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He gestured to a knockout blonde beside him. “You remember Alice?”
I nodded. We met at Thanksgiving. She had impressed me with her kind heart and her ability to keep the eldest Gagnon in line. That was no easy feat. Mainers were stubborn and contrary on a good day, and Henri was no exception. Especially after the injury that put him out of commission for a while. If he was a cranky bear before, he’d morphed into a grizzly for a while, from what Dylan had told me.
She gave me a small wave, her eyes bright. “Our kids will be so happy you’re back.” Henri and Alice were in the process of adopting two kids from foster care. It warmed my heart to know Tucker and Goldie would have such incredible parents. Their lives so far had been even harder than what my brother and I had gone through.
I fixed their drinks and promised to come over for dinner. Then they slipped away, returning to a large group that included the other Gagnon siblings and several people from around town.
Of course Remy was there, the sight of him now bringing back a tinge of the embarrassment that had hit me when Dylan told him about my gallbladder and lack of insurance.
Remy Gagnon was larger than life. He was funny and charming and always moving. As a kid, he’d charmed his way into extra cookies from the lunch ladies and extensions on papers from our high school teachers.
He didn’t take himself too seriously either, despite his good looks and athletic talents.
Though recently, his charmed life had fallen apart. And this Remy was a shadow of the man I’d known for most of my life.
His charisma had been tempered, his dark eyes swimming in pain. And if he wasn’t training? Things had to be bad. The guy who needed to be in the woods twenty hours a day and never stopped moving? I had always assumed he’d be on the cover of a Wheaties box by now. But instead, he was hanging around Dylan’s apartment moping? As far as I knew, he’d never moped a day in his life until now.
If I ever laid eyes on Crystal LaVoie again, I was going to punch her so hard she’d need a second nose job. She had always been a selfish brat, but openly cheating on Remy? He was a good person. Loyal and faithful, and although his taste in girlfriends had clearly been lacking, he would have given her a beautiful life.
Sure, I was small, but I was scrappy. And although I generally hated violence, I would make an exception for that hell beast any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
I dried a rack of glassware while covertly watching Remy across the bar. The way he moved around the pool table was positively feral. He was all long limbs and quiet grace. His brothers were big, beefy types, but not Remy.
He was lean and graceful and looked like a natural athlete, even holding a pool cue. Even from here it was obvious he was absolutely decimating his brother Pascal, who wore a crisp tailored dress shirt and his usual scowl.
Remy was all man, yet his boyish qualities lingered. Maybe it was the stubble? Or the dimples? Or the messy hair in need of a trim?
When his group had ordered drinks, he’d asked for a water, though he’d always been a one-beer kind of guy. I didn’t want to pry, so I made another crack about his blueberry pie cologne.
He scoffed. “You’re giving me a complex, Pip. Time to try a new brand of deodorant, I guess.”
Despite my teasing, Remy actually smelled like pine forest and testosterone, not that I had noticed or anything.
And I definitely hadn’t been keeping track of just how good he smelled since I hit puberty. Nope. Because it was Remy. His smell was immaterial. Unimportant.
And my brother had no sense. Dylan was positively out of his gourd for suggesting we get married. Yes, it would solve my health care problem, but it could potentially cause many others. But then again, Remy hadn’t seemed offended by the suggestion. And it was probably wishful thinking, but I thought I caught a spark of curiosity in those dark irises when my brother brought it up.
Nah, it wasn’t possible, no matter how much teenage Hazel would have loved it.
It was natural, required even, to have a teeny, tiny crush on one’s older brother’s best friend. And when said brother’s best friend was Remy Gagnon, resistance was futile.
He was the subject of every one of my teen romantic fantasies. The cute older boy who understood my tortured soul and saw the real me.
In reality, he had looked at me like an annoying kid sister and had spent years of his life lusting after Crystal LaVoie, the queen bee of Lovewell. Blond and tall with a rich dad, no one in their right mind could compete with her. Thankfully, I was long gone when they started dating. Though it was inevitable. The charming, handsome athlete and the pretty blond princess. Every generation in every small town had that couple. And although they didn’t connect until after high school, people like that? They were magnets for one another.
Eventually, Remy would recover and magically find another gorgeous woman with the perfect body and a bubbly personality, but hopefully she’d understand how wonderful he was. Then I would see them every Thanksgiving and smile. As long as he was happy, I’d be happy too.
“Bartender!” Bernice hollered over the crowd. She put an arm in the air and made a circular motion, gesturing for another round. I gave her a thumbs-up over the bar and got to work. She sat in one of the large booths in the back, surrounded by a group of older ladies. For as long as I could remember, they came in every Friday for girls’ night, as they had been calling it, though Jim refused to even consider themed nights.
I grabbed a cold bottle of pinot grigio from the cooler, thankful it was a twist top, and scurried over.
“Amen,” cried Jodie Martin, lifting her glass as I poured. She was my sixth-grade math teacher and used to stay late a few days a week to teach me algebra. I gave her a big smile. Yet another person in Lovewell I owed.
“Can you ask Jim to send over another basket of fries?” Steph Dumas asked, batting her exaggeratedly long false eyelashes at me. She and her husband Steve had run the bakery in town for decades before their son took over a few years back.
I nodded. “Not a problem. Can I get you ladies anything else?”
They shook their heads. “Girls’ night!” Bernice shouted, and they all raised their glasses.
