Page 11 of Love You Always

Carson wasn’t in Los Angeles with me during the year when I thought I could make a go of things in the big city of shining lights. I had an MBA from Stanford and the arrogance to think I’d take LA by storm. I planned to take my business degree and flair for entrepreneurship down to Lalaland and start something big. What could possibly stop me?

It turned out a lot of things stopped me. “I’m not getting into it, okay?”

“Not okay. Explain. From the way you were talking about her, I thought the bad blood went back a decade or something. I figured she ran over your dog and refused to date you all in the same day.”

“No.”

I shove the bar away from my chest with a grunt. Hopefully, that signals I’m done talking so we can get back to the workout. Carson stands over me, hands lightly touching the bar, and counts my reps. When I get past ten, my arms start to burn. This is more weight than I usually press. Felt like a good day to push my limits since my testosterone is pumping at high volume and I have nowhere else to put it.

Pushing the bar away again, I feel my arms start to shake. I shoot Carson a look, warning him that he’d better get ready to hold the bar if I can’t get through one more rep. He nods. I bring the bar down slowly, watching it wobble as my muscles start to give out.

“One more,” Carson says. I push hard and get the bar up, but there’s no way I’m bringing it back to my chest without it landing on top of me. “Spot!” I grit out. Carson grabs the bar and lifts it onto the rack.

Sliding out from under the weights, I’m winded but no less agitated. Carson hands me a towel. “You have one more set in you?”

I shrug. “You?”

“I’m good if we stop. Good either way.” He wanders over to the free weights and hefts two twenty-pound dumbbells to do a quick set of bicep curls. I walk to the water station and fill up a cup. I’m off my game today, and it doesn’t make sense. A million women have walked through Buttercup Hill and none of them have affected me one way or the other. But this woman…I can’t get her out of my head.

“Yeah, let’s call it.” It smells like sweat and mildew in here and I’m just not in the mood.

Carson catches my eye in the mirror and his eyebrows shoot up. “Guess there’s a first for everything. You must really be bent outta shape.” He comes over to the water station and pours himself a cup. “Let’s go to the Dark Horse. First beer’s on me.”

I want to say no. Carson’s like a dog with a juicy rib bone andhe’s not going to let the Ella thing go. But he did drag his ass down here to keep me company when he didn’t have to, so if he wants to go to the bar, I’ll go to the bar. Saving grace about the Dark Horse is it’s usually full of locals playing pool and watching sports, so it’s bound to be loud. Too loud to have a conversation about a girl.

“Where is everyone?”I ask, swiveling on my barstool to see if someone—anyone—has come in the door. The place feels dead and hollow like someone called a fire drill and no one’s made it back inside yet.

Carson checks the time. “It’s early. Give it an hour.”

“I’m not giving it anything. In an hour, I’m heading home.”

“Fine. So tell me about the actress. What’s your beef with her?”

“Jesus, this again?” Maybe if I’m irritable enough he’ll leave it alone.

The bartender puts two fresh pints in front of us and only then do I notice I already polished the first one off. He disappears down by the other end of the bar where he starts slicing lemons and limes into wedges.

“This again. Just tell me what happened and get it over with. You know I can’t let a thing go.”

It’s what I love and hate about Carson. He’s a contractor by trade, and when I hired him to build a second story on my house, he attended to every detail himself, even when he could have pushed some tasks off to his subcontractors.

My second story was finished ahead of schedule and under budget, which, according to Beatrix, never happens.

He was married once, something he has no problem talking about. “A disaster from moment one,” is how he describes it. They were the picture-perfect couple in high school, a footballplayer dating a cheerleader. Prom king and queen. “We didn’t know that a marriage needs more to survive than matching high school diplomas.” Once they grew up, they grew apart. Carson was the one who called it quits, and his wife left town with their beagle the next day when he was at work. He came home to an empty house and started a new career in carpentry. That’s how he ended up in Napa.

Of all the people I know, he’s probably the most trustworthy option if I felt like sharing a few details about my time in LA and my initial brush with Ella Fieldstone. It’s not like I need to get stuff off my chest, but for the past week, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her.

That’s making me feel like talking about her just so I can keep thinking about her.

“I know you can’t.” Maybe I can’t either. Maybe that’s why we’re such good friends, neither of us letting the other one cut corners.

Carson’s eyes dart between the two flat screen TVs on the wall behind the bar, and I vaguely notice that one has some college basketball game, and the other is showing sports highlights. I can’t focus enough to care about either one, but Carson is a stats guy and he’s taking in the game recap like he’s studying for a test. He’s in a few fantasy leagues, so maybe he stands to make some money on the games.

“It was during that year I spent in LA. I met her.” I’ve never admitted it to anyone, but it feels strangely good to get the information off my chest.

He waggles his eyebrows. “I knew it. Boy meets girl, girl shows no interest in boy, boy hates her until the end of time. Am I close?”

I shake my head. “I’m not that much of a neanderthal. I can handle it if a woman’s disinterested.”

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