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Palmer
Pete was slammed with customers while the band played. The music was okay, but it wasn’t really his taste. There was more screaming and slamming on the cymbals than he preferred. But he’d deal with it in order to snowboard on the slopes all day and work at night.
After high school, he’d opted to go out and explore the world, much to his parents’ displeasure, citing that he should go to college and find a career. Settle down with a wife and kids someday. That wasn’t Pete’s thing. Snowboarding was his one true love. His goal was to board every big ski resort in the mountains, maybe make it in the competitive world. He’d headed west after graduating from a small high school in Vermont. Now, he found himself in Oregon. He should have been preparing to leave here, but something had kept him from making plans to do so, and he couldn’t put a finger on why.
At the moment, he couldn’t keep his eyes off the curvy brunette nursing beers at the end of the bar. He had been flirting with her between delivering drinks until he and Dimitri ended up switching sides, and now all Pete could do was glance in her direction. She was quiet, reserved, didn’t seem to talk to many people. Her friend approached her once while the band was playing, urging her to go on the dance floor, and that’s when he first noticed that she signed to her friend. Growing up with a hard-of-hearing dad, he could understand the brunette, and he almost laughed out loud when she told her friend that she’d talked to three other girls who were there for Trek.
His name was actually Trek. Whether that was completely made up or some nickname, Pete didn’t know. Trek brought women to the bar all the time, but not for screwing. He wanted this bar wall to wall with as many women as possible because where the women were, the men would follow and the band took a small cut of the drinks on the nights they played.
“Switch sides?” Pete asked Dimitri, who shrugged. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist, and if it wasn’t for the cute brunette he desperately wanted to talk to, Pete would have been bored most of the night working beside Dimitri.
Pete went right over to the brunette, wiping down the bar top and taking the empties piled along the bar. “Another?”
She shook her head and glanced toward the dance floor where her friend was now dancing with Trek while the band took a break. They were surrounded by a lot of other girls who looked as if they might start a brawl.
“You sure?” he asked her.
Her cheeks reddened, and she shook her head once more, not speaking. He knew how reserved his dad was about using his voice, so he didn’t want to push her, but at the same time, he wanted to have a conversation with her.
After helping a few more customers, he noticed she kept staring at her phone then out at the dance floor. Fuck it. He went to her end of the bar. He could tell she was about to slide off the stool, probably tell her friend that she was leaving, and he knew he might never see her again. Something inside him said he couldn’t let that happen.
She was already smiling and shaking her head as he approached, but he lifted his hands and signed, Water? A shot of tequila? What do I have to get you to stay a little longer?
Her head rocked back and a giggle he could barely hear over the music came out of her. She situated herself on the stool and signed back, A shot of tequila, I guess.
My name is Pete, he signed.
Bea.
And for the rest of the night, Pete was the worst bartender to everyone except Bea.
I crack my neck and flex my fingers. God, it feels so good to have a story that can’t stop coming to me. It’s as if it’s just flowing out of me, and I can barely type fast enough to keep up.
Grabbing a yogurt that I brought with me this morning, I sit in the stillness of the cottage, smiling to myself. Hudson is picking up Adley from preschool today. I have the entire cottage to myself for a day of uninterrupted writing, and for the first time in a long time, I’m excited by the prospect.
I walk over to the couch, ready to write another chapter, when I spot a white shuttle pull up in the driveway. I figure they must have the wrong house, but then I see the script on the side and sigh. Northern Lights Retirement Center.
There goes my productive day of writing. I turn my cochlear implants back on.
Alice and Jean get out of the van with bags of stuff in hand, two men trailing behind. Glancing around, I wonder if I can sneak out somewhere, but they all stare at my SUV in the driveway, and I hear them arguing about who they think it is, making my escape impossible.
I’m thrown when they don’t knock on the door but use a key to gain entry. Since Adley is with Hudson, I can go home and write, although I feel as if there’s some kind of magic here helping me get the words in. Still, I pack up my stuff.
“Palmer?” Alice stops in the doorway with some other friends of my great-grandma.
They’ve tried to fill the shoes of my great-grandma Dori and her friend Ethel Greene, two meddling grandmas who pushed all their kids toward the loves of their lives. No one can fill their shoes though.
I wave, reaching for my coat.
“We didn’t know that Lance had given the key out. So, you’re the next, huh?” Alice says.
I nod.
“Why doesn’t she speak?” a man behind Alice asks. I’ve never seen him before, and I’m not sure if he’s the new driver or what.
“She’s deaf,” Jean says.
Well then.
