“There he is, the man of the hour, the town’s beloved.” Mrs. Underwood, who was approximately a thousand years old, wobbled her way toward me outside the clinic after I closed shop.
I stilled, inwardly punching my own face for forgetting to check the windows before I got out of work. There was always someone wandering past wanting a favor. A ride, a quick medical diagnosis, some life advice.
“Heard you’re treating Beau Duggar’s pregnant wife under the table ’cause she’s got no insurance. That’s kind of you.” She waved her walking cane in my direction, flashing her blindingly white dentures at me.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
And then, because it was still ingrained in me, because I was so deeply and acutely attached to the role this place designated to me, I forced myself to add, “Can I take you anywhere, Mrs. Underwood? Home, maybe?”
“Oh!” She put her hand to her chest. “Are you sure?”
No.
“Absolutely.”
“How nice of you to offer. I was actually on my way to your mother’s, if you can believe it. We’re working on the next luncheon.”
“It’d be my pleasure.”
It would also be my hell.
Mom lived on the other side of town, which meant a longer drive in the opposite direction of my destination, in the presence of the town’s biggest gossip. But I couldn’t backtrack, could I?
“Lovely. She’s telling me you are going to help her with the seating arrangements at the rehearsal dinner next week. You must be excited to see Wyatt getting married again.”
“Bursting at the seams.”
“You next?”
“Unfortunately for the future Mrs. Costello,” I jested mildly.
“Ah, c’mon. Anyone would love to have you, Cruzy.”
Not the town’s most infamous and gloriously scandalous waitress, so it seemed.
After I dropped Mrs. Underwood off—and walked her to my mother’s doorstep, arm-in-arm—I went back into town to take some promotional pictures for the Wellness Awareness Program I was taking part in.
I was going to run a marathon with a few more folks to raise money for a foundation designed to help children suffering from obesity. When I was done with the promotional stuff, I checked my watch to see if I had a moment to check in on Tennessee at the diner.
I had about three minutes before I needed to go back home and get ready for Wyatt’s bachelor party in the city.
My showers, my snacks, my coffee breaks—everything was timed perfectly with a stopwatch to ensure the utmost time efficiency.
I was about to open the door to Jerry & Sons—could almost spot her through the windows—when a small figure reeking of flowers blocked my way.
“Dr. Costello! How nice to see you. I’ve been hopin’ to run into you, actually.”
Mrs. Holland threw herself in front of me, in a pastel cardigan, designer jeans, and a Chanel purse. Her brunette bob was sharp, her eyes shrewd and cold. You could tell Gabriella was her spawn, because they both looked perpetually put-together and hungry.
“Ma’am.” I smiled patiently, peppering the gesture with a brief kiss on her cheek. “How’re you feeling today?”
Translation: unless you’re about to drop dead and require medical assistance, step away from the door and let me say hi to my girlfriend.
But was Tennessee really my girlfriend?
Probably not.
In fact, she would no doubt hit me with a sharp object if I ever called her that in public. Still, in my head, I could call her whatever I wanted.
“I’m well, thanks. And yourself?”
I looked past her shoulder at Tennessee inside the diner, serving a table of snotty teenagers who pretended to drop some utensils to look up her skirt. They laughed when she bent down, and for once I really paid attention to them, not her.
My blood ran cold. How dare they.
“Good. Good,” I heard myself say, anyway.
She turned her head to follow my gaze, realized who I was looking at, then pierced me with a look.
“Gabriella said you and she are taking a break.”
“We decided to stop seeing each other, yes.”
“Well, that’s just a shame. Listen, I know what it’s like, all right? Gabriella’s daddy was exactly like you. Very sought-after. Handsome, rich, well bred. He had trouble settling down, finding peace with just one woman. I understand the charm and allure certain women have on men.” Her voice became high-pitched, almost shrill. We both knew exactly who she was referring to. “But I’m here to tell you, honey, that Gabriella’s still interested. You had your fun on the cruise, and now you two can put it behind you. Sometimes a man needs to blow off some steam. Get things out of his system before he moves on. Better you did it now than after you got married.”
I wanted to tell her that her daughter couldn’t even compete with Tennessee Turner’s little toe.
Gabriella was a pretty present tied in a ribbon and Tennessee was a tempestuous ticking time bomb wrapped in a booby trap…and yet, she was the one I wanted.
But because I was me, the greatest guy alive, I bowed my head with faux-humility.
“I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Holland, but I really have to run.”
She grabbed my forearm with her bony fingers, pressing hard to stop me from going.
“Heard you were getting some kind of a medical award. That true?”
“Yes. The AAFP. American Academy of Family Physicians.”
She grabbed me by the collar, stepping into my face, her smile melting into a scowl.
“Listen here, Dr. Costello. My daughter is smart, beautiful, and earns a good paycheck. The best catch in this godforsaken town. She is willing to go a long way to make you two happen. I’d hate to see you blow it on some one-night stand that has stretched into a month or two. Not to mention, people’ll start talking, and I’d hate for that to happen.”
I had no idea how Mrs. Holland came to the conclusion Tennessee and I were an item, but asking her would be a way of confirming our relationship, something my reluctant girlfriend didn’t want and I didn’t need.
So instead of feeding my curiosity, I took a step back.
“Ma’am, I have the utmost respect for your daughter, but I’m in a place where I need to think long and hard about my next step, and it wouldn’t be fair on her if I jerked her around.”
By the time I got out of Mrs. Holland’s pacified (retracted) claws, I was about ten minutes behind on getting back home. I threw another annoyed look into the diner. Tennessee was now swatting away a truck driver who’d passed by town and looked to be persistently flirting with her.
Truth was, I didn’t feel powerful at all in that moment. I felt like a pushover. Cornered to let the townsfolk treat Tennessee however they pleased. And restricted by Tennessee herself to claim her as mine and protect her the way I’d always wanted.
But ultimately, answering Mrs. Underwood, or Mrs. Holland, or just taking whatever the fuck I wanted from my girlfriend was out of the question.
I was too good.
Too decent.
I shook my head and went home.
An hour later, I was in hell.
More specifically, in my brother’s Mercedes as we made our way to Winston-Salem to his bachelor party. I was the designated driver, because Dr. Cruz Costello—you guessed it—was always on DD duty.
That, in itself, wasn’t too bad.
I needed to cut back on the alcohol, anyway, if I wanted to keep that lithe runner’s body. But the fact Wyatt had gone ahead and invited Rob? That was unforgivable.
Downright stupid.
It was bad enough I’d had to endure the douchebag’s presence over dinner the other day while my mother fawned over him and moaned about what an embarrassment Tennessee was to Fairhope, but now I had to spend an entire night with him, along with Tim Trapp and Kyle, one of the useless sons who was responsible for Jerry & Sons’ title.
“Why’d your first marriage end?” Rob asked Wyatt from the passenger seat, cracking a beer open. He looked much less heartbroken than that day I’d found him on his ex-girlfriend’s front porch.
“She was a cokehead and bled me dry financially, but man, she was a hot piece of ass. How about yours?” Wyatt sucked on his vape pen.
“My first marriage broke up due to the fact that Julianna was a goddamn bitch.” Rob did a hiccup and snort kind of mix, that didn’t earn him any points, taking a pull of his beer. “She was straight up a moody cow and always bitched when we had to move places because of my jobs—how was it my fault that I needed to travel from school to school to coach? And Dani, well, Dani was a sweetheart.”
He downed the rest of his drink.
“Then what happened?” Kyle asked from behind, sitting in the backseat, rolling himself a joint.
“She found out I had a son.”
“Women.” Wyatt sighed, sucking on his vape. “Always so dramatic.”
Everyone laughed.
“She planned a trip to Fairhope to surprise me for my birthday, bring me back to my hometown, see my parents, and I had to explain to her why we couldn’t go,” Rob whined.
“You hid the fact you had a son from her?” I asked.
It was the first time I’d spoken since we hit the road, so everyone turned toward me to ensure they heard right.
Silence descended on the car before Rob answered.
“I’m not exactly proud of that, man.”
“Sort of sounds like you only came back home because every other plan fell through,” I said roughly.
Rob’s face sobered, and he put aside his empty beer can. “I came home because it was time to man up. I made a mistake. I’m paying for it now.”
“Water under the bridge.” Wyatt waved a hand, trying to calm things down. “You’re back, it’s all good.”
“Look, I know I really fucked it up with her. Nessy, I mean.”
Julianna and Dani, too, Sir Fucks-a-Lot.
“You gonna try to win her back?” Kyle licked the rollie paper of his joint from side to side.
Tim was napping in the backseat at this point between Kyle and Rob, totally checked out. That’s what happened when you had to pay child support to two different women and held onto three jobs.
“Hell yeah.” Rob chuckled. “Nessy still has a killer body, a sassy mouth on her, and she is the mother of my son. Bonus points—she pays her way through life, which can’t hurt in my financial situation. Figure if she hasn’t come for my throat financially yet, she’s not going to.” He cackled, shaking his head. “Though I mean it about helping her out. I’m going to start paying for Bear’s stuff. In the meantime, I’m going to play the tortured saint for a few months and hopefully crawl back into her bed for a bit, at least. Think she’ll have me?”
“Sure,” Wyatt said.
“Maybe.” Kyle cocked his head.
Snorting out, I said, “She’s not stupid or desperate, you know.”
“What’d you say?” Rob’s hand found my shoulder.
I shook him off.
“Nothing.”
We got into a swanky sports bar twenty minutes later.
There was a black vinyl booth reserved for us. Country music blasted through the speakers, football games were playing on huge flat screen TVs on the walls, and there were people grinding and dancing a few yards from the bar, which connected to some sort of a dance club.
I had the acute sense of being the only responsible grown-up in this bar, with the average IQ in the place equating to that of a half-eaten sub. Wyatt was my brother, so loving him was part of a package deal, but I never understood his decisions.
Especially the one to invite one of my ex-best friends to his bachelor party.
The waitresses—who wore even less than Tennessee’s diner uniform—served food in black thongs, a matching bra, and a white silk tie. We started with a round of drinks and some tequila slammers, ordered food, and then more tequila slammers.
Everyone downed their alcohol like it was a competitive sport while I watched and prayed no one puked in the Mercedes on the long drive back home. The car wasn’t mine, but the headache of getting it cleaned afterwards would be.
Seven shots and four beers later, my brother and his friends were treading close to disaster territory with a side of alcohol poisoning. They were about half a step away from getting matching, horrible tattoos they’d definitely regret later.
Wyatt, Kyle, and Tim—the latter seemed visibly more awake after drinking his own weight in shots—dragged their nearly-middle-aged asses to the dance floor, grinding their crotches against college girls to the sound of Sam Hunt and Blake Shelton.
Rob stayed behind. Didn’t take a genius to know it was because he had a bone to pick with me. I studied my glass of water like it was the most interesting thing in the universe, wondering if I could make him drown by pushing his head into it.
“So,” Rob said.
“So.”
“I kind of figured you’d at least pick up the phone and call me after you found out I was in town.” He sat back on the vinyl, eyeing me behind the rim of his whiskey glass.
“Same could be said about you.” My voice was terse, smooth. “I wasn’t the one who went MIA for thirteen years.”
“First time I saw you again, you were with Nessy, and you didn’t seem all too happy to see me.” Rob put his whiskey down, angling his entire body toward mine. “What’s going on between you and my ex, Cruz?”
It took everything in me not to tell him the truth. That we were fucking, and laughing, and bantering, and getting to know each other.
That lately, Tennessee stopped spraying her hair into something that resembled plastic, and dropped the weird nails, and slowly began to realize people might see her for who she was if she just gave them a chance.
It was like Cobain’s quote: “I’d rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I’m not”. She decided to be herself, unapologetically. Honoring herself and who she was. Not making amends or trying to appease the people in town.
That I was more than ready to pick up the pieces he’d left behind, and I didn’t think he deserved half a chance with her, even if, unfortunately, she had to put up with his existence for her son’s sake.
But I knew she would never forgive me if I told her ex-boyfriend the truth.
I took a sip of my water. “Not sure how it’s any of your business.”
“I’m her ex.”
“You were kids, and you fucked off before you pulled out of her. You want to know something about Tennessee’s life, ask her, not me.” I slammed my glass against the table.
“Don’t think I don’t remember how you used to pine for her.” He looked angry, contemplative, and constipated. Guess he tried to appear tough.
A lopsided smirk met my lips. “You’re drunk.”
“That might be so, but I’m also right, aren’t I? Am I going to have competition here? The least you can do for me is be frank.”
“Actually, Rob, I owe you jack shit where Tennessee Turner is concerned. If my memory doesn’t fail me, and it rarely does, I was the one who was supposed to ask her out all those years ago. I won the game.”
Was I actually bringing up the rock-paper-scissor encounter from before my balls had fully dropped as though it meant anything?
Wyatt, Kyle, and Tim were taking shots from the inside of waitresses’ cleavage and howling to the ceiling while Rob and I were engaged in a stare down that would have been tense had he been able to focus properly in his drunken stupor.
“You’re seriously still stuck on this?” His mouth dropped. “She wanted me.”
“You fucking left her.”
“You don’t know the whole story.”
Rob’s head reared back, and he stared at me with so much hatred, I wondered if I’d ever known him at all. I was putting a dent in his carefully designed plan to make Nessy wife number three.
He wasn’t prepared for resistance from any of us.
Thought he’d walk right in and play daddy to Bear and husband to Tennessee.
His on-hold family, that he’d kept on the back burner, in case all else failed.
And that Tennessee, the town nobody would be so happy, so grateful she’d welcome him back as though she had no pride or self worth. As though she didn’t deserve better than him—hell, than all of us.
“Enlighten me, then.”
Wyatt was now French-kissing a woman who was definitely not his future wife in my periphery. I’d have felt worse for Trinity, if she didn’t patronize her older sister as if she herself had her life all figured out.
Rob blew out air, standing up and sliding out of the booth.
He began to pace.
“I was too young. Way too young.”
“So was she.”
“Cruz, I asked her to abort it.”
I saw red. All. Fucking. Red. I couldn’t see anything but the blood I wanted to draw from that bastard at how he’d just reduced Bear—a fucking amazing kid he’d had nothing to do with shaping—to ‘it’.
“It has a name now. A personality, too. Likes. Dislikes. It was growing inside her. Keeping it was her right.”
“If I’d stayed, I would never have had a chance to be something. I wanted more for myself.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re giving me your side of the story after being so self-sacrificing and stoic for so long. I’m really starting to root for you on this hero’s journey of self-discovery,” I said sarcastically. “You planning on backpacking through Europe to find yourself next?”
“She decided for both of us. It wasn’t fair.” Rob yanked at his hair, shaking his head.
“Fair flew out the window the moment you turned your back on her, you bastard.”
Rob reached for his drink, emptying the glass in one swig and slamming it against the table, sneering.
He looked up, his eyes empty and cold.
“You’re still in love with her.”
And you’re still not.
If he loved her, he never would have acted the way he had. Or like this.
“Just remember, Cruz. Even if you fucked her, she is, and always will be, my leftovers. I was there first. I tasted her first. I—”
I didn’t let him finish the sentence.
I tackled him to the floor, throwing the first punch, which landed square on his nose. He got up and stumbled backward, steadying himself by grabbing the edge of another booth and someone’s wig with it.
The person slapped Rob’s hand away. Rob smiled at me, his teeth bloodied with the popped vessels I probably damaged with my fist.
Blake Shelton sang that God gave him someone, and I was about to hand the Almighty another son of His in the shape of Robert Gussman.
My ex-best friend hurled his entire weight at me, crouching down to try to get me in the stomach. But I was faster, not to mention sober, and sidestepped, making him land against our empty booth in a heap of limbs.
He groaned in pain, and I heard the music lower and people behind us running to break up the fight.
I grabbed the hem of his collar, lifting him up and tugging at him until his eyes found mine.
“Don’t.”
I punched his face.
“You.”
I punched his stomach.
“Dare.”
I kicked him in the balls.
“Call her leftovers.”
Punch. Punch. Punch.
Rob’s entire face was bloodied, but he still managed to throw a hook straight into my eye socket when I wasn’t expecting it. I tripped a few steps, Wyatt’s arms catching me before I bounced back and went for Robert’s full destruction.
Tim and Kyle pulled Robert away, breaking us up.
“Holy shit, Cruz. What the fuck?!” Wyatt boomed, pushing me violently toward the door, his expression roaring, his lips still glittering with a stranger’s watermelon lip gloss.
Rob, Kyle, and Tim stayed behind. We spilled out to the humid summer night, and I blew out air, my body buzzing with violence.
“He’s a son of a—gun.”
“He was one of your best friends.” Wyatt pointed at the door to the club.
The two bouncers outside looked at us like we were guests on Jerry Springer—when the baby daddy who impregnated five women in a span of three days just walked in to hear his paternity results.
“What’s happening to you, brother? Don’t think I haven’t noticed you got cozy with the other Turner girl. I didn’t say shit because I figured you’d drop her after the cruise, but Jesus Christ, this is getting to be too much.”
“Too much what?” I challenged him, arching a brow.
“Too much trouble for someone like her.”
I threw my head back and laughed. “You’re marrying her sister.”
“Her sister’s different. Trinity’s harmless. A church mouse.”
“Well, Tennessee is all venom and honey. Dangerous but irresistible. She’s better than Trinity. Better than all of them.”
“In the sack, maybe. But—”
I grabbed the hem of his shirt, no longer giving any damn about my precious reputation.
I pressed my nose against his. “Don’t. This is the last time you talk about her like that, got it? Next time, your face will be the shape of my fist.”
“Wow. Okay.” He pushed me away, taking a few steps back. He turned around and kicked a trash can, pouring its contents onto the sidewalk. “Goddammit!”
He paced back and forth.
Robert, Kyle, and Tim trickled out of the club, sweaty and disoriented.
Rob looked at me with murder in his eyes, pointing a finger to my face. “I’m not getting into a car with this psycho.”
“Better get a head start if you want to make it home by morning. West’s that direction, in case your drunk ass needs a map.” I spun the keys on my index finger, starting toward Wyatt’s car.
They all trailed behind me, Robert included. Wyatt was the first to catch my step.
“Is it serious?” he asked.
I knew exactly what he meant.
I weighed the pros of telling him the truth. There was no way at least some of this evening wasn’t going to make its way to Mrs. Underwood, who’d make sure to tell everyone else in Fairhope.
No point in pretending otherwise.
“Yeah.”
“Does Mom know?”
“No.”
“Are you going to tell her?”
I rubbed my chin. “If Tennessee’s okay with it. Either way, we’ll wait until after your wedding. I don’t want your bride to die of a heart attack.”
“I appreciate it. Finding a third one would be a hassle.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. You still have most of your hair and a respectable chunk of inheritance. You’ll be all right. Just don’t tell anyone before Tennessee and I are ready to.”
“You got it, bro.”
There was silence for a few moments. I wondered if the other guys had heard us. I wasn’t sure if I wanted them to know or not.
“You kissed someone else,” I pointed out to Wyatt.
He sighed. “Baby bro, not all relationships are the same. Trinity and I have a very good idea of what we want from each other. I doubt she expects faithfulness from me. She just wants to marry into money and stop working.”
“Good,” I said. “Because she is a pretty crappy nurse.”
“Nessy is a good waitress. Kyle says Jerry told him she gets the best tips.”
“She’s talented.”
“I hope she makes you happy.”
“Wyatt?”
“Whaddup?”
“Tell Trinity what happened tonight. Because if you don’t, I will.”
