I follow him into the kitchen. He stops at a cabinet next to the fridge. It’s the only one with a glass front displaying various bottles of liquor. I drag out a barstool and sit on top of it while he pulls two copper mugs from the bottom shelf. He adds a small scoop of crushed ice from the freezer, then holds up a bottle of vodka.
“This okay?” he asks.
“Sure.”
He twists off the top and pours a couple of ounces, then chases it with ginger beer.
“Where’d you learn how to do that?” I ask as he garnishes the mug with a lime wedge.
He smirks. “Humpin’ Hannah’s.”
I know the place—a popular downtown nightclub with live music. Been there a few times.
“Wasn’t always Rhett Dawson,” he reminds me.
I try to picture him as a bartender. It’s a fuzzy image barricaded by the even bolder and brighter one of him singing on a stage. Makes me realize how very little I know aboutEverettDawson. The guy I want to know everything about.
He slides the glass across the countertop. It stops mere inches from my hand. I quirk a brow, impressed. Then I sample my drink. The tart of the lime and the sweet of the ginger mix. It tastes as good as it looks.
“Nice to know a mediocre singer has a fallback plan.”
He leans a forearm onto the countertop, fixing his eyes on me. It sends the hair on my arms standing at attention, and a tingling sensation skitters down my spine.
“What about you? Always wanted to be a nanny for a famous musician?” He lifts his glass to his tightly pressed lips. The look he’s giving me is a dangerous one.
I nod. “One with a big ego too.”
His chuckle is deep and throaty.
“I’ve always wanted to do something that makes me happy. I think being around kids does that,” I add. “Did you always live here? Before Nashville, I mean.”
He watches the pale amber liquid swirl in his glass with the rotation of his wrist. “The tabloids haven’t given that one away yet? Or do you only watch73 Questions?” His expression is blank when he looks up again and waits for my answer.
“I meant here,” I say, stretching my arms out toward the walls of this home. I know he’s referencing theVogueYouTube series I absolutely did watch before I met him. The fact that I had a maple fritter donut in my car that morning at drop-off was simply a coincidence from that video.
“No. I moved out right after high school.”
From the unsettled look on his face, I gather he’d rather not be back. “And you don’t like it here?”
“At my parents’ house? It’s not where I wanted to end up, no. How long haveyoulived here?”
“I moved right after high school too. It’s expensive living in California, and I’d never been to Idaho before, so…” I shrug. There wasn’t much more to the decision than that. I’m not the five-year plan type of gal.
“Did you meet him here too?”
I nod. “When I was nineteen.”
“Nice guy?”
I wouldn’t have married him if he wasn’t nice, I want to argue. But I know he’s just curious like I am about his life.
“Brian grew up in a strict family. A big one too. There were bills to pay and mouths to feed and no excess for any kind of adventure. Education was an expectation not an opportunity, and Brian did what his father had done because he felt obligated to. When I met him, he was knee-deep in his senior year at Boise State—finishing out his last semester of student teaching. I was the girl at his fraternityparty ready to show him a good time.
“My life experience far exceeded his in the realm of fun. I’d moved states on my own, visited five different National Parks sleeping in the back of my Honda Civic, and had no intention of settling down. I’d traveled with my parents, sky-dived, swum with sharks. My life excited him at first. But then it became a push and pull of expectations I could never live up to after we got married. He’d press for me to get a new job when the last one didn’t work out and then be disappointed when I’d find something in retail, working weekends rather than spending time at home with him on his days off.”
I check his face to see if this is too much. He saidNice guy?and I gave him a monologue. Even though all along I know he was asking whether my ex was nice tome.
“Well, anyway… things change. It was for the best,” I finish.
