by Lesley Jones
“Koa.” His name comes out on a whispered breath as I imagine the scene.
I reach my hand out across the table, and he takes it in his. It’s an unconscious action. Once again instinctual, reaching for someone who so obviously needs comfort at that moment.
“Nelson must’ve seen the terror, panic, whatever written on my face and started straight away by saying, “He’s safe Carmichael. He’s in the back of my Ranger. A little shook up, but he’s safe.”
I pull my hand away from his, lace my fingers together, and stretch them up and behind my head in an attempt to let more air into my lungs, but it hurts my wrist, so I bring them back down to the table.
“He’d been here in town, hanging out with a few of the other apprentices and a bunch of girls. They’d been drinking down by the river. Instead of waiting their turn for a ride with the DD, one of them thought he’d be smart and drive back into town after drinking all night. Kai decided it’d be a good idea to ride with him. Austin, the boy driving, only got about a mile before running his truck off the road.”
He puts his coffee mug down and stares at it for a while before looking back at me.
“Neither of them were wearing seatbelts, but Austin was so drunk he couldn’t even keep his foot on the gas. They drove off the road and through some bushes before hitting a tree. They were more scratched up by the bushes once they fell out of the car than by the accident. Unluckily for them, a witness had called for assistance and Nelson was the first on the scene.”
“So, you sent him to your mum’s for punishment.”
“Yeah, pretty much. And for my own peace of mind. I was so fucking pissed at him. After going through what he did with his mom, I thought I could trust him to be a little more responsible.”
“I can imagine.”
“He thinks he’s there for a year, but we’ll see. I believe he learned his lesson as soon as he sobered up, but I’m his dad, and he needs to know that fuckin’ up has consequences.”
Imagining Koa as a dad does all kinds of strange things to my heart, and my ovaries, if I’m honest.
“You told Rebecca that you have two kids, how old’s the other one?”
He blinks a few times, which tells me he’s thinking about his answer.
“Four.”
Fuck. That’s a new one. A baby still.
Wife?
“Boy or girl?”
“Oh, she’s a girl all right. No doubt about that. Four thinking she’s twenty-four. She’d love your hair and your nails, probably your tattoos, too.”
I thought I had his relationship status covered, that was before I knew he had a four-year-old, though, so I dive straight in and ask what I need to know.
“Where’s she live?”
“She’s in Aspen with her mom. My ex-wife.”
Ooooookaaaay. So another ex-wife?
“Another ex, how many exes and kids do you have?”
“Just two. Two wives, two kids.”
“Just two.” It’s not a question, just a statement, I suppose. I’m trying the words out on my tongue. Two ex-wives. Two kids.
“Wasn’t the way I thought my life was gonna go, but it is what it is.”
“What happened?”
He shrugs and looks around the diner.
“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
He bloody does. I need—no, I want to know. Everything.
“Met Lucy at an after-party for one of our shows we played in Georgia. She was cute, funny, and gorgeous. Convinced me that the whole relationship thing was worth giving a second chance.”
A different waitress, not Rebecca, comes over and clears our plates, and we remain silent as she works.
“We got married, and Lucy was pregnant three months later. I thought we were happy. I bought us a house in Aspen. I bought her a new car, clothes, jewellery. I bought her anything she wanted. I came home from a tour one time, and there was a lawyer at my house, waiting to serve me divorce papers. Turns out, all she was after was a paycheque for the next eighteen years.”
Didn’t know Lucy. Didn’t wanna, but I suddenly had the urge to slap the bitch.
“Please tell me you had a prenup in place. Everyone here has a prenup, don’t they?”
“Not everyone, but yeah, I did, but she still did well out of it. I wasn’t gonna fight her. If that was what she wanted, then that was what I’d give her. The only thing I did fight for was my little girl. She wanted full custody.”
Wow, I don’t have kids, but after going through what he has and losing one, I can only imagine how much that must’ve hurt.
“So, you don’t see her, your little girl?” My nose tingles as I ask.
“I do. I had to make some changes, but I fought and won joint custody. My daughter comes to me every other weekend, two weeknights and we share school holidays.”
My left hand is pressed against my chest in an attempt to slow my racing heart.
“So why, what were her reasons for wanting the divorce?”
He starts to put his jacket on, so I do the same.
“She didn’t love me. She married me for my money. Had a child with me to guarantee an income for the next eighteen years. She moved on with a record producer friend of mine just a few months after our divorce was settled, they got married, but that ended just a year later.”
“Wow.”
“Oh, it gets better. After the record producer dumped her ass for a younger model, she came begging and crying back to me.”
“Whaaaa?”
He chuckles, but it’s not the funny, haha kind. It’s the “I know, right?” kind. “Now she’s with the head of the real estate company that sold us the house I bought for her, someone I went to school with in fact.”
Rebecca appears with our bill, and I attempt to pull my card from my wristlet, but he’s faster and insists on paying.
We say our goodbyes to Martha and Rebecca and head outside.
“So carry on,” I insist. Obviously being female, I’m gagging to know the rest of this story.
The blue sky has gone, hidden behind a blanket of grey and white clouds, snow falling lightly from them.
We stand outside the diner facing each other, people jostling us as they pass by. He reaches out his hands and places them on my shoulders, pulling me closer to him and out of the way of an elderly couple, both with walking sticks, allowing them room to get by.
Once they move around us, his hands remain in place, and I look up at him.
“She fucked me over, Essex. She claimed I couldn’t take care of my daughter because of touring with the band. She tried to take my little girl from me, she attempted to take Kai’s baby sister from him. Fuck, she’d already gotten the house and a decent monthly payout, there was no way I was gonna let her have any more.”
He licks his lips and looks past me. When his eyes land back on mine, they’re different. The emotion that had been evident as he told his story last night and over breakfast were now gone. Replaced with something I couldn’t quite read.
“I gave up my music because of her. I abandoned the band, so I wouldn’t have to tour anymore. I went back to work for my dad’s construction company that I’d invested in, grown, and expanded. I bought a new house, I fixed it up, turned it into a home for Kai and Malia, and I went to court. I won joint custody, so when she came crying back to me, begging me to see her, to hear her out, I didn’t even take her calls. I had everything redirected to my lawyer and let them deal with it. My only concern was for my little girl. The impact all of this upheaval was having on my daughter. Once I threatened Lucy with court action and another custody hearing, she backed down.”
“But why, I don’t understand? Why would she divorce you, marry someone else, then try to come back to you?”
“Money. She’d met her match with Aaron Cohen, the producer. She had been his third wife, so he was an expert with the prenup, and she left with exactly what she came in with, and that was what she got from me. I heard a rumour they wer
e both fucking around on each other from the very beginning. Tried to look into it in case I needed the evidence to gain full custody of Malia, but it wasn’t what I really wanted, the battle I mean, not my daughter.”
I let out a long breath through my nose and shake my head.
“Fucking hell, Koa, somebody should write a book or make a film about your life. I thought TOWIE was where all the drama happened. Someone should make a The Only Way is Aspen show. Do they have a Housewives of Aspen?”
I get an entirely blank stare.
“You’ve no clue what I’m banging on about, do ya, Cowboy?”
“I ain’t got a Scooby, Essex.”
A little of the light returns to his eyes, and we both smile for a moment.
“I’m so sorry all of that has happened to you. I can’t believe women like your exes actually exist.”
“Me, either. Fucked over twice by two different women. No way in hell will that ever be happening again.”
I feel his words. I physically feel them hit me. They land right in the middle of my chest, and they squeeze it tight, so tight that it hurts.
I don’t know why his words are painful.
I’m confused as to why they leave me hugely disappointed.
He’s a stranger. But isn’t everyone when we first meet them?
I look at him in silence for a few moments, wondering what it is exactly I’m expecting from him, from our relationship, if that’s what our association can be called.
Despite my brain’s tendency to go off on a tangent and to tell itself unbelievably fantastical stories, I haven’t actually allowed that to happen with him. Yeah, he is hot, as fit as fuck, and I’d most definitely consider the possibility of shagging him before I leave. I mean, why not? We’re both adults, and there’s definitely chemistry between us. That’s been apparent since the get-go. But none of that explains the hollowness in my belly or the tightness in my chest.
“The drugstore’s this way, let’s go get something for that wrist of yours and then we’ll find a phone store.”
I nod and follow him.
KOA
I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE fuck it is with this woman, but she has me spilling my guts every goddamn time I open my mouth.
I don’t have too many close friends. Clay, Dev, and Blake from the band and a couple of my foremen from work. Dean and Lee especially. Dean is married to my PA and secretary, Shannon and I went to high school with all three of them.
As we walk, I think about how it might be to introduce Gracie to my friends. Her and Shannon would probably get along good. Too good maybe.
Aside from the guys in the band and from work, I talk to my mom and Bill about certain things, but only certain things. And then there’s Lexi, she’s someone who I don’t even want to think about while I’m with Gracie.
But none of them, not the guys from the band, work, or my mom have ever had me opening up the way Gracie does, and I don’t know why that is. Perhaps talking to a stranger is easier than baring my soul to someone that I have a history with. And yet, despite only knowing her for three days, I don’t feel like Gracie’s a stranger.
We hit the drugstore, purchase a compression bandage, some ibuprofen, and seven flavours of some lip stuff that Gracie insists she can’t live without. We then cross the street to the phone store to get her whatever she needs from there.
She’s been quiet since we left the diner, no doubt absorbing everything I revealed to her earlier. It doesn’t sound good when you say it aloud, I get that. Two failed marriages and two kids with different women, but what pisses me off more is that in neither case was it my fault. The only blame I’ll accept is in my poor choice of women to try to settle down with. That’s why I’ll never do it again. Lexi knows this, I think she’d like more but accepts that it’s never gonna happen.
“Thank you.”
Gracie’s voice brings me back from my thoughts. We’re leaving the phone store after she picked up a new SIM and a US charger for her phone so that she doesn’t have to keep using an adapter, and someone has held the door open for us.
“You’re very welcome—” The guy’s voice cuts short, and I glance up. “Carmichael, heard you were back in town. Didn’t believe it, though.”
Logan Barnes is standing in front of us, but he lets go of the door, allowing it to close. Obviously expecting a conversation. But I can’t stand the fucker. He’s the last person on this earth I’d want to stand and pass the time of day with in the sunniest of conditions, but definitely not while there’s snow falling around us and the wind is starting to whip up.
Before I can shut him down, he’s holding his hand out to Gracie.
“Logan Barnes, don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”
I put my hand on the small of her back—yeah, again—and am about to steer her away, when she responds by taking his hand.
“Gracie Elliott.”
“Good to meet you, Gracie. You’re obviously not from around here with that accent.”
“No, I’ve just arrived from England.”
She smiles at me, having no clue what she’s getting into by engaging Barnes in conversation. The guy’s a slippery, slimy, sleazeball and the brother of my ex-wife’s latest husband—my second ex-wife, not the first—and works for the same real estate business.
“So, vacation or just visiting our sometimes resident rock star?”
“Oh, no. We’ve only just met. I’m renting Koa’s aunt’s cabin for the next few months. Sort of a working holiday.”
I actually consider kissing her at that moment, just to stop her from speaking.
And maybe, just because.
Barnes still has hold of her hand and steps away from the door, moving Gracie with him. I consider pulling her back by her scarf, but knowing Gracie, she’ll turn around and beat me with her good hand.
I move with them and slide my hand from her back, to her hip and pull her into my side. She looks at me again. I can just make out her eyebrows beneath her beanie, and I see that they’re drawn down and pulled together in a frown.
“Gracie’s staying with me at Emily’s old place. I’m gonna be working on the renovations, she’s gonna help me with the interiors—together, as a team, working and living…......together,” I add again, just so it’s clear he needs to fuck off right now.
Gracie gives the biggest eye roll, mouthing “What the fuck?” as she does.
“But you’re not dating or together.” He emphasises the word together with air quotes. I’ll air quote the fucker right between his shifty eyes. With my fist.
“As a couple, I mean,” he adds.
I open my mouth to speak, but Gracie gets in before me.
“Oh no. Koa doesn’t date, he just makes bad choices and collects ex-wives like trophies to prove it.”
Barnes throws his head back and laughs. His overly white teeth are on full display. I clench my fist, fighting the urge to knock that fake Colgate smile right off his smug face.
“We need to get going, we still need to get groceries, and this weather looks like it’s about to pick up.”
“So I’m guessing you don’t know anyone yet, being so new in town?”
Barnes totally ignores what I’ve just said and addresses Gracie.
“Well, we went to the diner where I met Martha, who seems to love Koa but not me so much, and Rebecca, who apparently has a massive crush on Koa but barely noticed my presence. Oh, and let’s not forget the delightful Misty, Queen of the Regrowth, the town whore, or striper, or bike, or whatever. She seemed to dislike Koa and me equally.”
“Well, I’m sure we can do better than the diner. How about I pick you up and take you to dinner? Somewhere a little more upscale, where you won’t have to worry about bumping into the likes of Misty Walker. Maybe go for some drinks afterwards, and I can introduce you to the people of Addison Creek that you’re gonna want to know, not the ones it’s best to avoid.”
“We’ve actually got—”
“Aww, thank you, Logan. I’d
love that. That’s really sweet of you.”
Fuck no!
No way is this happening.
“Ain’t that sweet of Logan?” She smiles at me and asks.
“No.”
“What?”
“No, it’s not fucking sweet of him, and no, you’re not going.”
“Now hang on—” Gracie puts her hand up to Barnes as he begins to object, warning him to hush his noise. He closes his mouth instantly. Pussy.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought you meant.”
“Glad we’re clear on that, Essex.”
“Oh, we’re clear all right, but let’s just get things straight about what exactly it is we’re clear on, shall we? Logan very kindly asked me out to dinner tonight. I said yes. That means I’ll be going out for dinner tonight. Is that clear enough for ya, Cowboy?”
“You wanna go out for dinner tonight? Fine, I’ll take you out, but you’re not going with him.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
I feel my jaw drop at her response.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Or are you like your mate, Misty, and hard of hearing, too? I said, go fuck—”
“I heard what you said, I’m just confused as to why you’d say yes to this slimy motherfucker when he asks you out to dinner, but when I ask, I get told to go fuck myself.”
“You best watch your mouth, Carmichael.”
My heart’s banging hard against my ribs, and I grit my teeth so hard that my temples feel as if they’re about to explode.
“You”—I point my finger at Barnes—“best be walking away now, ’cause if you open your mouth one more time, I can’t guarantee you’ll be able to again.”
“I didn’t tell you to go fuck yourself for your dinner offer, I said it because you think you can tell me what I can and can’t do.” Gracie interrupts the stare down between Barnes and me.
I slice my eyes from him to her and back again. I don’t trust this fucker. I’ve known him most of my life, and I’m pretty confident he wouldn’t think twice about punching me while I’m not looking.
“So, if I ask you to go out to dinner with me, but not to go out for dinner with douche bag here, you’ll say yes?” I ask, looking back her way for just a split second.