Page 5 of Caught Up In You

I scoff. “And why do I need to leave for that to happen?”

“Because you walk like a herd of Clydesdales, and you can’t watch the housewives without pacing,” Hazel says.

“Those bitches stress me out,” I grumble.

“Wyatt, I love you more than anyone in the world other than this little peanut,” she says, nodding down at the baby, who is swiping at a dangling stuffed lion. “But it’s time for us to exitsurvival mode. Real life is waiting.Yourreal life is waiting. You’re not the one who had a baby. So please, go out and have fun before I die of guilt over this whole situation.”

An ache settles deep in my chest. “You don’t need to feel guilty. You know I’d do anything for you, Haze.”

She gives me a gentle smile. “I do know that. You’ve shown me time and time again. So what you can do for me now is get out of this house and take the old Wyatt out on the town.”

Which is how I wind up alone in my rattling old pickup truck, cruising down the highway toward my favorite dive bar. Alone, because I called my two best friends only to find out that Grace is up in Chicago, where her studly new boyfriend’s hockey team is playing a doubleheader, and Carson is home with the flu. I’m all by myself for the first time in I don’t know how long.

I’m not mad about it.

I dig into the center console, pull out a cassette, and pop it into the tape player. My wine-colored Toyota Tacoma was born in 1999 and is so bare-bones it doesn’t even have a CD player. I long ago decided to embrace the Stone Age technology, and I love to scour thrift stores and garage sales for tapes, which means that most of my music falls on the vintage end of the spectrum.

Now, Heart wails out of the staticky speakers, and I wail right along with them. As soon as I leave downtown Cardinal Springs and turn onto the highway, I press the gas pedal—hard—and let my voice soar right along with Anne Wilson’s. I grip the steering wheel and feel myself coming back online, my back melting into the old driver’s seat.

I’ve lived in the little brick ranch house on Mulberry Street for nine years, but my Tacoma is probably the closest thing I have to a home. The minute I was old enough to babysit, I started saving cash, squirreling it away where my mother couldn’t dip into it to cover utilities or buy movie tickets. Ibagged groceries, I waited tables, I weeded and mowed and shoveled mulch. I did any job I could find until I could afford my truck.

I was sixteen when I bought it. It was already eleven years old, and I got a pretty good deal on it because the tires were bald, the brakes needed replacing, and the windshield had a spidery crack from one side clear to the other. But I didn’t care. It wasmine, and the truck meant I wasfree.

So when I turned eighteen and my mom decided she was going to follow some biker from Orlando up to Indianapolis and that she only had room for one kid, I was content to load my meager belongings into that truck bed and set off to make a life for myself in Nashville.

My only regret was that Hazel had to go with Libby and not with me.

But then the phone call came five years later, and I loaded up this truck again to move back to Indiana. To clean up yet another one of Libby’s messes. To get my little sister back.

I’ve thought about upgrading the truck. At this point it’s a quarter century old. But the thought of parting with it makes my breath catch in my chest. So I keep it.

Besides, at this point I know how to fix basically every part of the damn thing myself. I can’t imagine owning a new car that would put me at the mercy of an honest-to-god mechanic. I’d rather change my own oil, thanks. Hazel demands that if I drive Eden around I use her Subaru, with its back seat and airbags, and I’ve got no problem with that. But for just me?

This truck is my homegirl.

My destination, Sorry Charlie’s, is only thirty minutes away, located on a quiet stretch of highway halfway between Cardinal Springs and Indianapolis. I met Glenn, the owner, years ago at a tattoo shop in Bloomington. The motto of Cardinal Springs seems to be “What’s your business is my business,” and when itcomes to my business, I don’t like to share. So when I need to unwind, to find a hookup, to drown my sorrows (or all of the above), I head to Sorry Charlie’s.

I’m just about to flip the tape in the deck when the dim lights of the Sorry Charlie’s parking lot come into view. I bounce the truck over the gravel and park. It’s Friday, so the bar is buzzing, which is good, because that means I have a chance of meeting someone. Going out isn’t the only thing that fell by the wayside when Eden came along.

My drawer full of vibrators are as exhausted as I am.

The interior of Charlie’s is dark and smoky, even though people haven’t been allowed to smoke inside for more than a decade. The stale memory of cigarettes lives in every crack and crevice. Most of the light in the room comes from a collection of flickering neon beer signs and a glowing jukebox in the corner, which is playing John Mellencamp. As soon as my worn motorcycle boots hit the sticky wood floor, I feel at home. I certainly spent more time in dive bars growing up than whatever trailer or cheap apartment Libby had us in.

“Wyatt! Long time,” Luke calls from behind the bar. His honey-blond hair is curling out the bottom of a ratty Colts cap that I know from experience smells like Budweiser and weed. He grins that crooked grin I like, and I slide onto the barstool in front of him. “Where ya been?”

“Family stuff,” I reply. “Can I get an Upland?”

“Sure thing,” he says, winking, and I’m just about to start psyching myself up to go home with him again—he’s sweet and a giver, but my clit is about a quarter inch north of where he thinks it is, and last time I tweaked my back trying to gently nudge him in the right direction. But when he slides the beer bottle in front of me, I notice some fresh ink on his forearm.camille, it says in dark, swooping script covered in a layer of Saran Wrap.

“You got a new girlfriend, Luke?” I tip my bottle at his new tattoo.

He gazes down at his forearm like there’s a golden retriever puppy there. “Yeah, we met Christmas Eve. Karaoke at the VFW. She brought down the house with ‘Gloria’ by Laura Branigan. She’s amazing.”

“Congrats, man.” I try to smile through the twinge of disappointment. I’ve been kind of fine with these last three months of celibacy—or at least too tired and distracted to care much. But coming to Sorry Charlie’s has broken the seal, and now I need to getlaid. Luke would have been a gimme, but now I’m going to actually have to do some work.

Ugh, I’m so tired.

I glance around at the motley collection of jokers hanging off barstools, crammed into booths, and—god help me—playing darts in the corner. And unfortunately, I think I spot a couple of repeats in the crowd. Guys Idefinitelydon’t want to deal with again, either because of their futons or their lack of bath towels or, in the case of the guy currently lining up a dart, his mother.

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