Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 105846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Lord knows, at this point, my sister and I both are emotionally locked up tighter than a billionaire’s vault. I need someone to gab and share feelings with.
Josie comes over by me, putting some tip money in the tip slot of the cash drawer and closing it up, clearly intending to get back to the real work. But something about the moment makes me blurt out words I’ve been wanting to say since Tuesday night.
“All right, I have to know. How do you know that bartender Clay?”
The exhale she lets out could be its own wind turbine and power half the town. “He’s the owner, actually, of The Country Club. Before last week, I hadn’t been there in a long-ass time.”
“Okay…but how do you know him?” I push with a teasing lilt. “Ex-lovers?”
She sighs. Looks over at me before her eyes become fixated on the floor, and another sigh escapes her lungs. “He’s my ex-husband.”
A bomb may as well have exploded above us.
“What? He’s your ex-husband?” The shock I feel is so consuming that I slap both of my hands down on the cash register, and it starts flipping out. Ringing and clinking and even spinning the numbers on its old-fashioned dial.
With wide eyes, I step back with my hands up, and Josie jumps in, slapping the noisy thing like it’s an angry alligator.
“I’m sorry!” I shout over the chaos, feeling so small you could fit me in your pocket. When am I going to stop messing crap up?
Still…this is huge!
“Are you telling me you were married?” I scream, just as the cash register stops wigging out and shuts up completely.
Camilla and Todd both suck their lips into their mouths and tiptoe into the kitchen and away from us.
“Yes,” Josie answers, her patience for me already depleted. “I was married. And now I’m divorced. Can we move on?”
My brain wants to self-implode.
“You. Got. Married?” My voice rises with each word. “You got married?” I gesticulate my hands wildly in front of me, and Josie puts herself between me and the glass counter defensively. “My sister got married, and then she went through a divorce, and I didn’t know anything about it? Why, Josie? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know, Norah.” She places two hands on her hips. “Probably for the same reasons I don’t know anything about your ex other than his propensity for bleeding. In fact, why are you in Red Bridge at all? Why did he come looking for you? What exactly is going on?”
Well, shit. This conversation took a hard left into a place I am not equipped to handle.
“You know what? I’m going to run down to Earl’s for a bit. I’ll be back shortly,” I redirect, taking off my apron and trying not to get trapped in Josie’s now smugger-than-smug smile.
“Uh-huh. That’s what I thought,” she says, and even though I’m not looking at her as I grab my purse and keys, I can hear her “Checkmate” smile in her voice. “We need whole milk again, so you might as well make yourself useful and grab two gallons. Oh, and while you’re there, get a gallon of oat, almond, and 2%, too.”
“Aye-aye, Captain.” I salute her like a diligent soldier and slip through the front door faster than a cat on the nip. She’s obviously not ready to air out all of her dirty laundry, and quite frankly, neither am I. Our secrets will live to see another day.
I keep my head down on the short walk across the square, lest I draw some kind of unwanted attention from townspeople after the article about my ex-fiancé’s grand visit to Red Bridge in the paper this past week, and pull my hair over my earbuds to make a curtain around my face.
The automatic doors to Earl’s Grocery open, and I step inside with Carly Simon reverberating through my ears. She sings about some guy and how vain he is, and I almost hate how much I can relate to this song and the fact that it makes me think of Thomas.
There’s a large, far-too-curious part of me that wonders how things went for him after he left Red Bridge with a protection order to leave me the hell alone. A man like Thomas King is used to getting what he wants and things going his way…all the time. His experience in this small town was the complete opposite of that. It goes without saying that it got under his skin. But the consequences of that? I don’t know.
Did he tell his father?
Does my mother know about what happened?
Is he actually going to leave me alone?
So many questions that I wish I didn’t have.
I pull my cell phone out of my pocket and purposefully change the song from Carly Simon to Lesley Gore and some lyrics with the empowering vibe I need.