Page 17 of Caught Up In You

Owen

See you in a few

CHAPTER 7

WYATT

The Half Pint is packed.

Never in my life did I think I’d find a packed bar on Valentine’s Day to be a respite, but that’s what happens when your formerly quiet, empty house suddenly contains a baby and a mother who’s newly free from prison and driving you crazy.

Honestly, to put any of this on Eden is unfair. That angel baby is a goddamn delight these days, what with the smiling and the giggling.

It’s my mother who’s driving me out of my ever-loving mind.

“If we don’t get some more men in here, and quick, this whole event is going to be a bust,” Mrs. Eberle says, gazing around the bar with a furrowed brow.

And it’s true. The Half Pint is pretty devoid of dick tonight, which is unusual. But Mrs. Eberle is hosting a speed dating event to benefit the Women’s Auxiliary, and the men of Cardinal Springs seem to have gotten the message and stayed home.

So far the bar is mostly filled with women ranging in age from their early twenties (my friend Carson, looking nervous in jeans and a loose pink sweater) to their late eighties (Mrs. Tingle, wearing a floral caftan and raring to go). But there’sonly a handful of men, and most of them look like they came straight off a shift and had no idea there was anything other than drinking happening here tonight. They’re all holding hot-pink index cards, though, hand-printed name tags on their chests. Mrs. Eberle isn’t letting anyone out of here without participating.

Except for me, thank god, because I’m working.

“Well, you can always just mix it up and have everyone meet everyone else. Less heteronormative that way,” I say.

Mrs. Eberle pointedly ignores me and turns to Grace. “Where are your brothers?” she asks, wringing her hands.

Grace looks up from her perch at the end of the bar, where she’s hunched over her phone, watching the Grinders game. Her boyfriend, hockey god Decker Brooks, is playing the Vipers tonight, and she’s just hoping her man stays out of the box.

“Felix said he was coming,” Grace says, her eyes back on the phone, her brow furrowed as she follows the action. “He said he’d text the others.”

This is the only way I get to see her these days, since she spends most of her time either at the bookstore she opened a few months ago or watching hockey. She assures us that once the season is over, she’ll return to the land of the living. If I didn’t know just how perfect those two are for each other, I’d wretch. I don’t believe in love generally, but I make an exception for Grace and Decker, because I watched them both stumble ass-backward into happiness. That man would walk through fire for her. Hell, he’s leaving the NHL for her (well, for his broken bodyandfor her). He’s one of the very rare good ones.

And even so, I keep my eye on him. I know all too well how someone can seem like the perfect guy, and then one day you wake up and he’s pinning your best friend to your couch with his tongue and calling it “songwriting.”

But what did I expect? It’s not like I’ve ever had good role models for love or relationships. Maybe if I’d seen Grace and Decker together earlier in my life, I might be a believer. I might have been able to spot a snake in the grass when he slithered up to me. But I didn’t know sparkle from spit back then, and now I have to change the radio station several times a day just to avoid hearing the evidence of my worst choices climbing the country charts.

“Hey, hon! How’s your night going?”

Speaking of bad examples of love and relationships, in walks my mother, her hair dyed back to her favorite cherry-cola red. She’s also found the boxes of her clothes that I shoved in the attic and reclaimed her favorite jeans, the ones with the holes in the thighs and rhinestone butterflies on the ass. She looks like Shein Paris Hilton. I try to be pretty nonjudgmental about shit like age-appropriateness, but the woman is in her early fifties. Would it kill her to dress less like an early-aughts disgraced heiress?

And she apparently didn’t stop her exploring in the attic.

“That’s my shirt,” I say through gritted teeth, eyeing the vintage Stevie NicksBella DonnaT-shirt she’s wearing.

My mother grins like we’re thick as thieves. “Yeah, but who introduced you to Stevie Nicks? If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even have this shirt.”

Yep, that sounds just like the Libby Hart I know and barely tolerate. Always making everything about her. She’ll probably get a stain on it, then leave it on the bathroom floor. Just another one of her messes for me to clean up.

“Are you even allowed to be in a bar?” I ask.

“I’m not drinking, hon,” she says, and she has the gall to look annoyed. But I’ve learned to keep a close eye on her. I don’t mind if she makes bad choices for herself, but I’ll be damned if I let her decisions affect Hazel and Eden. I don’t even want her stayingwith us, but the house is still technically in her name. And a condition of her parole is that she has a stable place to live. As much as I’d love to tell her to kick rocks, I’m not in the mood to do battle with the State of Indiana.

I did, however, banish her to the basement. I’m not about to give up the primary bedroom to her. Not when I’m the one who has paid the mortgage these last nine years. Not when I’m the one who had the furnace replaced last winter and the new garage door opener installed last month. Her name may be on the deed, but that ismyhouse. It’s the only long-term home Hazel has ever known. It’s where Eden will grow up safe and happy for as long as Hazel wants to raise her there.

And Libby Hart will not fuck that up. Not like she fucked up so much of my childhood.

“If you’re not drinking, then what are you doing here?” I ask.

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