Page 7 of Home Sweet Home

“Thanks for the wine,” Evie said, tucking her arms around herself. “But I should get back to my friend. Girls’ night. Hope you have a great time in Chicago.”

A flicker of disappointment crossed his face, soon replaced by a small, tight smile, saving face so his friends didn’t think he’d struck out. “No problem.” He tapped his hand against the bar and slid off the stool. His friends clapped him on the back as he tucked himself back into the booth.

Evie’s limbs loosened, and she let out the air she’d been holding in her lungs.

“What’s wrong with that one?” Kayla asked, taking a sip of her wine. “Enlighten me.”

Evie picked at the corner of the label on her beer bottle. “He’s from out of town. I wish you hadn’t let him buy us drinks.”

“That’s what people do in bars, Evie,” Kayla said. “They meet new people, buy drinks, get to know one another.”

“I don’t want to get to know him.”

“Yeah, I know,” Kayla said. “This isn’t the first time I’ve witnessed Her Majesty the Ice Queen up close.”

Evie shrugged. “All I have time for is work and making sure Josh doesn’t turn into a serial killer.”

“We have the same job. And I have a six-year-old, and even I manage to catch a dick every once in a while.”

Wayne must have heard the worddickcome out of Kayla’s mouth because his head whipped toward them so fast it couldn’t have been on accident.

“I can’t even remember the last dude you slept with.”

“Tie Guy,” Evie said, a wave of embarrassment washing over her.

Kayla grinned. “Oh right. One of my more inspired nicknames.”

Evie had met Tie Guy three neon Jell-O shots into a drunken night dancing at the Nite Owl. Creek Water’s nightlife was limited to Mel’s, so they’d driven all the way to West Greensburg to blow off some steam. Tie Guy had come up behind her and started grinding on her, and it wasn’t until ten minutes later, when they finally met face-to-face, that Evie saw the neon-pink Wayfarers perched on his nose and the loosened tie around his neck. He’d left the tie on for the duration of their drunken, unsatisfying sex. It kept swinging and hitting her in the face. And when she woke up, his naked body was splayed across her bed, the tie still fastened around his neck.

“That had to have been, like, two years ago,” Kayla said. “I wish you wouldn’t close yourself off so much. Travis could be the love of your life. The father of your future children. But you’re never gonna know if you never give anyone a chance.”

“Burgers,” Wayne said, sliding plastic red baskets in front of them with such perfect timing that Evie thought seriously about kissing him, as thanks for saving her from more of this conversation.

She didn’t want to talk about it, because whenever she met a guy, even if he was cute and seemed nice, she would fast-forward to the part where he broke her heart. The one thing Evie knew with absolute certainty was that people in her life didn’t stick around, and if they would always leave, it was best not to let them in. It softened the eventual sting.

Pillowy buns topped the burgers, and shiny oil seeped through the plastic liner under the fries. The smell of grease made Evie’s mouth water. She lifted the burger when the door to the bar opened, letting in a gust of evening summer air strong enough to rustle the paper in the basket.

Two men walked into Mel’s. One was shorter and thin, with trimmed black hair and stubble across his chin. Thick tortoiseshell glasses were perched on his nose. He wore a button-down shirt and honest-to-God pants. Not jeans, but slacks. Evie wasn’t sure she’d ever seen anyone come into Mel’s, or any business establishment in Creek Water, wearing clothes so nice. All of it looked expensive.

The other man was West Hawthorne.

She had to be hallucinating. She blinked twice, wondering if maybe Wayne had slipped shrooms into her drink, but it was most definitely him. It had been almost a decade since West left Creek Water, and since then, he’d barely set foot in town. He hadn’t even shown up at his father’s funeral.

He was so tall and broad, the bar was like a Hobbit hole around him. Aviator sunglasses obscured his eyes. His Devils hat was on backward and pulled low over his forehead, dark-blond waves poking out from underneath. As a teenager, she’d had so many vivid daydreams about tangling her hands up in those curls that she would have recognized them anywhere. The thought made her want to slap herself across the face.

West glanced toward the bar, and Evie whipped her head back around, hoping he hadn’t seen her.

“Mel’s makes a fucking bomb burger,” Kayla said, her mouth full, burger crumbs spilling out the sides as she licked a dollop of stray mustard off her finger. “Don’t tell Joe I said that.”

When Evie lifted her own burger to take a bite, she found her appetite had vanished, her stomach turning over. She was hyperaware of each movement West made.

The floorboards creaked under his weight as he walked toward the bar.

Do not sit here. Do not sit here, Evie thought. Besides the group of dudes watching the game in the corner, Mel’s had been a ghost town when she and Kayla had walked in. There were dozens of empty seats.

But then West settled onto the stool next to hers, his feet flat against the ground even with his knees bent. His stool groaned underneath his weight. It was an adult-sized stool, but under him, it looked like a kindergartner’s chair.

“If you’re not going to eat your fries, I call dibs.” Kayla grabbed a fistful of fries from Evie’s basket and shoved them into her mouth. As she chewed, her gaze wandered to the right, and when it landed on West, her eyes went wide. “Holy shit. That’s—”

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