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Some people thought that it would be a bad idea working for my best friend, but we’d never had a single issue. We were a great team. He respected me and what I brought to the business and I respected him as an owner.
The only friction that we’d ever had occurred this past year after Cheyenne returned to Firefly. Billy must have sensed the way I felt about his sister because he’d made it painfully clear that Shadow was off-limits.
In all of our years of friendship, nothing had ever come between us. Not girls, even when we both wanted to ask Kendra Montgomery to prom. We just flipped a coin. I won. Not sports. When we both went out for quarterback and I ended up being the backup junior year and then starting senior year. No biggie. Not even distance, when I was in the Marines and stationed overseas, he stepped up and was there for my parents, when I couldn’t be, after my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
We’d been more than friends, I considered him a brother. And I knew that would change if anything happened between Cheyenne and me. If I crossed the line with his baby sister that would be the end of my friendship, my brotherhood, with Billy.
I’d hoped that my feelings for Cheyenne would go away. I figured that after the initial shock of her being back in town wore off, I’d get to know the person she was now, and the pedestal that I’d always put her on would come crumbling down. There was no way she could possibly live up to the mythic-like creature I’d created her to be in my head. My unicorn.
I knew I was in trouble when she not only lived up to the memories I had of her, she’d gotten better with age, like a fine wine. She was smarter, prettier, cooler, kinder, and funnier than when we were kids. Every time I saw her, spoke to her, spent any time with her, I fell deeper in love with her. And I didn’t know what the hell to do about it.
It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to risk one of the most important relationships in my life by telling her how I felt. It was that I knew Billy was right. I wasn’t good enough for Cheyenne.
She was working on her Ph.D. in clinical psychology, she volunteered at the Boys and Girls Club and Senior Center teaching art classes. Her dream was to open up a center for troubled and disadvantaged youth that focused on alternative therapies like art and working with animals.
She was classy, funny, smart, and had the kindest most generous heart of anyone I’d ever known. She rescued every animal and person that needed her.
I managed a bar and battled PTSD and depression.
She was so far out of my league it was comical.
“Cashanova!” Clyde, who was a regular at the bar and one of a trio that we referred to as The Three Stooges, bumped into me as he came to a stop.
I cringed as I heard my slurred nickname.
“Hey! Cashanova!” he repeated when he realized what he said. I could see that Clyde thought his spin on the nickname was unique and original. He was wrong on both points.
I’d earned the nickname from being the wingman to my best friend Billy “Panty Dropper” Comfort who walked down the aisle today. It wasn’t something I was proud of or had ever particularly enjoyed being labelled as.
“So, who have you got your eye on? What about Kendra? Or the redhead with the blue dress?”
I’d been there done that with Kendra years ago. At Prom. I wasn’t sure who the redhead in the blue dress was, which meant she was here on the bride’s side since I knew everyone that was here for the groom’s side. I’d lived in Firefly my entire life except for the six years I was in the Marines and knew everyone that was local.
“You know I always did have a soft spot for redheads.” Clyde blinked both eyes at me, in what I could only assume was his attempt to wink.
I lifted my pint glass to him. “She’s all yours, Clyde!”
He wheezed with laughter. “Oh boy, if I was only twenty years younger.”
Twenty years younger would make him in his sixties. He’d need to be at least fifty years younger and even then I would guess that the redhead in the blue dress would be out of his league.
The ginger in question must have felt her ears burning because she turned in our direction and her eyes met mine. I looked away while Clyde lifted his beer bottle as if to cheers her from across the room.
“Cash!” Caroline Shaw rushed up to me, her large yellow hat flapping with each step she took. “Did you see this?”
I could tell by the way she was running that she was at least two if not three sheets to the wind. I reached out my hands just in time to stop her from barreling into me. She owned Pretty in Peach beauty salon. When I was a kid, I’d always tried to keep my distance from her because she was always talking about how thick and beautiful my hair was and she’d run her fingers through it and say that she’d love to have me in her chair.
It had creeped me out.
But, a few years ago, I’d moved into a beachfront cottage that sat next door to her salon and we’d grown close. I’d learned to appreciate her eccentric ways.
“Look! We made the news.” She thrust her phone at me and I saw that an entertainment show was running drone footage from the wedding.
I still couldn’t quite wrap my head around the amount of attention Billy’s wedding had garnered. I understood why it was big news in Firefly, The Comfort Curse was a widely accepted superstition that locals had been obsessed with my whole life. But why in the hell anyone who didn’t know Billy or his brothers would give a shit baffled me.
“Miss Shaw, you’re lookin’ mighty pretty today.” Clyde tipped his hat toward her.
“Well, thank you, Mr. Howard.”
