It was the first time I’d spoken since we hit the road, so everyone turned toward me to ensure they heard right.
Silence descended on the car before Rob answered.
“I’m not exactly proud of that, man.”
“Sort of sounds like you only came back home because every other plan fell through,” I said roughly.
Rob’s face sobered, and he put aside his empty beer can. “I came home because it was time to man up. I made a mistake. I’m paying for it now.”
“Water under the bridge.” Wyatt waved a hand, trying to calm things down. “You’re back, it’s all good.”
“Look, I know I really fucked it up with her. Nessy, I mean.”
Julianna and Dani, too, Sir Fucks-a-Lot.
“You gonna try to win her back?” Kyle licked the rollie paper of his joint from side to side.
Tim was napping in the backseat at this point between Kyle and Rob, totally checked out. That’s what happened when you had to pay child support to two different women and held onto three jobs.
“Hell yeah.” Rob chuckled. “Nessy still has a killer body, a sassy mouth on her, and she is the mother of my son. Bonus points—she pays her way through life, which can’t hurt in my financial situation. Figure if she hasn’t come for my throat financially yet, she’s not going to.” He cackled, shaking his head. “Though I mean it about helping her out. I’m going to start paying for Bear’s stuff. In the meantime, I’m going to play the tortured saint for a few months and hopefully crawl back into her bed for a bit, at least. Think she’ll have me?”
“Sure,” Wyatt said.
“Maybe.” Kyle cocked his head.
Snorting out, I said, “She’s not stupid or desperate, you know.”
“What’d you say?” Rob’s hand found my shoulder.
I shook him off.
“Nothing.”
We got into a swanky sports bar twenty minutes later.
There was a black vinyl booth reserved for us. Country music blasted through the speakers, football games were playing on huge flat screen TVs on the walls, and there were people grinding and dancing a few yards from the bar, which connected to some sort of a dance club.
I had the acute sense of being the only responsible grown-up in this bar, with the average IQ in the place equating to that of a half-eaten sub. Wyatt was my brother, so loving him was part of a package deal, but I never understood his decisions.
Especially the one to invite one of my ex-best friends to his bachelor party.
The waitresses—who wore even less than Tennessee’s diner uniform—served food in black thongs, a matching bra, and a white silk tie. We started with a round of drinks and some tequila slammers, ordered food, and then more tequila slammers.
Everyone downed their alcohol like it was a competitive sport while I watched and prayed no one puked in the Mercedes on the long drive back home. The car wasn’t mine, but the headache of getting it cleaned afterwards would be.
Seven shots and four beers later, my brother and his friends were treading close to disaster territory with a side of alcohol poisoning. They were about half a step away from getting matching, horrible tattoos they’d definitely regret later.
Wyatt, Kyle, and Tim—the latter seemed visibly more awake after drinking his own weight in shots—dragged their nearly-middle-aged asses to the dance floor, grinding their crotches against college girls to the sound of Sam Hunt and Blake Shelton.
Rob stayed behind. Didn’t take a genius to know it was because he had a bone to pick with me. I studied my glass of water like it was the most interesting thing in the universe, wondering if I could make him drown by pushing his head into it.
“So,” Rob said.
“So.”
“I kind of figured you’d at least pick up the phone and call me after you found out I was in town.” He sat back on the vinyl, eyeing me behind the rim of his whiskey glass.
“Same could be said about you.” My voice was terse, smooth. “I wasn’t the one who went MIA for thirteen years.”
“First time I saw you again, you were with Nessy, and you didn’t seem all too happy to see me.” Rob put his whiskey down, angling his entire body toward mine. “What’s going on between you and my ex, Cruz?”
It took everything in me not to tell him the truth. That we were fucking, and laughing, and bantering, and getting to know each other.
That lately, Tennessee stopped spraying her hair into something that resembled plastic, and dropped the weird nails, and slowly began to realize people might see her for who she was if she just gave them a chance.
It was like Cobain’s quote: “I’d rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I’m not”. She decided to be herself, unapologetically. Honoring herself and who she was. Not making amends or trying to appease the people in town.
That I was more than ready to pick up the pieces he’d left behind, and I didn’t think he deserved half a chance with her, even if, unfortunately, she had to put up with his existence for her son’s sake.
But I knew she would never forgive me if I told her ex-boyfriend the truth.
I took a sip of my water. “Not sure how it’s any of your business.”
“I’m her ex.”
“You were kids, and you fucked off before you pulled out of her. You want to know something about Tennessee’s life, ask her, not me.” I slammed my glass against the table.
“Don’t think I don’t remember how you used to pine for her.” He looked angry, contemplative, and constipated. Guess he tried to appear tough.
A lopsided smirk met my lips. “You’re drunk.”
“That might be so, but I’m also right, aren’t I? Am I going to have competition here? The least you can do for me is be frank.”
“Actually, Rob, I owe you jack shit where Tennessee Turner is concerned. If my memory doesn’t fail me, and it rarely does, I was the one who was supposed to ask her out all those years ago. I won the game.”
Was I actually bringing up the rock-paper-scissor encounter from before my balls had fully dropped as though it meant anything?
Wyatt, Kyle, and Tim were taking shots from the inside of waitresses’ cleavage and howling to the ceiling while Rob and I were engaged in a stare down that would have been tense had he been able to focus properly in his drunken stupor.
“You’re seriously still stuck on this?” His mouth dropped. “She wanted me.”
“You fucking left her.”
“You don’t know the whole story.”
Rob’s head reared back, and he stared at me with so much hatred, I wondered if I’d ever known him at all. I was putting a dent in his carefully designed plan to make Nessy wife number three.
He wasn’t prepared for resistance from any of us.
Thought he’d walk right in and play daddy to Bear and husband to Tennessee.
His on-hold family, that he’d kept on the back burner, in case all else failed.
And that Tennessee, the town nobody would be so happy, so grateful she’d welcome him back as though she had no pride or self worth. As though she didn’t deserve better than him—hell, than all of us.
“Enlighten me, then.”
Wyatt was now French-kissing a woman who was definitely not his future wife in my periphery. I’d have felt worse for Trinity, if she didn’t patronize her older sister as if she herself had her life all figured out.