“Grab one for me too,” Chase added, smiling down at me.
I didn’t know how he did that—made me feel all squirmy and warm and uncomfortable with just a look. There was another guy who did that to me but for entirely different reasons.
The thought that those reasons weren’t actually that different flashed through my mind, and I let it zip away without acknowledging it again.
“Sure,” Presley said, taking my arm to drag me away.
Chase watched us the whole way, along with everyone else in the bar.
A cluster of people sat around a big table they’d made out of smaller ones, and at our approach, greetings rang out. Chairs scooted, and a couple of guys who used to be on the baseball team pulled up seats for us.
Chase was on his own, I guessed.
“You all remember Olivia Brent.”
They nodded and said their hellos with cheer. The group was composed of half cheerleaders, half misfits. Chantel, Courtney, Kendall, and Kaylee—the cheerleaders—and Amanda, Megan, Celeste, and Shannon, who had been goth girls. Now it seemed they’d all mingled. The guys peppered between them—husbands, by the look of it—were baseball players and burnouts. Stewart had almost burned the school down playing with a lighter and some hairspray when he was high. Now he looked like an accountant. Jared and James—twin baseball players—had once been the hottest guys in town, shortstop and first baseman for the high school team. Now they were forty pounds overweight and already balding.
They were a living testament to a simple fact of life—nothing turns out like you think it will.
Chantel, who had never spoken to me in school, smiled sweetly at me, her hand resting on her very pregnant belly and the other hooked in Stewart’s arm. “It feels like we haven’t seen you in a thousand years. I’m so sorry to hear about your grandfather.”
“Thank you,” I said, clutching my drink.
“How’s it going at the farm?” she asked. “I heard you and Jake had to split it. That can’t be easy—I don’t think I’ve ever seen him smile.”
“It’s a rarity and generally at someone else’s expense.”
She rubbed her belly. “I don’t know how you stay so skinny with all that ice cream around. They’d have to cart me around in a flatbed if I lived on a dairy farm.”
“And all that cheese,” Amanda mused. Heads nodded in agreement. “I’d make meals out of wheels of cheddar. You’d have to fight me off.”
“Seriously,” Chantel started, “if you tell me you don’t work out, I might pitch myself off the roof over the unfairness of it all.”
“Please don’t swan dive on account of me. I don’t have magical metabolism—I’m lactose intolerant.”
They blinked at me. A laugh shot out of Stewart.
“You’re kidding. You inherited a dairy farm, but you can’t drink milk?”
“I mean, I could, but it wouldn’t be pretty.”
“Not even with Lactaid?” Shannon asked with a sad look on her face.
I shrugged. “Such is my curse.”
“That’s awful,” Chantel said with a wavering voice.
Stewart looked at her like she was a bomb about to go off. “You’re not about to cry over Olivia’s digestive system, are you?”
“No,” she shot, brushing the corner of her eye with her index finger. When Stewart started laughing, she nailed him in the arm. “It’s your fault I’m like this. You did this to me.” She gestured to her belly before hesitantly accepting a kiss on the temple.
Kaylee smiled and said., “My little boy, Braden, caught wind of a petting zoo, and I think his smile was bright enough to power the town, he was so excited. I mean, the Pattons have one, but the animals look depressed. You’re going to give them a run for their money.”
“Somebody should,” Stewart said into his pint glass before taking a sip.
“It is true. I even have goats with bunch of babies in the mix. I got them onesies, which everybody told me was crazy. Obviously I’m a terrible listener.”
They chuckled, but their attention shifted when Chase pulled up a chair next to me.
The guys all got up and clapped his hand or shoulder, and the girls all said their hellos—some with disdain, some with a celebrity sort of longing, a few with friendly enough apathy. But everyone seemed to have a reaction.
Chase Patton demanded attention without having to say a word.
“What are we talking about?” he asked.
“They were just asking Olivia about opening the farm to the public,” Presley said proudly and pointedly with her eyes on mine.
“I think I heard something about that,” he said, hanging his arm on the back of my chair. Everybody at the table noticed.
I did my best not to squirm, partly because I was under scrutiny, partly because he was supposed to be the enemy, and partly because I didn’t necessarily want him to be.
“You’re opening up the old shop, right?” he asked.
“She is, and she’s putting my soap in the front window,” Presley said. “Aren’t you, Livi?”
I chuckled. “Guess so.”
“It really is something, guys. You’ve got to come see what she’s done with the place,” Presley added.
“Oh, it’s nothing, really.” I hated that I blushed and hoped my barely-tan helped cover it.
“We’ve seen bits,” Kendall said. “We all follow you on Instagram.”
Everyone nodded their agreement, even Chase.
I gave him a questioning, smiling look. “Well, thank you.”
Courtney laughed. “Oh my God, the video where you mucked out the stalls and fell in shit had me and Dave laughing. Didn’t it, honey?”
Dave nodded. “I thought Court was going to hyperventilate.”
“I’ve mucked one stall in my life, and it went exactly like that,” Courtney said.
“And the hashtag,” Amanda said, whacking Courtney on the arm. And at the same time, they hollered “Muck it!”
Everyone laughed, but not that teasing, cruel sort of laugh—an authentic laugh of relation and camaraderie.
Now I blushed in earnest, my skin steaming hot and my smile immovable. “If I can’t laugh at myself, what else do I have?”
“Oh my gosh,” Chantel said, slapping Stewart on the chest with her gaze on me. “That picture with Jake in the calf pen? I knew he was fit, but that was just ridiculous.”
Stewart wasn’t amused. “I keep catching her looking at it on her phone, zoomed in four hundred percent.”
“He just has so many abs. There are like twelve of them,” she said.
“How’d you get him to let you post it?” Amanda asked.
“By not asking.”
The table chuckled.
“I bet that went over big,” Jared correctly guessed.
“He barely knows how to work the internet, so really, he’s all bark.”
“Well, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you,” Chantel said, pressing her hand to her chest.
Stewart made a derisive noise and took a swig of his beer.
“Oh!” Kendall said, snapping to attention. “Speaking of having to laugh at myself, the other night, the baby was in the bath …”