INSTEAD OF DRIVING straight home from Jonah’s after our punk country adventure, I swing through downtown Langley to see if anyone’s hanging out at the town’s one tavern, The Dog House. The late-night crowd usually sticks to the front room with the bar and pool table unless a local band has a gig in the back room. It’s kind of a shame given the back has a spectacular view over the water.
I spot a couple of familiar trucks parked on the street. It’s eleven thirty, and the sidewalks and street are empty. The movie at the Clyde theater let out an hour ago, so the bar should be pretty mellow, except for the miscreants I call friends.
Inside, Erik’s playing pool with Dan, the town’s resident silver fox, while the world’s crankiest bartender, Olaf, resets a chess board on the bar. Olaf’s gnarled hands and salty beard match his sour expression and general bad mood. Tonight he’s wearing an old yellow T-shirt with a rainbow and a pot of gold on the front like some sort of cruel leprechaun joke.
I greet everyone with a wave and join them in the corner.
“Hey, bro.” Erik pours me a glass of beer from their pitcher. “Want to play the winner?”
I agree and pull up a stool.
“How’s it going?” Dan asks while Erik lines up his shot.
“Good. Just got back from over in town.” I keep it vague. Vague is good.
“Carter’s been stalking the coffee huts again.” Erik throws me under the bus he’s driving. Not that he knows the details of where I’ve been today.
“What do you mean again?” I glare at him.
“Every few months you turn into a coffee addict, going two or three times a day for a cup, but never to the same hut twice.”
“How would you know? Are you tracking me all day because you have nothing better to do?”
He knocks a striped ball into a side pocket. “Jonah’s mentioned it.”
Seriously? Do the two of them spend their days standing around gossiping?
“Someone has a little crush on Miss Curtis?” Olaf uses Ashley’s old name.
None of us bother to correct him. No point. He’s old and been around forever. On the island, you know a person by their family’s last name. Sometimes going back a couple of generations. Born a Donnely, you’ll always be known as a Donnely.
Hell, Olaf has a hard enough time remembering to uphold his bans of Erik and I coming in here. I swear we’ve been permanently banned for multiple lifetimes at this point.
“Curtis? I thought her name was Kingston?” Dan wears a confused expression. Normally pretty stoic, the uncertainty and furrowed brow are about as awkward on him as a tutu on a goat.
“Long story.” Erik shakes his head in warning at me. Some stories involve secrets we all try to keep locked away.
“Jonah’s last name is Kingston, too. Aren’t they brother and sister?” Dan frowns. “Have I been calling them by the wrong name for the past five years?”
“No, they’re both Kingston now, but at one point they were Curtis.” I give Olaf a look to keep quiet. He rolls his eyes and mumbles something about small town secrets being pointless.
Dan chalks his stick. “Okay. I’m not losing my mind.”
“Like I said—” Erik starts.
I finish for him. “Long story.”
Honestly, the truth of the name change isn’t the biggest scandal on the island, but neither is it my place to open up someone else’s closet full of skeletons. Either one of them can tell Dan the story. Or not. I’m finally learning to keep my mouth shut when it comes to Ashley.
Took me way too long to learn this lesson.
“Ain’t no shame in what those kids did to distance themselves from their no-good father.” Olaf ignores both my hand gesture slicing across my neck and the X I make with my crossed hands and continues speaking. “Ron Curtis is a lowlife crook who left his wife and kids, and screwed over other men’s families. Burned every bridge he could with people he called friends before he left the island. Can’t blame them for erasing him from their lives. Kingston’s their mother’s maiden name. Although with the way she and her mother treated Ashley, calling her a harlot in church and all that bullshit, I’m surprised Ashley didn’t change her name to Magdalene to really piss them off.”
If Sally, Sandy, and Connie are the biggest gossips on the south end of the island, Olaf is their first runner up. The bridesmaid to their brides. The caddy to their golfer. He’s the rooster in their hen house. Man has a big mouth, too many opinions, and a memory like the old elephant he is.
“Not my place to pry into other people’s lives, but I’ve always wondered why they never talk about their dad.” Dan studies the pool table. “Thanks for solving that mystery.”
Satisfied with the crib notes, he sweeps the solid balls off the table, kicking Erik’s ass without another word.
“Looks like you’re playing me,” Dan says. “You can rack.”
Another reason I look up to the pizza man—he doesn’t judge anyone for their past. Maybe because he’s not born and raised islander, he can let things go the rest of us hoard in our memories.