I shot a look up at him. Questioning, wondering. “Oh, I’m not worried. I’m just saying, you can’t judge me when you’re not getting any either.”
“Well, who said I’m not?”
A hot ball of fire built inside my belly, churning around and licking at my throat. I swallowed at it, making feeble attempts to calm the flames to a gentler flicker, but it stayed there. Burning away at me as we stopped at the store front.
Who was he sleeping with? Why hadn’t I met them? Why hadn’t he said anything in all this time? I wondered if he did have a girlfriend, if I was keeping him from her. I wondered if she knew about me, and if she hated me for depending on him so much.
I looked up at him as he peered through the window. “So, um … do you have a girlfriend?” I hated the way it sounded, like I was jealous. And maybe I was, as well as hurt for being kept in the dark.
“What?” he asked, glancing down at me.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” I repeated, wishing I had never asked.
“I knew I shouldn’t have said anything,” he said with a groan, shaking his head. “I’ve never really done relationships, Kylie,” he confessed, and I wondered why I had never known that before either. “And I don’t … go out that often, either. Just, um … every now and then.”
I filled in the blanks myself and nodded, ignoring that nauseating burn in the pit of my stomach. Ignoring the fragmented visions of him sleeping with random, faceless women.
“Oh.”
Aggravated with himself, he sighed. “Don’t be like that. It’s just—”
“It’s none of my business, Dev,” I interrupted, wrapping my arms around my stomach.
I forced myself to focus on the interior of the old bar, through the dirty glass windows, instead of my best friend and his apparent penchant for casual sex. And God, why did it matter to me?
Because maybe you wish it was you.
Ignoring my heart, I coaxed myself to believe that it didn’t matter to me. I leaned closer to the glass, cupping my hands around my eyes.
“It’s nice, right?” he asked, recovering from the conversation with a touch of awkwardness in his voice. “I can’t wait to get in there and check it out, that staircase back there is way too fucking cool.”
I nodded, eyeing the spiral set of stairs in the back of the space. “Yeah, it is. I wonder where Connie is?”
As if she heard me, a rotund woman walked around the corner. Her pixie-cropped hair was styled pristinely and a very expensive pair of sunglasses sat on the bridge of her nose.
“Ms. James?” she asked, eyeing me with uncertainty.
I realized she was taking in my outfit, the unprofessional choice of clothes Devin had selected, and I nodded apologetically. “Yeah, sorry,” I said, feeling instantly mortified. “I, uh—”
“I spilled coffee on the shirt she was wearing,” Devin chimed in, noticing her wrinkled nose of disgust at the old Blink 182 t-shirt.
“Are you the carpenter she mentioned?” the woman asked, tipping her head back to look up at Devin’s face. She was short—shorter than me, even at five-foot-even—and her eyes flickered with delight. “My, you’re a tall young man, aren’t you?”
Blushing gently, Devin nodded. “Yeah, I’d be the carpenter.”
“Carpenters are rather clumsy, I’ve found,” Connie said, nodding her sympathies, her mouth forming an exaggerated pout. She then extended a hand for me to shake. “Connie Fischer, real estate agent and River Canyon mayor.”
“Kylie James.” I put on my most business-like smile and she nodded once. “This is Devin O’Leary.”
He reached out to shake her hand, but she shook her head with a tight-lipped smile. “Oh, that’s quite all right. Dirty hands. Anyway, if you’ll both follow me, I’ll give you the grand tour, although I can’t understand why anybody would want this filthy old place. I do love the restoration of our beautiful historical buildings, but this place is just disastrous.”
Connie’s voice faded as she dug through her large purse for the key. Devin leaned down and whispered into my ear, “Dirty hands?”
“Just ignore it,” I hissed back, keeping my grin plastered to my face.
“My hands aren’t dirty,” he grumbled above me, and I jabbed him in the side with my elbow.
The door pushed open with a gentle creak, greeting us with its old hello, and Connie led us inside over the noisy floorboards and littered debris. The musty smell hit my nostrils immediately and I pinched my nose. Glancing back at me, Connie nodded apologetically.
“The basement is very damp. Mildew is a problem. I hope you’re up to the task,” she said to Devin, and he nodded.
“I’m sure it’s nothing I can’t handle.”
He walked past us, assessing the place with his professional eye, and I hung back with Connie, allowing her to take me through the old tavern, bit by bit.
“Nothing seems to stay in this place,” she told me as we walked together into a backroom. “Another bar tried to open several years ago, but it was unsuccessful. We have The Ol’ Tavern down the road, and one bar is plenty for such a small town.”
I nodded, surveying the empty room with one quick look around. “We ran into a guy—Patrick—who told us about it when we first got here.”
“Ah, so you’ve met some of the locals already? That’s just wonderful. We love friendliness around here.” She smiled kindly, folding her hands over her belly as we moved back into the main area. “Anyway, you said you were interested in opening up a café?”
I took a few steps toward the bar and ran my fingertips over the knotted wood. “Yes, and I’d love to do something for the art community as well. You know, poetry readings and live music—that kind of thing. Devin actually plays the guitar and sings, so I thought he could play on a regular basis, and—”
“He’s your boyfriend?”
My words were stopped short as my jaw went limp at the personal question. “O-oh, uh ... no. He’s, um, just a good friend of mine. We’ve known each other for years.”
“Mm,” she said with a thoughtful look. “I thought you were together.”
I awkwardly touched the split ends of my faded purple hair. “Oh, uh—"
“Anyway, I do think this would be a lovely space for a coffee shop, if you can handle all the mess. The layout is perfect, and you wouldn’t need to do anything to the plumbing or electric, if you didn’t want to.” Connie observed the open room, and I followed her gaze.
She was right; it really was perfect. It was dusty and decorated with cobwebs, but otherwise, the multi-leveled room was lovely. The main area right inside the door, had plenty of space for tables and chairs, and one corner already had the platform stage I’d planned on having. A few steps toward the back, led to a cozy nook and I thought it would be perfect for floor-to-ceiling shelves with tons and tons of books.
The floorboards creaked and groaned under my feet as I walked further into the space. Those tiny whispers, pleading with me to take them in and adopt them as my own. I looked around, searching for Devin, and I spotted him coming in through a door behind the bar.
“Storage room and basement that way,” he mentioned when he caught my eye.
“What do you think?” I asked as he came to stand next to me.
“It’s solid. The mildew in the basement isn’t a huge deal, I can clean it up easily. I think I’d need to do a more thorough inspection but, so far, everything looks good. Really structurally sound.”
I smiled at his business-like tone. “So, you like it?”
“God, yeah! I’m already getting ideas,” he said, and I turned to look up at him. I caught the dreamy gaze in his eyes. “That bar over there? It’s a beautiful piece of solid oak. I thought I could repurpose that and make you a counter.” I nodded, watching as the place morphed into the vision of my dreams, right before my eyes. “There’s also a loft you could use as an office. I could put a wall up, if you wanted, to give you more separation from the shop itself. Or, you could utilize it and t
urn it into an extension of the shop. Whatever you wanted.”
My eyes welled up with tears, and for the first time in over a year, there was nothing sad about them. There was no connection to my heartbreak. These were pure. They were happy. They were a sign that things just might be okay, and I turned to Devin, who watched me with anxious intent.
“I want it,” I said simply.
His lips spread into a wide grin. “Really?”
“Yeah, this is it. This is the place I want.” The place my dad would have wanted for me.
I turned around to Connie, who waited by the bar expectantly. “Let’s do it.”
“Wonderful! How about you meet at my office tomorrow, and we can get the paperwork going?”
Without a second thought, I grabbed Devin’s hand, wrapped the fingers of both my hands around it and clutched it to my chest. I felt good. For the first time in a long time, the future looked bright, and it was a good day.
♪
If there’s one thing I know about good days, it’s that they are often countered with a bad one.
After Devin dropped me off at home that evening, Mom was sitting on the couch, watching TV. She asked me how it went with the realtor, and I excitedly gave her the rundown of our meeting.
“That’s great, honey. Daddy would’ve been so proud of you,” she said, and with a hug and a weak smile, I left it at that. Afraid that if I spent too much time, the nice moment would backfire.
I retreated to my room and dove for my laptop, prepared to log into the bank account my parents had set up for me when I was a little girl. The account that held the inheritance from my late-grandparents, donations my father made toward my dream on a monthly basis, when his addiction could spare it, and earnings from part-time jobs and nights of babysitting.
My coffee shop fund.
With the excitement and nerves of someone about to invest such a large sum of money, I put in my username and password. I waited with anxious anticipation for the website to log me in.
And when the website finished loading, I found I’d been locked out. Confused, I grabbed for my phone and called the bank. Obviously annoyed that I called five minutes before closing, the teller informed me that the account had been closed.
“Closed?”
“Yes,” she said in an impatient monotone. “According to our records, all of the money in the account was withdrawn last year. We require a minimum of twenty-five-dollars to keep the account open, and—”
“I know,” I said, cutting her off. My heart pounded in my ears, my stomach churned, and my eyes burned with the onset of tears. “Can you tell me who closed the account?”
And as she gave me my father’s name, my heart broke all over again.
♪
The second meeting with Connie had been a lot shorter, and a lot less fruitful, than I’d initially planned. And so, afterward, Devin and I found ourselves at The Ol’ Tavern, just down the street from what should’ve been mine.
“You know … Dad was the reason I even wanted to open Black & Brewed in the first place,” I said. My words settled into tremors and Devin noticeably braced himself. Clutching to the empty bottle of beer in his hand. “He told me I could do anything, he told me to work toward it, and then he stole it from me.”
I shook my head and looked up to the iron lantern hanging over the table. A single tear worked its way over my cheek and splashed onto the wooden table top. I knew there should have been more, more tears, and more anger. I just didn’t have it in me anymore.
“And the worst part is, I can’t even hate him. It would be so much easier if I could just fucking hate him, Devin.”
“He’s your dad, Kylie,” he replied, treading carefully. “There would be nothing easy about hating your dad.”
With a broken sigh, I closed my eyes. I could see my laptop’s screen and my bank account.
“I should’ve changed the information when I had the chance,” I said, meek and shattered. “I should’ve known better than to leave that type of money in his control. I should’ve been keeping an eye on it. I mean, God, I hadn’t checked the fucking thing in over a year! Fuck …”
Devin shook his head. “You can’t blame yourself.”
My lips pinched and twisted. “Then, what do I blame, Devin? If I can’t blame him for being sick and I can’t blame myself, then what?”
He hung his head, because he didn’t know either. Nobody ever did.
I took a peek out the window at the old, dilapidated bar. I could see the sign for my coffee shop hanging over the door. I could see everything I ever wanted behind those windows, and my father—the man I could never stop loving—had taken it all from me. My dreams, my goals. They were gone, along with the money he’d helped me save.
With a deep breath, and a feeble burst of determination, I climbed out of the booth and put on my best smile. “Well, I guess that’s the end of that, right?”
Devin’s eyes slid up from the table to look at me. “The end of what?”
“This,” I said weakly, still smiling, still trudging through. “I’ll get a job at Starbucks or something. It’s about time I get back to work anyway, right? I’ve gotta move on.”
Devin stared off into The Ol’ Tavern, past the bar and bartender, toward the juke box. His dark brows sat over his eyes with furrowed intensity. His lips pinched between his teeth and he sighed. “You really want that coffee shop, Kylie.”
“Yeah, I do,” I told him, “but I’ll be okay. I’ll get a job, and I’m not in school anymore, so I could work more hours and save more money. It’ll go faster and—”
“Or, you could go into business with me.”
Stupefied, I stared at him and his shaggy hair as I sank back into the booth. “What?”
He pursed his lips, tipping his head back to look at the dancing flame over the table. Shadows played over his face, emphasizing the copper-tones in his hair and stubble. “I think we should go into business together,” he said, his voice even and sure.
Slowly, my head began to turn. Protesting. “Devin, I can’t ask you to—”
“You’re not asking me anything, Kylie. I’m making you an offer.” His eyes pinned me to the spot. “I have the money, and I certainly have the skill to take care of the work that needs to be done. I could be a, uh … silent partner,” he said, using the term I had taught him during my studies.
It wasn’t any of my business, I knew that, but here he was, offering me money, his services and his partnership. So I asked, “How the hell do you have the money?”
He shrugged, his thumb flicking at the open mouth of his empty beer bottle. “Remember I told you I have some money saved up for studio time?”
“No. Stop,” I said, shaking my head adamantly. “I’m not taking—”
“Kylie.” My name snapped against my face and I stared, dumbfounded. “I want to do this, okay? I’ve made up my mind.”
“But your music!”
“What about it?”
“I-I don’t know! You’re supposed to go and make a record, you’re supposed to get noticed and get famous, and—”
His gaze was cast onto the table, his lips tightening and releasing multiple times as his thoughts churned. “Yeah, well, the thing about music and fame is that it all comes down to luck. I could dump all of that money into studio time only for nothing to come of it, but you know what has nothing to do with luck?” I shrugged my response and he pointed a finger at me across the table, playfully poking at my cheek. “Your coffee shop.”
Flustered and stunned, I brushed his finger from my face. I fixed to staring at him, to letting it all settle in, shaking my head in disbelief.
“Dev, this is too much,” I said quietly. “I know you’re always trying to help me, but this … I really don’t know if I can accept this.”
“It’s not charity,” he insisted, his eyes meeting mine. “It’s a business venture, and it helps me also. I’ll be making a little extra money, and besides, I already told you I’d be there every day, re
member? It might do something for my music too.”
The shadows deepened the features on his face and I found myself staring, mesmerized by the angular shape of his nose. The defined cut of his jaw. The elongated tendrils of hair lying against his forehead. I thought about those attractive guys I had met in college—the cute ones with crappy personalities to balance it all out. Nobody could have it all.
Nobody but Devin.
It was difficult to understand how this guy—this man—could accidentally meet me at a party one day, and then continually change the course of my life. How he could singlehandedly attempt to make sure everything went well for me.
I loved him for it.
I loved him.
“I don’t deserve you,” I said, my voice hushed against the music filtering through the jukebox.
He laughed, playing all of it off like he wasn’t the most heroic person I’d ever know. “Oh, knock it off. It’s not like I’m doing anything.”
But God, how wrong he was. Because, Devin was giving up more than he ever should have for me, to give me the life I always wanted. The life I needed to move on and to thrive.
He was giving me everything.
CHAPTER FIVE
2015: Nine Years Later
Devin
Trent held the wooden stud steady against the jolt of the nail gun. With each air-compressed pop, the piece of wood was more secure, and by the fifth nail, I told him to let go. I finished the job and stood back to assess the job.
“Give me that level over there?” I held out my hand and Trent grabbed the tool, passing it over to me. I pressed the level’s body against the length of wood and I nodded to myself. “Okay, we’re good here.”
“Great,” Trent said with a thumbs-up. “One down and uh, four-hundred more to go.”
I laughed. It was an exaggeration, but it sure as hell felt that way. I wasn’t a fan of doing the framework on new construction. It was tedious labor. Give me some cabinetry, or give me a nice, old building to restore. That’s the type of shit I liked—design coupled with carpentry. Like Kylie’s coffee shop.
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