Page 55 of Artfully Wild
“Sheesh, Frank, mine isn’t dead.”
“May as well be,” he claps back and then quickly adds, “Sorry, sorry. That was too far. It’s just with Dean’s dad leaving my sister, it brings up a lot of old feelings.”
“You have feelings?” I joke.
“Only for people I can tolerate.”
“Sure.”
He leans back in his chair again, taking the position he had before, this time with his hands laced behind his head. “So, you’re obviously not here to deep clean my baseboards.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Okay, then what are you doing here, J?”
I pick up the cage next to me and before I set it on his desk, I shift some papers to the side, which he promptly takes over and stacks them neatly on the edge of his desk. Frank’s cage lands with a soft thump.
“Why the fuck is that bird in my bar?”
“C’mon, Frank. Hear me out,” I beg.
He stands instead, hands in the air like he could make the bird magically disappear with a wave of his hand.
“No. Whatever it is, no.”
“Not even if it means I get to spend the whole weekend with the woman I love? Alone? Without everyone trying to get involved with our relationship?”
That makes him stop and turn around. There have been very few times I have seen Frank surprised. He hides his emotions well, something I’m pretty sure Hudson learned from him. Butif you really look at him, I mean, really look, you can see that he’s actually not that good at hiding.
“Mind repeating that, son?”
“Skylar and I are going to that ski resort for the weekend. They want to meet with her about selling the store and go over the paperwork.”
“Okay, you’re going to come back to the part about selling the store, but first I need you to repeat what you said before.”
“Which part?” I ask, confused now, because I’m not even sure what I said.
“The part where you said you were going to spend the weekend with the woman you love?”
Did I say that out loud? Shit. I did. I mean, I know I love her, but I think that might be the first time I admitted it to anyone else.
“What about it?” My voice comes out steady and strong, because I may not have meant to admit it to him, but I sure as hell meant what I said.
“You said it out loud,” he answers as he shoves his hands into his pockets.
“I did.”
“I wasn’t sure how long it was going to take you to finally admit that.”
“What do you mean?”
He walks back toward the desk, but instead of taking back his spot behind it, he sits in the empty chair next to me and turns it until it is fully facing me. Leaning his elbows on his knees, his gray eyes meet mine.
“Son, I have watched you pine over that girl since the day you met her. I always thought you had something going on between the two of you in high school and then you told me about the deal you made. I remember the day you came in after school and you were the saddest I’d ever seen you. Happy ingeneral, but sad underneath it all. You and I both aren’t very good at hiding how we really feel.”
I remember that day too. We snuck out that night to go skating and just when I thought we could possibly get past the just friends barrier, she brought up making that stupid deal. I don’t know if it was because she was as terrified as I was, but I agreed. I would have agreed to anything she needed then. When I came into the bar later, I tried to mask how I felt I made the biggest mistake of my life, but apparently, I didn’t do very well.
“You carried on for weeks like your dog had died or something—”
