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Right now, I would have clawed my way over to him and made sure everyone knew he was mine.
But I wasn’t going to do that. I could control myself, even if I’d started to feel like a feral animal in the last ten seconds.
“Moose,” I called over, trying to work my way between a couple groups of people to get his attention.
He clearly couldn’t hear me. The guy flirting with him was right up near his ear, saying something I couldn’t make out. I was sandwiched between a group of women who were having a fantastic afternoon, judging by the amount of laughter and the size of the margaritas in their hands, and another young couple, a man and woman who were practically hanging on each other like this was a nightclub instead of a brewery in the daytime.
“We should fucking get married,” the guy was saying to the girl. “Fucking marry me. You are so hot.”
“You’re a bad boy,” she cooed back at him, dragging her fingers over his cheek. “We just met last week.”
“Don’t care,” he said, clearly very drunk. “I’d wake up to you forever. Marry me.”
She burst into laughter before leaning in to kiss him.
I tried my best to move through the crowd to a different side of the bar, hopefully in better earshot of Harlan. My laptop bag felt too heavy on my shoulder, and I was increasingly uncomfortable being around so many people who all just seemed so much happier than me, right now.
“Harlan,” I called out, hoping that using his real name would catch his attention better. I had to say it another time before he heard.
He looked my way, his expression immediately softening. He said something to the guy in the pride flag shirt, then took a step over toward me.
“This is mayhem,” he told me. “But the tips are going to be hefty today.”
“It’s wild,” I agreed.
I didn’t want to be here anymore—I wanted to be back in bed with him, to be anywhere with him.
I really just wanted him to be mine.
“You headed out?” he asked, right as another customer reached over the bar and tapped him on the shoulder, trying to get his attention for another drink.
“Yeah, I need to get some fresh air—”
“Shots!” the pride flag guy suddenly yelled, very loudly, before a dozen people around him erupted into cheers. “Shots! We need some shots!”
“If I don’t get back over there, I think a war might break out,” Harlan said.
I nodded. “A skirmish, at the very least.”
That earned a smile from him, and that longing feeling in my chest came back with a fierce vengeance seeing that I’d made him smile.
“I’ll talk to you later, Goose,” he called out, already reaching for a pint glass to catch up on a backlog of drink orders.
For fuck’s sake, the feeling in my chest may as well have been desperation.
I wanted to jump over the bar and pull Harlan into a kiss. I wanted to tell him that I’d been an idiot to ever suggest I could feel casually about him. I wanted to rewind to that tiny moment on the bench yesterday and make those words go back in my mouth.
Instead, I just gave him a polite smile and waved goodbye, walking out of the brewery feeling more confused than I’d ever been.
I got in my pickup and dropped my laptop bag on the passenger seat, slumping for a moment like I was an inflatable that had just lost all its air.
The silence of my truck was a small solace, and it felt like a gift after being in the busy bar. I sat there for a few minutes, lost in the chaos of my own thoughts, of the sheer amount of change that had occurred in my life in such a short amount of time.
Overwhelmed didn’t even begin to describe it. It was as if one domino had been kicked over, and now everything in my life was shifting, making me see things more clearly than I ever had before.
The key was in the ignition and my foot was on the pedal before I knew where I was going.
I just drove.
I drove, taking whatever turns I took subconsciously, not thinking about where I was going at all. The afternoon sunlight was at its most golden right now, slanting through the pine trees and dappling the mountains in deep blue and orangey-pink shadows. I followed the winding black asphalt down the mountain, feeling like I was simultaneously processing everything and nothing at the same time, overwhelmed enough that some switch had flipped and now I was just existing.
Letting the road lead me wherever the hell it wanted.
And my heart already knew that I was headed toward Red Pinecone Farm before I could acknowledge it in my head. I took the familiar turns, now, making my way past the sights I used to see almost every single day.
