by Mia Malone
Patrick had actually done just that, and Brody braced for the gushing he knew would ensue. It always did.
“I bet that line got you a lot of... dates,” Marie said calmly.
“I meant the color,” Brody cut in and tried to keep a smirk off his face. “Blue clothes. Blue eyes. Blue car. Navy.”
Marie tilted her head back to look at him, and her lips twitched.
“Not very hippiesque,” she murmured.
Her eyes lit up in a way that slid right through him, and Brody decided that his brother would have to step so far back from this woman he might accidentally end up in Nova Scotia.
“Okay. How about a –”
Whatever Patrick was about to offer - and Brody reject - was cut off by Boone who came bouncing up the steps.
“Boone, sit,” Brody ordered, and the soaking wet animal plopped his butt down immediately.
Marie crouched down and rubbed her hands through the wet fur.
“What a good boy you are,” she crooned and got enthusiastic licks all over her face. “It's okay if he wants to come inside,” she added.
“Probably not a good idea,” Brody said reluctantly at the same time as Boone got up and shook himself.
“You're probably right,” Marie said calmly and wiped her face off again.
There was another silence, and Brody glanced at his brother.
“You have a minute?” he asked.
“Sure,” Pat said calmly.
There was another long silence.
“I’ll be over in a sec,” Brody said pointedly.
Patrick kept watching him, and then humor bled into his eyes, but he moved toward the steps. This meant Brody wouldn't have to look like a fool, trying to make his goddamned ex-seal of a baby-brother leave them the hell alone. It also meant he grinned as their eyes met.
Patrick raised a hand, and said, “Come down to the bar, Marie. I’ll make sure we have wine.”
She giggled and called out to him as he jogged through the rain toward his house, “It’s a bar. I’m pretty sure you do.”
“The bubbly kind,” Pat clarified on a shout and closed his door with a thud.
“He’s funny,” Marie murmured.
“Yeah.”
He was goddamnit. Funny and charming in a way Brody never had been and never wanted to fucking try being either. Perhaps it would be better if he backed off and let the happy people spend time laughing together.
“I don’t like sparkling wine.”
“Okay,” Brody heard himself murmur. “What do you like?”
“Anything,” she said breezily.
“Except champagne.”
“True,” she agreed, and clarified, “Or beer. And cider. Soda. Anything with bubbles.” She scrunched up her nose slightly and added, “I like wine of any kind, but mostly pink. And lemonade. Also pink.”
Navy blue clothes and pink lemonade. Well, fuck it. His brother might be the funny one but Brody’s earlier resolve to tell Pat to back off came back with a vengeance.
“Okay,” he said and felt the tips of his mouth twitch. “Let me know when you'll be at the bar, and I'll come down and make you a glass of hippie juice.”
She narrowed her eyes slightly.
“Are you making fun of me?”
“No.”
That wasn’t a lie. Spending time at the bar, making her a drink and getting to know her was exactly what he would like to do, at her earliest convenience.
“I don't know why I blurted that out, Brody,” she said and made a face. “I seem to behave like an idiot today, but I'm jetlagged, you know?”
“Jetlagged,” he echoed. “Where did you fly in from?”
“I drove from Minnesota.”
“Straight through?”
“No. I spent the night in Chicago,” she shared, and added, “And Cleveland and Albany.
Jetlagged, he thought with a silent sigh but decided that laughing again might make her less receptive to a drink at the bar and schooled his features into what he hoped was sympathetic calmness.
“You’re probably more tired than jetlagged,” he murmured.
“Probably,” she agreed. “I’m usually not this silly.”
“You’re not silly. You’re cute.”
Now why the heck had he said that? He wasn’t slick with the ladies, or not like Pat, at least, but his modus operandi was absolutely not to blurt shit out for no reason at all. Moving back to Bakersville had apparently transported him back to his teenage years in more ways than he’d expected.
Her eyes widened but they crinkled at the corners, and she pursed her mouth in a fucking adorable way.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
He was about to ask her to come to the Café for lunch the next day when Boone butted his nose into his thigh a few times. Brody knew what that meant, and sighed silently, but it was anyway too soon to ask Marie to do anything, so he put a hand on the dog’s head.
“Boone’s hungry.”
“Okay. I need to take care of my groceries.”
“Okay. See you around, Marie.”
She gave him another smile and murmured goodbye as she started hauling her bags inside.
Brody jogged the few steps over to Patrick's back door and let his dirty dog into the mudroom. The houses were mirror images of each other, but that was the only resemblance. Pat might be the charming bartender with the easy grin and no worries in the world, but he was also neat to the point of being slightly obsessive about it. Even his goddamned trash was sorted in bags of different colors. Blue for plastics. Green for cartons. Gray for regular shit. Or whatever.
Pat had inherited the clean-gene from their father, and Brody had... not. He wasn’t a slob, or not much anyway. His house was clean, mostly, and a few items spread out here and there had never bothered him. Except in the kitchen, which he’d upgraded a few years earlier and kept spotless.
He reached for the bowl and kibble in a box neatly and predictably labeled, “Bowls and Kibble,” and heard the thumps from Boone's tail rhythmically communicate the dog's wild happiness about the fact that he indeed would get food also this evening. Then he put his shoes in the doorway into the kitchen, knowing that the dog would read the signal and stay where he was.
“Hey,” he said and took the beer his brother handed him. “You’re not having one?”
“Working tonight.”
“Ah.” Brody said with a nod, figured that what the fuck, better just get it done with, and murmured, “So...”
They stood in silence for a while, watching each other. Brody sucked down some beer, waited for Pat to comment on the situation at hand, and tried to figure out what he could say himself without sounding like a fucking moron.
“So,” Patrick said finally.
There was another silence, and then Brody sighed.
“You’re gonna make me say it?” he asked.
“Yup.”
Well, fuck it. Brothers were a nuisance.
“You can’t have her,” Brody stated.
“She made you laugh.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
Brody felt his brows go up when he saw the familiar, lazy grin on his brother's face.
“As easy as that?” he asked.
“Sure.” Pat shrugged. “She's cute, but I'm not gonna settle down anytime soon.”
Settle down? No one had said anything about settling down. He just wanted to...
“Bro,” Pat said and waited until their eyes met again. “Stop thinking so fucking hard for once in your life, and just go with the flow. Flirt, if you remember how to do it. Laugh some more. Do her, or don’t do her. She might not want to jump straight into your bed, you know?”
“Huh.”
He hadn't thought about that option and didn't like it, but Pat was right. She might not
“She’s happy, but there’s something... there’s history,” Pat murmured.
“She's
well past forty, so there will be,” Brody countered. “Life happens to all of us.”
“True.” Pat nodded. “So, what are you going to do?”
“What I’m going to do is not share my play with you,” Brody muttered.
He wasn’t going to tell the grinning moron that he hadn’t quite worked any kind of play out yet. Or that he didn’t exactly have a play-book. He met up with women when he felt like it. Fucked when he felt like it. He hadn’t jumped straight into the limited dating scene Bakersville had to offer, though.
“I could give you some hints,” Patrick smirked.
“Fuck no,” Brody grunted, but he had to laugh at the stupid way his brother wiggled his brows. “Have fun at the bar tonight. I’m taking this,” he added, wiggled the bottle he’d barely touched, and walked across the parking space behind the Mermaid house.
The lights were on, and he wondered what she was doing.
Unpacking? Taking a shower?
“Jesus,” he muttered and adjusted his jeans as he opened the door to his house.
He was getting a serious hard-on in the goddamned late afternoon and knew that he'd take a shower of his own right about fucking immediately. He also knew he'd think about Marie while he did, which made him grin.
He'd have to figure out what to do, but she'd be next door for six months, so he had time.
Chapter Three
Hippie juice and Tallahassee
Marie
I had started to suspect that I’d made a mistake of gigantic proportions.
I'd been in Bakersville almost a week, and it had rained the entire time. Twenty-four goddamned hours each day. Or, I didn't precisely know the exact number of hours since I slept ten hours each night, which was highly unusual for me and made me wonder if I was coming down with something.
A cold? Influenza? A small bout of depression?
Each morning when I hauled my tired behind out of bed and looked out over the water, it rained, though, and it didn’t let up for one damned minute so when I fell asleep on the couch, watery sleet still poured down, and I heard it beat rhythmically on the roof when I crawled into bed.
I had called my children, and our conversations had been short and stilted. We'd never been stilted before, and it hurt. I told them I missed them and would pay for their plane tickets to come and see me, but Amelia had an assignment to hand in, so she couldn't plan anything. Joey would spend the weekend with Marlena's parents. He didn't share which weekend this would take place, and I didn't ask because I didn't want to nag.
I also called my sister, and there wasn't anything stilted about our rather one-sided conversation, which was mostly her yelling at me. It was short too, though, because I hung up on her when she offered to share a link to some site where they sold medical marihuana aimed at reducing a whole range of issues stemming from what seemed like anything from schizophrenia to a mid-life crisis. Since I had neither, I interrupted her with a calm goodbye and closed the call.
What I hadn't done was venture outside. Or, that wasn't true. I made a mad dash to the supermarket and came back with six bags full of food of the non-healthy but comforting variety. There had been some wet people in the bakery section, but they had been busy arguing loudly about the cost for artisan bread and hadn't paid me any attention. The cashier was a young man who had been busy glancing at his buzzing phone while he scanned my items, so I hadn't talked to him either, except for a brief, “Have a nice day,” as I left which made him scoff and glance outside.
So, there I was, full of unhealthy, sugary food, mad at my sister, sad about my deteriorating relationship with my kids, and no one to talk to.
One of the things I'd realized when I sold the house and moved was that I had no friends. Or, I had friends. Just not the kind of friends who approved of what I was doing, so calling them and moaning about my awful life would make them gloat. Which would not improve my situation in any way.
I had almost made my mind up to relocate to somewhere where there were people.
And sun.
Florida perhaps. I had always wanted to live in Florida, and when I woke up to another day of gray rain, I wondered why the heck I hadn’t found a house to rent there.
Most of the time, I had my pens and sketchpad out, and I was drawing. Small swirly patterns, endless loops of leaves and flowers, seashells and seaweed. Meaningless scribbles, but they soothed me. I missed the scanner we’d had in the office and started to toy with the idea of buying a smaller version of the humongous monster of a machine, but it would have to wait until I’d gotten my business off the ground. I had some savings and the surplus from selling the house, but eventually, I’d have to have some kind of income. Instead, I took photos of the drawings which I sent via email to myself, and then I unpacked my drawing board so I could start processing the images in my trusted Mac. As I sat there, creating vector designs out of the grainy photos, my mind was blank.
I should plan. Start up a website. Send my contact details out to everyone I'd ever met in the business. I'd worked in an ad agency for years, so I knew people. I didn't do any of the things I told myself I should do, though, and just kept moving vector points and adjusting angles.
A sudden and complete silence startled me, and I turned around slowly to look out at the water outside the window. Then I got up and walked out on the porch to stare at the calm ocean, and the small patch of blue that had started to come out between clouds which seemed less gray.
The air was cold and crisp, and a breeze swept over my face as I stood there, inhaling deeply to let the fresh, tangy scent flow through me. The ping from my phone startled me, and I walked back inside to see if either of my children had changed their mind.
The text message was from a former colleague who had moved to California years ago. We'd stayed in touch, and she knew where I was. She had also promised to try to send work my way.
“Major and urgent crisis. Grasping straws. Do you have to have a beachy pattern which hasn't been used anywhere else already?”
Slowly, my eyes moved from my phone to the scribble next to my computer, and then to my laptop where shells, crabs, and seaweed filled the screen. I pushed out a startled laugh, used my phone to take a picture of what I'd just finalized, and answered the text message.
“I completed this a few minutes ago. Would it work?”
Then I sent the image, which was not a very professional way of handling the whole thing, but I figured it couldn’t hurt.
“Vectorized?”
“Yes.”
“I love. Send ASAP, and I'll pitch it.”
I put the phone down and leaned on the desk for a beat.
This was a sign if I’d ever seen one.
They might not like it, and selling a single piece would not pay for much, but it was a start, and I'd find a way. I would not move to Florida after all, and I would find a goddamned way.
When I'd sent the file, I pulled my hands through my hair which felt a little icky since I hadn’t showered in a few days. I was also hungry but didn't feel like sitting on the couch, eating crab dip straight from a plastic container.
I’d go to the Bar and let Patrick with the laughing eyes pour me a glass of whatever and tell a few jokes. If they served food, I’d eat something, or else I’d just survive on peanuts. Brody wouldn't be there, I told myself forcefully and ignored the small flutter in my belly. And if he was there, he probably had droves of women surrounding him and his manly chest.
An hour later, I walked into the Bar to find that my assumption had been wrong. The Bar was half full, and there weren't droves of women there, but some of the patrons were female and not one of them clung to Brody's chest. He sat at the end of the bar, watching people with a face completely void of emotions. When our eyes met, the corners of his crinkled slightly in what looked like a smile, and then he nodded, gestured at the barstool next to him and raised a brow.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but this was not it. In my circle of
friends back in Minnesota, men opened doors, pulled out chairs, and kissed your cheek. It occurred to me that most of them also were incredibly boring or sleazy. Or both. Chairpointing and brow-raising men might prove to be more interesting, so I walked over to Brody.
“Hey,” I murmured, trying to sound casual and pulling it off quite credibly.
He was wearing another tight black tee and would have looked great in a blue one, but it stretched over his broad shoulders in a way I would have described as smoking hot if someone had asked. Which luckily no one did.
“Marie,” he murmured. “You went all in today, I see.”
A smile was playing at his lips, so I assumed he was joking, but I didn’t get it, tilted my head to the side and raised my brows.
“Green...” He circled a hand in front of me, and added, “Ish.”
I looked down on my turquoise, tight tee with a blue pattern of fishes, and large white letters stating that I had gone fishing. The giggle I'd held back slipped over my lips, and his face softened.
“Marie,” Patrick said from behind the bar. “What can I get you?”
“I’ve got this one,” Brody stated.
Then he calmly walked behind the bar, reached for a shaker and started pouring things in it with a practiced ease which shared that he'd done whatever he was doing many times before.
“How have you been?” he asked and shook the metal container in a way that showed off his muscles.
“Miserable,” I said with a smile. “But it stopped raining, so things are improving.”
He filled a glass with ice and poured the peachy-pink liquid over it. “Okay,” he said, looked around and reached for something green which he promptly chopped up and drizzled over the drink. He narrowed his eyes as he watched the selection of straws, picked a pink one, and then he set the glass in front of me. “Bet this will cheer you up.”
I took a sip and thought my eyes would pop right out of my head when I got a mouthful of sweet lemonade with a soft kick of something stronger mixed with a fruity undertone. It was hands down the best drink I’d ever tasted.
“I could get really, really drunk on this, Brody,” I breathed out, and watched his face split up in a grin.