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They shook their heads and gave me polite smiles.

I hurried back to the bar. Tundra had come in an hour ago, and I was determined to steer clear. We hadn’t spoken in the three weeks since the scene at the abandoned farm house. As I glanced through the stools, he was nowhere to be found.

“Yo! We need a new bottle of ketchup over here. Can you hit the closet?” Lark said from behind the bar.

“You got it, Lark,” I said, and headed down the corridor to the supply closet.

The door to the men’s restroom opened and Tundra blocked my way.

I offered him a polite smile and shifted to pass by him.

He shifted with me. “I didn’t mean that shit I said.”

I stopped a foot away from him, and we went into a stare down.

I waved a hand in front of me. “Honestly, it doesn’t matter. We were both pissed, but sometimes anger sheds new light on a situation. I hope you’re able to sort things out with your woman.”

He let me pass. I went to the closet, grabbed the ketchup, and went back to the bar, only to watch Tundra’s burly frame lumber out the door.

“You gonna talk to me tonight?” Tundra asked.

Another week had gone by, and I kept my distance from him…though we were finally getting steady business at On a Lark, which limited my time for chit-chat.

I nodded while I filled a red tumbler with soda. “I’ll do my best, but we’re slammed tonight, so it’ll be brief.”

Tundra hung at the bar shooting the breeze with my brother, Ryan, and Lark. He stuck around until the crowds thinned.

“Did you ever find a place?” he asked while I filled in for Ryan behind the bar.

“I did. Right before things went down back in September. I thought you knew.”

He shook his head. “You got a long drive?”

I despised this small talk. Yet, I saw it for what it was: getting a friendship back on track after an epic blow-up was like learning to walk again. You knew how to do it and that you could do it, but it still took baby steps.

“Nope. Five minutes door-to-door. If there were sidewalks, I could walk home.”

He frowned. “Where the hell did you find a place so close? You don’t make enough for a house.”

“I’m renting a double-wide down the street. Are you having another or are you switching to tea?”

He stared at me – those warm brown eyes calculating. “Make it a Sprite.”

I served him the soda and moseyed down the bar to Duane, a man who for the past two weeks had come in for Monday Night Football, but I wasn’t classifying him as a regular yet. By the time I wandered back to the register, Tundra had left.

Thanksgiving week ranked as one of my favorite weeks of the year. In many ways it was like the whole world slowed down. My brother, Killian, told me it was all in my head.

I had a five p.m. to one a.m. shift, and as I beelined to the office to stow my phone, I spied Tundra at the bar. It had been a month since our last conversation. He’d been in for a drink a few times, but I’d been too busy to have a full conversation with him.

In the office, Lark sat at the computer. He glanced up at me. “Nickel has to pull more hours this week to make up for that shit back in September.”

“That shit wasn’t his fault,” I reminded him.

He shot me a stern look. “My point is - you can take Wednesday off.”

I shook my head. “Thanks, but I’d rather get a day at Christmas or New Years Eve.”

Lark stared at me. “Are you sure?”