Things We Never Got Over

by Lucy Score

  “Hey, Sloane!” I greeted her with a wave.

  The librarian’s red lips curved in a smile, and she jerked her head at the girl who followed. “Well, if it isn’t Liza, Naomi, and Waylay. Chloe, do you know Way?” Sloane asked.

  The girl tapped a sparkly pink nailed finger to her chin. “We had B lunch together last year, didn’t we? You sat with Nina—the short one with black hair Nina, not the tall one with bad breath. She’s really nice, she just doesn’t do a good job with the brushing. I’m in Mrs. Felch’s class this year and I’m not happy about it ’cause everyone says she’s a mean old lady. I heard she’s even meaner ’cause she and her husband are talking about a divorce.”

  I noticed that Waylay was staring at Chloe with wary interest.

  “Chloe!” Sloane sounded both amused and embarrassed.

  “What? I’m only repeating what I heard from several very good sources. Whose class are you in?” she asked Waylay.

  “Mrs. Felch,” Waylay said.

  “Sixth grade is gonna be awesome even if we do have mean old Mrs. Felch because we get to switch rooms and teachers for science, art, gym, and math. Plus we’ve got Nina and Beau and Willow in class with us,” Chloe plowed on. “Do you know what you’re wearing on the first day? I can’t decide between an all-pink ensemble or a pink-and-white ensemble.”

  It was a lot of words to take in from such a small person.

  “If you ever need to know anything about anyone, just ask my niece Chloe,” Sloane said, looking amused.

  Chloe grinned, showing a dimple in one cheek. “I’m not allowed to visit Aunt Sloane at the library cause she says I talk too much. I don’t think I talk too much. I just have a lot of information that needs to be disseminated to the public.”

  Waylay was staring at Chloe with half of her slice of pizza hanging out of her mouth. It had been a long time since I’d been in school and faced with a cool girl. But Chloe had cool girl written all over her.

  “We should get our moms, or I guess your aunt and my mom or my aunt, to schedule a playdate. Are you into crafts or hiking? Maybe baking?”

  “Uhh,” Waylay said.

  “You can let me know at school,” Chloe said.

  “Thanks?” Waylay croaked.

  It occurred to me that if people in the grocery store were giving her the evil eye, Waylay might not have a lot of friends at school. After all, it wasn’t hard to imagine mothers not wanting their daughters to bring home Tina Witt’s daughter.

  Inspiration struck. “Hey, we’re throwing a little dinner party Sunday. Would you two like to come?”

  “My day off, and I don’t have to cook? Count me in,” Sloane said. “What about you, Chlo?”

  “I’ll check my social calendar and get back to you. I have a birthday party and tennis lessons on Saturday, but I think I’m free Sunday.”

  “Great!” I said. Waylay shot me a look that made me think I sounded a little bit desperate.

  “Perfect! Let’s grab our to-go order before it gets cold,” Sloane suggested, steering Chloe toward the counter.

  “Damn, that kid can talk,” Liza observed. She looked at me. “So when were you gonna invite me to this dinner party?”

  “Uh…now?”

  We ate our pizza, I ate our salad, and Liza picked up the bill like the patron saint of temporarily broke tenants. We hit the sidewalk and the Virginia heat. But Liza headed in the opposite direction of the car. She tottered down to the building on the corner and knocked loudly on Whiskey Clipper’s plate glass window.

  Waylay joined her, and they both started waving.

  “What are you two doing?” I asked, hurrying after them.

  “Knox owns this place too and does some barbering,” Liza said with a hint of pride.

  Wearing his usual uniform of worn jeans, a fitted t-shirt, and ancient motorcycle boots, Knox Morgan was standing behind one of the salon chairs, taking a straight razor to a customer’s cheek. He had a leather apron-like organizer hung low on his hips with scissors and other tools tucked in the pouches.

  I’d never had a barber fetish before. I didn’t even know if that was a legitimate fetish. But watching those tattooed forearms, those dexterous hands work, I felt an annoying pulse of desire spark to life under the pizza I’d inhaled.

  His gaze met mine, and for a second, it felt like the glass wasn’t there. It felt like I was being dragged into his gravity against my will. It felt like it was just the two of us sharing some kind of secret.

  I knew what I’d be thinking about and hating myself for when I laid down in bed tonight.

  FOURTEEN

  THE DINNER PARTY

  Knox

  “Beer and catch a game? Beer and shoot the shit on the deck?” I asked Jeremiah as he and Waylon followed me up the steps to my cabin. Once every two weeks or so, I’d take an early night, and we’d get together outside of work.

  “I wanna find out what’s got your beard so droopy. You were fine a couple of days ago. Your usual grumpy self. Now you’re pouting.”

  “I don’t pout. I ponder. In a manly way.”

  Jeremiah snickered behind me.

  I unlocked the door and, despite my best efforts, glanced in the direction of the cottage.

  There were cars parked in front of the cottage, music playing. Great. The woman was a socializer. Another reason to stay far the hell away from her.

  Not that I had to, seeing as how she’d been avoiding me like I was the problem. The past week had been a struggle. An annoying one. Naomi Witt, I’d discovered, was a warm, friendly person. And when she wasn’t feeling warm and friendly toward you, you definitely felt the cold. She refused to make eye contact with me. Her smiles and “Sure thing, boss” responses were perfunctory. Even when I drove her home and we were alone in the truck, the frostiness didn’t thaw a degree.

  Every time I thought I’d gotten a handle on it, she popped up. Either in her backyard or at my grandmother’s. In my own bar. Hell, a few days ago, she’d floated up to the window at Whiskey Clipper like a goddamn vision.

  She was driving me fucking nuts.

  “See? That right there,” Jer said, pointing a finger in my face. “Pouting. What’s going on with you, man?”

  “Nothing.” I noticed my brother’s department vehicle parked at the cottage. “Fuck.”

  “There a reason you don’t like seeing your brother’s car parked at Not Tina’s?”

  “Is it the bisexual part of you that wants to talk about fucking feelings all the time?” I asked. “Or is it the ‘I come from a big, Lebanese family that knows everything about everybody’ part that I can blame?”

  “Why not both?” he said with a quick grin.

  A particularly loud burst of laughter caught our attention, as did the scent of grilled meat.

  Waylon’s nose twitched. The white tip of his tail froze in the air.

  “No,” I said sternly.

  I might as well have said, “Sure, bud. Go get yourself a hot dog.” Because my dog took off like a streak.

  “Looks like we’re joining the party,” Jeremiah observed.

  “Fuck. I’m getting a beer first.”

  A minute later, cold beers in hand, we wandered around the back of the cottage to find half of Knockemout on Naomi’s porch.

  Sloane, the pretty librarian, was there with her niece, Chloe, who was wading knee-deep in the creek with Waylay and my grandmother’s dogs. Liza J was sitting next to Tallulah while Justice manned the grill and my pain in the ass brother flirted with Naomi.

  She looked like summer.

  Considering I’d had two sips of beer, I couldn’t blame alcohol on my mental prose. My mouth went dry as my gaze started at her bare feet, then moved up the long, tan legs to where they disappeared under the flirty, lemon yellow sundress.

  “So that’s the problem,” Jeremiah said smugly. He was looking right at Naomi, and I didn’t much care for it.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  Waylon bar
reled his way up onto the porch and made a beeline for the grill.

  “Waylon!” Naomi looked delighted to see my dog. She crouched down to greet him, and even from here, the peek of cleavage was enough to tie my balls in a knot.

  “Waylon,” I barked.

  My jerk of a dog was too busy enjoying the affection of a beautiful woman to bother listening to me.

  “Knox! Jer!” Tallulah called when she spotted us in the yard. “Join us.”

  Naomi looked up, and I saw the sunshine fade from her face when she spotted me. The ice walls went up.

  “We don’t want to impose,” Jeremiah said, cagily eyeing the spread. There were deviled eggs, grilled vegetables, some kind of layered dip thing in a fancy dish, and four kinds of desserts. On the grill, Justice was turning chicken breasts and hot dogs.

  “You’re welcome to join us,” Naomi said through a smile that was more gritted teeth than invitation. Her message was clear. She didn’t want me here at her cozy little dinner party.

  Well, I didn’t want her in my head every time I closed my fucking eyes. So I considered the score equal.

  “If you insist,” Jeremiah said, shooting me a triumphant look.

  “Nice flowers,” I said. There was a blue vase overflowing with wild blooms in the center of the table.

  “Nash brought them,” Naomi said.

  I wanted to smack the smug look of satisfaction right off my brother’s face.

  So he brought a girl flowers, and I could barely get her to say two words to me. He should know better than to challenge me like that.

  I played dirty. Even when I didn’t care about winning. I just wanted Nash to lose.

  Between eating and shooting the shit with Naomi’s eclectic guests, I watched her. She sat between Waylay and Nash, who had all but pushed me out of the way like we were playing musical chairs. The conversation was lively, the mood upbeat.

  Naomi laughed and talked and listened, all while keeping an eye on everyone’s plates and glasses, offering second helpings and top-offs with the expertise of someone who spent their life looking out for others.

  She was warm, attentive, funny. Except to me.

  So maybe I’d been a bit of a dick. Personally, I didn’t think that was enough of an infraction for me to be relegated to Ice Town.

  I noticed every time Sloane or Chloe mentioned something about school starting, Naomi got pale and sometimes excused herself to go inside.

  She talked to Jeremiah about hair and Whiskey Clipper. She talked about coffee and small business with Justice and Tallulah. And had no problem smiling at any stupid thing that came out of my brother’s mouth. But no matter how long I watched her, she never once glanced in my direction. I was the invisible dinner guest, and it was rubbing me the wrong way.

  “Liza J was telling us stories of you and Nash growing up earlier,” Justice said to me.

  I could only imagine which stories my grandmother had decided on. “Was it the rock fight in the creek or the zip line from the chimney?” I asked my brother.

  “Both,” Nash said, lips quirked.

  “It was quite the childhood,” I told Justice.

  “Did your parents live with you?” Waylay asked. It was an innocent question coming from a kid who knew what it was like to not live with her parents.

  I swallowed and looked for an escape.

  “We lived with our parents until our mom passed,” Nash told her.

  “I’m so sorry to hear that.” That came from Naomi, and this time she was looking right fucking at me.

  I nodded stiffly.

  “Naomi, did you pick up Waylay’s school laptop yet?” Sloane asked. “My sister said Chloe’s was a little buggy.”

  “Yeah, every time I open the internet, it restarts. How am I supposed to watch age-appropriate videos on YouTube with no internet?” Chloe chimed in.

  “Or, I don’t know, do school work?” Sloane teased.

  “I could probably take a look at it,” Waylay offered.

  Chloe’s brown eyes widened. “You’re a STEM girl?”

  “What’s that?” Waylay asked with suspicion.

  “Science Technology Engineering Math,” Sloane filled in.

  “Yeah. Nerd stuff,” Chloe added.

  Sloane elbowed her niece.

  “Ow! I don’t mean nerd like bad. Nerds are good. Nerds are cool. Nerds are the ones who grow up to run companies and make bazillions of dollars,” Chloe said. She looked at Waylay. “Nerds are definitely good.”

  The tops of Waylay’s ears turned pink.

  “My mom always said nerds were losers,” she said quietly. She shot Naomi a look. “She said girls who liked dresses and doing their hair were…uh, bad.”

  I had the sudden urge to hunt down Tina and drop-kick her ass into the creek for not being the kind of mother her kid needed.

  “Your mom got a lot of things mixed up, kiddo,” Naomi said, running her hand over Waylay’s hair. “She didn’t understand that people could be more than one thing or like more than one thing. You can wear dresses and makeup and build rockets. You can dress in suits and play baseball. You can be a millionaire and work in your pajamas.”

  “Your mom doesn’t like dresses and hair?” Chloe scoffed. “She’s missing out. I had two wardrobe changes for my birthday last year, and I got a bow and arrow. You be you. Don’t let someone who doesn’t like fashion tell you anything.”

  “Listen to Chloe, who’s about to lose a hot dog off her plate— Get down, Waylon,” Liza said.

  My dog froze, mid-sneak.

  “We can still see you even if you’re not movin’, dumbass,” I reminded him.

  Waylay giggled.

  Pouting, Waylon slunk back under the table. Seconds later, I noticed Waylay tear off a piece of her hot dog and casually tuck it under the checkered cloth.

  Naomi noticed it too but didn’t tattle on either one of them.

  “If you brought your laptop along, I could take a look,” Waylay offered.

  “Well, if you’re doing a little post-dinner tech support,” Tallulah said, pulling a huge iPad out of her work bag, “I just got this for the shop, and I’m having trouble transferring everything over from the old one.”

  “Ten dollars a job,” I said, slapping the table.

  Everyone’s eyes came to me. Waylay’s lips quirked.

  “Waylay Witt doesn’t work for free. You want the best? You gotta pay for it,” I told them.

  Her tiny smile was a smirk now, which morphed into a full-out grin when Tallulah yanked a $10 bill out of her purse and handed it over. “First paying customer,” Tallulah said proudly.

  “Aunt Sloane!” Chloe hissed.

  Sloane grinned and went for her purse. “Here’s a $20 for your trouble. Miss Fashion here also dribbled honey on the space bar when she was making tea.”

  Waylay pocketed the bills and sat down to get to work.

  This time, Naomi locked eyes with me. She didn’t smile, didn’t say “thank you” or “get me naked tonight.” But there was still something there. Something I itched to unlock simmering in those hazel eyes.

  And then it was gone.

  “Excuse me,” she said, pushing back from the table. “I’ll be right back.”

  Nash watched her walk away, that bright yellow material sliding over tanned thighs.

  I couldn’t blame him. But I also couldn’t let him have her.

  When Jeremiah caught his attention with a question about football, I used it as an opportunity to follow Naomi inside. I found her bent over the rolltop desk next to the stairs in the living room.

  “Whatcha doing?”

  She jumped, shoulders hitching. Then spun around, holding her hands behind her back. When she saw it was me, she rolled her eyes. “Is there something you need? A slap across the face? An excuse to leave?”

  I closed the distance between us slowly. I didn’t know why I was doing it. I just knew that watching her smile at my brother made my chest tight, that being frozen out was getting to me. An
d the closer I moved to her, the warmer I felt.

  “Thought money was tight,” I said when she tilted her head to look up at me.

  “Oh, bite me, Viking.”

  “Just sayin’, Daisy, your first night on the job, you gave me a sob story of losing your savings and supporting your niece. Now it looks like you’re feeding half the county.”

  “It’s a potluck, Knox. By the way, you’re the only one who didn’t bring anything to share. Besides, I wasn’t doing it to socialize.”

  I liked the way she said my name when she was exasperated. Hell, I just liked my name on those lips.

  “All right then. Why are you hosting half of Knockemout for a potluck?”

  “If I tell you do you promise to do us both a favor and go away?”

  “Absolutely,” I lied.

  She bit her lip and peered over my shoulder. “Fine. It’s because of Chloe.”

  “You’re throwing a dinner party for an eleven-year-old?”

  She rolled her eyes. “No! That adorable chatterbox is the most popular girl in Waylay’s grade. They have the same teacher this year. I was just trying to give them a chance to spend some time together.”

  “You’re matchmaking sixth-graders?”

  Naomi’s jaw jutted out and she crossed her arms over her chest. I didn’t mind because it pressed her breasts up higher against the neckline of her dress.

  “You wouldn’t understand what it’s like to walk through town and be judged by people just because of who you’re related to,” she hissed.

  I took a step closer to her. “You’re dead wrong about that.”

  “Okay. Fine. Whatever. I want Waylay to go to school with actual friends, not just rumors that she’s Tina Witt’s abandoned daughter.”

  It was probably a solid play. I’d had my brother and Lucian on the first day of school when we’d moved here. No one in school had the guts to say shit about one of us since we were protected by the pack.