Page 8 of Home Sweet Home

Kayla had never understood the concept of an inside voice, so basically everyone in the bar heard her freaking out. Wayne turned his head toward them, and Evie could tell he recognized West too.

“What can I get you, man?” Wayne asked, coming up to the bar. “Huge fan, by the way.”

“Thanks.” West pointed at the drinks sitting in front of Evie. “I’ll have one of those.”

It was weird, hearing his voice after so many years, each word slow and drawn out like a ball of yarn lazily unspooling. His accent was a gift from Della, a born and bred Texan.

“Which one?” Wayne asked, gesturing toward the two drinks in front of Evie.

West looked them over, but then he looked up, as if he’d just realized another person was sitting there. She froze, worried the slightest movement might draw more attention than she wanted.

“Double fisting,” West said. “Like your style. Miller, please.”

Wayne nodded. “Anything for you, man?”

“Gin and tonic,” West’s friend said, his voice as cool and smooth as his clothes. “I assume you don’t have Tanqueray.”

Wayne pulled a bottle from the shelf. No top shelf at Mel’s, just a shelf. “We’ve got Burnett’s.”

“Fine,” he said with a lazy wave of his hand and a sigh that suggested otherwise.

As Wayne mixed the drink, Kayla fidgeted. Evie could only assume her unrest was because she was trying to figure out what to do, sitting three feet away from the only famous person Creek Water had ever produced.

Please don’t recognize me, Evie thought as she took a bite of her burger. The bun was crusty and dry around the edges, and the cheese had started to congeal under the air-conditioning.

“Evie Cauley,” West said.

CHAPTERTHREE

Evie’s handfroze on the way to her mouth. A stray bit of tomato slipped out of her burger and landed on her plate with a squelch. Kayla’s jaw dropped so low, Evie could have fit her entire burger inside with room to spare.

West took off his sunglasses and hung them on the front of his T-shirt, the right corner of his mouth creeping toward the ceiling. She’d seen that same crooked smile a hundred times. Seeing it again was like unearthing a balled-up T-shirt from the back of her closet, one that used to be a favorite, then slipping it on and finding it fit differently.

“Nice backward baseball cap.” Evie took a big gulp of her red wine. It was bitter going down, but she needed alcohol in her body and fast. Her gaze landed on West’s friend, perched on the edge of his stool like he was worried that if he fully sat down, he would become one with it and be stuck in the sticks forever.

The grin that spread across West’s face was too bright to bear, and when his eyes drifted south toward her legs, she wondered if maybe Wayne had turned off the AC because heat spread through her. “Nice Daisy Dukes.”

It was a familiar routine, except she was used to performing it from the passenger seat of West’s Jeep with the morning air whooshing through the rolled-down car window as they cruised down the highway to school.

“What are you doing here?” Evie asked, pulling at the frayed bottoms of her shorts. They used to be jeans, bought secondhand from Goodwill, but a fryer accident had left the bottoms coated in sticky oil that wouldn’t wash out, so she’d recycled them.

West glanced toward the TV in the corner just as one of Travis’s friends slammed his palm on the table and said, “Come on, Diaz!” Their eyes were glued to the screen, and they hadn’t noticed West yet.

“Watching the game.”

“I meant what are you doing in Creek Water?” The words came out measured, careful, the opposite of how she felt.

Kayla shifted in her seat to get a better view and gave West a wave. “Hi. Kayla. You probably don’t remember me.”

West leaned forward, and now there were only a few inches of distance between him and Evie. She could smell mint and pine rising up off his skin, like he’d just walked out of a redwood forest. “Last time I saw you, your hair was… lime green?”

“Well, shit,” Kayla said. “I can barely remember my kid’s middle name.”

West gestured toward his friend. “This is Rich.”

“Pleasure.” With a tight smile, Rich flicked his hand in the air to get Wayne’s attention, as if his impending gin and tonic could save him from the conversation. Wayne came back with the drinks and set them on the bar.

West cradled his beer in his palms. “This young lady lived in the house next door to mine. Used to lecture me about playing Luke Bryan too loudly when I drove her to school.”

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