Chapter 3

Jenna’s first night back at The Wheel was turning out to be far more interesting than she’d expected when it began. More people showed up after the firefighters. A few die-hard plant workers continued to nurse their lonely beers far longer than she would have thought possible, but one by one they gave up and left. Jenna was delighted. By this point they actually needed the space for paying customers.

“I’m ready to go, Tanner.” The blonde’s voice pierced Jenna’s ears as she moved around the floor. Looking at the couple, she could see what Tanner saw in the girl. She was beautiful, with soft blonde hair down to her waist, rosy red cheeks, and a body that rivaled that of a Playboy Bunny. Still, a part of her wondered what other reasons Tanner had for ending up with a woman like that. Other than her stunning beauty, she just didn’t seem like his type.

“You’re staring,” Hannah whispered.

“Crap,” Jenna huffed, turning away from them to make herself busy. “When did that happen, anyway?”

“Um, I think about two years ago or so?” Hannah shrugged. “I’m not really sure. They’re always breaking up and getting back together.”

“Why?”

“It could be that Tanner is smoking hot and knows it,” Hannah laughed. “He was cool when you guys were together in high school, but now… I don’t know. Since he’s been working at the firehouse, he’s just kind of found himself, I guess. He bounced around for a while, but Brandy landed him, and even though they fight like cats and dogs, and break up more than any couple I know ever has, they keep ending up back together.”

“I guess it’s really love if you can’t let it go, huh?” Jenna asked, trying her hardest not to stare at the couple.

“More like trying to shake the flu during the winter. No matter how much Nyquil you drink, it just won’t go away,” Hannah laughed. It got a chuckle from Jenna as well. But the laughter was short lived as whatever had been brewing between Tanner and his girlfriend began to explode right there in front of everyone.

“Enough! Brandy, you need to go! I can’t believe you’d do this to me!” Tanner shouted.

“Hey, bro, calm down.” One of the firefighters stood up to get in between them.

“Back off, Gary,” Tanner fumed. Turning to Brandy, he yelled, “I’m not going to keep doing this with you! You can tell me if you don’t want to be with me! You don’t have to flaunt other guys right in front of me!”

“I wasn’t flirting! You’re just overreacting!” she yelled back. “I didn’t even want to come here tonight and now you’re treating me like this! After I came down to the station to surprise you!”

“You didn’t come down to surprise me! It was probably just on the way back from your other boyfriend’s house!”

“There is nobody else! Tanner! I swear! You’re overreacting!”

“I’m overreacting?!? I’m overreacting! Then explain this!” He tossed his phone onto the table.

Jenna, and everyone else in the bar, looked on, wishing they could see what he was talking about. Brandy simply glanced down at the device before rolling her eyes. “That’s not what you think it is.”

“Really?”

“It’s not.” She began tearing up. “I was trying to put something together for you and he just got a little jealous. My photographers sometimes—”

She started flapping her hands up and down as if trying to wave away her anxiety. Her pretty face burned a bright shade of red and those big beautiful eyes welled up with tears.

Tanner held his hand out to her. “Stop! Just stop. Leave, Brandy. I survived tonight. Do you get that?!? We survive our shifts! I don’t need this kind of stress. Not with my exam coming up! I can’t do this with you anymore. It’s exhausting.”

“Please, baby, let’s just go somewhere and talk. I can explain all of it. I swear.” She began crying quietly onto his shoulder.

Tanner shrugged her off. “I’m done. I let you do this to me every single time we get together. How many times are you going to break my heart?”

Brandy sniffled and wiped her eyes. “You know what? Fine! I can’t believe I let you suck me back into this relationship when you’re so suffocating and don’t care about me pursuing my dreams. How could you get so hung up on my photographer sending you a proof from my shoot before it goes to print!”

“The shoot was for Christmas sweaters, and that ain’t Rudolph he showed me. How did he even get my number? What’s wrong with you?!? No, nothing, forget that. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you, Brandy. You show me day in and day out who you really are, and I keep choosing it. But not anymore, I’m done.”

The look on Brandy’s face as she gazed around at the patrons of the bar was a mixture of embarrassment and sadness. Jenna’s eyes glanced to Tanner, and for that brief moment, she wanted to go to him. She wanted to comfort him, but that wasn’t her boyfriend anymore. They were barely friends at this point.

“Yikes.” Hannah’s voice trickled into her thoughts. “Yeah, that’s what happens. And then next week they’ll be right back together again.”

“That’s so toxic.” Jenna shook her head. “I can’t believe he keeps going back to someone like her.”

“What? You think he should be with someone like you?”

“That’s not what I meant.” Jenna rolled her eyes.

“You sure about that? I would completely understand if you still had a thing for Tanner. He’s hot. And technically he did belong to you first.”

“No one belongs to anybody. People don’t own people.”

“Clearly you’re neglecting a huge part of human history.”

“Hannah, stop it!” Jenna giggled. “I loved him. I’ll always want what’s best for him. I do for all of my exes.”

“Oh yeah? What about Mike?”

“Gag! He can fall into a pit of broken glass. But I’ll still wish him a speedy recovery,” she joked. Mike had cheated on her while her life was imploding. An ex barely worth mentioning, but Hannah had made her point.

So Jenna stole one last look at Tanner, who’d separated himself from everyone else, before getting back to work. It was getting late and people were starting to leave. The atmosphere was winding down once again as Jenna walked around cleaning tables. Hannah looked exhausted as she sat at the bar with her arms folded and her eyes trying desperately to stay open.

“This is why I told you to take it easy on the Shirley Temples,” Jenna joked.

Hannah sniffed in a gust of air before waking herself up. “Sheesh. I had no idea how old I was that I can’t even stay awake until one in the morning anymore.”

“Well, you had work today, but thank you for coming. I love you so much for tonight. I don’t know how I would have made it through without you. You want to grab lunch tomorrow?”

“Absolutely!” she said, glancing over to Tanner, who was still sitting at a table by himself. “Tell me how that works out for you.”

“Nothing to tell because I’m not doing anything but putting him in a cab and sending him home!”

“Alright, I guess lunch tomorrow then. Tell your dad I said good night.”

“Will do, and say hi to your folks for me.”

Hannah simply gave her a two-fingered salute before grabbing her bag and walking out of the bar.

Jenna took her time cleaning up and shutting things down. It wasn’t until her father emerged from the office that she remembered he was there. Excited to show him how much money she’d made for the night, she emptied out the register and hurried over to him.

“Dad, look! Oh, and Mr. Hannity gave me this,” she said, handing him the envelope.

“You spoke to him?” her father asked with a concerned look in his eyes.

“Well, of course I did. It was only brief, bu—”

He cut her off. “I don’t want you speaking to him. You hear me? I told him that, and that’s the way it’s going to be!”

“Okay, Dad,” Jenna said, not wanting to fight. “But just so you know, he’s kicking in an extra two grand a month for that room to be exclusive to him and his guests.”

“That’s not the deal. Why did you change the deal?! This one was working fine!”

“He already agreed to it, Dad, and I was just trying to help. If we start taking advantage of these situations we can really turn this place around. We have to start making smarter business decisions, and renting out that back room for way less than it’s worth isn’t good business! We have to—”

Paul cut her off again, throwing his hands up. “Just stop! We don’t have to do a damn thing! This is my bar! Mine! I don’t need your help, and I don’t need your rowdy friends creating a spectacle out of this place. Keep them out of here! All they’re doing is bringing a bad crowd and unnecessary attention to the bar!”

“That’s the complete opposite of good business, Dad! I made us four grand tonight with Mr. Hannity’s raised prices. You are not seriously saying that you’d rather it go back to being quiet and you making a measly twenty-six hundred a month versus thousands of dollars, are you? This place has so much potential and I have so many ideas! I think we should really grab the bull by the horns here. We should paint the walls a nice off-white, clean up the tables, reupholster the chairs and barstools. If we raise enough money we can even redo these horrible floors!” Jenna’s excitement had her running off on a tangent before she realized how upset her father was getting.

Then he exploded. “No!”

He was shaking, and his face was turning a deeper shade of red every second as he stood there in front of Jenna with tears welling up.

“No!” he said again. “You’re not going to change a damn thing! Stop trying to erase my wife!”

“Daddy, I promise I’m not,” Jenna said, now fighting back her own tears. “I just thought that if we changed things around that business would be better and this place could stay afloat. Isn’t that the best way of honoring her memory? To keep this business running? You’re just being so stubborn!”

“Stop! I don’t care what you have to say right now! This place doesn’t belong to you!”

“Well, it won’t belong to you, either, if you keep letting your emotions run it!”

“Just get out! I can’t do this with you, not right now, Jenna, please,” he sniffled. “I’ll close up and make sure Mr. Hannity is out and gets home safe. Just go and get your drunk friend out of here too!”

Paul stormed off, refusing to listen to anything else she had to say. Jenna had started crying while her father wiped away his own tears. Strolling up to Tanner, she tapped her fingers on the tabletop. “Sorry you had to hear all of that, but it’s time for us to lock up. Can you drive home? Do you need me to call you a cab?”

“I’m not drunk,” Tanner said, gulping down the last sip of his beer. “Besides, it’s only right that I got to see your blow up with your father after I embarrassed myself with Brandy.”

“Oh, you didn’t embarrass yourself,” she smiled. “Come on, let’s get you some air.”

Tanner wasn’t drunk, but he wasn’t exactly sober either. He stumbled a bit getting up from the table.

“Yeah, definitely calling you a cab,” she chuckled, pulling his arm around her neck. Hoisting him up, using her shoulder as a crutch, she helped Tanner make his way outside.

The stars over Doveport were always spectacular for anyone who took the time to look at them. Jenna wished she could gaze at them on her first night back, but trying to hold Tanner up while he kept trying to go back inside the bar was exhausting.

“I don’t need a cab. I can walk,” Tanner said, pulling himself away from Jenna.

“At least let me walk with you, then.”

“It’s a free country,” he said, throwing his arms open wide.

Jenna walked away from the bar with the mildly drunk Tanner in silence, wondering what to say to him. Every time they looked at each other, they’d simply smile but they wouldn’t speak.

It wasn’t until Tanner stopped walking that he finally said something. “Thank you for walking with me. I’m sure I could have managed on my own. You don’t have to come the rest of the way. It’s another few blocks from here.”

“Wow, that was the crappiest expression of gratitude I’ve ever gotten. No, wait, it’s a tie between you and my dad! You two sure know how to make a girl feel appreciated.”

“Listen, Jen, I’m not in the mood for any of your tantrums tonight,” he told her bluntly.

“My tantrums? You say that like—” she stopped herself. “Never mind. Let’s not argue. We’re both pretty fired up from this evening, and the last thing I want is for my last memory of tonight to be fighting with you. I don’t want any lasting memory of you to be of us fighting.”

Tanner paused. “What is your last memory of me?”

Jenna wasn’t really ready to take that stroll down memory lane, but he had asked, and she felt compelled to answer him. “The last good memory is the week after the funeral. You never left my side. The entire semester that I took off from school, you kept me encouraged and motivated. Even though it was mostly text messages, it was still good.”

“And the last bad one?” He turned to face her. It was a very sobering look in his eyes.

Jenna swallowed hard. “I don’t think you want to know.”

“I do,” he said, grabbing her hands. He held them gently, and somehow it felt like they had never broken up. “I just want a little bit of clarity.”

“Okay.” She let out a deep breath. “I can’t believe I’m about to tell you this. Even Hannah doesn’t know about it, but it was that time I was headed back to school and we ran into each other. I thought that you reaching out to me was more than what it was. That was my fault. I own that. But when I told you I was heading back, you didn’t ask me to stay like you did before. You actually told me that you wouldn’t be calling or texting much at all. You were going for a promotion and your girlfriend was uncomfortable with our friendship. But hey, the worst memory award is actually a draw between that and the night before I left the first time, where you fake proposed.”

“I meant that,” Tanner said wearily. “I loved you when I loved you, Jenna.”

“And I loved you, but I wasn’t ready to be married. Not at 17. Tanner, there’s way too much history here,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t want to rehash it all on your doorstep.”

“Let’s go back to the bar and rehash it there, then,” he smiled. Turning around, they started walking back toward The Wheel. Jenna simply glanced at him, walking down the street in his bright yellow uniform, dirty with soot and ash, suspenders hanging at his sides, his black T-shirt clinging to his muscular frame.

“I don’t want to do that, but I do want to hear about this fire you guys fought tonight, and your life outside of our past and whatever emotional wreckage you’re trying to pull yourself away from,” she smirked.

“Still sensitive, I see,” he mocked her. “And what is going on with you and your dad? I don’t remember Mr. F letting anything get to him the way you just did.”

“He’s just taking too long to grieve,” Jenna said icily.

“Damn, if you were any colder I’d swear it was January out here! Is that an actual thing? I didn’t think that was something that ever stopped. Maybe you should take it easy on him. Just because you’re not a blubbering mess doesn’t mean he isn’t. He lost his wife, his soul mate… I know exactly how that feels.”