Almost Had You Read online

  Tilting my head back, I laugh, relieved she’s said yes. “I’ll see you there, Ms. Wellsley. I look forward to it even.”

  She smirks, then says, “You’re surprised?”

  “What, that you agreed to let me buy you a drink?”

  She laughs. “No silly, that you’re looking forward to buying me a drink.”

  Rocking my head side to side, I press my lips together. “Yeah, I suppose I am.”

  “Classic,” Clover says as she waggles her fingers over her bare shoulder and walks off.

  I’m sweating when Bentley comes over to collect me. I’d forgotten how hard this was. Women. The real world. Alabama women, more specifically. It’s a kind of work I haven’t done, or even thought of, for half a year. “I’m out of practice,” I tell Bent, as he tells me who all is going to be at DR.

  “It’s like riding a bicycle. Unless you’re Teddy Vondtete, because that poor boy could never ride a bike. You get back on it and keep it straight, and you’ll have the ladies in your lane in no time. Don’t you worry about that, I have a plan.”

  “No plans, Bent. No.” Nothing but trouble comes when Bentley makes plans.

  He laughs. “I’ll put in a good word and you’ll be bending over Billy-Jo before the night is over.” She was one of my high school girlfriends, a safe place and a familiar face. “Nope. Not happening and I don’t need your good words or any of your words for that matter. I can bend over Billy-Jo if I want to. I think I have my sights on something a lil’ more fancy.” I watch as Clover’s cupcake, purple dress disappears out the airport exit.

  Bentley grabs the bag by my feet and slings it over his shoulder, sinking from the heavy weight, as my mom and dad wave me on. We walk outside and the Alabama heat again welcomes me home. “Clover Wellsley won’t touch you or any other man if her life depended on it. She can’t shit where she eats, you know that. She’s too high-falutin’. I’m trying to save you time, brother. Don’t waste time gettin’ twisted up wantin’ perfect when perfectly good is ready and waiting. It’s downright rude.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” I lie, watching covertly as Clover holds her dress in place as she slides into the backseat of her father’s Lincoln Navigator.

  Bent slings my bag into the bed of his Rikki’s Electric truck. It’s white and well-loved. Maybe that’s why I left—the difference between me and my best friends from childhood, and even the difference between my father and me. I wanted something more. Something different. The challenge. The thrill of the unknowns after you work devil hard for something.

  Looking around at all of the people here to support me, I realize how much I love them, and this place, and with one last brief glance at a modest cut, iron-clad, purple dress, I also recognize how I’ve changed.

  Chapter Two

  ___________________________________

  Clover

  MY LIES ARE so windy I keep the windows rolled down no matter the temperature. Add them to the fact I’m forced to endure my mama and daddy talking about Mercer Ballentine in a closed space, and I’m basically a volcano about to erupt. The ride home from the airport is only four minutes, but it feels longer when you’re trying not to say things that will give something away.

  You can drive from one side of Greenton to the other in nine minutes and fifteen seconds if the traffic lights stop you, even less if they don’t. We are a blip on a map. Not even a dot. We’re an exit sign on the interstate and a town so old and crusty it seems we’re stuck in the nineteen eighties with flashes of modern life.

  “He sure grew into a strapping man, now didn’t he?” Mama parrots. I’m not sure if it’s directed at me, but I’m not going to answer. Mercer is more than strapping. He’s a gaggle of muscle. A wall of Southern charm. An annoying feeling in my stomach that makes me sweat thinking about him. I don’t need to talk about how strapping he is. I saw it in all its glory.

  Daddy clears his throat. “It’s required for his job, Susanne. He has to haul buildings off people and such. Muscles are part of the job description. It’s not that impressive.”

  “You’re describing a Marvel Superhero, Daddy, not a military man.”

  My mother claps giddily. “Not just any military man, A Navy SEAL. Clover, are you going over to the Dizzy Rocket for a drink?” Her wishes are completely transparent, and I’m not surprised she was listening in on our conversation inside the airport lobby. Making sure the family and Daddy always look good is everyone’s job, hers especially.

  My mind is on a million other things, so I let it slide off my back. “Yes, I agreed to a drink with Mercer. I’m going to pick up my car when we get home and head over. I need to help Tannie plan the festival after, so I won’t be there for long. One drink.” I’m not helping my best friend, Tannie do anything, but that’s a meager lie in the big scheme of things.

  Dad pulls into our long driveway that curls into a formidable circle. “When Clover is ready, we have several suitors who will make fine husbands.”

  My breaths come quicker, and that floppy feeling in my midsection creeps up to my throat. “I don’t want to talk suitors or men right now. Mercer is just a friend. He’s always been a friend. Since childhood. You know that. He’s nothing more. A drink isn’t going to change that.”

  “Good girl,” Daddy says, putting the car into park—a firm grip on the steering wheel. My mom huffs from the heat as she hops down from the passenger side of the blacked-out SUV, and I follow suit. The large water fountain in the center of our drive is spitting water twenty feet high. It’s a circular garden my mama spends most of her time in. The water is dyed light pink to match the flowers she has planted in there right now. One Christmas the water was dyed green and I accidentally fell in. My skin was stained a Grinch green color for a week straight. I lost a beauty pageant because of it. I’ve also never walked close to that mother trucking fountain since.

  “Oh, Clover,” my mother calls as I rush to my garage bay on the far end of the drive, catty-corner to the house.

  I glance over my shoulder. “Yeah, Mama?” She’s standing, eyes shielded as she surveys her squirting pride and joy.

  She pauses, looks over at my father, rolls her eyes, and says, “Tell everyone we said hello. Be a good girl and don’t drink too much. The Wellsley name is on the line.”

  “You don’t have to remind me of a fact I was born knowing, Mother. It’s always on the line.” A weaker woman would crack under the pressure they’ve put on me my entire life. And maybe I have cracked and I’m just doing it in a backward kind of way.

  “Maria is cleaning your house, darling. Make sure you take off your shoes at the door when you get home from DR later.” Seven million. The probable number of times she’s said this phrase or a variation of this phrase since I was old enough to understand what it means. It’s Saturday the day Maria always cleans.

  I swallow hard, trying to contain the tirade I’d like to scream if I were a different person. “Of course,” I reply, nodding. “Cleanliness is as close to godliness as we can get.” I used to believe it, but sometime over the course of the last decade, I just started saying it because I always have. It’s what is expected of me.

  Mama nods and links arms with my daddy as they approach the entrance to the manor. It is an old plantation house that they renovated and expanded before we moved in when I was four. There are fifteen thick columns out front because the Bridgeton’s next door has fourteen. There are parts of the house that I’ve barely explored, an entire wing my father calls his cave. It takes seven full-time staff members to keep everything running smoothly. It’s all I’ve ever known and yet I know it’s not what I want for myself.

  I’m right smack dab in the middle of an existential crisis, waiting for whatever sign God wants to give me before I detonate into shards of lace, proper manners, and a bride unwilling. I toss my oblivious parents another goodbye and punch in the code, my birthday, to open the garage bay door. I grab the extra set of keys that hang on a hook on the wall and start my car, last year�
��s Christmas present. Kit, the handyman, is parking my father’s SUV so I wait, tapping my nails on the leather steering wheel, for him to back it into the garage next to mine. Pulling out into the driveway, I take a deep breath as the pink fountain catches my eye in the rearview mirror.

  There is no escape in a small town. Secrets spread like a silent breed of ivy, wrapping around every tree, every building, every person. I’m forced to be the woman everyone else thinks I am. It’s not all bad, don’t get me wrong. I’m fortunate I have parents that care and a trust fund that guarantees I never need to work a day in my life. That means I’m jealous of what it feels like to have to do things. What am I missing? Girls with curls want straight hair. Girls with straight hair want curls. I want the freedom that comes with being able to dictate my own destiny. I pull into the DR parking lot and park next to Tannie’s red BMW.

  I flip down my mirror as I try to calm my thoughts and pull the Clover Wellsley everyone expects to the surface. A caricature of my real self. Tannie opens the passenger door of my car and slides in, perching her Chanel bag in her lap. I gave it to her as a present for her birthday last month.

  “How was it? How does he look?”

  I slide the gloss brush against my bottom lip. “Who do you mean?”

  “Oh, my God, you are such a space cadet these days. Mercer. How does Mercer look, Clover? I couldn’t make it to the airport, so I didn’t catch that first glimpse, you lucky girl, you.”

  “He looks like Mercer. Like he’s always looked. Like his muscles ate his brain,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I’ve got a lot on my mind, that’s all. A little support would be nice.”

  “I’d support you if you told me what was going on,” Tannie hisses. I can’t tell anyone, especially my best friend who is a bigger gossip than a blowhard politician. “I meant does he look like a tortured war hero that needs comforting,” she adds, my problems all but forgotten in place of her own desires. “By a willing woman that is.”

  “Seriously? Joe just broke up with you last week and you’re ready to dive back in?”

  My best friend groans, opening the makeup pouch in her purse. “It will help me get over Joe. You don’t get it, Clover. You don’t date. You don’t have boyfriends or give your heart away and let men stomp all over it. Sometimes you need to mete out revenge…retribution.”

  “Sounds like I’m not missing out on much,” I reply, capping my gloss and sucking in a deep breath. “I’m sorry Joe hurt you, but that has nothing to do with me, and I am capable of imagining what it feels like.”

  “Actually,” she says, cocking her head to look at me. “Maybe you are the one who needs a night with Mercer Ballentine. What would be better than spending time with a man when you know there can’t be strings attached? He’s leaving, right? Not serious. No dating. No giving your heart away. Just something to get your mind off of whatever is plaguing you.” Tannie groans. “That you won’t even tell your best friend about.”

  I consider it, truly. It takes a few seconds for me to snap back to reality. “Mercer isn’t that type of guy.”

  “You mean, you’re not that type of girl.”

  Oh, I am. But Mercer is too close to Greenton, too entwined in our lives. Our fathers work together. “I didn’t save my virginity for nearly three decades to give it to a man who cares nothing for it.”

  “I bet he cares a lot,” Tannie says. “I bet if you got it over with, you’d feel a lot better.”

  “Since when did we talk about such unladylike things?” I growl. “Let’s go in,” I order and open my car door to the humidity of an Alabama evening. Talking about more of my shortcomings isn’t good for my mental state. Not right now when I’m about to see Mercer again.

  Tannie’s heels sound against the pavement as she tries to catch up to me. “I’m only trying to help you.”

  Sighing, I halt and wait for my friend. “It’s not helping me, okay?” Bentley’s truck is parked off to the side and it catches my eye. “I’m having a drink and then leaving.”

  My friend nods. “I’m sorry. That’s fine.”

  I push on the good side of the double doors and enter DR. It always smells like wood polish and stale beer. The jukebox is playing an old country song, and everyone is wearing smiles. The bar is full, all the high-top tables filled with couples and groups of friends. I keep my head held high as Tannie links her arm in mine. “To the bar,” she says.

  We make our way toward the long counter in the back of the room, where the large neon sign that says Dizzy Rocket blinks out a dying wish, making an annoying zapping sound. Tannie wedges her way between two men sitting on bar stools to get the bartenders attention. “Ladies need drinks,” she croons. “Come on now! Where are your manners?”

  While my friend uses her feminine wiles, I scan the crowd to take stock of my surroundings. I smize at a few frenemies that catch my eye.

  “If you’re looking for me darlin’, you should know I saw you the second you stepped through the door,” Mercer drawls from behind me. “The good side of the door.”

  Smirking, I turn. “Well, well, well. There is the man of the hour. Tell me, did it hurt?”

  Mercer changed into a plaid dress shirt. This must be his fancy shirt. His smile takes my focus away from his clothes, though. It’s wide and white and it takes me a moment to catch my breath.

  “When I fell from Heaven?” Mercer asks, biting his bottom lip.

  I shake my head. “Trying to fit your enormous head through the door. The bad side of the door. The one that’s broken.”

  He laughs, tilting his head back, wide neck working as the chuckle shakes his body. I lick my lips and regret it when I taste my gloss. “You owe me white wine,” I announce.

  Mercer is already nodding. “I got the bottle you mentioned ready. Let’s head over to the end of the bar and I’ll pour you a glass.”

  Tannie snakes in next to us. A friendly serpent in expensive heels. “Mercer Ballentine you look good enough to eat.” She touches his shoulder. “Welcome back from the perilous war, my friend. Tell me how you’re doin’.”

  I said I wasn’t interested so it shouldn’t unnerve me to see her hands on the man, but it does. Tannie has something I want, something I’m working at obtaining for myself. Free will. She has the ability to date whoever she wants. No one judging her for a one-night stand, or whispering behind her back for touching him. I interrupt, gritting my teeth. “About that glass of wine, then?”

  My friend looks at me, and like a good Southern girl, she senses my irritation and backs off—stepping sideways a couple times. “Yeah, yeah you guys go catch up. I saw George and I need to know if Joe is dating yet. If he touches that bimbo Clarice, I will never forgive him.” George is Joe’s best friend, and it’s obvious she hasn’t embraced the fact that he is gone for good. I tell her I’ll catch up with her later and watch as she walks away. George sees her coming and his jovial smile morphs into fear.

  Mercer holds out his arm. “After you.” There are two empty stools at the very end in the quietest part of the bar—farthest from the jukebox. This is where people sit when they’re on dates. I swallow down my hesitation, because it’s a stupid thing to worry about. Rather, it should be a stupid thing, but it’s not. My world has an odd set of rules.

  “Shouldn’t you be working the crowd?” I ask, sitting on the stool, crossing my ankles like a lady, instead of at my knees like a lady of the night. Mercer nods at the bartender and then gestures to the bottle of wine chilling in a wine cooler. I can’t help but look around, take note of everyone who is staring at us. My skin prickles.

  “What? Can’t this be considered working the crowd?” he replies, running a hand through his hair. I catch a whiff of his shampoo and clear my throat. He grabs two filled long stem glasses from the bartender and offers me one. I accept the glass, holding it up in between our bodies. “Cheers to Greenton. To making my way back home,” Mercer drawls, his blue eyes hold mine as we clink glasses and take that first delicious sip.

 
“It’s good, isn’t it,” I say, savoring the taste, trying not to think about how good he smells and why I’m hung up on such an insignificant thing.

  “For someone who doesn’t drink wine, I’d say this is an A-plus,” Mercer replies, taking a big gulp. “How have you been, Clover?”

  Setting my glass down, I rub my hands together to warm them up. “It’s same ole, same ole. You know how this place is. Not much changes.”

  Mercer twirls the wine stem in between two fingers. “I didn’t ask how Greenton was. I asked how you’ve been.”

  Sighing, I smile. “I sort of am Greenton, Mercer,” I reply, meeting his searching gaze. “I’ve always been Greenton. I’ve never had a choice.”

  He winces and smirks at the same time. “I’d disagree with that, but I never question a lady.”

  Sipping my wine once, and then again, I try to compile my reply. “I still live in the house on my parents’ property. They’re trying to match me with every suitable bachelor in the state, and I’m fighting like mad against it, against everything.” I turn to him. “Mama and Daddy don’t know I’m fighting it. Sort of avoiding and deflecting.”

  Mercer chuckles. “You always have been a pro at diversion.” He rubs the stubble on his chin. “Tell me something then,” he says, tilting his head to the side.

  “Only if I want to,” I reply, smiling to match his.

  “I know you’re balancing what’s expected of you with what you want, but at what point do you break protocol and put your desires first?”

  Is he speaking in code? Was that a pickup line? I can’t tell and I should be able to. Mercer is my people. Why is he being cryptic? I sip my wine and nod, letting him know I’m thinking about his question.

  I meet his eyes and it’s a mistake, because it confuses me even more. “Well, I, ah, I guess I’m waiting for a sign.” That covers all the bases. “Busying myself with everything under the sun to fill up my life. I started a non-profit. It helps women and children in the area get back on their feet after a trauma…domestic abuse, anything really. They can stay as long as it takes to sort life out. I’ve been trying to implement programs to help them find stable work. Greenton is small, though, so it’s a challenge. It’s over on Fifth Street. Where Cranky’s Gym used to be.”