Chapter 1
I don’t hear the noise at the bar as I rip the photograph of my ex-fiancée from the memory board hanging on the dark burgundy wall. Mickey’s Bar and Grill has had this memory board since the day Mickey opened for business. It takes up the entire wall space to the right of the bar. Patrons love to tack up pictures or even drawings done on napkins. It’s like looking at a wall of memories of the people from our small town over the past twenty years. There’s one of Mike and me at our high school graduation proudly on display at the top left corner. Mike runs the bar with his dad, Mickey. I’ve known Mike since second grade. Growing up, it had always been me, him, and Chase. Best friends. Ride-or-die.
“Jorey, what do you want to drink?” my sister, Harper, shouts at me.
Well, Harper is my half sister, but that’s only semantics and a very long story. Turns out my real dad, my biological one, was a billionaire philanderer who dicked his way around the world. I discovered several years ago that I had seven brothers and sisters, all from different mothers. Harper was one of them. Couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.
No wonder my mother never married, and I don’t blame her one bit. Seems she and I have that in common. Falling in love with cheaters. Maybe it’s genetic.
From everything I’ve learned about my sperm donor, he was an awful husband, neglectful father, and an all-around major disappointment. Besides, I never missed having a father figure in my life because I had my grandfather. Jack Hammond stepped in and filled that paternal role.
I miss him. I miss Mom. Every damn day. I think that’s why I appreciate Harper and the rest of my newfound siblings. They’re all I have left. I wonder if Grandpa Jack would be proud of who I’ve become. Because I’m not. I’m twenty-seven years old and have nothing to show for it. Nothing of my own. Nothing I can point to and say, “Look at that. I did that. I made a difference in someone’s life.”
Damn it. Just seeing a photograph of my ex has me spiraling back down that deep hole of depression and negativity that took me years to crawl out of.
“Jordan!” Harper shouts over the din of overlapping voices when I fail to answer her.
“Whatever is chilled.”
Harper knows I drink the same thing every time we come to Mickey’s—sparkling water or club soda—but she still asks. Her deeply ingrained Southern manners dictate that she does. She says “yes, ma’am,” even to girls half her age. It’s hilarious.
My attention slides back to the photograph, and I visually trace the face of the woman I once loved. Her verdant green eyes and strawberry-blonde hair glow under the sun shining down on her. Long legs and a stick-thin figure encased in tiny jeans shorts and a white halter top. The smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose that she hated, but I adored. Amelia was girl-next-door beautiful—on the outside. Inside, she was cold and heartless, and I was the sucker who was stupid enough to fall for her lies. Anger spikes hot and heavy the longer I look at the picture. It always does when I remember her betrayal.
I was an idiot when I proposed to Amelia. I had just lost the only family I had ever known within months of one another. Grandpa Jack from a heart attack, and my mother from a long, drawn-out battle with breast cancer. After their deaths, I was in a really low place. Broken. Depressed. Alone.
Amelia and I had been dating since high school, so it only seemed natural at the time to propose. Start a life together. Build a family. Wife, kids, a dog. The whole perfect Norman Rockwell picture.
Joke was on me, though. I caught her in bed with my best friend, Chase, a week before we were supposed to get married. Total cliché, I know. But there you go. Live and learn and never make the same mistake twice.
“We should burn that,” Harper suddenly says over my shoulder, and I startle, almost knocking back into her. She sidesteps quickly, averting disaster and saving the drinks she just ordered.
“Jesus, Harp. I need to put a bell on you.”
Standing next to me, she raises her voice. “You wouldn’t be able to hear it over the music, anyway. If you don’t tear that up, I will.” She points her drink at Amelia’s photograph and scowls.
Harper knows about Amelia and what she did. Even though they’ve never met, my sister hates my ex with a fiery passion of a thousand suns.
Mike joins us at the end of the bar and sees what I’m holding. “Well, damn. I thought we burned all of them.”
One drunken night, Mike and I took all the pictures that had Amelia and Chase in them off the board. We stumbled our intoxicated asses out back to the alleyway and set the pictures on fire in one of the metal trash cans. Not the smartest thing to do, but it was fun and extremely cathartic at the time. Mickey reamed us a good one when he found out the next day.
I take my Perrier from Harper as Mike tugs the glossy four-by-six photo from my fingers and hands it to her.
“Have at it,” he says.
Harper’s face lights up with mischief. She shoves the drink she’s carrying at me to hold and dashes down the short hallway to the ladies’ restroom, disappearing inside.
Mike groans. “If she blocks up the toilet, you’re plunging the damn thing yourself.”
“You’re the one who told her to have at it.”
A guy three stools down from us raps his knuckles on the bar top to get Mike’s attention. “This new IPA is good. What is it?”
Mike holds up a finger to a trio of women, who are trying to flag him down at the end of the bar.
“A new farmhouse ale we’re testing.”
“Keep it. It’s a winner,” the stranger says, tossing a ten on the glossy wood and walking off.
