Page 87 of Can’t Say No

I’m about to throw in the towel in favor of wallowing alone at home when Caroline slides onto the barstool beside me.

Franklin makes a beeline in our direction, suddenly very eager to serve my little corner of the bar.

“Caroline, gotta tell ya, I don’t think Eddy’s is the place for me tonight. The food is shit, the music is shit, and up until you and your feminine energy walked in, the service was shit too.”

She pats my hand dismissively, ordering us both a round of beers from our oh-so-friendly barkeep, who can hardly keep his tongue in his mouth from drooling so much over her. She laughs at the corny joke he throws her way, and I swear I see Franklin grow an inch taller from the ego boost.

Finally, Caroline faces me.

“Okay. Here’s the deal. We’re gonna get tipsy, you’re gonna tell me everything that went down with you and Delaney, you’re probably gonna cry. Vic will bring us fresh fries, we’ll eat our feelings, and then everything will feel a little less shitty.”

She says with a flourish, like a magician revealing their grand finale.

I roll my eyes, but a reluctant laugh escapes me. “You’ve got it down to a science, huh?”

She beams over at me. “It’s a tried-and-true formula.”

Franklin reappears faster than humanly possible, two beers in hand. Before he can go in for the kill and ask Caroline for her number, Vic hip-checks him out of the way.

“So the whole thing was fake? Or fake, then real, then fake again?” Vic expertly quarters a lime, dropping them down the necks of our bottles without taking her eyes off mine. “Or,” she says, pointing her paring knife at me, “it was real the whole time.”

I squirm a little in my seat, both from her astute realization and from the knife still pointed my way.

“It was always real for me, at least. And I thought…” I spin my bottle on its edge. “I thought Delaney felt the same way, but obviously I was wrong.”

Caroline shakes her head, taking in a hearty gulp of her drink.

“I don’t know, Connor. I watched clips from The Valley. That new song? Those lyrics seemed pretty clear to me.”

Vic nods emphatically.

“I watched it too. A couple times. I knew Delaney could sing, but damn. Just her and a guitar? Unreal. And I agree with Caroline, she was really sayin’ something. But hell, what do I know? I’m just your friendly neighborhood perpetually single bartender.”

Vic shrugs as she heads off to take care of other patrons.

“She wrote it here,” I mumble, eyes locked on a crack in the bar top. “When we were still together. So yeah, maybe it was real, for a moment. But not real enough to make her stay. Not real enough to actually mean something.”

The last sentence catches in my throat and I suddenly feel like I’m on the verge of tears.

“I’m sorry, Connor,” Caroline says quietly. “I know you really love her. And I guess it’s neither here nor there whether the love you shared was under false pretenses or not, because at the end of the day, you’re here and she’s not. And that sucks.”

Caroline meets my gaze, and there’s so much tenderness there. Delaney might always have a piece of my heart, but Ridgecrest does, too. My roots here are too deep to ignore. This town, for better or for worse, will always be my home.

“Thank you, Caroline. I’m lucky to have you.”

I pull her in for an awkward hug, both of us perching on the edge of our barstools.

I am lucky. A little worse for wear, and a lot more heartbroken than I’d care to admit, but lucky nonetheless.

“And now that we’ve covered the feelings portion of the night, we can focus on getting absolutely wasted.”

Caroline knocks her nearly empty bottle into mine, and Franklin appears, ready to replenish our drinks.

And that’s exactly what we do.

By the time Vic puts us both in an Uber, the music is impeccable, Delaney is a distant memory, and the floor isn’t sticky at all.

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