Graham nodded to them, and after they found a seat, Brystol came to Graham. “Want my help?”
He paused and thought about it for a second and nodded. “Grab your apron,” he instructed her. Brystol ran off, and Graham went over to her parents’ table.
“It’s okay if she works for a bit?” he asked them.
“I’m fine with it. She’s still on vacation from school,” Brooklyn said. “Wanna talk about these past couple of days?” She waggled her eyebrows at Graham, whose cheeks heated up with embarrassment.
“Can’t say I do.” But he did. He wanted to know what Rennie had said to Brooklyn. He would have loved to pull out a chair and listen to her tell him everything, but he would never betray Rennie’s trust in Brooklyn, no matter how desperate he was.
“Probably for the best, man.” Bowie chuckled. “Those two were squealing like schoolgirls. I think one of my eardrums blew.” He put his finger in his ear and started to wiggle it back and forth. Brooklyn pushed his shoulder and laughed.
“All I’m going to say, Graham, is you’ve made her happy.”
A feeling of satisfaction washed over him. He took their order with a shit-eating grin on his face and excused himself to go help two others who had sat down at the bar. As soon as Brystol came out from the back, he felt a bit relieved. He could handle the drinks easily, especially with her taking care of all the food orders. They had a good little system between them whenever she worked.
Graham finished helping the people at the bar and took Brooklyn’s and Bowie’s drinks over to them. He sat down again and sighed. He tried to think of a way to bring Rennie up without looking desperate for information but couldn’t.
“What did she tell you about Theo?”
“That dude was beside himself when he showed up,” Bowie said. “Pounding on my damn door like I owed him something. Pissed me off.” He leaned back, and Brooklyn rested her hand on his thigh. “The guy was yelling into my house, calling for Rennie, except he calls her Renee, which I’ve never understood, and I’m like, ‘She isn’t here. Haven’t seen her since she left with you,’ and then he says she left Canada, that he can’t find her, and all I can think is this guy did something to Rennie. Then I started to get really pissed.”
“And then I come downstairs and ask what’s going on, and he tries to come into the house! But Bowie isn’t having that and pushes him back outside,” Brooklyn told Graham. “I ask him again, and he tells me he and Rennie got into a fight and that she left. He expected to find her back in Cape Harbor. I was confused because if she were in town, why wouldn’t she be at our house, right?”
Graham nodded.
“So maybe you want to fill us in, because the only thing she said to me was that you and she had an amazing time together, and things were going to change.”
Graham tried not to smile or think about what her words could’ve meant. “Did either of them tell you what went down?”
Bowie and Brooklyn shook their heads. “Rennie said you knew, that she’d tell me but had to get back to Seattle for work.”
“She texted me and asked me to come and pick her up at the resort. I did. She didn’t say a word to me until we were in the middle of the ocean, and then she really let it all out.”
“Let what out?” Brooklyn leaned forward and stared intently at Graham.
Graham looked around the bar to make sure everything was okay. “Theo’s married.” He paused and let the words sink in. “And not in the ‘I’m separated and getting a divorce’ sort of way.”
“What the—” Bowie bit back whatever he was going to say because Brystol approached the table. She set down their order of cheese curds and made her way to the next table. Bowie leaned forward and whispered, “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Graham shook his head slowly. “Nope. There was a couple at the hotel who recognized Theo, and when they approached him, he referred to Rennie as hotel staff helping him to his room because he was drunk.”
Brooklyn covered her mouth and gasped. “Oh my . . . Rennie didn’t seem too upset when she was at the house this morning.”
A smile spread across Graham’s face. He hoped he was the reason she was no longer upset. Of course, he also knew how Rennie felt. “I think, regardless of his infidelity coming to light, they would’ve broken up sooner rather than later. She’s been unhappy for some time and said a lot of things over the holiday that led me to believe, even if he was single, Theo wasn’t the guy for her.” Graham was, though. He was, without a doubt, the man for Rennie, and he was going to do whatever he had to in order to prove it to her.