Forget surging into his throat. At this, Trig’s heart straight up plummeted through the floorboards. “What?”
“It’s time, son,” Grandma Betty said softly, her expression so pitying Trig nearly turned tail and ran. He knew what was coming. The talk of all talks. The beginning of the end. He wasn’t ready.
He looked at Ryan. “Did you know about this?”
“They’re my grandparents. Of course I knew. I just couldn’t find a time to say anything to you because of,” Ryan waved his hand up and down in a ‘would you just look at yourself?’ gesture, “all that. I mean, you’re a disaster.”
“We’ve decided to sell Mystic,” Pudge said, not drawing out the inevitable. “We signed the final papers last night.”
Trig’s jaw joined his heart on the floor. “Why?”
Pudge sighed. “We received an offer we couldn’t refuse.”
“Montgomery?” he asked, his voice rising as his panic shot through the ceiling.
Betty nodded.
This can’t be happening.
“Wait,” Trig pleaded, racing out of the bar toward his room. Grabbing Kissie’s envelope, he shouted, “Wait one second!” while running back into the bar, sliding around the corner, nearly wiping out. “There’s this,” he panted. “Let me show you this first.”
“What’s this, Trig?” Betty asked while Trig pulled out a glossy folder with Mystic Hot Springs scrawled across the front.
“It’s an ad campaign I’d been working on with…”Christ, he couldn’t even say her name without his throat closing up.
“Kissie,” Ryan supplied.
When Betty opened the envelope, Pudge looking over one shoulder, Ryan over the other, a heavy silence descended.
“Holy shit, dude,” Ryan breathed, spreading pictures out on the bar, then opening a tri-fold brochure.
Everything was upside down from Trig’s vantage, so he couldn’t make out what they were all staring wide-eyed at. “What is it? Is it bad?”
“No, man. It’s not bad. It’s amazing, actually. It’s just… It’s you.”
Struggling through a dry swallow, Trig reached out with trembling fingers, spinning the brochure to face him. On the front was a picture of him, pouring Billy a beer, smiling. The tagline written in bold font seemed to float in the air beside him:Family at the Bar, Magic in the Water, Love in the Air.
Inside the brochure, there were pictures of the pool, the water clear and glistening in the sun. Pictures of the town bathed in pink and red twinkly lights, of the bakery, the diner, the tent over the tennis courts.
“It’s so you, Trig,” Ryan repeated, taking pictures of the brochure with his phone. “It’s everything you love about this place. She captured it perfectly.”
Trig swiped at something wet slipping down his cheek.
“Ahh,” an annoyingly aristocratic voice interrupted from the door. “The news is finally out, I see.”
After Lane took off his coat and hung it on the rack, he frowned, his hands sliding into the pockets of his probably absurdly expensive pants. “I thought it would have been received a little better than this, though.”
“What’s he talking about?” Trig asked, wiping his tears away as covertly as he could. “What are you talking about, homewrecker?”
When Lane rolled his genetically perfected blue eyes, Trig’s restraint snapped.
Launching himself over the bar, Trig grabbed the front of Lane’s sweater and pushed him into the wall. “Why are you here? Haven’t you done enough to me already?”
Reeling back, Trig made a fist.
Unflinching, Lane scoffed. “Are you seriously about to punch me? When did you become a brawler, Andrew?”
Instead of hitting him, Trig shoved him hard into the wall again. “It’s Trig, asshole. Now get the hell out of my bar.”
