Page 60 of Mourner for Hire

FORTY-EIGHT

VADA

The parking lot is empty except for Dominic’s truck. The bar is dead beyond the flickering neon sign that says Open . It’s not Monday, reminding me of what he told me earlier: it’s hard to survive in a town like this.

The leaves crunch under my feet, and I realize my time in Shellport is coming to a jagged end.

It’s hard not to wonder what will come of Dominic and me when I head back to the city.

Long distance isn’t impossible when it’s only a few hours.

But it’s also hard not to wonder if he expects anything beyond my stay here.

The door creaks as it swings open, and the smell of pine, sea, and the subtle tang of beer hits me, sending a flurry of memory pulsing through my veins.

The first time I ever saw Dominic.

The first time I felt his skin.

The first drink he ever made for me.

The first round of pool.

The first kiss.

Dominic looks up from the glass he’s polishing, and his lips slide into a sly grin.

“Closing early?” I ask, and he narrows his eyes just so that I fully understand. I tilt my head. “It’s such a cool place, though. ”

He shrugs, walks around the bar to meet me, and pulls me close as he says, “Bad location.”

I don’t have time to respond before his lips are on mine, and I’m lost in a sea of daydreams.

“What will come of it?” I ask, pulling back and glancing around. The wood-paneled walls. The view of the valley and the ocean just outside the back wall of windows. The string lights on the deck.

“I don’t know yet.”

I nod once. “Can I show you something?”

“Of course,” he answers as I pull out a stack of photographs and place it on the bar.

His gaze wanders over the pictures—a mixture of confusion and tenderness in his expression.

“I don’t remember any of it,” I confess.

I watch him swallow, searching the photographs for the right thing to say. “Tell me more about your memory loss.”

“It’s not really memory loss. It’s more misplaced. Something traumatic happened in my childhood, and my mind decided to compartmentalize it and tuck it away on a shelf in the back of my brain to protect me so I could function and move forward.”

“Is there a way to get it back?”

“Nothing is guaranteed. Some therapists believe in hypnosis, but even that’s a struggle because you can’t guarantee which memories will come back and which ones won’t.”

He nods and inhales. “So you don’t remember me?”

“No. Do you really remember me?” I let out a breath of a laugh with the question.

“Yes,” he answers, voice low.

“Well, I certainly must have left an awful impression.” Again, I try to laugh, and again, he doesn’t.

“I didn’t at first. Not that first night here. And when I read the will, it still didn’t register. But that day on the hike, I saw your birthmark, and I thought it looked familiar. ”

I narrow my eyes. “And you still tossed a vibrator in my grocery cart.”

He grins, cheeks flushed. “Yep. Then slowly, it all started coming back to me.” He pauses, looking at me with what I can only describe as devotion. “You started coming back to me.”

“Tell me everything.”

“I remember you were obsessed with apples. You ate probably three a day. I remember your mom would let us have seconds when she made cobbler. I remember that you hate pumpkin pie. I remember that you would feed our dog your green beans because you didn’t want to eat?—”

“Drew Barkermore. May he rest in peace.”

He stares at me thoughtfully. “And I remember you were always around until you weren’t. And I remember Mom saying we’d see you soon and we never did, and after a while, I just stopped asking. Time ticks forward. Life goes on. You became this memory of a friend.”

I smile at the sentiment; a warm swell of affection surrounds my heart.

“Do you realize you just remembered something?” he asks.

My mind backtracks, but I come up short.

“You just remembered my dog’s name from twenty years ago.”

Realization makes me smile. “Memory is a funny thing, isn’t it? Picking a dog’s importance over you.”

“Maybe I get to make memories with you now, though. Because the past doesn’t matter.”

For some reason, this sentence makes my throat tighten. “That’s how I feel about the cottage.”

His gaze tightens on me, beckoning me to continue.

“I hope it’s a beautiful place for people to make memories because, based on my research, our families used to have a hell of a time there.”

“It turns out we still do,” he responds.

A grin spreads over my face, and heat hits my cheeks .

He cups his hand around my jaw, letting his fingers tangle into my hair as he tilts my face so he can sink his lips into mine. A quick sigh of pleasure escapes my mouth, and he pulls back, lingering.

“Or maybe it’s a place you and I could still make memories.”

He pauses for only a brief moment to let the statement rest in the air between us before he kisses my jaw and trails kisses down my neck.

He could mean just for now. He and I, fooling around and making memories. Or he could mean more.

“I need you to spell it out for me.”

He kisses my collarbone and then pulls back to look down at me. “Spell what out?”

“What did you mean by that? A place where we could make memories. Like, for the next week? Or… Because that was a vague statement with very ambiguous implications, and I just don’t want to have make-believe scenarios running through my head, playing tricks on me.”

A deep, throaty chuckle escapes his lips, and he smiles like he’s amused or in love. The two expressions can be very similar. It’s very confusing.

He sweeps my hair back from my face and tilts my chin to face him.

“I mean, stay, Vada.”

I wait for him to elaborate.

“Stay here. Be here. Let home be here.”

“What about you? You might not even be here.”

“I heard from Good Samaritan in Corvallis early,” he says. “That’s only an hour from here.”

I throw myself at him, squeezing him tightly. “You did it! I’m so proud of you!”

He seems unperturbed as if he just told me he’s going grocery shopping. “Thanks.”

“Dominic, you should celebrate! ”

“I will,” he reasons, a tortured look on his face. “As soon as you say you’re staying.”

A sly smile spreads over his lips as I hold his face in my hands. “Are you going to force me?”

“No, just strongly encourage.”

I laugh even as tears fill my eyes like the slow rise of water after a storm. My throat is tight, and it feels like he just cracked my chest open.

“The cottage is done. The party is in two days, and then…” I clear my throat. “I’m supposed to go home.”

I don’t say I have to go home. I say I’m supposed to. Because that’s the plan. That’s what is written in the will—set in stone and in dry-erase marker on a whiteboard.

He nods twice, hearing me. “I won’t tell you what to do. But you have a place here… if you want it.”

“I thought you were dying to get me out of town. At the ready with pitchforks and torches.”

He laughs lightly. “It turns out your witchy spells are quite convincing.”

Now it’s my turn to laugh. It’s a brief release of euphoric breath before my mind falls back on what he’s suggesting.

I tilt my head and smile, staring at him fondly.

I think of the last two months here. The people I’ve met and how welcome they’ve made me feel.

The complete one-eighty Dominic and I have had while realizing he was an integral part of my childhood before I moved away.

“I thought I was an inconvenience.”

“You are.” He doesn’t miss a beat. “No, you are worse. You are a disruption.”

“Wow, Dominic, you really know how to lay it on thick.” I let out a laugh.

He kisses my forehead. “I had a plan, and then you came along and I started to question all of it. You lit a fire under me and it made me angry enough to realize how unhappy I’ve been in my circumstances.

You disrupted my life and inconvenienced me into falling for you, Vada.

I fought it every step of the way. But if I’m honest, I wasn’t just angry it was you who showed up at my mom’s funeral, I was angry that I wanted it to be you. ”

I study his face, cupping my hands around his cheeks and dragging a thumb across his bottom lip. I don’t have an answer. Not yet, anyway.

He must sense my unrest because he adds, “Don’t decide right now. Just know it’s an option for you.”

“It feels like I’ve known you forever.”

“Because you have,” he answers.

I nod and pull him to me, kissing him with every emotion coursing through my veins.

“You wreck me, do you know that?” I pull back from the kiss, and he nips at my collarbone.

“Yes,” he whispers, low and deep as his palms encase my ribcage, outlining the curve of my back.

“I hate it,” I moan.

He kisses my sternum. “No, you don’t.”

I let out a small laugh, my defenses down because they quite simply do not exist.

Before we know it, we’re stumbling through the bar, and he’s flipping the neon Open light off, and then we’re upstairs, wrapped up in each other and the possibility of us.