AllFreeNovel
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My gaze bores into hers. “More like dropping everything to be with my pregnant girlfriend, busting my ass off to provide a future for her, only to find out eight months later that it may not be mine. Spoiler alert, it wasn’t. She’d been cheating on me with my best friend. So yeah, I know a thing or two about responsibility.”
She slinks back. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Because you didn’t care to ask!” Heat floods my entire body as my pulse pounds.
“I didn’t know we were at the ‘tell me your life story’ stage of whatever this is.” She shakes a finger between us.
“Clearly, you don’t know a lot of things about me and didn’t bother to ask because you were too focused on yourself. Maybe this was a mistake.” She flinches and inches backward. I snatch my keys off the counter and stomp past her. “I gotta get out of here.”
My knuckles crash into the door, forcing it open, and I don’t wait around for it to slam behind me. I throw open my car door and jump inside. Adrenaline courses through my body as I fumble to shove the key into the ignition but don’t turn it over. Hurt and anger bubble through my pores. Who’s she to make snap judgments about me? She knows nothing about me or my life. What am I even doing here? Running a bakery…this isn’t my life. This was never supposed to be my life. I turn the key and the engine roars. The tires squeal on the blacktop as I stomp on the gas and exit the parking lot. Unsure of where I’m going, I just drive. Newly built unfamiliar buildings pass by, along with new businesses that sprouted up since I left. I lived here for most my life, but everything seems foreign, like I don’t belong here anymore. Maybe I don’t, until the sign for Porter’s Ale House comes into view. At least it’s a place I’m semi-familiar with. I pull my car into the parking lot and proceed inside.
There’re a few people scattered amongst the high-top tables and a couple sitting at the bar. I decide to take a seat at the bar, a beer and the baseball game playing on the tv hanging behind it might distract me from Hollyn and the bakery. I find an empty seat at the end and plop down. Before I can decide what I want, a brunette greets me from the opposite side.
“What can I get you?”
“Whatever you got on tap.” Her gaze drifts to the row of ten different tap levers, then slowly comes back to me with a raised eyebrow. “Oh. Um. Castle Danger.” She grabs a pint glass and rests it below the spout and pulls the lever. The dark brown liquid fills the glass as the tan foam forms at the top. Once it’s full, she sets a coaster in front of me and places the beer on top. “Thank you.” But she doesn’t move. She studies me as if she’s trying to see into my soul, and I think it’s working.
“You look familiar.” She tilts her head and squints.
“I’m not from around here. Well, not anymore anyway.”
“You’ve been in here before.”
“A couple of times. I’ve met Jake. I’m friends with Trey, Seth, and Bennett.”
She snaps her fingers. “That’s it. You’re the new guy. Van. I’m Rylee.” She pauses. “So, what brings you in here without your posse?”
“It’s a long story.” I reach for my beer and take a gulp.
“They always are.”
Over the next twenty minutes, I spill the entire last twenty hours of my life to this stranger. And it feels refreshing. She listens, pours me a new beer as soon as mine is empty, and all this without judgment. Or so I thought.
“So let me get this straight. You got into a fight with your girl—”
“She’s not my girl,” I correct.
“Oh, she’s definitely your girl, otherwise you wouldn’t be at the bar in the middle of the afternoon pouring your heart out to a bartender you don’t know.”
Well, shit, maybe she’s on to something.
“As I was saying, you got into a fight. You told her to calm down. That pissed her off more, and then you called her selfish. Did I get all that?”
“You missed the part where she called me young and irresponsible.”
“At this point, it’s irrelevant. I’m going to give you some free advice.” She narrows her eyes at me. “If a girl is visibly upset, the last thing you want to do is tell her to calm down. Anything that happens afterward is on you.”
I curl my lip. “That’s kind of shitty advice. She needed to calm down. Everything that happened was fixable.”
She slams a cutting board down on the railing. “Do we need to add not listening to your list of strikes?”
“I listen. Maybeyoushould calm down.” For the second time today, a woman shoots daggers in my direction, and I hold up my hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. Fine. I get it. But what’s done is done. What do I do next?”
She leans back and crosses her arms over her chest. “Do you like the girl?” I nod. “Good. Because Hollyn’s a good person and doesn’t deserve some asshole playing with her heart.”
“How’d you know I’m talking about Hollyn?”
“I’m a bartender. I know shit. Plus, the entire gang comes in here. It’s like their second home or something and they talk. A lot. Anyway, here’s what you gotta do.” She raises a finger in tandem with each statement she makes. “Apologize for being an asshole. Fix her fridge. Then make it up to her in a more behind closed doors kind of way.”
