He came at her, so Hope used the only thing she had left in her arsenal… she ran. Reaching the bathroom, she slammed the door in his face and locked it. Luckily, her mother didn’t believe in flimsy, cutesy locks, as she called them. No, this was a bolt, and Hope threw it home.
“Open the door, Hope.”
“No. It’s done, we scratched the itch. Now go away, and we’ll both forget this happened.”
“Just open the door, Hope. Let’s talk about this. I don’t like the insinuation that you’re just another notch on my belt.”
She leaned against the door, and then slid down it as her legs gave way.
“Let’s not pretend I was anything else, Newman. Someone like me could never be anything to someone like you. So just go.”
“I’m not having this conversation through wood,” he said quietly. “But we will have it, Hope.”
She heard the door slam seconds later, and knew she was alone. Turning on the taps in the shower, she stood under the water and let the tears flow.
“Stay,” Newman said, holding his cards up so Buster couldn’t read them. He then picked up his beer and downed half a bottle. He couldn’t get the memory of Hope out of his head. They’d had sex three weeks ago. Hot, and extremely pleasurable sex. Why couldn’t he move on? Even the beers he was downing like water weren’t helping. They were just making him meaner.
Since that day in Hope’s bedroom, they’d pretty much avoided each other. On Newman’s part, that was because he’d had no idea how to deal with whatever the hell this was between them. She tied him in knots, there was no other way to describe it. She wasn’t like other women, and didn’t fall into the Paul Newman handbook of how a woman worked. He just couldn’t get a good read on her, and that really bugged him.
“That’s your sixth.”
“What?” Newman looked at Jake, who wore his hat pulled low over his eyes.
“That beer is number six. You usually only have four.”
“I have more than four!”
“Nope,” Tex said. He had a Texan bandana around his head. The man never missed an opportunity to show his true colors. “We get drunk, you stay sober, them’s the rules, bud.”
“Who made those rules!” Newman felt his anger rising.
“No one, it’s just always been that way, no matter how many times we’ve tried to get you drunk.”
“True that.” Buster raised his bottle. Newman couldn’t see his eyes because he wore dark glasses.
“You gonna play a card, pencil dick, or wax on about nothing,” Cubby said peering through one eye. The other he’d closed so he could concentrate. He’d had more than six beers. His sheriff’s cap was on backward, which declared he was off duty.
“You’re an officer of the law.” Newman glared at him. “You should be the one to drink less.”
The eye turned his way.
“Give me a break, I look after you wieners every day.”
“It’s your thing, Newman. No one means anything by it,” Patrick McBride said from the kitchen. He wore the faded pink cap that his children had once given him, as he had every poker night for the many years they’d been having them. He and Declan were cooking hot dogs.
“Even I know that, bud, and I haven’t been here all that long.”
Newman looked at Brad, who was squinting at the cards in his hand.
They’d been playing for several hours, and for once it was Jake who was winning.
“She said that.”
“Who?”
“Hope.”
“What’d she say?” Tex asked.
