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“Why does Violet have to let him out?” Daisy said. “He’s with his friends. She didn’t feel that great this morning anyway at the flower shop. She said she had a headache. I’m sure she pushed him out the door.”
Daisy and Violet worked most Saturdays. Sometimes Ivy did too if she needed to fill in at the store, but Heather rarely worked on the weekends. Not unless she was bored and if that was the case, she did things at home in her little makeshift lab there. She hardly ever went to the greenhouses on days off.
She was half listening to her friends at the table. Her eyes were on the man that she was hoping was going to come to her and he hadn’t yet.
11
Time She Deserved
The last place Luke wanted to be was coming to this bar for a drink on Saturday night.
The past two weekends he’d been able to get out of it with the weather not being great but no way Zane was letting it go this weekend. He’d found out when they were walking in that Violet had pushed Trace out the door saying she was going to curl under the blanket and watch a movie and that it’d do Trace good to go get a drink with friends. It’d help with his book.
Luke found that funny that Trace would need to go to a bar with buddies to do research, but what did he know?
All he knew was he’d spent more than enough time in bars with his army buddies picking up women when they could.
There were no women to pick up here and he was with two taken men.
Then he reminded himself he had a woman he wanted, but he couldn’t give her the time she deserved. He was wishing the academy would go faster so that he could move on with his personal life until he realized that wish was a first for him.
The three of them hung their jackets up and sat. He saw Zane waving his hand to someone and turned, there was Heather sitting at a table with two other women he’d seen at the party over a month ago. One was Heather’s roommate he was guessing.
“Looks like single ladies' night out,” Trace said.
“Yeah,” Luke said. At least that verified Heather was still single.
“We should send them over a drink,” Zane said. “My wife would have my neck if I didn’t.”
Their server came over and got their beer orders. Zane saying to send another round to the table over there. “One is drinking tea. I believe she is the driver, the other two are having wine.”
He’d seen the glass in front of Heather. Guess she was the responsible one for the night.
“How’s the academy going?” Trace asked. “Got anything you can give me to put in my story? Maybe Kyle is going to butt heads with State Police on one of his cases.”
Luke knew Trace was basing his series right here out of Mystic and making his best friend that he’d lost the main character.
“Ask me what you want,” he said. “I’m an open book.”
Zane laughed. “I’m not sure I’d ever say you were an open book.”
“About this stuff I am,” he said, grinning. Their beers were brought out and he took a healthy sip of his. “Maybe I’ll get a mention in this book.”
“Most definitely,” Trace said.
They talked for a bit about life in general. He tried not to feel any jealousy that their lives were pretty much normal after living through the same things he did.
He wouldn’t say he had any PTSD or anything from his time in the service. Nothing like what Trace went through.
He’d done his time and got in and out unscathed physically and not many could say that. Mentally, he was hard as a rock going in and had probably built up many more layers over time.
When their food had been eaten, he was glad he’d gotten out of the house and Zane had forced the issue. It felt as if he had no life since he moved here. Not that he had much of one before, but he found that the little cottage he was living in was the most perfect thing he’d had in his life. After a long day, he was happy to come home and unwind and sit his butt in front of the TV. Sometimes he grabbed a beer, other times a bag of chips.
If it reminded him of the times he was in the projects with his father or one of his mother’s boyfriends never getting up and doing anything other than drinking or getting strung out on drugs at the end of the day, he pushed it off.
Not the same thing. Nor would he ever do that and say he’d worked hard all day and it was his right.
Those men didn’t know what hard work was and never would, but there were times it was difficult for him to get the comparisons out of his head.
