It took two beers and about an hour for me to get my shit together and to start acting like a normal human. Eventually, I stopped being constantly aware of Macin my periphery, waiting for the moment when she might approach and I’d have to ignore all my programming and figure out how to justbearound her.
But it never happened. Mac didn’t come over to chat because why would she? We were rivals. Enemies. The thorns in each other’s sides. She never sought me out unless it was in retribution.
Abby and Jase asked what was up with me no less than six times, but I waved them off, saying I was just in a weird mood and it would wear off. And it did. By the time nine o’clock rolled around, I was laughing and joking and being my typical charming self.
But then my good mood took a nosedive when Connor Pritchard came over and slapped me on the back.
“Brady Judd. Good to see you, man.”
Is it?I wanted to say. Instead, I pasted on a good-ole-boy grin and an aw-shucks attitude and said, “Connor Pritchard. How the hell are you?”
Abby shot me a look. He knew how I felt about the guy. Best friends with long memories were pesky like that.
But I was playing nice tonight, all around. I could shoot the shit with a former classmate. Even if that former classmate was a huge prick. But whatever, I wouldn’t cause problems for Abby. Not again.
I’d picked a fight at a bonfire one similar night a few years back. Floyd Ellerby had shown up and gotten drunk and mouthy and called the cops. At one time, Floyd had been a teammate and good friend of mine. But things had gone downhill at the tail end of eleventh grade.
Thinking back to that time, my eyes drifted over to Mac across the bonfire. She was chatting with Emily Bates and Larry and looked like she was having a good time.
It was strange how so many of my experiences and memories led back to MacKenzie Clark. If you’d asked me two months ago if she was a big part of my daily existence, I would have said,No, not really. Mac was a constant, though, a regular in the story of my life.
But she was more than just a background player, hovering on the fringes. We’d crossed paths and come to blows more times than I could count. I had a memoryof Mac at every age—from preschool to Bible study to soccer practice to this very field one week ago and a hundred times before.
Now, though, all those moments and realizations were stacking up in front of me, forming a wall I could hardly see over.
My interaction with Mac last Friday was the reason I could barely think straight tonight. Mac was why I thought Connor Pritchard was a dick and why I was biting my tongue at this very moment to keep from telling him so. And it was due to Mac that my friendship with Floyd ended junior year.
He’d randomly hooked up with her out at her family’s farm. I’d been an asshole at the time and tried to talk him out of pursing anything with her. I’d had my reasons. Sure, they had been immature and selfish and stupid, but that was what had driven my seventeen-year-old self to keep Floyd away from her. I’d been an idiot and too cowardly to admit the actual motive behind my actions had been jealousy and attraction.
But Floyd hadn’t listened. He screwed around with her in secret, too chickenshit to date her openly. And when she called him on it, he spread hateful rumors about how easy she was. Abby, Jase, and I had separated ourselves from Floyd after that. He’d quit the soccer team and avoided us too, taking up with guys like Connor and his lackeys. He’d lost his closest friends but gained the sort of drama-seeking bros who devalued and disrespected women for a chance at hot gossip and rising popularity.
Now Floyd worked down at Begley Auto with some other assholes.
When he’d shown up at the bonfire a few years after graduation, he tried to act like nothing had happened. Like he hadn’t tried to ruin a young girl’s reputation. Like we were all still good friends. I’d set him straight on that and caused a big scene in the process. I didn’t regret it, but I knew how Abby felt about that sort of attention.
He was a respected business owner in town, and the last thing I wanted to do was make him regret our friendship. He put up with a lot from me. I was flaky and unreliable, loudmouthed and easily distracted. Abby had been the most constant presence in my life outside of my family. We’d been friends since kindergarten and roommates in college, and he was my brother in every way but blood.
So when Connor smiled his smarmy grin and bragged about the car dealership he managed over in Charlotte, I promised myself I would behave myself tonight.
And it worked for a little while.
Twenty minutes into reminiscing about his glory days, Connor nodded subtly over in Mac’s direction and said, “Man, I wished I’d waited until senior year to get with Clark over there. Didn’t realize she’d hit a growth spurt and have such nice tits. Back then, they didn’t even fill up my palms.”
His laughter died abruptly when I stood up and grabbed his expensive fleece jacket by the collar, dragging him with me. Dark spots clouded my vision as fury pulsed with every beat of my raging heart. All my wayward, misguided thoughts focused on the asshole in front of me and what I’d do to him for saying?—
I clenched my free hand into a fist and opened my mouth, but Abby pushed between us in a hurry. “Brady, go calm down. Connor, you better watch your fucking mouth or you can get the hell out right now. Mac’s a good friend, and you aren’t a teenage idiot anymore. You’ve got no right saying shit like that about a woman—any woman.”
Connor held up his hands in surrender and said obligingly, “Okay. You’re right. My fault.” His words were for Abby, but he was staring straight at me. “I take it back.” Then he laughed lightly. “Didn’t realize Kirby Falls had feminists all the way up in the mountains.”
“Hell, we even got a Walmart now,” I said amiably before making my voice hard with contempt. “We have all sorts of things you seem to have forgotten since moving away, Pritchard. Common decency and respect for women being chief among them.”
I felt Jase rise from his seat to stand shoulder to shoulder with me. He had three younger sisters and had been raised by a single mom. We were on the same page here.
Connor laughed again, but it sounded strained this time. “I’m going to head out. Good night, gentlemen.”
I watched him glance around nervously as he walked away.
It was quiet, the only sound was wood hissing and popping in the fire. I took inmy surroundings, realizing conversation had halted as a result of the altercation. People—friends, former classmates, acquaintances—were all staring at me.
