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Andrea: I miss you guys. Can you call me?
That was a hard no. My ex had a lot of fucking guts asking me to call her. I hadn’t blocked her because we needed to be able to reach one another in case of an emergency.
Anger churned in my gut as I deleted the text. Things were going well here, and I wasn’t going to let her stir up drama. She was in the past, and I was focused on the future.
By the evening, I’d cooled off over the text from Andrea. I’d taken the kids to my parents’ house and was driving my truck to The Barn, which looked like it belonged in an architectural design magazine.
The Barn. Only Keller would pick such a simple name for a place this grand. It was a few miles from The Sleepy Moose, located right on Lake Karlsson. The grounds glowed from string lights and had several little areas with gazebos, benches and landscaping.
I parked and went in, admiring the open two-story building. It had warm wood floors and wood plank walls, wood beams visible above. A band played onstage and people were crowded around a large bar area.
“You made it,” Coulter said, approaching me with a shoulder clap. “What are you drinking?”
“I’ll walk over to the bar with you,” I said. “Where’s Grady?”
Coulter scoffed. “On the dance floor with his woman. She loves to dance. Grady would walk through fire for that girl, I’m tellin’ ya.”
I spotted them—Grady was so tall and broad he was hard to miss in a crowd. He and Avon were dancing close, their foreheads resting together. I was happy he’d found someone he loved so much. Andrea and I had never been that way. She was practical and thought sweet gestures were cheesy, so I gave up on them early in the relationship.
“Holt Sellers! Welcome home!” A man clapped me on the back as soon as I reached the bar. “You may not remember me. I’m Ron Markley. I was a few years ahead of you in school.”
I didn’t remember him at all. But I did remember his last name from my conversation earlier today.
“Hey, thanks, man,” I said. “It’s good to be back.”
“Shots!” Ron called out. “Fireball shots all around! Where’s my brother?”
I cringed at Coulter and spoke in a low tone. “I’d rather do a shot of horse piss than Fireball.”
“Yep, same. I’m sticking with my beer.”
I ordered a Guinness and was standing off to the side of the large dance floor talking to Coulter when Grady and Avon approached us, hand in hand.
“Glad you made it,” Grady said.
“I spent the afternoon making birdhouses with my kids. It’s nice to have some adult company for a change.”
“Damn,” Avon said. “I meant to come take photos of that for the paper, but I couldn’t get away from the office.”
“You didn’t miss much. I tried to paint a mammoth on mine, but it looked more like a Rorschach test.”
Coulter squinted. “A what?”
“You know, the inkblots that aren’t really anything, but they ask people what they think they look like as a psychological test,” Avon said.
“Oh yeah, I always see boobs,” Coulter said.
Grady nodded. “That is not even a little bit surprising.”
Coulter shrugged. “It’s no secret I’m a boob man.”
“In more ways than one,” Grady quipped.
I was about to take a sip of my beer when I saw her and paused everything, including breathing. Shea had just walked into The Barn, and I wasn’t the only man who’d noticed.
I’d only seen her with her hair pulled back, and tonight it was loose around her shoulders. She wore a T-shirt that said “Letterkenny Irish,” cutoff jean shorts and cowboy boots. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.
Someone stopped her to say hi, putting his hand on her arm, and a flare of jealousy shot through me. What was with me?
