it. When she’s got the money, I’ll do the work. Simple.”
“No, it’s more than that. She’s going to need you for reassurance.” I leaned on the car. Bea’s head stayed buried in the engine, but her hands had stopped moving on the distributor cap.
“She’s got friends. I’m not exactly her friend.”
I nodded, although Bea couldn’t see me again. “Yeah, she does. But she’s going to need all the help she can get when I leave.”
“Right.” There was a pause. “When’s that?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.” I summoned up my courage; I had to tell someone. “I was going to ask her to come with me, but now I realize that she won’t go, even if it’s the right thing for her. Besides, I don’t see why she would.”
“Right.” Another noise of tightening screws, and Bea backed out from under the hood again. “That should do it. Get in the car and turn her over for me, would you?”
I lodged myself in the front seat; Bea was a lot shorter than me, and it was a squash to fit myself in. I turned the key, and the ignition coughed. Once, twice, then died.
Bea swore. “Still not enough fuel in the line.” She reached into the car. “Turn it over again in a second when I say so. Not yet or I’ll get spiked by the battery.” I heard a scraping sound. “Okay, now.”
Turning the key again, the ignition stuttered, and the engine came to life with a deep growl. I put the accelerator down, and the engine roared, then settled down to a steady thrum as I eased off. Unfolding myself from the driver’s seat, I watched as Bea dropped the hood and smacked her hands together in satisfaction.
“Okay, that’ll keep me going until I can make it back to the garage and dig out a replacement pump.” She looked up at me, dark eyes under strong brows. “Do you care about her?”