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Chapter Two
Carl
Oh, to be home.
The thought was, of course, sarcastic. Libreville was fine when you were a kid, or someone looking to settle down. When you were a guy barely in your prime and looking for excitement, it was boring as hell.
There was at least a bar in the area or I wouldn’t agree to stop no matter what my brother said. Dad didn’t need us to stick around for so long, and besides, we visited often. There was no reason to stick around for three freaking days, shooting the shit when we could just as easily have done it over live chat and it would have been less unbearable.
But my opinions were almost always ignored because I wasn’t the smart twin.
I pushed open the door to the bar and headed for a booth. There weren’t that many people around, probably because it wasn’t sports season. That was usually when the place pulled in any worthwhile crowds. It was fine with me, anyway. I didn’t need to see or talk to anyone. I’d had friends in high school, but they pretty much all cleared out about the same time we did, and I didn’t need to get stuck with relatives missing their boys and girls trying to take a trip down memory lane.
Still, it was emptier than I would have thought at this kind of time on a Friday night. I happened to glance around, and froze, stopping in my tracks. My brother walked into me, making us both stumble, but I ignored him as he grumbled.
No way.
Of all people I would have imagined would be in a place like this, she was probably the last. Emma Davis left town earlier than anybody before the ink was even dry on her diploma. Hell, she left before us, though we were a year older and a grade higher. We’d come back plenty of times, but she’d never be around.
We wouldn’t have come out if I hadn’t been bored out of my mind and bothered Abe until he agreed to go with me. We might have missed her without knowing it.
Talk about luck.
She sat in a booth, but in a different direction from where I was heading. Without thinking about it, I reached back and grabbed my still grumbling brother, and dragged him behind me.
“Carl—” but the protest died on his lips.
He probably saw what I did. A girl—woman—we both knew, drinking by herself. It looked like it was only the three of us in here, besides the bartender, though I didn’t bother to look around again.
She looked up when we got close, and it was definitely her, not just my eyes and the poor lighting playing tricks on me. By the widening of her eyes, I guessed she probably remembered us.
Good.
“Carl and Abe Thomas?” The surprise in her voice was pronounced. “What are you guys doing here?”
I almost felt relieved when she called out to us first, but I covered it with a casual grin. Between me and my brother, I was the ladies’ man, though he didn’t hurt in that department, either. But Emma Davis wasn’t the kind of girl I’d ever approached before. I didn’t think I’d know how to, without scaring her off. Which was exactly what used to happen before. I remembered she’d spoken maybe ten words to me—she’d said them all just now—though I only noticed her in high school. The school options in Libreville were limited, though, so we’d pretty much schooled together all our lives.
But we didn’t exactly run in the same circles. Before high school, girls and boys didn’t mingle any more than they had to. In high school, I ran with the wilder crowd, but Emma was a quiet girl. I never knew how not to scare her.
That was the last thing I wanted now.
“Would you mind if we sit?”
“Um,” she blinked and then shook her head a little. “No. Please, sit down.”
She ducked her head, and I thought her skin turned a little pink. Was she blushing? I sat across from her, hoping it would make her more comfortable, and Abe slid in beside me. I’d come in for a drink, but I didn’t want to take the time to walk over to the bar and order it. Clearly, my brother didn’t either.
“So, Emma Davis. I gotta ask, what are you doing drinking alone at the local bar in Libreville.”
Abe nudged my side, none too gently, but I just leaned back and folded my arms across my chest. Her head was still ducked down, her hair hiding her face, and my hand wanted to reach across the booth and hold her chin, raise her face so I could see if she was blushing
“Uh, I just got into town, actually. And suddenly felt like I needed something to drink.” That last part was muttered in a low voice, but the place was empty, we heard it clearly.
“No trouble, I hope.”
“No trouble, just a little tired. I haven’t been to the bar in a while, but I come to town every couple of months. Life’s gotten a little hectic, I guess.” She glanced up, gave us a wry smile. “High school doesn’t really prepare you for life, you know.”
Every two months? It must have been bad luck we missed her every time she came by.
I would have been a bit of a hypocrite if I agreed with her. It was true, but I pretty much coasted through high school without caring much about my grades. That was usually Abe, so I couldn’t completely empathize. I wasn’t a smart cookie, and I knew fairly early on my ticket out of the sleepy town of Libreville wasn’t going to be college. Abe would have gone, but I ended up dragging him into my schemes.
“So, what are you doing in town?” Abe asked, easily sidestepping her comment-that-was-not-really-a-question.
She held the beer bottle in front of her, wrapped both her hands around it, looking down again. “I came to visit my mom. I do it every couple of months, and I managed to get off work this weekend, so I called her yesterday, then got in my car this morning.”
“You’ve been doing this every year since you first left?”
“Yeah.”
“We don’t come by any schedule, but I can’t believe we never ran into you once.”
Not that we always looked, but usually, a kid that left town and came back was big news. The first few years, dad would throw a party and invite his fr
iends because his ‘prodigal sons’ deigned to visit him until we both put our foot down and threatened to stop coming altogether.
“I only stay the weekend, and Mom doesn’t always make a big production of it. Most of the town never even know I’m here until they see me walking around.”
She seemed a little sad, sounded a little sardonic when she added that part. She even rolled her eyes, though we weren’t meant to see that. I wanted to ask what had her so down, but she’d likely come to a bar to drink and forget. Talking about it would probably just annoy her, so I put it out of my mind.
Instead, I sat back in my seat and watched her. She was in a pale dress held up by flimsy straps, leaving her shoulders mostly bare. I followed the line of her throat as she took a sip of her drink, down to the dip where her collar bones met. The neckline didn’t reveal any cleavage, not from where I was sitting, and I wanted to be right next to her. The dress curved nicely around her ample chest, and it was all I could do not to imagine her naked.
“You’ve changed a lot from high school. You’re even sexier than before.”
I said the words without thinking, coming back to myself after they were out of my mouth. I regretted them almost immediately—I meant it, but I didn’t know how she would react to it.
But she seemed to have grown out of her shell, at least a little.
Her eyes widened, her skin flushed a little, and her eyes flit across the both of us before settling back on me. But she got her expression under control and smiled, though it was shaky around the edges.
