Page 1 of Brad & Finn
1
BRAD
May 2025
“Alright,Ma, I’m going to head back into town for the night. I’ll see you for breakfast tomorrow,” Brad called as he let the rusted screen door shut behind him.
“You make sure to text me when you get back to your hotel room!” she called back, her voice carrying from the kitchen, down the hall, and out onto the small front porch.
Brad sighed softly to himself as he ran his hand over the railing’s chipped paint. He’d helped his mom install this railing almost a decade before, when she admitted she sometimes stumbled over the last step on the way to the mailbox. Just like every other project he’d done around the house, it had taken several hours of YouTube videos and a few trips back and forth to the hardware store downtown, but he thought it’d turned out alright. Maybe he’d swing by and grab some paint this weekend and touch it up.
He tossed the keys to his rental car in the air and wondered if maybe he’d need to scrape off the flaking paint and…sand it? Prime it? Prime and sand it?
He sighed again, this time much louder since he would hopefully be out of earshot down by the curb.
“Did you hear me?” his mom shouted from inside.
Brad tipped his head back, cheeks catching the setting South Carolina sun. He didn’t miss much about his home state, aside from his lovely mother, but the warm weather was a reprieve coming from the blustery Chicago spring.
“I’ll text you later, Ma!” he shouted back, trying to keep any teenage petulance out of his voice. Sometimes he found himself slipping into old patterns when he came back home, even though it’d been almost exactly twenty years since he left.
“Alright, don’t forget now!” she called.
Brad closed his eyes and nodded to no one in particular.
It was only eight, and he had no intention of going straight back to his hotel. He also had no intention of telling his mother he was going to the town’s watering hole to celebrate his new promotion, since he’d had no one to celebrate with back in Chicago.
Before he could escape to the safety of a glass of whiskey, a familiar voice called to him from across the road. He turned around to find old Mrs. Walters standing on her front porch. She’d been “old” back in high school, when Brad could still get away with calling her that, but now, she had to be pushing ninety. She was bent over her walker, waving a gnarled hand at Brad.
She’d been there to see all of Brad’s childhood, both the good and the bad. Through it all, she’d always been kind to him, and he committed right then and there to remove the “old” from her name.
“Good to see you in town for the celebration!” she called. “Jimmy’s not going to make it, I’m afraid. Too busy playing doctor up North.”
Brad had seen on social media that the annoying—also a moniker he should probably drop now—next door neighbor boy, Jimmy, wasn’t just playing doctor, but was a thoracic surgeon at a prestigious New York hospital.
“He doing alright other than that? And how about you?” Brad called, beeping the car locks and opening the door, hoping to signal he didn’t want to have a full chat but still wanted to be polite.
“Oh, you know, the hips aren’t what they used to be, but Jimmy and Lisa are doing quite well. Gave me a great-grand-baby to dote over, so I can’t complain.” She turned her walker with an ear-piercing shriek across her cement porch and slowly made her way back towards her door. “You stop by more often now, you hear?”
Brad once again found himself nodding at no one, so he ducked his head and slid into the driver's seat. As he drove familiar backroads he could have mapped out in his sleep, he wondered if he’d run into any of his classmates at the bar. It was a day before his high school reunion officially started, but Brad had wanted to get here a little early, both to see his mom but also to get out some of his pre-reunion jitters.
As the reunion date loomed over him, he’d been thinking about high school a lot. He’d had so many dreams back then, which morphed and changed over the years into his current dream job. It hadn’t been a straight and narrow path by any means, but with his most recent promotion, he was one step closer, and that had to count for something.
Traffic picked up, meaning there were at least four other cars on the road with him as he neared the center of town. He decided to park at the hotel and walk to the town’s only bar so he wouldn’t have to count his drinks.
He momentarily considered changing out of his airport attire, which consisted of a college-branded hoodie and well-worn jeans, but he figured that should be fine for a few drinks at Timbers and Tallboys. It used to be called Tall Paul, with a massive statue of Paul Bunyan out front. His mom had called a few years back to bemoan that some “fancy-pants young man” had come into town and taken over the bar with his “lady business partner,” and the first thing they’d done was tear down the statue. As far as Brad was concerned, it seemed to improve the curb appeal of the old place, but his mother wouldn’t hear of it. Apparently, it caused a big fuss around town, and his mom was nothing if not a gossip. Or, at least, she was now. Town gossip hadn’t always been good to his family, but things had settled down in recent years.
As Brad approached the bar, he saw a familiar face on the other side of the street. Chloe Abernathy had been one of the two co-captains of Gomillion’s cheerleading team. He’d had an on-again, off-again relationship with Kendall Coleman, the captain of the team and one of Chloe’s two best friends. The two of them and the other co-captain were a tight-knit triad, attending almost every football game afterparty and sitting at the same lunch table as Brad and some of the other football guys throughout high school.
While he could admit he’d been way too caught up in Kendall and his own teenage bullshit, he’d gotten to know the two co-captains pretty well and would even have called them his best friends before they went off to college and lost touch. Chloe had always struck him as a sweet girl. She’d also been stunningly attractive, and time seemed to have enhanced her looks. Her hair was tossed haphazardly over one shoulder, the long, straight strands turned nearly golden in the setting sun. The soft cheekbones of her youth had turned sharp, accentuating her pouty lips.
Brad raised his hand to wave, but realized he’d missed his chance when she and the man she was with turned into the townice cream parlor. Brad didn’t get a perfect look at the man, other than the fact that he had a fantastic ass encased in chinos the color of Piedmont clay.
Thank God that statue of good ol’ Paul was gone, because Brad probably would’ve run face-first into it. Instead, he tripped over the uneven spot where the base of the statue used to be and righted himself with a few stumbling steps. A young mom with a baby strapped to her chest stepped around him, giving his clumsy ass a wide berth.
He hurried into the bar, hoping to avoid any more mishaps, and was greeted with a perfunctory nod from a lumberjack-looking fellow behind the bar. Before he could take another step, a blonde woman carrying at least four pint glasses in each hand rushed by him.
“Welcome to Timbers and Tallboys,” she called, as she bustled behind the counter and set the glasses down with a loud clang that rang through the room.
