Page 16 of The Bad Girl List

I hear her, but I’m too distracted to reply. There’s something about this place that makes the tips of my fingers start to tingle. The smell of the wooden walls and the battered wood floor soaked with years of alcohol. The dirty light fixtures that look like someone hung them in the seventies and have never bothered to dust them in the last fifty years. The two deer trophies in the back corner. The oversized, empty wine bottles lining a long shelf along the back wall, all of them as dirty as the light fixtures. I love it all.

And the old farmers. I like the way they lean around tables and talk while they sip at their tumblers. A few of them play card games.

Before I realize what I’m doing, I’ve grabbed a barstool that gives me a perfect view of a table with four old men in their rumpled shirts. My hands dip into the big pocket of my cargo pants to retrieve my sketchbook and pencils.

Before I graduated college, not a day passed when I didn’t draw. I often drew during school lectures as a way to help me process and remember the information. For me, drawing is a bit like breathing: essential to living.

Or at least, it had been until I’d graduated and landed the job at Presidio. Then I became too busy and too stressed to draw.

It was a small incursion at first. It began with me swapping out my preferred cargo pants for the suffocating pencil skirts and precarious heels. I couldn’t exactly stash drawing materials in clothing barely stretchy enough to stash myself in.

Then the work started to pile up. I’d forget about the drawing supplies in my desk drawer. And when I got home from the office, I either had a mountain of work to get done for Sophia, or I was too tired to draw.

After a while, my various pencils and sketch pads ended up scattered around the studio in random places. A thin sheen of dust collected on them, because who has time to draw when you’re working twelve-hour days?

Now, for the first time in forever, the compulsion to draw is back. It feels like a reunion with a long-lost friend.

I start to sketch, tracing the outline of the four farmers playing cards while they sip at their tumblers of what looks like whiskey. Annika has struck up a conversation with the cute bartender. Snatches of their conversation penetrate my ears, but I barely notice.

A pink beverage has appeared in front of me. A Cosmopolitan. A few persistent pokes in the rib cage from Annika reminds me that I have an item to cross off a list tonight: I’m supposed to get so drunk that I puke.

Well, it shouldn't take that many drinks. And honestly, I’d agree to just about anything so long as I can hang onto this feeling, onto this moment of connecting so perfectly to my colored pencils and the picture coming to life on the page.

CHAPTER 6

The Girl with the Colored Pencils

TREVOR

Thanks to the bottles of wine I’d consumed at the bungalow, a comfortable buzz is in full effect by the time Thomas and I pull into the parking lot of Zeke’s. Despite this, a familiar tightening pulls at my muscles. What had I been thinking? Why did I agree to Zeke’s, of all places?

Healdsburg has its fair share of bars, but Zeke’s is the place where locals come. Out in the vineyards of Dry Creek Valley, it’s the sort of place you have to know about to find. It’s a favorite hangout for the farmers and winery workers. My grandpa spends so much time here, he should probably pay rent for the table he and his buddies always occupy.

Which means that everyone in this place will know who I am. The likelihood of someone telling my parents they saw me out is pretty high. It reminds me of the Sunday dinner threat hanging over my head: bring a date, or face one of my mom’s set-ups. Try evading dinner altogether, and the family will invade my house.

The pain of missing Elle, of the two-year anniversary since her death, had me on edge before I started drinking. The looming stress of Sunday dinner, combined with the murmur of voices carrying out from the bar, makes me wish I was already passed out in my bed with Tequila.

I hang back as Thomas starts in the direction of Zeke’s. “This wasn’t a good idea.”

“Of course it was a good idea. The old dudes have all missed seeing you. Come on, I bet Gramps will be here.” Thomas grabs my arm.

I resist.

“Dude,” Thomas says, “I’m not asking you to pretend you don’t feel like shit. You lost the love of your life. I get it. I know I told you I wanted to flirt with the bartender, but I’ve never needed a wingman for that shit. I just wanted to get you out of the house, have you talk to people a little bit.”

The fight goes out of me. “You’re determined not to let me be alone in my misery, aren’t you?”

“I know you think Gimpy counts as not being alone, but yeah, you need to be around human beings once in a while.”

“Her name isn’t Gimpy.”

“I know.” Thomas flashes me his signature, million-dollar grin. “I just call her that because it pisses you off. I wouldn’t make fun of her if she let me scratch her ears once in a while. Come on, let’s finish getting you shit-faced. Drinks are on me tonight.”

We climb up the wooden steps that lead to the wide porch that fronts Zeke’s. The familiar smell of old wood and stale liquor hits my nose, and a wave of nostalgia goes through me. I hadn’t even realized how much I’ve missed this place.

I used to come here almost every Friday night to have a drink and play a few rounds of cards with Gramps and his friends. Elle came with me sometimes, too, and was always very popular among the resident farmers.

I step through the doors. There’s a lot more people here than I’m used to on a Friday night. Along with the usual array of old-time farmers, there’s a smattering of tourists. I can always peg the tourists by the way they dress. Locals don’t pick something from the nice side of the wardrobe when visiting Zeke’s.

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