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If he and Dennis were being honest with themselves, a surprise beer was probably the only adventure either of them needed, since the mine accident. And Dennis didn’t even seem to need that. He always got the same bottle of Bud Light with a Jameson chaser. Had for years. Since before Missoula. Since before everything.
“You ain’t been late since the day you were born,” Dennis said, his bottle resting against his bottom lip. “And this ain’t a big city, so you can’t blame traffic.”
“I’ve got a new neighbor.”
Levi hadn’t meant the comment by way of explanation, but he could tell by how Dennis lifted his eyebrows that it was the way his brother-in-law took the information. “He park in your driveway?”
“No. My neighbor’s not why I’m late,” he said, though he didn’t have a better explanation for his tardiness, because “No matter how close I am to my new neighbor, I want to take at least one step closer, so it took me a while to drive away” would sound pretty stupid.
“Why’d you mention it, then?”
She was on his mind. “I’m not used to having a neighbor. It’s distracting.”
“So, not a sixty-year-old with a gut. You wouldn’t be distracted by that.”
“Ha!” Levi rubbed his own stomach. It was still flat but, at the age of thirty-seven, he was starting to think more about carrots and less about French fries and beer. “We’ll both be lucky not to be that in twenty years.”
“I’ll be lucky to be that in twenty years.” Dennis took a long pull on his beer, draining the bottle and signaling for another one. It was going to be one of those nights. Levi and the dishwasher would be hefting Dennis into the passenger seat of Levi’s truck, and sometime around noon tomorrow, Dennis would text him for a ride back to get his car because Brook refused. And Brook would be texting him about letting Dennis get that drunk, because not only did she still think it was her job to monitor Levi’s behavior, but she considered it Levi’s job to monitor Dennis’s behavior.
His sister had gotten taller over the years, but inside she was still a bossy twelve-year-old playing Mom while their dad worked in the mines.
But neither Levi nor Dennis would drive home drunk, so that was progress since their reckless younger years. At least they’d learned something.
Proof that stupidity wasn’t guaranteed to kill you young.
“So, you gonna introduce yourself to this distracting neighbor?” Dennis asked, his second bottle of beer already half-gone. At least the whiskey was untouched.
“What for? To get roped into helping her with home renovations?” Levi shrugged. “That house needs a lot of work, and I’m already too busy as it is.”
“So, she’s cute.”
“She’s a child,” he said, yanking his mind away from her legs and her nose and her ass and everything else about her he’d tried not to admire over the past couple of weeks.
“She bought a house, so I’m guessing she’s at least twenty-five. Hmm. Might be more than cute—hot, even.”
Levi shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t have time. Or interest. I’ve been married already. You should know. You were my best man.”
Dennis shrugged. “Only ’cause no one else would do it.”
A couple of beers between them helped them both laugh at the joke. At the time of Levi’s actual wedding, Dennis—and everyone else—had been dead set against it. Kimmie had been too young, the chorus of noes said. And Dennis had only served as best man because Kimmie had cried when he’d refused. And then everyone had been mad at Levi for making her cry. No one had noticed at that time that his entire goal in his marriage had been to keep Kimmie happy.
All history.
“You gonna ask your neighbor out?” Dennis asked with disarming openness. Both he and Brook regularly pushed Levi to date women. Dennis suggested women like the girls who worked the registers at the hardware store or the ski shop. While Brook had a never-ending supply of friends who would be perfect for him.
Sometimes he said yes to Brook’s friends, and he’d even gone on more than one date with a couple; but there had never been any spark that compared to what he’d felt for Kimmie. Anything less would be doing both of them a disservice.
