I pry open the door to the Legion and get blasted with half-functional air conditioning and that stale beer smell familiar to almost every dive bar in America. Bar flies are scattered around, and I find a seat between everybody else. I’m examining the state of my fingernails when a coaster appears in my line of vision. I look up to find Becca’s Stone.
“Darcy, right?”
I smile. “Hey, Stone. How ya been?”
“Can’t complain. You?”
“Seen better days.”
He nods. “What can I get ya?”
I came in here with the intention of getting lit on whiskey, but practically, how would I get home? “Just a Coke.”
“You got it,” he says, scooping some ice into a ribbed plastic cup and picking up the soda gun.
“How’s your woman? I haven’t talked to her in a few weeks.”
“Should be here any minute,” he says. “She’ll want to tell you all about the ducks.”
“Ducks?” I ask, and Stone grabs his phone off the bar, scrolling through his photos. He holds up a picture of Becca with a broad smile and a duck tucked under each arm. “Oh my gosh, I’ll have to tell Brianna. She always wanted to have ducks. But just baby ducks.”
Stone’s face darkens for a moment and his Adam’s apple bobs. He slides the Coke across to me, puts his phone face down on the back bar, and walks to get somebody else’s order.
Uh oh. Looks like I pushed a button.
“Do my eyes deceive me?” comes a loud voice from the doorway. I grin, turning toward who I know to be Becca. “Oh, you look like shit!”
I sigh. “Thanks? Where ya been?”
Becca slides into the bar stool next to mine. “Cleaning houses with my mom. Something to hold me over while I get things going with the farm.”
“Better than a coal mine,” I say, and she looks at me curiously. “You know, like my great grandpa had to when he was getting the peach farm going. You’re cleaning houses to get your farm going.”
“Oh, right.”
“So, why ducks?”
She grins, pulling out her phone to presumably show me duck pics. “Tractor Supply won’t have chicks again until fall and I wanted to get my bird enterprise going.”
“I love that. You’re seriously the coolest person I know. Also,” I lower my voice. “I mentioned Brianna, and Stone didn’t seem to like it.”
She rolls her eyes. “We’re fighting about that. He doesn’t like that I still talk to her sometimes.”
“That’s odd,” I say.
“Dummy wants to have his cake and eat it too, but I like to treat the cake like a human. He’s just being a jealous little bitch.” She taps her pack of cigarettes on the bar top.
I grimace. “Sorry.”
She shrugs. “He’ll either get over it or he’ll lose me. His choice.”
“Wish I could be so casual.”
“Oh no, what did Daddy do? Do I need to go talk some sense into him?”
I shake my head and blow out a breath. “I broke it off, or put a pause on it. He’s ready to throw away everything to be with me.”
Becca’s head cocks back and she shrugs again. “You’re a catch. He should.”
