Page 16

chapter

eight

My Hero – Foo Fighters

CAMPBELL

Later that night, a sweeping glance told Campbell all he needed to know: Timmy’s Nook hadn’t changed.

Same rodeo stools, ready to buck you off the second you perched your ass on them.

Same pockmarked bar, its surface trapping postcards of Myrtle Beach, Charleston, and Hilton Head beneath layers of varnish.

Same lonely faces, peering through a haze of smoke and neon.

The smell of stale beer, tobacco, and perfume—the scent of bars the world over—was as repellent as it was comforting.

Settling into a darkened corner booth, the cracked vinyl squealing in protest, he figured he knew every person in the place. And without a doubt, they knew him. Had known his mother and father.

Or at least known of them. The “Battling Trues”.

In fact, most had probably been in the ballpark the day he lost his mind, the last of his innocence, and his shot at a college athletic scholarship .

Part of the reason—besides Celia’s bloodthirsty threats—he had stayed away so long.

His parents’ mess had been the reason he left.

Being so well understood wasn’t a particularly pleasant feeling.

Dooey Tanner, the beefy guy hunched over the bar, had sat in front of him in first grade.

The old alphabetical seating arrangement.

Every morning for the first month, Campbell had pulled out a yellow marker and drawn on the back of Dooey’s neck.

The kid never uttered a peep. A month of tattooing, and he hadn’t said a word.

But his mother—in a phone call to Campbell’s—had raised hell about stained collars and gross intimidation.

The next day, his mother bought him a coloring pad and a set of fat markers, the kind that smelled like mint and fake cherries, then shooed him away when he asked about punishment. Not that he wanted a whipping, but he’d sure expected something.

It was the first time he remembered the odor that hovered in the bottom drawer of his father’s desk, where the old man sometimes hid bottles wrapped in brown paper, clinging to her.

This was also the first time Campbell recalled lighting a fuse that fizzled out long before it could blow up in his parents’ faces—a spark snuffed out by disinterest.

So, he’d lit more, hoping one would catch.

Hadn’t really gotten that until he ruined a perfectly good bat, smacking it against a harmless tree.

By then, his mother was long gone.

The thought landed hard, heavy enough to make him scan the room for a waitress. He wanted nothing more than to avoid the bar—but he wanted a drink. Badly .

“All that promise, Camp. Whoo-whee, did you deliver.”

Campbell jolted, his head smacking against a stuffed gamecock nailed to the wall by its scrawny neck. A ragged maroon feather floated to the floor as his pupils adjusted to the light, the woman beside his booth swimming into focus.

Just his luck. Screwing-on-the-cotton-press Tammi had tracked him down.

“Hey,” she said, settling into the seat across the way when he didn’t move fast enough to accommodate the pointed look she aimed by his side. “Where ya been hiding? Haven’t seen you since baseball practice. And you know me, I’ve been looking.”

His lips twitched in that familiar way. He couldn’t stop the response any more than he could stop wishing the woman sitting across from him was?—

“Why the frown, Camp?” Tammi’s purple-tipped nails danced across the table, skimmed his arm from wrist to elbow, then retreated. “Aren’t you glad to see an old friend?”

“Honestly, I was just waiting for a drink and a little company.”

Tammi preened, wiggling in her seat, her bosom bouncing beneath a tank top better suited to summer than late fall. “Drinks coming up,” she said, flagging down a passing waitress like she would a cab on a busy street. “Bourbon and Diet Coke and…”

“Scotch. Neat,” he murmured, realizing he should have stayed home, ignored the restlessness that had set in after he tucked Kit and John Nelson into bed. Restlessness fueled by staring out his bedroom window and seeing a spark of light coming from Fontana Quinn’s cottage.

Letting him know she was awake.

And willing.

“Where’d you sail off to, sugar?”

Campbell circled back to find Tammi leaning in as far as the pockmarked slab of wood allowed, her cleavage getting a generous boost. Catching his gaze, a satisfied smile spread across her face.

She tossed a batch of bleached-blonde hair over one shoulder and reached for his hand.

It took every ounce of control not to pull away.

“Remember when we used to go two towns over just to buy beer from that run-down country store? The ornery old coot who owned the place charged us three times the going rate but never once asked for proof of anything. Sold us cigarettes too—Pall Malls, disgusting things.” She gave his hand a squeeze.

“We had some code name, didn’t we? One we used in class and in front of our parents. ”

“Grampa’s,” he said, wondering why he’d held on to that tidbit for fifteen years. What a waste of prime real estate.

“That’s it!” Her expression softened, the way a woman’s does when caught in the middle of a memory.

“Afterward, we’d go down to the river with a truckload of blankets and food, that transistor radio with the bent antenna spitting out whatever station we could find.

Mostly country, which we hated. And you, you could always set the best fires, Camp.

I swear, they near to burned all night, throwing light clear across the lake.

Magic, those nights. The freest times of my life. ”

She caught his gaze, her eyes the same golden-brown ones he’d cherished for a month or two in the spring of 1981, the only change a few tiny creases shooting from the corners. The same eyes that had met his beneath that tangle of branches she seemed to treasure.

What startled him was how much she remembered— the way she remembered. The weight she placed on their time together.

To him, it had been nothing more than fun and games. Sex every day, when sex was all he could think about. Without commitment. Without obligation.

It called to mind every single thing he feared if he let himself get involved with Fontana.

“Why”—he dropped his voice and leaned in—“why do you, I mean those were great times and all, I enjoyed them, enjoyed you , but…” Campbell broke off as the waitress delivered his drink, which he grabbed with a hand that had begun to tremble.

Tammi waited until they were alone—bless her—to release a shrewd smile and an explanation.

“Why do I hold those memories close? Oh, Camp, the biggest thing I had to worry about was getting caught sneaking in my bedroom window after you dropped me off and whether my mother had remembered to press my cheerleading skirt the night before. I was a perfect size six without a wrinkle in sight. Secretary of the senior class, president of the home ec club. At the top of my game, the world at my fingertips.”

Her nails clacked against her glass in time with her accomplishments, one, two, three, four. “And baby, oh baby, I had dreams. I know that’s hard to believe now, but I did. Big, impressive dreams. Not a single one involved a curl and dye on Main Street.”

“I never meant”—he took a sip, the cheap whiskey tasting like shit but oh-so better than nothing—“to hurt you. To leave you expecting...more. More than I could give.”

Tammi wiped a smudge of crimson lipstick off her glass. “What are you, Camp? Almost thirty-three? Birthday coming up in a couple of weeks, right? October twenty-first.”

He nodded, running his pinky along a scar in the table. Could it get worse? She remembered his birthday .

“Did you think I wouldn’t? That date is etched in my brain.” She crunched ice between her teeth. “A woman thing, I guess.”

“I don’t know yours. April? August? Honest to God, I have no idea.” He dragged a finger through the dew streaking his glass, lifted it to his lips, and sucked. Then wished he’d checked the move when Tammi hissed a breath and wiggled back in the booth .

Autopilot. He was on autopilot. Flirting when he didn’t even want to. Talking to Tammi like he hadn’t since those hot-and-getting-hotter days—when their lives had been as settled as snowflakes in the bottom of a glass globe.

No shaking up. No unrest. Just solid surety of their place in the world.

It was nothing like that now, any of it.

“I was an ass, Tam, and I never intended to be. I’m not even sure now what I intended.

Beyond you and photography...goddamned baseball, homework and the obligations that went along with being my father’s son, I didn’t realize.

What was coming, and how easily the ties that bind can be broken.

If I made you feel less, it’s because I felt less.

” With a half-laugh, he swept his hair from his brow.

“And here I sit—you're right—closing in on thirty-three, and I still haven’t figured it out. I really hoped I’d like myself by now.

Instead, it feels like I’ve failed every person who counted. ”

“Oh, sugar, I’m here to tell you, life doesn’t turn out the way we plan.” She plucked a slice of lime from her glass and bit into it. “Did you really think it would?”

“Actually, I’m not all that surprised.” Pulling a toothpick from his shirt pocket, he twirled it between his fingers, longing for the cigarette he no longer allowed himself.

“But I don’t like knowing I’m dragging other people into my house of indecision.

It’s enough making myself miserable, not knowing what’s around the bend, feeling like I made poor choices.

” He tapped his toothpick against the table.

“But all of a sudden—no joke, in the last week or two—I don’t want to pull anyone else inside.

Tangle their life up with mine unless I’m sure they can handle it.

I can handle it.” He exhaled sharply. “Ruin a friendship or something.”