Then I sit back and listen to him rant with only enough attention to insert a polite “Mmm” and “uh-huh” here and there.
By the time we arrive at our destination, I need a drink. Not thinking about someone is a surprisingly hard amount of work.
It’s too early to hit a bar, so I spend a few hours wandering around the marina and its charming little shops until it’s time for lunch. Starving, I shovel food into my mouth like a farm animal. I drink two pints of cold beer. Afterward, I feel much better. More clear-headed. It’s probably only the sea air, but I’ll take it.
I decide I like the place so much, I want to stay longer.
I call Hank from a payphone near the restaurant’s restrooms.
“How much vacation time do I have accrued?”
“You’ve worked for me for five years. You get two weeks of paid vacation a year. You’ve never taken one. You do the math. Why do you ask?”
“The therapist I went to this morning said it would be good for me to take some time off work.”
Hank pauses, then sighs. “That’s a lie, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Juliet, I’m worried about you.”
“I’ll be fine. I just need a few days off.”
“How many days?”
“Like…a hundred and eighty-seven?”
“You’ve got through the end of the week,” he says firmly. “Get your head on straight and come back fresh next Monday. Deal?”
“Deal,” I say, relieved.
“And kiddo?”
“Yes?”
His voice drops. “You’re a smart girl. You already know what to do with your accountant. Trust your gut.”
I can hear the air quotes around the word “accountant.”
“I would, but my gut is currently waging a bloody war between my head and my loins. Things are ugly. The casualties are piling up.”
He chuckles. “Ah, to be young with an overabundance of hormones. I’m so glad I’m old. Things are far less confusing.”
“You’re not old!”
“I’ve been alive twice as long as you have. That’s half a century.”
“Half a century isn’t old. My grandmother was ninety-two and still going strong the last time I saw her.”
“And I’ll bet she looked as fresh as a daisy, didn’t she?”
When I don’t say anything, he laughs. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Fifty isn’t old in mind or spirit, but trust me, kiddo, you get to my age and you start avoiding mirrors. Your skin becomes forested with weird moles. Sleeping the whole night through without having to get up to pee is a thing of the distant past. Anything that can possibly sag, wrinkle, or dangle, does.”
“Please excuse me while I go throw up.”
“Hey, don’t blame me for gravity.”
“I like you the way Newton liked gravity. Once he found it, everything else made sense.”
I close my eyes and rest my forehead against the cool metal housing of the pay phone, praying for some miracle that will block Killian’s words—and his beautiful face—from my mind.
“You still there?”
“Yes. Just wondering if there’s a way to bleach my brain of the hideous images you’ve branded onto it. I’m traumatized. I’ll never be able to look you in the eye again.”
“You’ll live. See you Monday.” He hangs up without waiting for a response.
The next call I make is to the voicemail Fin, Max, and I use for emergencies. I leave a message saying I’ll be out of town for a few days, but I’ll check in so they know I’m OK. Out of an overabundance of caution, I don’t say more. Especially not where I’m staying. I know they’ll understand.
I rent a room for the rest of the week at a motel right on the water’s edge. It has a view of the boats bobbing peacefully in the marina, a fully stocked minibar, and a whirlpool bathtub big enough for three people. If I thought heaven was anything like this, I might start trying to be a better person.
Then I call back the voicemail and tell Fin where I left my car in the mall so it doesn’t get towed. There’s a spare key in the kitchen drawer, but knowing her, she’ll hotwire it just to rub it in.
There’s a small gift shop in the motel lobby where I buy toothpaste and a few toiletries. A boutique down the street catering to tourists sells T-shirts and shorts, flip-flops and breezy, floral dresses. I splurge on several things, wondering when was the last time I bought myself clothes.
Unlike Fin, the fashion plate, or Max, who always looks like she’s auditioning for a role in the next installment of Tomb Raider, I’m usually dressed down in jeans.
I spend the afternoon wandering around on foot, no destination in mind. When the sun is sinking below the horizon and my empty stomach is protesting, I look for a place to eat dinner. I settle on an oyster bar with a crowded outdoor patio and a live band playing classic rock covers in one corner of the dining room.
I take a seat at the bar inside and order a chardonnay from the leather-skinned, wild-haired bartender, who is approximately two hundred years old. He tells me his name is Harley after the motorcycle, that he’s lived in this town since the day he was born, and also that he’s in love with me.
“I love you, too, Harley,” I tell him, smiling. “Let’s run away to Mexico together.”
He cackles, then sends a glance down the bar to my right. He lowers his voice. “I’d take you up on that, sweetheart, but I think you might have bigger fish to fry tonight.”
Following his head tilt, I turn in that direction.
Seated backward on a stool with both elbows propped up on the bar top, a man faces the crowd. Clad in denim, one long leg is stuck out into the aisle, the other is casually kicked up on the footrest under the stool. He’s wearing sunglasses, Western boots, a cowboy hat, a tight white T-shirt that showcases every ripple of his washboard abs, and the collective lust of every woman in the place.
Tattoos cover his muscular arms from his bulging biceps all the way down to his thick wrists.
He runs a hand over the short black beard on his square jaw, giving me a perfect view of his other tattoos.
The ones on his knuckles.
I can’t describe this feeling. It’s shock, fury, disbelief, pleasure, horror, awe, and an almost overpowering urge to commit bloody homicide with a cocktail pick in a room full of people, all rolled into one.
Killian turns his head and looks at me. I can’t see his eyes behind the mirrored glasses, but I feel them, fiery red Superman laser beams slicing me in two.
I turn my attention back to Harley. “You know what? This wine isn’t gonna do it for me. I need a shot of tequila.”
“Atta girl!” He produces a shot glass from under the bar, sloppily pours tequila into it, hands it to me, and says, “Just remember, sweetheart: no glove, no love.”
And this is my life.
Harley wanders away to tend to his other customers. I wait, heart pounding, as Killian takes the stool beside mine.
He pretends to peruse the menu written in chalk hanging on the wall behind the bar. Then, sounding exactly like he walked off a cattle ranch in Texas, he drawls, “Hey, there, darlin’. How ya’ll doin’ tonight?”
I resist the urge to slam my forehead onto the bar and shoot my tequila instead.