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“Hey, don’t get too excited. Should I tell Damien you said hello?”
“Oh believe me, I’m not. And fuck him. He owes me twenty bucks and a bottle of Jack.”
“Right.” Because that was exactly what Damien needed—more alcohol to soak his stupid brain. The money was probably for a parking ticket courtesy of an Officer Rooney.
“You ever going to own up to crushing on this girl anytime soon?” Whit knew me better than most, but even that detail was under lock and key. It wasn’t happening, ever. Taylor Jane was friend zoned for a number of reasons, starting with my sanity and her physical safety. I couldn’t risk going apeshit on her the way my dad did on my mom. It killed them both and a part of me on that rainy stretch of highway.
“Nope.”
“If you say so, man. I got a hundred bucks that says otherwise.”
“You’ll be a sore loser.” Or I was about to be a broke man with a house to fix if I didn’t get my shit together.
“Yeah, yeah, you keep telling yourself that. Tell Taylor I said hi and I’ll be by soon to do whatever grunt work you got for me.”
I knew I could count on Whit.
* * * * *
I headed over to Taylor Jane’s house. She was out today, picking out more paint colors and then some spa shit with the girls. That honey-do list was getting longer and longer with this girl and it should have bothered me. Heck, any other girl and it would have, but with her it didn’t. So here I was, driving the ten minutes over to her dad’s house to help him hang some stuff on the walls Taylor Jane was afraid might fall on him while he was standing on the ladder.
After all these years, I owed Alan Bryant a lot.
I parked in the driveway and knocked on the front door. No answer, which wasn’t unusual, so I turned the doorknob to find it open. “Hello? Mr. Bryant, it’s Hunter.”
“Out back, son.”
I followed his voice to find him sitting on the back deck, a glass of soda in his hand. This house had been the one Taylor Jane grew up in and the second place I ever called home. Everything remained the same, not a knick-knack moved since Mrs. Bryant’s death. There was an eerie reverence the way her father remained devoted to a woman I’d met a handful of times. The house was a mausoleum to his testament of love for both her and Taylor Jane. Love, I didn’t think I would ever be worthy of experiencing. I joined her dad and watched a group of squirrels jump from tree branches in the backyard.
“Taylor Jane—”
He held his hand up to stop me from what I was about to say.
“I know my daughter, Hunter. She’s worried about me, but I need her to do this. Flip that house and find her dream.” He talked like there was something else on his mind. It was evident in the way he hunched over and held his drink with a shaking hand breathless and pausing between each word. He didn’t look good physically and sounded worse emotionally, but what did I know?
I had been out of town when he had his heart attack and by the time I returned I had missed Taylor Jane returning to school for the semester. It seemed time would be my punishment since that night after the prom. I didn’t know what question to ask him to get the answer I needed.
“She just asked me to help hang some stuff and fix the curtain rod. Nothing more than that.”
Mr. Bryant grunted, and I took it at face value unless he was going to say more.
“You know I’m not well, Hunter.”
I stayed quiet, wondering if he would elaborate, and he did.
“My heart, it’s not good. It hasn’t been the same since my wife died and it’s more than just heartbreak. I’m a sick man.”
Swallowing back the unfairness of it all, I asked, “How bad is it?” But what I was really asking was how long he had because I had to figure out how to pick up the pieces for Taylor Jane when this all fell apart. No good deed ever went unpunished and in a strange twist of events I found myself her unwilling guardian of sorts.
“My heart is a ticking time bomb. There’s medicine I take, but the expense doesn’t seem to justify the means anymore.”
“What do you mean? Taylor Jane would want you to do everything you could to stay well.”
“Hunter, I miss my wife. This wasn’t the life I had planned for us.” Sad lines carved the frown in his face and I’m rendered nearly speechless. Nobody was dealt the perfect set of cards, I could testify to that personally.
“You’re all she has.”
He shook his head; my argument fell on deaf ears.
