The bar was closed on Mondays. As much as I wanted to just flop on the couch all day and suck down cold beers while binge watching shows I'd missed, I'd started to remodel the kitchen weeks ago, which meant I was microwaving dinners in the laundry room. If I didn't finish the remodel soon, my diet of frozen pizza and burritos would kill me.

The last few years of his life, my dad had really let the house go. My brother, Jeremy, and I inherited the house and a tiny savings account. My dad had worked his ass off all his life, right up until the end when his health made it too hard for him to do anything that took energy. But he had little to show for it. He never drove nice cars or bought man toys or big televisions. He just never made enough for those luxuries. But he kept Jeremy and me sheltered, clothed and fed. And loved. He was better at that than making money. Jeremy was eight years older than me. He was off at college before I even reached puberty. The age difference was too big, and we were never close. He and his wife and four kids lived across the country. He told me I could do whatever I wanted with the house, including living in it. I told him I'd fix it up and once I sold it, I'd send him his cut. But fixing up an old house took a lot more money and time than I had.

My dad had shoved a small desk into the corner between the refrigerator and broom closet and called it his home office. He'd used it to write bills and lists. I had put off pulling it out and throwing it away because there was something about the desk that left me with good memories. Dad would sit hunched over the desk in his blue uniform shirt and tell me about some funny thing that happened at work while he wrote out bills. And no fail, every time, he'd have to tear up at least two checks because he would be so busy telling me his story, he'd write the wrong amount. I tried to get him to use online banking, but he stubbornly refused, saying he didn't want the entire internet world to know his bank account information.

I yanked the desk free and heard something slide out of the back. Once I cleared the desk from its tight corner, I turned back to pick up whatever had fallen. Two faded pictures lay in a pile of debris and dust. Trying to keep with an office theme, Dad had always taped pictures to the wall above the desk. He was such a character.

I picked up the photos and blew them off. One was a picture of a day at the beach. I hadn't expected the pictures and my breath left me for an instant. I rubbed my thumb over Emily. She was standing on the sand in her lemon yellow bikini, proudly showing off the new dragonfly tattoo on her hip to me and Evan, my friend and band mate. Getting a tattoo had been totally out of her comfort zone, but she and her friends had decided to go for it. She had been thrilled about it once it was done. She had an unusually wide smile spread across her pretty face as she pulled the string of her bikini down with her thumb. In the background, Rebecca was learning how to stand on a surfboard. Gregory, the guy she was dating at the time, was standing behind her with his hands wrapped greedily around her waist. Evan's wife, Rhonda, had been taking pictures all day. The second picture was of Rebecca standing on a surfboard on the sand.

My phone rang. It had been two weeks since Rebecca's call, and for some stupid reason, I was still expecting to hear back from her. It was Dylan.

"Yeah."

"Hey, I signed you up for that bar owners’ conference at the convention center. Supposedly, it's a good place to do networking, and they're offering a class on workplace safety. It's next Friday. So I'll cover here at work."

"And why am I going? Why didn't you sign your own name to the form?"

"Cuz I hate those fucking conferences, and I can't sit through some boring lecture on safety."

My business partner still hadn't recovered from my snide remarks about his eyeing the sixteen-year-old. I had really hit a fucking sore spot. "Fine. Whatever. I don't mind them as long as they serve some decent breakfast food. Is that all you needed? I'm dismantling more of the kitchen."

"Yep, that's it." He hung up.

I went to put my phone back in my pocket, then a brilliantly stupid idea popped into my head. I placed Rebecca's picture on the desk and snapped a photo of it. It was slightly blurry, but it was easy enough to see her white smile shining through. I sent the picture with a text. "How's the surfing going?"

I put the phone back in my pocket, convinced she would ignore the text and photo just like she'd ignored my calls. A text buzzed right back.

"I've given it up for field hockey."

My fingers slid over the letters. "Good choice. Besides, that Gregory dude was a jerk."

"No, only you thought he was a jerk. Because you were a big ole butthead back then."

"I guess I was." I had been one of those guys able to get along with everyone, but I somehow always managed to find something wrong with any guy Rebecca dated. At the time, I had no idea that I was doing it. Now I understood why.

"Hey, Rebel, how are you doing? Are you happy?" I couldn't find the courage to ask if there was someone in her life, but I'd left the question pretty open ended. I braced myself for the return text, hoping she wouldn't send a couple picture with some guy holding her in his arms.

No picture. Just a text. "I'm surviving. How about you?"

"Surviving."

"I'm kind of disappointed you ended up starting a business with Dylan."

The sports bar had been the first successful thing I'd done since graduating high school with a shitty C minus average. "You are? Why?"

There was a long hesitation before her response. "It's just that you were my only hope for knowing a mega rock star."

"Yeah, well, maybe I can still get discovered. In the meantime, I've found that food and shelter and clothing are kind of nice to have."

"I've got to go. I'm at work."

"K, I'll let you go."

"Hey, Josh, I never minded that you hated my boyfriends."

"Sorry for being too overprotective."

"I never minded that either. XO" I looked at her texts for another minute before putting the phone away.

Remodeling had made me thirsty. I grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and headed out to the living room with the two pictures. I plopped down on the couch and chugged back the drink as I stared at the picture of Emily showing off her tattoo. She had the whole world wrapped around her finger. She was smart and beautiful and so damn confident.

My eyes swept around away from the focal point of the picture, the beauty in the yellow bikini. The picture had faded a lot, but I could still clearly see Rebecca out in the water. I was sitting in the foreground in a beach chair. My head was turned away from my picture perfect girlfriend showing off her sexy new tattoo. Even though only the side of my face was showing, it was easy to see what had my attention. I was watching the girl on the surfboard.