I could never be square, but I’ll still be there.
At seven, I walked into Salvation Station scanning the joint for Brooke.
“They’re over there,” Ryder said from the bar pointing to a place in the corner.
“Thanks.” I gave him a quick wave. The thing about small towns wasn’t just that everyone knew everyone else, but they were all connected in some way. Ryder was the deputy mayor’s twin brother, and husband to Trina, who was Sinclair’s good friend and worked with her in the same office as Brooke, who was married to the mayor. Sometimes I felt like I needed to create a chart to keep everyone straight.
“Hey you,” Brooke said, standing from her chair to give me a hug. She looked infinitely happier than she had when I arrived at the end of summer.
“Join us,” her husband, Mayor Mo, as I called him now, said, pulling out a chair. Initially, he didn’t like me, but once I put him straight that Brooke and I were never, and would never be a thing, he seemed okay with me.
“You remember Sinclair and her husband, Wyatt,” Brooke said.
I reached over the table to shake their hands. “Yes, good to see you.”
&nb
sp; “And Trina,” Brooke said.
“Yes. I remember you from the Harvest Festival. I hear you got your man,” I said with a nod to Ryder.
She smiled. “Despite myself, I did.”
I sat down.
“What’s your poison?” Ryder came over to the table.
I looked around and saw a variety of drinks.
“He’ll have a Yuengling,” Brooke called out.
I nodded that beer would be fine.
“So how was school?” Brooke asked.
“Good. I’ve got a good class.”
“You’d have hated me and Ryder in fifth grade,” Wyatt said. “We caused all sorts of trouble.”
“Nah, you’d have loved me and that would have made you behave.”
Wyatt laughed.
“Thank God Alyssa doesn’t take after you in that respect,” Sinclair said to him. “She’s in fifth grade, in Ms. St. James’ class. I’m sure you know her…Holly, not Alyssa.”
“I do know her.”
Brooke bumped me from the side and gave me a knowing look. I suspected she’d started drinking well before I got there. She wasn’t drunk, but she appeared loose enough that I could see her making some sort of comment about my being hot for teacher.
Ryder brought my beer to me. “As a teacher, can you keep this group from getting too raucous?”
“No,” I said, taking the beer. “But I do know some awesome science experience with alcohol that might distract them.”
The group laughed.
The attention turned to razzing Sinclair about being mayor and obscure laws that needed to be changed.
“Like that one that says a parent can be arrested if their child burps in church,” Ryder said. “I shouldn’t have to go to jail just because my kid has got gas.”