I can’t believe after all these years, I’m going on a date with Tim Reese.
No, correction: it’s not a date. We’re just getting drinks. As friends. For all I know, Tim has a girlfriend. After all, he’s good-looking and charming and has a decent job. Tim is a catch. It seems almost impossible that he would still be single.
But I get the feeling he is.
I had wanted to take separate cars, but Tim pointed out that we are leaving from pretty much the same block, so “for the sake of the environment, we should carpool.” I couldn’t argue with that logic. And I didn’t argue when he offered to drive.
So that’s why I’m wearing a pair of black skinny jeans and a flattering blouse while I’m standing in front of my house, waiting for Tim to arrive. I never used to wear much makeup in high school, and I’m not going to wear much now. Just a bit of eyeliner and a slash of lipstick. I don’t want to look like I’m trying too hard.
A white Lincoln Continental pulls up in front of the house, and before I have a chance to be surprised that this is the car Tim drives, I realize that there’s a white-haired woman behind the steering wheel. When she emerges from the car, she pushes her oversized glasses up the bridge of her nose and smooths out her pink suit.
“Brooke?” She holds out her arms like I’m going to run into them for a hug. “Brooke! I can’t believe it’s you!”
I stare at her blankly. “Hello…?”
“It’s Estelle!” She grins at me with bright red lips. She wasn’t nearly as subtle in applying makeup as I was. “Estelle Greenberg! We talked on the phone.”
I cringe, wishing I could go back inside my house. Estelle Greenberg is Raker’s premier real estate agent. In my parents’ will, they earmarked
money to pay for Estelle to sell their house and give me the proceeds. She called me up while I was back in the city, assuring me that she would take care of the sale of the house and I wouldn’t even have to set foot in Raker if I didn’t want to.
She was fairly shocked when I told her not only did I not want her to sell the house, but I would be living there.
“Oh, Brooke,” she sighs. “I remember you when you were only this
high!”
She holds up a hand at about mid-hip, to indicate how big I was in her memory of me. I suppress the urge to roll my eyes.
“I have to tell you, Brooke,” she says, “the real estate market is insane right now. You can’t even imagine what price I could get you for this house. Enough for you to buy your dream apartment back in the city. You could even live in Manhattan if you wanted.”
A vein pulses in my temple. “I appreciate that, but I’m not interested.” “You know, the real estate bubble won’t last forever. You should be
smart about this.”
“I’m fine,” I say tightly. “Really.”
“What do you want with that dusty old house anyway?”
Estelle fixes her brown eyes on me, waiting for my answer. It’s not an entirely unfair question. It’s not like my most recent memories of this town are good. But there was a time I was happy here. In some ways, I spent the happiest years of my life in this house. Back when I was young and carefree.
Or maybe part of me is still a rebellious teenager, who wanted to come back here solely because my parents would never let me after I got pregnant.
“This is my goddamn house, Estelle,” I say in a low voice. “And I’m allowed to do whatever I want with it without having to justify it to you.”
Estelle’s false eyelashes flutter as if she’s shocked I spoke to her that way. I certainly would not have said something like that back when I was this high.
“You know,” she says, “your parents would be very disappointed that you disobeyed their wishes.”
Truthfully, I’m shocked my parents left me the house at all. After I started mailing their monthly checks back to them, uncashed, I figured I
was out of the will. But there was no one else for them to leave their estate to. So I got it all by default.
I fold my arms across my chest. “Please don’t bother me again, Estelle.”
Her bright red lips part, and for a moment, I’m certain she’s going to argue with me. But instead, she turns on her heel and gets back into her Lincoln. Her car zooms away just as Tim’s Prius slides into my driveway. I take a deep breath, trying to dispel the tension from our confrontation. It works—a little.
“Wow,” Tim says when I climb into the passenger’s seat. “I haven’t seen you dressed up in a long time.”
I squirm as I slide the seatbelt into place. “I’m not dressed up.” “Right. Me either.”
Although he does look a bit dressed up. He’s wearing a light blue dress shirt, and he’s even put on a tie. Back when we were kids, I never saw him wear anything besides a T-shirt and jeans, but this suits him.
I don’t invite him to come in, and he doesn’t seem upset about it. I don’t know what Josh will make of me bringing home some guy, especially if that guy is the assistant principal of his school. At the very least, it could start some uncomfortable rumors.
“Where are we going?” I ask him.
“It’s a bar that opened up a few years ago—the Shamrock. It’s pretty quiet, decent food. Or just beer, if that’s all you want.”
I nod, musing to myself that the last time I saw Tim, neither of us was old enough to drink legally. Now that milestone has come and gone.
“So how is Josh finding school?” Tim asks. “Fine,” I say. “He’s making some friends.”
“That’s great. Kindergarten is such a hard transition, but I’m sure he’ll do great.”
I freeze. I had assumed that when Tim looked me up in the school records, he figured out that Josh was in fifth grade. Apparently not. He still thinks my son is five years old. Which means he doesn’t know that Josh is Shane’s son.
And I really, really don’t want to tell him. Not yet. Not when he’s looking over at me during the red lights and smiling at me that way.
The Shamrock is only a five-minute drive away. Tim parks in the lot outside the bar, and he rushes around the side of the car to open the door for me, even though I have already got it open myself. This isn’t a date, but he’s being a gentleman, which is insanely sweet. Men aren’t like that in New York City. You have to go upstate for good manners, apparently.
Inside the bar is about what I expected. Dark, a slight hint of smokiness hanging in the air, and a lot of sticky tables spread out through the room. We grab a table in the back, and this time it comes as no surprise when Tim pulls out my chair for me.
“When did you get to be such a gentleman?” I tease him. “I wasn’t before?”
“Ha!” I snort. “I was lucky if you didn’t pull my chair out from under
me.”
“Brooke!” He clutches his chest in mock horror. “I would never have
done that. Unless you deserved it, of course.”
“I’m just saying…” I look across the table at his twinkling blue eyes. “You don’t have to act all formal with me. We’ve known each other since we were in diapers. We know each other pretty well.”
He arches an eyebrow. “We used to. Now—not so much.”
Before I can figure out what to say to that, a petite waitress in a tight T-shirt that shows off an impressive bust for her size comes over to take our order. She looks vaguely familiar, like many of the people in this town do— I think we may have gone to high school together. I let my hair fall in my face as I place my order, hoping I look different enough that she won’t recognize me.
Before she leaves, she rests a hand with red fingernails on Tim’s shoulder. “I’ll be right back, Timmy.”
“Thanks, Kelli,” he says.
Kelli. It comes back to me in a flash—she was on the cheerleading squad like me and Chelsea, but two years behind us. She looks almost the same as she did back in high school—same blond hair and heart-shaped face, although much larger boobs. Thankfully, she isn’t looking at me and doesn’t seem to recognize me.
Actually, she’s only looking at Tim. She gives him an unmistakable look, and I’m surprised by the flash of jealousy. I haven’t seen Tim in ages. I have no right to feel proprietary around him.
“I tried to find you, you know,” he says after Kelli leaves with our drink orders.
I attempt not to react to that revelation. “Did you?”
“You are really hard to find though.” He eyes me across the table. “No social media, huh?”
My parents did their damnedest to keep my name out of the news when it all went down, given I was a minor. And while I was in school, they also gave me a small stipend—a monthly check that along with my waitressing job just barely covered my expenses without leaving a penny left over—and one stipulation was I couldn’t be on social media at all. No Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram. It was easy to agree to that because I didn’t want to be on social media either. The last thing I wanted to do was catch up with my old classmates. Hey, Brooke, remember when your boyfriend tried to murder you? Man, those were good times.
“Sorry,” I say. “I was being cautious.”
“I know. But it’s me, Brooke. I just wanted to know you were okay.
You could have gotten in touch.”
When I was nine months pregnant, about to give birth to the son of a convicted killer, I had no interest in talking to old friends. Even Tim. But I can’t explain that to him. “I’m sorry,” I say again. “I needed time to heal.”
He’s quiet for a moment, mulling over my answer. “Fair enough.”
The waitress/former cheerleader, Kelli, returns with our drinks. She lays his glass down carefully in front of him and plunks my own more unceremoniously down on the table. She turns her attention back to Tim. “Are you getting any food today, Timmy?”
He looks up at her and smiles. “Not right now.” “I can’t tempt you with any onion rings?”
Tim shakes his head no.
She winks at him. “Buffalo wings?” “Nah…”
“Curly fries?”
Oh my God, is this waitress going to offer him every item on the menu one by one? But thankfully, after he turns down the curly fries, she finally goes off to another table.
“We went to high school with her, didn’t we?” I say.
Tim glances at Kelli, who is tapping her foot impatiently on the floor while she waits for two women to decide on their orders. “That’s right. You’ve got a good memory.”
“I think she was flirting with you.”
“Actually…” He lowers his voice a notch. “We went out a couple of times.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Seriously?”
He shrugs. “It wasn’t a big deal. Pretty casual.” “Did you kiss her?”
I laugh at the way his face turns slightly pink in the dim light of the bar. The freckles may have faded, but he is still fair and his skin tone shows off his emotions way too easily.
“She and her boyfriend were on some kind of break,” he explains. “We went out two times, then she went back to her boyfriend.”
“She dumped you?”
“She didn’t dump me. It was two dates.” He glances behind him, where Kelli is taking some other customer’s order. “And even if she didn’t go back to her boyfriend, I don’t think there was going to be a third date. We weren’t a match.”
“Oh, I get it. I didn’t know you were so picky, Reese.”
“I’m not picky!” He takes a drink from his beer and licks foam from his upper lip. “I’m just waiting for the right person. And Kelli was nice enough, but it wasn’t her. Is that awful?”
“No, not awful.”
He traces a pattern on the condensation of his glass. “So how about you? Were you married before?”
“No.”
“Oh.” He nods. “So Josh’s dad…”
“Not in the picture,” I blurt out. “At all.”
And also serving a life sentence for murder. That too.
I’m used to getting a sympathetic look when I tell people I’m doing this all by myself, but that isn’t the look Tim gives me. It’s something different. I can’t quite put my finger on it.
“That sounds hard,” he finally comments. “We’re fine.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t.”
“Look…” I take a drink of my own alcoholic beverage for courage. “I just want to be clear that my life is kind of complicated right now, and I’m not looking for… you know, anything. Except friendship.”
“Oh, good.” He leans back in his seat, which squeaks under his weight. “Because that’s exactly what I’m looking for too. Friendship.”
“Good then.” “Perfect.”
I study him across the table as he smiles back at me. Tim is a good guy, he always has been, and I believe that if I tell him all I want is friendship, he won’t push anything further. He’ll respect my wishes.
After all, ten years ago, he saved my life.
