Part of Your World(15)

I never minded living in Wakan. It never bothered me that we only had a pizza place open during the summer, or that I had to drive forty-five minutes to get to a Walmart or a Home Depot. But dating here was difficult. The small town didn’t exactly have a singles scene, and sleeping with tourists was never a means to an end. I didn’t do Tinder or whatever the hell Doug was doing these days. I dated a girl named Megan from Rochester for a while, but there had never been that spark between us. Eventually she told me she was seeing someone else and broke things off with me. I hadn’t even cared enough to be disappointed.

But Alexis…I was disappointed about her.

I don’t know what else I expected. Chances were she would have left the next morning never to be seen again, even if she had stayed the whole night. But I hated it anyway.

Everything about her had drawn me in. Her personality, her sense of humor. The curve of her body, the smell of her hair…

I had to stop thinking about it. Especially because there was nothing I could do.

“Hey,” Doug said. “Let’s do pull tabs.”

“I think I’m going home,” I muttered, setting my beer on the table.

He scowled at me. “Man, what’s your deal? You still crying over that girl?”

“You know what? Fuck you. Maybe if your pig hadn’t been out running all over the yard—”

“Hey, don’t blame your lack of game on me.” He laughed into his glass of Coke. “Not my fault you couldn’t close the deal.”

I didn’t tell anyone we’d slept together. I told them she’d come home with me, I’d made her something to eat, and she left. I didn’t want to cheapen our time together by making it fodder for Doug’s jabs. And the truth was, even though it had only been sex, it didn’t really feel that way. We’d had a connection.

At least I’d thought we did.

I’d probably imagined it. I had to have, right? Otherwise she wouldn’t have left without giving me her number.

I got up and started to pull on my jacket.

Doug cleared his throat. “You can’t just stay another twenty minutes?”

He glanced at me for a quick second, then looked away.

Doug struggled with some mental health issues—depression and PTSD. It’s why I was taking care of Chloe for him, because he needed his sleep. When he didn’t get it, it made his symptoms worse.

The off-season was hard on him. He needed interaction and projects, and when the tourists left he had neither. It had gotten so bad last year Brian and I had to take turns staying at Doug’s house because we were worried he was going to hurt himself.

This was another thing that sucked about Wakan. We had nothing. No dentist’s office, no urgent care. The closest mental health professional was almost an hour away, which meant we usually just dealt with our shit instead of getting help for it. He’d taken the drive down to the veterans’ hospital a few times. They gave him some meds and offered counseling. But they wouldn’t refill his prescription unless he kept seeing a doctor, and it wasn’t really practical to keep schlepping out there to keep it up, so he didn’t.

I was glad he was asking for help. Even if it was just asking me not to leave him alone.

I sat back down. “Yeah, sure. I can stay a bit.”

He took a swallow of his soda and nodded. “Thanks.” He paused a moment. “So what happened with her?” he asked, softer now. “The girl.”

I blew out a breath. What didn’t happen?

“Well, let’s see. We got to my place, and I had to explain that I lived in the loft above the garage and not the beautiful historic mansion that we parked in front of. So that was fun. Then your potbellied pig came crashing out of the woods and got mud all over her dress. Like, all over it. I had to throw tomatoes down to get him off her.”

“I’m sorry, man. I fixed the fence,” he said, looking genuinely apologetic.

“It’s fine,” I mumbled. “She was pretty cool about it, actually. She petted him, once she realized he wasn’t dangerous. Then when we got inside, Hunter jumped on her too. I think the whole thing was just too much.”

But had it been? Because even after all that, she’d stayed. I made her dinner, and she played with Chloe. We talked.

We did other things…

It was weird because I felt like we’d spent the whole time getting to know each other, and at the end I still knew nothing about her. I didn’t know her last name, where she worked, what she did. She was sort of cagey about it, so I didn’t press it. Not that knowing would have helped. She obviously didn’t want to be contacted or she would have given me a way to do it. I’d just look like a creeper tracking her down.

Liz came by with a tray. “Anything else, guys?”

“No thanks,” I said as she picked up an empty peanut basket from between us.

“So what happened with Alexis the other night?” she asked.

She hovered, giving me a twisted-lipped smile that I didn’t have to look up to know was there. I knew my cousin. She was trying to poke me.

I grunted into my beer glass. “Didn’t work out.”

“Really? I thought she liked you. She was giving off some very interested vibes.”

I scoffed quietly.

The phone started ringing, and Liz gave up her interrogation and went back to the bar to get it.