Page 35 of Silver Player

“I see how it is,” he says. Letty laughs, and Billy’s smile deepens. “What’s your flavor, honey? I’ll let you taste anything you like.”

I hate the innuendo in Billy’s voice, although it isn’t as if I don’t know he’s a huge flirt. There’s just something about witnessing it, especially after all the time we’ve spent together lately.

“William Forrest Harrington,” Giant bellows in a warning only an older sibling can give.

Letty looks back and forth between the two men for a second. “I don’t understand that one.”

“What do you mean, love?” Billy questions, and with the use of the endearment, the conversation has my full attention even though I’m aware I’m eavesdropping.

“Roald Dahl,” Letty explains, and Billy’s eyes shoot to his brother.

“You told her the family secret?” Billy’s taken aback, and then he mischievously grins again. “She really must be special.”

It takes me a moment to realize what they are discussing, and I can’t help but interject.

“Roald Dahl?” I question, looking at Billy with a tweaked eyebrow before glancing over at Letty. “Billy is the name of a character in a short story called The Minpins by Roald Dahl. It’s a cautionary tale about not going into the woods.” I pause for a moment, wondering what the connection is exactly between Roald Dahl and his name—what’s the family secret? Then I make my own connection. William Forrest. “Seems appropriate.”

Letty covers her lips with two fingers as if biting back a giggle. “Oh my,” she says under her breath, and Giant tugs her to him, but her eyes remain fixed on me.

“What would you know about playing in the woods?” Billy mocks me, his voice sharp and not as playful as it’s been with Letty or as easy as it’s become with me over the past few weeks.

“More than you’d know about reading a book,” I snap, instantly on edge again with this man. My response comes from his name connected to a fictional character, but then what I’ve implied hits me. Billy struggles with reading, and my retort suddenly feels like a low blow. Then again, Billy’s being awful standoffish…and just awful.

“Oh, good one,” Billy mocks, covering his heart with both hands. “Ouch, I’m hurt that I don’t read.”

“It’s better than being anywhere near your wood,” I bark, narrowing my eyes at him. If I had a momentary lapse of judgment, giving him some credit for working hard and playing harder or looking fine in those snug jeans, I take it all back. He’s an ass.

“Go away,” he stammers, shooing me to scurry along like a dismissed creature within those fictional woods, and I admit it hurts.

“With pleasure,” I state, although the last thing I want to do is walk away because he’s shooed me off. I’m upset and want to fight back but decide against it. I turn to Letty instead, and offer, “If you need a good book, come visit me.”

“And if she needs a good wood, she can come to me,” Billy adds, puffing up his chest as he bellows his comeback. Grace gasps beside me while Giant glares at his brother, and I remember we have witnesses to his harsh tone, his dismissal, and his innuendos. I turn and stalk away from the bar with Grace following me.

“He doesn’t mean it,” she whispers, but I’m too upset to believe her.

“He doesn’t matter,” I lie because the truth is, Billy’s behavior sometimes does hurt, and I’m exceptionally susceptible to his lashing after all the time we’ve spent together lately because of Sadie.

Behave, for Sadie.

Within fifteen minutes of the altercation with Billy, he’s introducing a band on the stage, and I’m starstruck. Lawson Colt of Colt45 was one of my teenage crushes. He eventually moved on to join his sister and form the band Kit Carrigan and the Chrome Teardrops. I forget all about Billy as Grace and I squeeze our way to the front of the crowd near the stage and cheer like teenagers when Lawson—now known as Tommy Carrigan—breaks into song. “Wait for Me” was one of those anthem songs that made me long for love as a pre-pubescent teen. As the haunting words flow over me in the rich, older voice of a man with chrome and midnight scruff and hair curling over his ears, I feel the same way I did some thirty years ago. Whoever I’m supposed to be waiting for, I hope he’s still waiting for me. Then I shake the thought and laugh aloud to myself because I’m no longer waiting on him, whoever he was. I made my own way in life between Sadie and the bookstore. I’m comfortable where I am, even if occasionally lonely.

Before I know it, Clyde has brought Grace and me another beer. “Only take drinks from me tonight,” he yells over the roar of the crowd singing along with Tommy and the band. Denton Chance is with him, and I recall the story of him leaving this town for fame and fortune. He definitely achieved it. He’s just as mesmerizing strumming away on his guitar and singing backup to Lawson with his model good looks and edgier features. The final member of the band is Hank Paige, a slightly larger man with no loss of sexy silver on him like his band friends, and he’s just as enthusiastically playing his drum kit.

Grace lifts her cup and takes a hardy drink of the amber liquid with a thick foam at the rim. I sip my second beer and realize the taste is growing on me. The mixture of spices and cloves gives this one a real autumn flavor, like fall in a plastic cup. I should serve this during the Booktober Sale the night we do first chapter readings until I realize why I like the flavor. It tastes like Billy smells.

I take another sip of the sharp flavor and smile as the band breaks into another song. Glancing over my shoulder, I curse myself for searching the rear of the tent where Billy is hoisting his sister up on the bar top, and then I follow her line of vision back to the stage. I vaguely remember some story of how Mati Harrington had been best friends with Denton Chance back in high school, but I was a few years younger than them and can’t recall the details.

Speaking of high school, Cora Conrad makes her way next to me, and I bristle from her nearness. Cora’s a blonde bombshell even as she pushes forty, but she’s changed a bit over the last year since her divorce. Seems divorce becomes her because there’s a glow about her tonight, but I don’t let the luminescence fool me. Cora and I were in the same grade, and she made my high school years hell. Her family has status equal to the Harringtons and the Chances in Blue Ridge, but she stood out from the offspring of those other families as a single child who was just plain mean.

“My how you’ve changed,” she addressed me almost three years ago when I opened the store, blatantly eyeing me up and down, noting the weight loss. Only she didn’t say what people typically ask: Have you lost weight? No, Corabelle knew outright I had.

“That Tommy Carrigan was a young girl’s wet dream back in the day,” Cora states, turning to peer at me, her eyes rolling down my body once again. “We never could have obtained boys like him as teens, though, could we?”

I’m not certain what Cora’s comment means, but I’m going with the assumption it has to do with the body shape I once had.

“I’m not certain we collectively are what you mean.” If Cora’s fishing for a compliment—a reminder of her beauty both then and now—she can forget it. I’m not about to boost the ego of a former bully.

“Oh, I just meant boys like him wouldn’t have been interested in girls like us.”