It wasn’t terribly hard to find the town since there was only one road leading into it. It was one of those small—what I had previously thought were made up—parts of the country that somehow had not succumbed to corporate greed.
The town proper was much like the pictures I’d scrolled through. It was small, slightly run down yet charming and had exactly two options to buy any kind of supplies. There was Walmart ten miles away, but I wasn’t going to go there on principle.
All of the stores on the main street looked owner operated, and not a familiar logo in sight.
The “General Store” looked exactly as you’d expect. Kitschy without meaning to be. Paint that was chosen thoughtfully, though it was fading and peeling in some places. Flowerboxes out the front of the store showed effort but the flowers themselves were wilting underneath the perpetually moody Washington sky.
To my surprise, there was a bookstore. I was sure that small town bookstores were gone the way of the dinosaur, considering my pal Amazon had made it far too easy to shop for a book without wearing pants. And to read one without even holding a book.
Personally, I despised Kindles. Obviously, I didn’t say that out loud, or in interviews. I said it was an amazing resource for the voracious and budget conscious reader.
I wasn’t sure why I tiptoed around the subject so much since most of my royalties were made from real books. An anomaly, my agent and publishers called it. It was called a miracle by some. People had gone electronic. This new wave had crippled a lot of well-known authors and publishing houses alike.
But apparently when a reader wanted to be freaked the fuck out by one of my books, they wanted to be holding the real thing. Just in case they needed it to bludgeon the demon creeping out from under their bed or something.
I was happy to see this place had a surviving bookstore and made a mental note to go in and check if they had me in stock. It was a terrible, narcissistic thing to do, but I checked every single bookstore for my books and immediately hated them if they didn’t have them.
Very, very few didn’t stock my books. And the ones that didn’t usually had some religious affiliation.
Bible thumpers hated me.
Next to the bookstore was a beauty salon I would never step into, even if my life depended on it; same thing with the hardware store next door. The coffee shop was a different story, though it didn’t look like they had the skills to make espresso, maybe a rusty old Mr. Coffee. The ocean sat right in front of us all.
Not picturesque and dreamy, like a lot of small towns in California boasted. No, this ocean was angry, moody, and ugly. There was no beach, only a sad-looking wharf housing equally sad-looking boats.
Homes were scattered along the jagged coastline, most of them rundown, battered by the sea air, by the weather, owners seeming to have given up on fighting back.
I knew the feeling.
I made a U-turn at the end of the road—literally—and continued my exploration of the one main street.
Though, there wasn’t much else to see.
A clothing store I was certain would smell like dust and cheap perfume. A drugstore that wouldn’t have enough Xanax to last me the week.
Most importantly, there was a bar.
I parked right in front of it, promising myself I’d do the grocery shopping I’d planned after one drink. The small store wasn’t likely going anywhere and I doubted it would have the gluten-free bagels and chia seeds I was after. Among other things.
Sure, it was kind of early in the afternoon but it was my first day changing my life, and also, there was a parking space right in front of the bar.
That was fate, right?
Even though one of the most consistent threads throughout my books were that fate was just bad luck wearing a nice dress.
To be fair, the bar didn’t look like a total shithole. It was nicely maintained, had its own not dying flower boxes out front and, most importantly, it had hard liquor inside.
I didn’t miss the gazes of the few people strolling along the streets as I left my car and walked to the entrance.
This was the kind of place that noticed newcomers. That wanted to greet them, ask them about their lives and welcome them. Luckily, my default “fuck off” face seemed to deter the people that looked like they were going to do just that. These kinds of towns were getting few and far between as we were turning into an increasingly individualist and antisocial race.
Some remained. Some endured. Across America, there were ghosts of time when work was plentiful and factories thrived, and this town itself was a relic when townspeople knew each other’s names and stared at the woman getting out of a Beemer and wearing thousand-dollar shoes, walking into a bar at noon on a Wednesday.
I didn’t smile.
What was the point of encouraging them?
“Let me guess. Margarita?”
I glanced up at the owner of the husky voice that had spoken a few seconds after I sat down. I hadn’t been paying attention to anything but my phone and the various of notifications buzzing through my social media. I’d already gotten my moody shots of the woods, my face half shadowed by a self-timer shot that took me an hour to get. The one I’d forsaken my hunger and safety for.
That’s what my social media was, really. A collection of photos that look casual, thoughtless even, when I actually obsessed over them. How I looked, how many likes I got, what people said. What news sources picked it up. If it was trending.
It wasn’t even that I gave a shit about what people said. It was the social cache I was addicted to. I loved that people were forced to choke down my weirdness like rancid caviar. Because I was the Magnolia Grace.
Insane, I knew, which was why I had sat myself down on this stool where someone was assuming I wanted a fucking margarita.
“That’s cute,” I said with saccharine sweetness. “The whole, ‘I’m a bartender and I’m gonna go on appearances and think the woman with great hair, better shoes, and a full face of makeup is going to be totally cliché.’” I raised my brow. “I’m a lot of things, honey, but cliché doesn’t even factor on that list. Whisky. Neat.” I squinted at the bottles lining the back of the bar.
A much more comprehensive selection than I thought somewhere like this would have. “Glendronach 18 is fine.”
The bartender was staring at me. Whether he didn’t expect my borderline hostile response to him guessing my drink, or didn’t expect to be wrong, or didn’t expect to have anyone but the local alcoholics in the bar today. Despite the lighting being dim, I saw him clear enough. Saw he was attractive. Too attractive. Tall. Tanned, somehow, since he stayed indoors and lived in a state that barely had sunshine.
Dark hair. Good. I liked dark hair on a man. Todd had been blond.
Square jaw.
Stubble.
A handful of rings on his hands. Nice hands. Weathered. Attached to muscled arms.
“Good taste,” he said after a long beat.
“I know,” I replied as he turned to snatch up the bottle.
He didn’t ask me anything. Didn’t speak; just poured and set my glass down. A generous double. If I liked anything, it was a bartender with a heavy pour.
He stood and watched me drink. Didn’t try to hide it either. That was fine. I was used to people staring at me. Besides, the stare felt comfortable. Awkward. Honest. I liked that.
This bar was just another in-between place. Like a hotel, or a bathtub. Somewhere I could convince myself was not a place to write. Not a place to work. Maybe a place to marinate. Think on nightmares, fears, demons. Conjure up stories, scenes, sure, but not feel the obligation to write them down. The guilt of not writing them down washed away by tepid water, or strong whisky, or hotel room sheets.