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My back aches. Fuck, all of me does.
The bar smells like frying oil and sweat. Something sticky tugs at the bottom of my boots beneath the table, like a drink was spilled earlier but never mopped up. It’s too damn loud in here for a Saturday afternoon.
I keep my face hidden beneath the brim of my hat and tap my fingers on the side of my whiskey glass. It’s grown warm in the time we’ve been sitting here, slick with dew.
“You’re one surly son of a bitch today,” Caleb notes, not hesitating to gulp down his cold beer.
Wearing his Cherry Peak Fire shirt and an easy grin despite the long day of volunteering at the station, he rolls his neck and finishes his drink.
Peakside is usually our location of choice to get dumb drunk after a long day, but ever since Caleb and his wife had their daughter nearly a decade ago, these evenings have grown few and far between. It’s why I took him up on his invite after lunch.
A few of the men who volunteer alongside him joined us after ignoring the withering glare I shot Caleb when they appeared.Just us, he promised. Bullshit.
“Yet you still invited me,” I reply smugly.
“Wouldn’t kill you to smile once, though. You’re scaring the waitress.”
I ignore him, raising my glass to my mouth and finishing the whiskey off. It burns the entire way down, hot in my stomach.
One of the new volunteers decides to chime in. “Told you not to invite him, Caleb.”
“Caleb doesn’t go anywhere without his ball and chain,” another puts in.
“You talk a lot of smack for a virgin,” Caleb tosses back.
I should know the names of these guys by now, but I don’t give enough of a shit to try. Reclining back in the booth, I peer behind the head of the man beside me and flag over the waitress. She doesn’t look scared of me. Maybe intimidated, but that’s not unusual. I’m not exactly the friendliest person, especially not to strangers.
“Another?” she asks me, voice too timid for a rowdy place like this.
Caleb responds for me. “Might as well bring him the whole bottle, Jewel. He’s in a mood today.”
I attempt to soften my scowl, but when Caleb barks a laugh at me, I know I look like a fucking idiot instead. “A water, please.”
She scurries off with little more than a tip of her chin. I ignore the brief slash of guilt that follows her quick disappearance and tighten my stare on the deep gauges in the table instead.
Peakside has been around since before I was born, and it hasn’t changed at all in the twenty-eight years since. The twin gouges on this table are from a teenage Brody and Caleb, though, our mark on the place courtesy of my pocket knife the first night we ever came here.
“Water?” It’s Caleb’s turn to frown.
I nod. “Gotta be up at the ass crack of dawn tomorrow.”
My grandpa has been planning our trip to the auction a few hours north of here for weeks now. He’d swat me across the back of the head with the newspaper hard enough I’d see stars if I cancelled on him because I drank too much whiskey the night before.
“The auction,” Caleb says before I can tell him. “Why does he need you to go with him again?”
“Wants me there to look at whatever he decides to buy before pullin’ the trigger on it.”
“Haven’t forgotten how to work beneath the hood of a tractor yet, Popstar?” Darren asks, another of the volunteers, but one I can stomach having a conversation with.
His subtle dig annoys me, but not enough to have me picking a fight with him.
“Couldn’t forget if I tried,” I grumble.
Caleb smirks. “Brody has spent more time beneath hoods than he has women.”
“Not includin’ your mother, right?” I ask, reaching up to flex the brim of my hat.
Caleb’s not even all that wrong. I’ve been beneath more hoods than I could ever think to count or remember. Before life took me down a different path, I thought I’d still be working on heavy equipment when my bones turned brittle.
