“The boy’s a barman,” said Davis, who still seemed to regard tending bar as some sort of sacred calling, akin to the priesthood. “He’s used to late nights and late mornings.”
Nick had been about to confirm this and use it as an excuse for his dragging his sorry body out of bed so late, but decided on the spur of the moment that the truth was the better option. “No,” he said ruefully. “Just too much home brew.”
He had been prepared to lose the respect of Zoe’s father but instead Davis threw back his head and laughed. “I guess you don’t get many drinks like that in your bar.”
“I’d have more customers if I did,” said Nick. “At first, anyway. And then suddenly less.”
“Then you’d get shut down by the Department of Health,” said Zoe’s brother, Byron. “That’s what happened when the bar where I used to work started serving cousin Tee’s home brew.”
“They tried to argue that they were using it to clean the toilets,” said Davis, shaking his head. “But the bureaucrats wouldn’t buy it. Even though it does make the bowl sparkle.”
Nick grinned. “Well it’s not making me sparkle, but it was great at the time.”
“You did drink a lot of it,” Zoe commented. “Do you remember much about last night?”
There was something about the way she had asked the question that caught Nick’s ear. Had something happened last night? She seemed too cheery for him to have said something stupid or offended her. Was it possible that they had… No. He would have remembered that.
He would definitely have remembered that.
He had, after all, been contemplating what her ass and breasts would feel like for way too long. There was no way he would forget it if he’d actually been able to put his hands all over her.
“Not as much as I would like,” he finally answered.
“Maybe that’s just as well.” She was smiling as she said it, but once again, Nick detected that certain something in her voice that suggested that maybe there was more that was remaining unsaid. He wracked his brain to try to think of what had happened last night, but found that brain-wracking in his current state was not a good idea.
“I hope I didn’t do anything dumb.”
“The dumbest thing anyone does when drunk on Tee’s home brew,” said Zoe’s sister, Karina, “is to keep drinking it.”
“Not the quite the dumbest thing,” said Davis, shooting a sideling glance at his son.
Byron rolled his eyes. “You go on one naked tractor ride and no one will ever let it go!”
Family breakfasts had ben rare in the Rothberger house when Nick was growing up. It was not that they had not been a loving family (they had been and still were), but there was always something else to do, always so much more going on. The Rothberger household had not just been about business, it had been about busy-ness. And when you put the two together they did not make for relaxed family meals.
That said, Nick had a hunch that, even had the family not been too busy, their breakfasts would still not have been like this. It was not just the plentiful food – grits, cornbread, cobbler and other stuff Nick had heard about only via rumor and the dire warnings of his cardiologist and personal trainer– it was not just the chatter, which was as plentiful as the food. It was an atmosphere of good cheer that hung in the air. There were no edges to the Blanchards; they simply were who they were, take them as you find them. It was all so… easy.
Nick wondered how much Zoe must miss this comfortable life, and how much she had been forced to change since moving to the big city. And now he was forcing her to change still more. Worse than that, he was suggesting that she needed to change, that she was better for it. That she wasn’t fine the way she was.
He was actively implying that the world she came from—the world of this welcoming breakfast, which he was enjoying so much -- was in some way less than the world in which he had been brought up.
He felt a little ashamed.
Not that there was anything wrong with the way he had been brought up or the life he led, but the idea that one was superior to the other was clearly nonsense, as he was coming to see. A person could be happy in either, or in both if they chose. Forcing Zoe to fit into the constricting mold of Vanessa Reese was like trying to put and elephant in a hamster cage. While trying to change her into Sabrina was selfish and… to be honest, it was wasteful; she was amazing the way she was.
He hadn’t really noticed before, but Zoe was a pretty great at being Zoe, and right now that seemed to Nick like the best possible thing that she could be. When they got back home, there would be some changes in how he went about teaching her. No longer would he be trying to change her for good, trying to convince her that his way of being was better than her way of being -- he would just show her how to fake it for a week. Then he could win his bet in good conscience.
The bet…
He was suddenly reminded of how much he wasn’t telling her. That he was, in fact, lying to her.
Should he be guilty over that too? No. It was just a bet. It wasn’t hurting Zoe or anyone else. It was fine. He returned to eating, forcing the pricking needles of conscience to the back his mind, where could safely ignore them.
“Have you kids got plans for the rest of the day?” Olive still believed Zoe and Nick to be a couple – or at least, she was trying to speed the process along (she had even tried to put them in the same room).
“Why don’t you show Nick round town?” suggested Davis.
Zoe’s wide brown eyes turned to Nick in question.
Nick nodded. “Sure. Why not.”
“Perfect!” Olive clapped her hands together and gave the two of them a beaming smile.
“Do you mind if I ask you something?” said Nick, as he and Zoe strolled down Main Street (pretty much ‘only street’) in the nearby town.
“Go ahead.”
“How do you grow up out here and not learn to ride a horse?”
Zoe rolled her eyes. “I can’t lasso a cow either. Hasn’t a visit here been enough to get some of those stupid preconceptions out of your head?”
“Apparently not.”
“After all, you grew up in the city but you do know how to ride a horse.”
Nick shrugged. “I had lessons. I had lessons in everything. I can still read basic Latin, I can row, play tennis, and dance the waltz. It’s like being prepared for the world’s most random game show.”
“That’s exactly what you’re preparing me for in a way,” said Zoe. “Who knows what might come up in the final exam.”
“Latin seems unlikely.”
“Good. Cause I’m not learning that.”
Nick looked about him. “This is a nice town. I can’t imagine why you’d ever want to leave.”
As they strolled down the street Nick saw people throwing them curious glances. Zoe waved to people she knew as they walked. The hominess of small town life was starting to grow on him.
“That’s because you don’t live here.”
“It’s not a good place to live?”
Zoe shook her head. “Oh no, it’s a great place to live. That’s half the problem. It’s such a great place to live that you never want to leave. And, assuming you want to do something interesting with your life - something different to what your Dad and your Grandad and his Grandad did – you gotta leave. And the longer you stay the harder it gets.” She shrugged. “I think I’ve found a pretty good balance. I visit often to see my folks and that works. Keeps me grounded. It’s a great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live her. It’s just too easy.”
‘Easy’ was a word that troubled Nick a lot in relation to his own life, although in a very different way. His whole life had been easy, his path through it greased by money and position. And that was great, not something you would ever want to complain about. But if everything is easy then you never get any real sense of accomplishment. Which, again, was a tough thing to bitch about – if the worst thing about your life was that you never got a sense of accomplishment t
hen you were generally considered pretty lucky and to be envied. But still, the void remained. If everything you had ‘achieved’ in life had been achieved solely through money then life was hollow. And if what you had achieved was a failing bar then the problem was suddenly worse. Nick was aware that he had bought his only achievement, and somehow he had still managed to fail!
They moved on through the town. Zoe pointed out her school, the place where she had got her first job, and the bar where she had sneaked in with a fake ID to try and get her first drink.
“Didn’t work,” she reported with a sigh.
“How come?”
“Look at this place,” Zoe indicated the town in general. “Everyone knows everyone. I came in the door, ready to introduce myself as Claudia Washington and order a beer, and Gus behind the bar says, ‘Hey Zoe, how’s your Pa?’.”
“You didn’t think of that before getting the ID?”
“Well you don’t, do you?” said Zoe, shaking her head at the stupidity of youth. “Damn ID cost me a fifty dollars.”
“That’d be a bargain in the city.”
“It may not have been that high quality,” admitted Zoe. “I think it was printed on cardboard.”
“My first fake ID cost five hundred dollars.”