Fifteen
Brian
Max surveyed the track of land that bordered Grizzly Pointe. If he was going to save his town from its own ignorance, and activists who might threaten it, he had to act quickly. Making a decision he hoped he wouldn’t regret, he pulled out his phone and called Mayor Madison. It was time to put his plan into action and the quickest way for word to get out, so the bears were protected, was to call a meeting of the board.
Ten minutes later, he ended that call and punched in the number for the Seattle Institute of Zoology. He wanted all his ducks in a row before he told Mia and one of those ducks was her job. If all went as planned, he could save the bears from assholes with guns, stop activist from foaming at the mouth all while giving Mia a reason to stay.
There was a lot riding on this, the least of which was his future happiness with a woman who would put up with a man like him. He chuckled when he thought back to a conversation he had with his cousin and the words of wisdom he’d imparted. “There aren’t many women out there that can put up with men like us. You find one, whether you got time or not, don’t let her get away, Max. Trust me, I know,” Jack had told him and he’d laughed it off.
However, his parting words, “You find the right woman you won’t be able to cause them a moment of pain,” had stuck in his gut, fed a desire to find the right one. Barring any hiccups, and Mia’s natural inclination to think things over for a million years, Max was sure he’d found the right woman. The moment her face pinched in terror for her bears, the instinct to find a solution to calm her fears took hold. Jack was right, Max thought. You find the right woman you’ll move heaven and earth to keep them happy, and die trying if you have to.
“Your turn,” I told Jess as I placed my laptop on the kitchen table.
“My turn what?”
“Log into your Facebook account, it’s time for you to look for Brian. I agreed to consider a relationship with Max and I’m doing that, now you have to look for your long lost love,” I reminded her.
I’d spent the afternoon on the phone with my employers trying to arrange a meeting to discuss my suspension. Surprisingly, they’d agreed to talk with me in person on Monday. That meant I had to leave Trails End by Saturday, less than two days from now to prepare. That also meant I’d be parting ways with Aunt Jess and saying goodbye to Max. Which also meant I only had two days to help her find Brian and to make a decision about my relationship with Max.
Because of my concerns about his feelings for Annie, I’d been skeptical about his feelings for me. I had to know once and for all how he felt and I planned to use the next day and a half to do just that. I realized this morning, after the night we’d spent together that I’d never wanted anything more than to explore what we had. I knew what I wanted, but I had to make sure that his heart didn’t belong to another before I put mine on a silver platter.
As for Jess, she got me into this so no way was I falling headfirst into possible heartache alone.
“Mia, I don’t think—”
“Type his name, Jess,” I insisted.
Jess looked at the screen, looked at me, then sighed and began to type the name Brian Snodgrass into the search bar.
“There are too many and I don’t know where he lives.”
“Type in his name and the name of the college, he attended,” I instructed. When she did this a half a dozen Brian Snodgrass’s pulled up and I watched her go stiff.
”God, there he is,” she whispered.
“Which one?”
Jess moved her finger across the pad and then clicked on one of the names. When his page pulled up showing all his personal information as well as posts, I told her “When you reconnect, tell him to check his privacy setting. The whole world can see his stuff.”
Brian Snodgrass, aka love of Jess’s life, was not only single, but ohmylanta was he hot.
He had a full head of salt and pepper hair, mostly dark, with bright blue eyes and a jaw that would put Robert Pattinson’s to shame. He hadn’t gone soft around the middle, looked active in cycling and ohmyfreakingod he lived in Seattle.
“Jess, he lives in Seattle,” I shouted.
“Holy shit,” she whispered.
“Jess, he’s single,” I shouted again.
“Holy shit,” she kept repeating.
“Jess, send him a friend request,” I squealed as I jumped up and down.
She was still in shock, just sitting there, so I shoved her hand aside and moved the cursor to click on the friend request. When it said sent, I sat down next to her and we both stared at the screen and waited.
We were still staring at the screen when Maxine walked up behind us twenty minutes later.
“What are we looking at?”
“Jess’s long lost love, we friend requested him,” I explained.
“How long since she’s talked to him?”
“Twenty-five years,” Jess mumbled.
“I’ll get the chips and beer. Have you stalked his page yet?” she asked as she opened the fridge.
“Yeah, he’s single,” I told her.
“When was the last time he posted?”
“Umm, looks like about two months ago. Shit, it might take him weeks to see your request,” I whined.
“Scratch the beer and chips then, Mia’s right, this could take a while,” Maxine replied.
Just then, her front door opened, slammed, and then we heard Max bellow “Mia?”
Something about his tone told me he was pissed and I had a bad feeling I knew why.
“Kitchen!” Maxine shouted back.
When he entered, he stopped in front of his mother, leaned in, and then stared her down. When she didn’t so much as flinch, his eyes shot to mine and tried the same tactic so I smiled like the innocent woman I am.
“Which one of you set the fire?” he finally asked.
“Pardon?” Maxine replied like the innocent woman she was not.
“Christ, it was you, wasn’t it?” Max growled.
“I’ve been here all day, haven’t I Jess?”
Both looked to Jess for confirmation and Jess nodded without taking her eyes from the computer as Maxine continued on with, “Shame about his boat, he must have pissed someone off don’t you think?”
“Is whatever this was about over?” he snapped ignoring her professed innocence.
Maxine looked at me and answered truthfully.
“Not a chance in hell.”
“Swear to God, I should put you in a home. Burnin’ boats, huntin’ killers, selling fuckin’ sex toys door-to-door to my men, and now you’re draggin’ my woman into your games?” Max growled.
“Curly’s dead and that shit-for-brains chief was tryin’ to pin it on your “woman” Maximilian, what did you expect me to do?”
Max opened his mouth to bellow I had no doubt, but Jess shouted, “Oh, my God, he accepted my friend request,” and we ignored him.
Both Maxine and I moved behind Jess and watch over her shoulder as a chat box popped up with a message that said, “Jess?”
She sat stock-still and stared at the screen, so I nudged her. She looked at me with anxious eyes so I nodded towards the screen and told her, “Say, hi.”
“We aren’t done talkin’ about this,” Max barked from behind us so Maxine and I shushed him.
With trembling fingers, Jess typed “Hi, Brian,” and Maxine and I sighed in unison, grabbed each other’s hand for support, and held on tight.
“Mom,” Max shouted.
“In a minute we’re makin’ a love connection,” Maxine shouted back at him as we waited for Brian’s next response.
You could see from the chat box that he was typing, and in what seemed like forever he finally posted.
“Not a day has gone by in twenty-five years that you haven’t crossed my mind.”
Jess’s hands flew up and covered her mouth, and then the tears fell. She inhaled deeply, let it out on a shaky breath and then her fingers started flying across the keys. Maxine and I smiled at each other and then turned around to find a scowling Max.
He raised an eyebrow and Maxine mumbled, “Fine, I won’t go after Stetson again,” but the hand behind her back had its fingers crossed. Max, knowing his mother, shook his head and then looked at me. When he opened his mouth to no doubt bellow at me, I blurted out, “Talked to SIOZ today and they’ve agreed to meet with me on Monday,” to break the tension.
“Meet?”
“Yeah, I have to fly out on Saturday morning. It was the only time I could secure a pilot to take me back to Fairbanks.”
Surprisingly, Max smiled. I expected him to argue about my leaving since I’d agreed to take the road less traveled. Instead, he pulled me in his arms and replied, “This calls for a celebration.”
“I’ll get my purse,” Maxine jumped in and Max turned his head and scowled at his mother. Clearly, his idea of a celebration didn’t include her tagging along, but she ignored his scowl and kept right on going.
“Jess you wanna come?” I asked as she sat glued to the computer. She nodded and held up a finger indicating she’d be right with us.
“Guess its Last Call instead of my house,” Max whispered as he nuzzled my neck.
“You’ll survive,” I giggled. When he bit my neck in retaliation, my knees went weak and he chuckled in response.
“Ready,” Maxine shouted so Max let me go with an ear nip and squeeze, then took my hand and pulled me out of the kitchen as Jess followed.
As we made our way to our vehicles, Maxine and I threw question after question at Jess. “What did he say,” “Are you gonna get together with him” “Did you tell him he was the love of your life?”
Seeing as we all couldn’t fit in Max’s truck, Maxine and Jess piled into my aunt's rental car, a two-seater BMW. Only Jess would drive from Fairbanks in a high-performance sports car instead of an SUV, she wouldn’t let anything like a little mountain get in the way of her fun.
“I’ll tell you both at the bar, but to answer one of your questions, yes, I’m gonna get together with him when we get back.”
Ten minutes later, we walked through the doors of Last Call and grabbed a large table in the back. I held my breath to see who would wait on us, though, to be honest; I kind of hoped it was Annie.
I wanted to see how they interacted if he watched her at all while we ate. I know my unease may be irrational, but I had a lot riding on the answer to this question. My mother would say to trust your instincts, but where men were concerned my instincts were crap. That being said, my gut told me he didn’t, he wasn’t the type of man to be unsure of anything, least of all his own feelings. So, while I watched Jess staring at the computer this afternoon, waiting for her second chance, I made a decision. I decided if I didn’t have an answer by the time I left, I’d take a leap of faith. Jess was right, I didn’t want to live with regret and question answered, or not, Max was worth the effort even if he changed his mind. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Barring the unthinkable (finding out he loves Annie), I was gonna move here and give it a go with Max.
When Ralph came to the table instead of Annie, I was a tad disappointed since it would have been a chance to ease my mind. He handed us menus, took our drink orders, and then left to fill them.
Several of Max’s men shouted their hello’s as we waited and then Suzy and Joanne walked into the bar. Seeing our party, they made a beeline for our table and pulled up chairs. Max hooked me around the neck and pulled me into his side and I was just about to ask Jess about Brian when a loud crash pulled our attention from the table. We looked up, saw Annie swaying as Ralph bent down to pick up our spilled drinks. I watched in confusion as she started laughing.
“Whoops, didn’t see you there Ralph,” she mumbled, then bent down and tried to help him, but he swatted her hand away.
“You’re drunk,” Ralph growled and I heard both Max and Maxine mumble “Christ.”
When Annie tried to stand, she lost her footing and went down on her ass in the middle of the broken glass. She burst into laughter as Ralph tried to help her up, her jeans soaking up the beverages as sat there. Annie kept on laughing as Ralph grabbed her by the arm that is until her gaze landed on Max. When she saw Max and me, her laughter died and then turned to tears. Max mumbled “Shit,” then rose from his chair and made his way over to her.
My heart started pounding as I watched him help her off the floor, and my stomach felt ill when she buried her head in his chest and wept.
He asked Ralph “Did she drive here?” and he nodded as Max held her up.
Annie wailed, “I should have told you I loved you sooner,” in great sobs in Max’s chest and I felt the color drain from my face.
Max closed his eyes at her words and held her tighter as she continued to cry. They stood there in a clutch, and Max’s face softened from anger to one I couldn’t recognize. Eyes glued to the scene in front of me, my heart rate increased as he whispered in her ear, ran his hand up and down her back, then turned his head towards our table looking for his mother. And not once did he look at me.
Like they communicated across some mother-son connection, Maxine got up and walked over to him. He spoke to her in a whisper and both looked back at me as Maxine nodded. When he was done, she made her way back to the table as he turned, an arm around Annie’s waist, and headed for the door.
That feeling you get when you know something bad is about to happen tightened in my gut as I watched Max walk out the door. I waited for him to look back at me, to give me some kind of sign what was happening, but he walked right through the door without a backwards glance.
When Maxine made it to the table, I asked, “What’s happening?” then held my breath for her answer.
“Max needs to take Annie home, get her situated, and doesn’t know when he’ll be back, so he asked me to tell you he’d call you later if he could,”
“Okay,” I whispered back, but the knot in my gut started to spread to my chest.
“He’s just taking care of a friend,” Jess replied.
“Yeah, I’m sure it’s nothing,” Suzy chimed in.
“That’s what friends are for, right?” Joanne added to the mix and I smiled as if I didn’t have a care in the world.
Four sets of eyes watched me carefully as I processed what had just happened. Trying hard to rationalize why Max felt the need to be the one who took care of her, while leaving me here with no indication as to what was happening, I couldn’t come up with one. Then, feeling like a bitch since Annie was upset. I decided I needed to change the subject before I succumbed to my own insecurities and blurted out “Tell us about Brian, Jess.”
Jess, she didn’t miss a beat, she knew I needed a distraction so she saved me from sympathetic eyes when she gave us the full rundown on one Brian Snodgrass CPA.
“He’s been in Seattle for almost twenty years, can you believe it. All this time we’ve lived in the same city.”
“Technically, you don’t actually live there,” I reminded her. Crashing at a garage apartment a few times a year didn’t qualify in my book.
“He has three kids, but he’s been divorced for five years. We’re gonna have dinner at seven on Monday to catch up and with any luck, I’ll be in his bed by eight,” she laughed.
“When we get home remind me to pull out my bag of goodies, I’ve got edible massage oil that tastes like strawberries,” Maxine told her.
For the next two hours, Jess regaled us with her summer fling with Mr. Snodgrass. We heard about skinny-dipping in the ocean, hot sex on the beach, and how she cried when she walked away from the love of her life. However, the whole time she spoke, I only gave her half my attention, the other half was on my phone. It sat on the table mocking me as I prayed it would ring.
I kept reminding myself I wouldn’t want to be with a man who didn’t care enough to help a friend home, all while working myself up that he hadn’t called. This is why I’ve avoided relationships thus far. They’re messy and you turn into a twelve-year-old. I’ve seen many of my highly rational, highly educated friends, men and women, I might add, turn into raving lunatics when matters of the heart were involved. And, as the night dragged on, my sanity began to slip towards childish levels and I feared I’d be the same.
By ten o’clock, there was still no call and when the ladies were ready to leave, I had to ride with Suzy and Joanne or ride in Jess’s trunk. As we pulled out of the parking lot, I was quiet, my mind was coming up with a million different scenarios as to why he hadn’t called.
- He was tired after a long day so he went home.
- She was ill and he was holding her head while she puked.
- They were playing Scrabble while she drank coffee to sober up and he’d gotten a triple word score and forgotten to call in his excitement.
- While playing Scrabble, he looked into her eyes and remembered why he kept coming back for two years and was now making love to her.
See, I’ve turned into a twelve-year-old.
“You wanna run by her house and see if he’s still there?” Suzy asked breaking me from my thoughts.
“What? No, no I’m fine. She’s just a friend, I trust him,” I lied.
“Really?” Joanne asked
“Really, what?”
“You trust him? Girlie, if I had a dollar for every man that has screwed me over, I’d be living in the Bahamas with hot manservants by now. The only man a woman can trust is her daddy.”
“Every man you’ve ever been with?”
“Every man,” Joanne replied.
“Why don’t we just drive past her house to set your mind at ease,” Suzy replied and I bit my bottom lip in indecision.
They all screwed her over?
I dated once or twice, found them lacking and then moved on. The longest relationship I’ve ever had was Donald—five dates—and then I’d cut him loose. I’d never been screwed over by a guy cause I was too busy trying to get rid of them.
Hmm, maybe I wasn’t a good judge of character. Maybe I didn’t know Max as well as my gut thought. Maybe I SHOULD drive past and make sure he isn’t in her bed . . . or, maybe I should trust him . . .
I was still trying to decide what to do when Suzy came to a stop and whispered “Shit.”
When I didn’t respond, she nudged my shoulder and pointed. When I turned my head, I saw a cute little white house, not a log cabin, surprisingly, but a white bungalow that looked well taken care of. There were flowers filling the beds, a rocking chair on the cute little front porch that went with the cute little white house, and in the driveway of the cute little white house with the adorable garden was Max’s truck. In addition, the house was dark. As in not a light on in the place. My breath started coming in pants and I looked at my phone to see if I missed a text or call.
Nope, nada, nothing.
The knot in my chest started to strangle me as I pictured Max in the arms of Annie. I needed air, I needed to escape, I needed to go home, now, and never return.
“Take me to Maxine’s,” I choked out as I turned my eyes from his truck.
Joanne grumbled, “Men are all the same, even the hot ones,” as I closed my eyes to ward off the tears.
“Always the hot ones,” Suzy hissed in outrage and female solidarity of the “men suck” kind. Then she gunned her engine and took me home.
The whole way I kept telling myself “This is good, better to know now than after you uprooted your life, you barely knew him so no big loss.” So, by the time I’d walked in Maxine’s I couldn’t wait to pack my bags, leave all this behind as a lesson learned, and give Stetson what he wanted—me gone.
With no way to leave for another day, I went in search of Jess and her two-seater BMW.
“You ready to get back to Seattle?” I asked her as she lounged on the bed, laptop in hand.
“Ready, willing, and able she gushed as she looked at her screen.”
“No, I mean are you ready to go now.”
She stopped typing, looked up at me, and read me like someone who’d known me my whole life.
“What happened?’
“Max is still at Annie’s and he’s staying the night,” I told her like it was no big deal as I pulled out my bag.
“What?”
“Suzy drove past, his truck is in the driveway, and all the lights are out. He told Maxine he’d call me, but he didn’t, you do the math.”
“Mia, there could be a perfectly reasonable explanation—”
“Jess, I’ve known him a week, he’s known her for two years. Occam’s razor says that in any given set of explanations for an event occurring, it is most likely that the simplest one is the correct one. I am not the simplest answer, I’m the complicated one. He had feelings for Annie and didn’t realize it till tonight is the simplest answer.”
“Mia—”
“Jess, please, I can’t face them. Let’s just pack our stuff and leave.”
“Right now?”
“The sooner we leave, the sooner you can see Brian and I can put this whole nightmare of a week behind me.”
“But Maxine’s in bed, we can’t just run out on her like that.”
“I’ll write her a note explaining I had to get back sooner that something came up.”
“And Max?”
“I’ll send him a text message. He can read it in the morning while they have coffee together,” I bit out.
“Mia—”
“Jess, I wanted this, so much, more than I even knew till I saw his truck sitting in her driveway. But he chose her tonight and I can’t bear to see them together, so please, can we just leave?”
“Fine, but I’m going on record now that I think you’re wrong about Max and I intend to tell you, “I told you so” when he comes after you.”
“Fair enough, but tell me this if you think I’m wrong. If you had slept with a guy, made a decision to take a leap of faith to see where it went even though you knew very little about him. Then you watched him walk out of a bar with his drunken ex as she cried about how much she loved him, without even saying goodbye, I might add. Then you go to her house and his truck is still there hours later and every light in the house is off, every stinkin’ one, what would you think?”
Jess stared at me, bit her lip in thought for a moment, then nodded, threw back the covers and replied, “Give me thirty minutes and we can hit the road!”