Page 10 of Trash the Dress

“Oh, son. That’s terrible. Are you all right?”

I finally stop filling the salt and pepper shakers for the tables to face my dad. “Why would you ask if I’m okay? I think that’s a question better suited for the jilted bride.”

His face seems to soften a bit before he answers, and he’s no longer staring at me with furrowed brows. “Because I know how deeply Vivian hurt you. It was a double-edged sword you got stabbed with. And it sounds like a similar situation to me. It had to bring up old memories for you. Did she know this woman?”

I snatch the hand towel I’d been carrying with me to clean up any areas that needed it from the table and head back to the actual bar top. “Thankfully, no, it didn’t seem so. Not too many can say they have a best friend that would betray them quite like that. I might hold the world record for shittiest best friend.”

“I’m sorry, son. I didn’t mean to stir it up or rub salt in the wound more. But I know you. And you weren’t anywhere close to being okay when Vivian left you standing alone at the altar only to take off with your best man. Sam still hasn’t shown his face around me since then. And it’s been?—”

I cut him off, “Five years. It’s been five damn years.”

Dad shakes his head before turning his attention back to the fruit in front of him on the cutting board. “How did the bride react?”

“Scarlett slapped the woman before running out of the church,” I reply. She had the guts to do what I couldn’t on my canceled wedding day. Almost five years have passed, and I still wish I had decked Sam right there the moment Vivian looked at me with tears in her eyes and admitted to me she was in love with my best friend. And what did he say? He said he never meant for it to go down that way. He didn’t even try to deny it. He said the entire year before our wedding day, they’d been trying to fight it but couldn’t.

I hadn’t even proposed to her yet. She said yes to me even though she’d already begun seeing him behind my back twomonths before I got down on one knee. Remembering it always feels like it happened yesterday. The anger and the hurt…the humiliation. The vivid white-hot sting of betrayal.

“Scarlett is a name you don’t hear much anymore. I like it,” Dad says as he places orange slices in a container.

“Huh?” I ask. He shook me out of my maddening reverie with the mention of her name.

Dad huffs out a laugh. “Scarlett. I like her name. From how you said she reacted, it seems to suit her.”

“You haven’t even met her,” I quip.

“If she had the gumption to stand her ground and slap the woman he cheated on her with in front of a church full of people, I’d say that tells me the name Scarlett fits her perfectly. Scarlett is a deep, vibrant red—the color of passion. Sounds like she has quite a bit of it to me,” he says and grins.

I grunt out a non-committal noise and move around the bar to put away the last few glasses before I open the doors at noon. High Road is a bar, but we still serve some of the best burgers around. So, we draw a lunch crowd as well as the dinner crowd.

My dad isn’t wrong about Scarlett being full of passion though. In the few hours I spent with her, she showed courage. She refused to back down and let him destroy her. She chose the high road; she chose me. Kind of ironic considering the name of my bar.

Even as her heart was breaking, she embraced it. Me, on the other hand, I ran from it. I pushed down the anger, resentment, and pain so far and buried it so deep…my heart froze from the cold darkness that settled over me.

Like a moth to a flame, she pulled me from my heartless state and gave me a glimpse of her warm sunshine. Even if it was fleeting.

The kitchen doors open and Gabby emerges, effectively shaking me from my runaway thoughts.

“Hey, Zander,” she says as she begins tying her black server apron around her hips.

Gabby is young. By young I mean twenty-three or twenty-four. Brittney Abbott—used to be Jameson—one of my friends who sometimes works and sings here, has told me to watch out because Gabby apparently has a crush on me. She’s also one of my best employees. She started as a waitress here—only serving food—when she was just nineteen. Of course, she wanted to learn to bartend when she turned twenty-one a few years ago. And she does it well. There’s nothing she can’t do…except entertain a crush on me.

“Hey, Gabby,” I reply. She blushes and smiles. I glance in Dad’s direction to see if he noticed or if I’m reading too much into it because of what Brittney keeps saying.

Dad just smirks and shakes his head again as he puts away all the containers of fruit he had sliced. I’ll take that as a sign he noticed and agrees with Brittney’s conclusion. It’ll be fine as long as she doesn’t try to act on whatever she thinks she’s trying to feel for me. I sure don’t need things to start being awkward around here. Simply knowing it might be true is enough to make it that way for me. I certainly won’t do anything to encourage it.

Gabby’s a sweet girl and deserves someone who isn’t jaded. And I’m basically a decade older than her. I know some people do the age-gap thing, but it’s not for me. I mean, I know you can’t control who you fall in love with, but to me, she’s still a kid. She needs to be with someone closer to her own age.

Not to mention, it isn’t a good idea to have a relationship, fling, or any combination of the two with an employee. I got close to Brittney when she was working here in a more full-time capacity, but not romantically. I’m thankful for her friendship, and even more so that she got her happily ever after with Hawk, her husband. They are about to welcome their first child any day now. And they’re waiting to find out the gender until delivery.

Kids. Babies. I don’t know if being a dad is a role I could fill. My own dad has always been the best, but even before my joke of a wedding day five years ago, I always worried I’d never have the inclination to want kids. I’m an only child and maybe that’s why. I’ve always been able to come and go as I please without having to think of anyone else needing me, least of all a tiny human. At this point, I don’t think it matters because I’m as single as a lost sock. And I have no plans to change that fact anytime soon. Maybe never.

CHAPTER SIX

Scarlett

The shrill sound of my best friend’s voice through the door to my apartment sends me flying off the couch where I had parked myself last night watchingDirty Dancingand eating moose track ice cream. Obviously, I fell asleep.

“I’ve called and knocked and got nothing, open this door right now, Scarlett!”

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