FEELING IT_A Best Friend's Brother Romance

by Scarlet Wilder

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “I have a day off tomorrow, so we need to catch up and maybe go for a few drinks. What do you say?”

  “That sounds amazing,” I said. “I feel so bad that I’ve only just arrived and already I’ve caused upset.”

  “Pfft.” Cheyenne shook her head. “That’s got nothing to do with you. Logan’s going through his own shit and he won’t let anyone help him. Every day I go from worrying about him and wanting to kill him with my bare hands.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She took a deep breath. “He drinks too much,” she said. “But it’s more than that. He can get up in the morning and do a whole day’s work like it’s the easiest thing in the world. He’s working for different people in town, building and fixing things, and sometimes he doesn’t even take any money for it. Everyone has a soft spot for him like he’s a hero. And then he has a few drinks and he’s the town idiot.”

  I was confused. “In what way?” I asked. “You mean he gets violent?”

  “No, never violent,” Cheyenne said, shaking her head vigorously. “He just acts like a damn jackass. He’ll sit in a bar and drink solidly for hours, then he’ll get on the motorcycle and drives home like the devil’s chasing him. Apparently, he’s been picking up girls and taking them home only to kick them out in the morning and then goes to work like nothing happened.”

  She shook her head but managed a smile. “Just the other day I overheard my mom mention that he took Kirsten home, you know the library assistant that works with her. She overheard her talking to her friend on the phone saying that she’d spent the best night of her life with him, Logan being all over her one minute, then cold as ice the next morning. I’m just too exhausted to go try and talk to him again. He needs to get his damn shit together.”

  “So you have tried talking to him about it?”

  “More times than you can count.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “I don’t really think they know how to deal with it,” Cheyenne said. “I guess they don’t really want to. Since it all happened, they seem to just want to spend time alone with each other when they’re not working. I guess everyone just has their own way of dealing with grief.”

  Her eyes glistened with tears but she quickly brushed them away. “I can’t have Molly see me cry,” she said, her voice shaking a little. “She hates it when people cry at work. I just feel so helpless sometimes. I want to talk about her, you know?”

  I knew she wasn’t talking about Molly. I nodded, and this time it was my turn to stroke her hand as I tried to comfort her. “I should have been here,” I said. “I should have called more and come over more. Made more of an effort. I’m really sorry.”

  She looked up and gave me a watery smile. “It’s not your fault, sweetie,” she said. “Nobody knew how this was going to turn out. Nobody was ready for it. Sometimes I think about the saddest things. I think about whether it would have been better if Willa had a disease or something, you know. An illness where we could all stand around her bed and at least have the time to say our goodbyes. But, it wasn’t like that. It was so fast and sudden that we’ve just been left to deal with it alone and we’ve all gone about it in different ways.”

  There was nothing I could say. I just wanted her to talk, because it was clear that she didn’t get to talk about things anywhere near enough. I could see Molly out of the corner of my eye, wanting to know when we were going to wrap things up so that Cheyenne could get back to work. I jumped down from the stool and gave my best friend a hug.

  “Let’s talk tonight,” I said. “We’ll go for dinner. My treat, okay?”

  Cheyenne hugged me back and then bent forward to check her appearance in the reflection of the chrome napkin holder, carefully wiping away the black smudges from beneath her eyes.

  “You on your way to the hospital now?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “He should be coming home today, so I’ve been over at the house trying to sort out the furniture. I think he’ll be sleeping in the back room, he can’t go upstairs.”

  “Do you know when he’ll be recovered enough to make it around on his own again?”

  “No, but I’m hoping Dr. Goldman will have more news for me today,” I said. “Damn, we’ve been a sorry bunch this morning, haven’t we?”

  We laughed a little and gave each other another warm hug. Then she went back to work, and I left the diner. As I walked across the parking lot towards my car, I could see the tracks left by Logan’s motorcycle, the rubber burned into the tarmac as he’d revved the engine and burned out of there with angry haste.

  I stared out into the distance, wondering where he’d gone and what he was going to be up to for the rest of the day. I could understand why Cheyenne was simultaneously frustrated by him and worried about him.

  He was so clearly hurt but, from what my best friend had told me, it didn’t seem that anyone could do anything to help.

  CHAPTER SIX

  LOGAN

  †

  I DIDN’T BOTHER GOING back to the apartment. Instead, I drove down to the shed. The heavy rain from the past couple of nights had caused the leak in the roof to grow bigger, causing the water to start collecting in a pool on the concrete floor below. Thank God, it hadn’t moved over to the wooden frame yet, but the leak was only going to get worse if left unattended. I needed to sort it out.

  As I got the ladder and propped it up against the outside wall of the shed, climbing up onto the tin roof, I couldn’t help but think about Caitlyn. She looked amazing, that was for sure, but she had changed a lot from the gangly kid who ran around with my sister in cut-off shorts and flip-flops. Now, she was dressed like a woman on her way to a business meeting. I smiled at the thought of the white lace-trim bra I caught sight of peeking out from underneath her blouse where it opened to reveal the swell of her breasts.

  Hell.

  I shook my head to clear the image from my mind. It was a shame that the reason she’d had to come home was because of her dad’s accident, but it had really been good seeing her again.

  Bill Reid was the kind of guy people loved to have in their town. He was strong and hardworking, and he cared about people’s safety. He was a good cop, the kind who’d confiscate the joint you and your buddies were smoking but, instead of hauling your ass into the police station and calling your parents, he’d let you go with a stern word and that would be enough.

  He was also the one who’d prevented me doing something I’d have later regretted if he hadn’t been there to stop me. One night in town, around eighteen months ago, I’d been so drunk I could hardly stand up straight. Some asshole with a mouth that worked faster than his brain started making comments about my sister. I didn’t know which sister he was referring to, but it didn’t matter.

  I’d reached over the bar, grabbed a half-empty bottle of vodka and smashed it over the guy’s head before he could open his foul mouth again. I held the top of the shattered bottle against his throat, the lethal shard pressing against the soft skin of his neck just below his jawline. I was in a cloud of drunken anger so red that it would have only taken a single twitch of my wrist to end his life.

  It was Bill that came up behind me, slowly talking me down and taking the bottle from my hand, setting it down on the counter. He booted the guy out of the bar and told him to never come back there again. Then he paid for the bottle I broke and offered me a ride home. We were both drunk and didn’t say a word all the way over to my apartment. We didn’t have to.

  He was a good man, hurting in his own way and, even though he’d already left the force by then, he could have easily taken me down to the cells to sober up and have one of his old buddies lock me away for the night. But, he knew it wouldn’t help matters, so instead, he took me home to sleep it off.

  Over the past few years, especially since Caitlyn left town to go to college, Bill’s been the kind of guy to keep to himself. I could relate.

  It was a little after ten in th
e morning and here I was, up on a roof with nothing around but the chirping birds and the rustling wind. I didn’t need anything or anyone else. Yes, I could sure relate to Bill Reid.

  I wondered why it was that Caitlyn had stayed away so long. I figured she probably had someone special back home in Montpelier. No doubt about that. A beauty like that must have had men pounding at her door, wanting her. Fuck, I only saw her once today and she was still occupying my mind. Maybe because she wasn’t anything like the girls I was hanging out with, meeting most of them at the bar here in Vergennes. I couldn’t imagine her falling off a bar stool with a beer in her hand.

  If only Cheyenne hadn’t ruined the moment by bringing up things she knew I didn’t want to talk about or be reminded of. All it took was one word from my sister to completely ruin my fucking morning.

  Lifting up pieces of tin from the roof, my mood seemed to darken even further. I pulled out one rusty nail after the other with the claw of a hammer, and it didn’t take an expert roofer to see that the repair was larger than just replacing a sheet of tin. It meant going back into town.

  I fired up the bike and headed back toward the hardware store. As I slowed down to stop at a red light, I pulled up behind a small blue car with a Montpelier license plate. I wouldn’t usually have thought twice about it, but I caught sight of a pair of dark brown eyes in the rear-view mirror. She was looking at me; my sunglasses hiding the fact that I was looking at her, too. I figured she was on her way to the other side of town, toward the hospital. The lights changed and she turned left and I went right.

  The hardware store offered plenty of things I wanted to buy, but I only grabbed what I needed to fix the roof. I knew I had work to do for folks around town, but repairing the roof was on my mind. There was too much inside the shed that could be ruined by the water if it got in again. I headed back to the shed where I made quick work of fixing the damaged roof. By the time it was done, it was nearly one in the afternoon.

  I headed back to Betty Crisps’.

  The old woman was happy to see me, but she looked at my clothes and shook her head. “I hope you haven’t slept in those, young man,” she said as she handed me a glass of lemonade. My throat ached a little for something stronger, but I wasn’t about to ask her to put a shot of vodka in it.

  “Ah, you know me, Betty,” I said, sipping the lemonade. “Laundry’s for the weekends.”

  She shook her head with disapproval, but there was a smile playing about her lips. She was one of the oldest people in Vergennes, pushing eighty-five. Her husband had died three years earlier and, since then, she hadn’t been able to keep up with the maintenance of her large house and garden. In the spring, I helped her out by pruning the trees and mowing the lawn. Over the last few days, I’d ripped out the deep roots of a huge old elm that had succumbed to rot, the pile of chopped wood at the bottom of the garden the only evidence of the tree that once was. Her back porch also needed some work, which I took care of the day before.

  “What can I help you with today?” I asked, and she pointed to her roof.

  “I think I’ve got a blockage in the guttering,” she said. “The water was spilling out over there last night, hitting Caesar’s kennel. It was making such a terrible racket but I couldn’t move the darn thing. I tried, but it was too heavy.”

  “Of course it was!” I exclaimed. “I built the thing myself. It weighs a ton! Please don’t try and move it again. You call me when you need something that heavy to be moved, okay. I’ll clear out the guttering today.”

  “You’re such a good boy,” she said. “When are you going to settle down with a nice girl to take care of you?”

  “Who’d have me?” I asked, holding out my arms, but there was a twinkle in Betty Crisp’s eyes as she reached up and stroked the side of my face.

  “Oh, if only I was fifty years younger,” she said, and she turned around slowly and walked back into the house.

  So, it was back up another ladder, this time hauling out handfuls of mulch that had sat in the guttering since fall.

  I thought about how maybe Betty was right. Maybe I needed to settle down with a nice girl and have her look after me, but it just wasn’t the sort of thing I’d ever given much thought to and, even now, while the idea crossed my mind, I quickly dismissed it.

  I wasn’t about to settle down with any woman, not just yet, but I certainly liked to have fun with them.

  I thought back to the dark eyes in the mirror, looking back at me from her car.

  Caitlyn Reid.

  The kind of woman I wouldn’t mind getting to know a little better as she sure wasn’t the young teenager I once knew.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CAITLYN

  †

  LOOKING AFTER A PARENT is never an easy thing. I certainly didn’t think I’d be having to look after my father when I was only twenty-two, but sometimes these things just can’t be helped.

  The hospital discharged him later that day with a list of things he needed from the drugstore and a wheelchair I had to return once he was back home. I asked about physical therapy, but Doctor Goldman assured me that dad wouldn’t need any. I was relieved at hearing this but slightly puzzled as well. From what I could see, he still had great difficulty moving about and was seemingly in quite a lot of pain.

  Raising my concern with Dr. Goldman, he assured me that the little swelling there was had totally subsided and that there was no damage to the spinal cord or the surrounding nerves; ‘Old Bill was one lucky devil’ and more than ready to go home.

  Just as I was about to probe a little further, a dirt-faced eight-year-old boy and his hysterical mother emerged from the elevator. The kid was cupping his ear with one hand while his mom jerked on the other. She took one look at Dr. Goldman and grabbed hold of his arm, ignoring me altogether. “Thank God, you’re here, Doctor,” she said in a high-pitched voice.

  Doctor Goldman’s shoulders slumped forward a little and his expression changed to what I could only describe as resignation. “What did Timmy shove into his ear this time, Mavis,” he asked. The redheaded boy caught my eye as he peeked at me from behind his mother’s back, and I couldn’t miss the mischievous twinkle in his eyes and the wicked little smile he shot my way.

  I turned to leave as our conversation was clearly at an end and, as I walked away, I was thankful that little Damien was not my problem to raise.

  I had my dad to think of now. If the doctor was happy to discharge him, who was I to argue. I knew he was in a desperate situation and needed my support, but I couldn’t help feeling a little pissed off as I drove him home.

  “Don’t turn off at North Main,” he said, irritably. “It’ll be chaos at this time of day with the kids coming out of school. Take Monkton.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I have to go past the drugstore to get your pills. If I go through Monkton I’ll have to come all the way back around again.”

  He frowned and stayed quiet as I took the exit. I couldn’t help but feel a childish satisfaction to see that the road was in fact clear.

  Dad couldn’t resist making comments about my driving, though.

  “Stop drifting so far to the right,” he said. “You’re going to take off the mirror on those parked cars over there.”

  “I’ve got plenty of room,” I said, exasperated. “Seriously, Dad, will you just let me drive?”

  There was a familiar anxiety that began to brew in my stomach. It was the reason I’d left Vergennes in the first place and, even though the first few days alone in my old house had felt like the warm embrace of home, I soon remembered why I’d wanted to escape to Montpelier.

  I knew my dad loved me and I even accepted that he didn’t always know the best way to show it, but, since Mom died, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking that whatever I did never seemed good enough for him.

  Now, as I drove back home, a wheelchair in the trunk of my car and my injured dad sitting next to me, I wondered how on earth I was going to cope. I talked about the arrangements I’d made
at the house, determined not to show him how scared I actually was.

  “I’ve cleared out the back room,” I said. “I’ve put everything into the garage, and I’ve taken one of the single beds apart and brought the pieces downstairs. I just need to fix it all together again. I know you won’t be able to go upstairs and I can’t have you sleeping on the couch, either.”

  For a few moments, I cringed, waiting for him to tell me about how it was a dumb idea to move everything into the garage and how I probably cracked his favorite vinyl records as I did so, but I was surprised when, instead, he simply reached over and patted my knee.

  “Thank you, my girl,” he said softly. “I really appreciate you doing that for me. And, don’t worry about putting the bed together. Old Jack is coming over to check on me a bit later and I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to help out with that.”

  Jack Clayborn had been my dad’s partner for almost as long as he’d been on the force. He’d always slip me some candy when my dad wasn’t looking and insisted that I sit next to him whenever he came over for poker night once a week, saying I was his lucky charm. Not that he won very often, but I didn’t complain. I loved sitting there listening to the grownups chatter away. It made me miss sitting on my Dad’s lap a little less.

  “You’re welcome, Dad, and it would be great if Jack could help out, thanks,” I said, and I even managed a smile but it soon turned into a frown as he opened the glovebox and began to rummage inside. “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  “I wondered if there might be a small something in there to soothe the throat,” he said sheepishly.

  “No, Dad,” I replied. “I don’t keep liquor in my car.”

  He reached into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. “Can you stop off and get me a six-pack?” he asked. “I’ve not had anything for days.”