Teardrop Shot(30)

I’d done nothing with the book I was going to write. That only brought more Damian gloom.

“Hey.”

Oh, thank God. A distraction.

It was Grant.

“Heya back.”

Be gone, stupid queasy stomach. I don’t need to feel you. Please have work for me to do, Grant. I’ll do almost anything at this point.

Almost. Let’s not get crazy now.

He was walking toward me from the back of the main building. He slid his hands in his pockets and jerked his head back over his shoulder. “Owen and Hadley are heading into town, dinner and drinks. Want to come?”

He said dinner. I only heard drinks. “I’m down. Can we add the last D word?”

Grant laughed. “You know how those two are. Any excuse for some dancing. We can go to The Barn. They’re actually playing a DJ these days.”

“Really?”

I was impressed. The airport was small, but Fairview had a surprising number of bars and a couple nightclubs even. The Barn was in one of the smaller towns outside of Fairview. We were going even smaller.

I loved it.

Grant nodded. “It’s Thursday, so there might be college students there.”

“Just call me Mrs. Robinson.”

Instead of the grin I expected, he grew more serious. He was quiet a beat. “You okay, Charlie?”

“As okay as I can be in Candyland.” I shot him a grin, trying to up the ante here. “You know how I am with the Seattle Thunder.”

He didn’t fall for it again. I was losing my touch.

“I’m serious. I know you, remember?”

Oh God. We were going into Realityland. Nope. No way. Retreat.

My smile slipped, but I lifted a shoulder. “I’m as good as can be, I guess.”

This was Grant. I had to give him something or he’d never let up. But I knew him too, and he loved gushing about people he loved.

“Is Sophia coming?”

See? There. His fiancée would do the trick.

And she did. His eyes lit up, and he launched into a story about how not only was she coming, but we’d be lucky if her Nana and abuela didn’t show up themselves.

Grant filled me in on Sophia’s dancing-loving family as we headed to my cabin. He didn’t stop until we reached a fork in the path. I had to go left for my place, and he had to go right, because I assumed he had work in that part of the camp?

I gestured behind him. “Got a maintenance order or something?”

“What?” He looked. “Oh, yeah. One of the players was saying his toilet wasn’t flushing. I’m excited to see.” His chuckle was dry. “But yeah. Let’s meet at the main lodge in an hour. I’ll be sobercab too, so feel free to let loose.”

Let loose. Did he not know me?

“Sounds like a plan.”

He nodded, his eyes warming. “It’ll be nice to hang out like real friends again.”

I gave him a thumbs-up, but as soon as my back turned, my smile fell.

Friends were a commodity I hadn’t had in so long. There’d been no friends from work. I’d faded away from all my friends during the Damian era, because it was too hard to see their normal lives when mine was slipping away daily. You can only talk about what’s going on for so long. People like to say they’ll be there for you, but there’s a time stamp on that offer. What they really mean is that they’re there for you over the next three days. If it takes longer than that, you’re out of luck. You need to move forward, find new friends to confide in.

No one understood unless they were on the “outside” alongside me, because everyone on the “inside” was busy being normal and living a normal life.

So after it ended with Damian, it’d been just Lucas, and yeah, the rest is history from there. So, no friends for me. And now here I was, back where I had friends around me I’d considered family at one point.

Working was easy. I could do that without talking. Jokes? Cheesy lines? I was the queen of those things. Want a random question? My need had simmered down, but I could pull one out if I needed.

But time outside of work, over food and with booze—that meant talking.

Normally, people love talking about themselves, so it’s easy to distract them. But not these guys. Not Hadley, Owen, or Grant. And they knew my tricks.

Yep. Cold sweat.

I could already feel I was on the verge of a breakdown. Again.

But I was tired. Not sleeping tired, but bone tired—tired of being alone, tired of dodging and evading. As I stepped into my cabin, I felt tears starting to roll down my face.

Maybe I should actually tell them? I ran through the conversation.

I’d see pity on their faces. Hadley would start crying. Owen would roll his shoulder back because he’d be uncomfortable. And Grant, he’d be angry. I could only guess at why he’d be mad, but I knew he would be. That was his go-to emotion for situations like that.

I decided instead that I’d get drunk. Problem solved. I was always a happy drunk too, like a Labrador.

Labrador it was.





I shouldn’t have worried about deep and meaningful conversation.

The Thunder’s preseason game was on television, so we ended up taking our plates to the bar. We ate and watched the game—seemed the loyal thing to do. People were yelling and cheering, and I had a flare up of Crazy Charlie when Reese stole the ball at the end of the third quarter, followed up with a fouled shot that went in, and followed that up by sinking the free throw. And then he stole it again, but instead of running up for the layup—which would’ve been blocked, the guy had three extra inches on Reese—he backed up and laid out the prettiest, most smooth-sailing floater I’d ever seen.