Page 7 of Just (Fake) Married
“You don’t remember?” I asked, feeling all my buzzy happiness slip away. All my hope. All mythat kiss changed my lifecertainty.
“I was really drunk and I don’t remember half the night. Tag said I pulled you into the pantry and I came out with a shiner. Everyone is saying I got handsy and you punched me. I mean, there’s no fucking way, though, right? I mean, I’m not that guy. I wouldn’t go there with you.”
Please someone kill me dead now. “Why not me?”
“Because you’re…I mean you’re…you’re…”
“What?” I asked, feeling all the humiliation a person could possibly feel.
Too ugly? Too young? Not good enough for a McGraw prince?
That kiss changed everything for me. And I thought he felt it, too.
How could he not remember?!
“Well, you’re a Calloway,” he half said, half laughed, like that explained everything.
“And you’re a McGraw,” I shot back. Because maybe it did explain everything. It explained everything we needed to know about each other.
A small, hopeful part of my heart dried up and blew away.
Hating each other was the only thing we were meant to do.
ONE
HARMONY
Fourteen YearsLater
The best dayof the year, hands down, is January 2nd.
You can keep Christmas and New Year’s and July 4th. I’ll take January 2nd, known to me and those that matter, asHarmony Calloway’s New Year’s Resolution Day.
It involves the following:
A warm cup of tea.
A sharp pencil.
A clean piece of paper.
Snow falling outside the big window of Last Chance Goods and Provisions is a plus, but not a guarantee.
“Harmony!” Chuck Swift yelled from the back corner of the store. “You got chicken feed in yet?”
“Not yet. The shipment got snowed in outside of Boise. Supposed to arrive tomorrow.”
Chuck lived in a trailer way up on Widow’s Peak. And you’d never guess by the hair in his ears, his sparkling way with peopleor the English language, but he made the best barbecue in the state of Wyoming. Probably in Montana too.
The guy was a barbecue savant.
A former cook on a chuck wagon, he opened up his BBQ joint and served it directly from his trailer, which was probably in violation of twenty-five health code violations, but no one around these parts cared because the food was so good.
His was an unusual business plan. He only opened when he felt like it. He only made what he felt like. And the only way anyone knew when he was going to be open, was me.
The flaws in the system were legion.
“I’m cooking today,” he said at the register. He had to move his beard aside so he could dig his wallet out of the chest pocket of his old overalls.
