Page 3 of True Honey (The Hornets Nest #4)

SHORE

K ayla grimaced.

“She’s new,” she added and went to help her, but another customer came through the front door and she had to leave the redhead to clean up herself.

I was glad for the interruption. As flirty and fun as Kayla was, I wasn’t exactly in the mood to screw my stress away in a bathroom stall with some waitress, not with my grandfather's ultimatum on my mind. Coming to Hilly’s was a mistake, but it was the first stop with alcohol before the Nest, and at least I could leave my bike in the parking lot safely and walk up the hill when I couldn’t drive it.

“You’ve got to throw some over your shoulder,” I said, swirling the last sip of whiskey.

“Isn’t that an old wives' tale?” She furrowed her brows at me, and I chuckled.

“You aren’t superstitious?” I asked her and shifted on the stool so I was facing her. “It’s bad luck if you don’t,” I said, nodding to the little pile of spilled salt on the serving tray.

“Maybe I don’t believe in luck, good or bad,” she challenged, and my face scrunched up in amusement at her response.

“Doesn’t everyone believe in luck?” I asked.

“Well I mean,” she sighed, filling the next shaker, “if you look at it from a perspective that every day is filled with bad luck, then good luck becomes a pipe dream. Besides, when was the last time anything happened to you that was just luck ?” She asked me.

I opened my mouth and shut it again. Trying to think about what she said before answering, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t think of a single moment when my good fortune wasn’t related to hard work or survival skills.

“Luck has nothing to do with our lives. It's just an old wives' tale to scare sailors, priests, and drunk businessmen,” she said, looking over my suit with a small smirk.

“You’re funny,” I chuckled, and the mounting fear of my future seemed to fade into the silence a little as she spoke, her voice settling me more than the whiskey ever could.

“You don’t talk to a lot of people or?” She teased.

“What, you don’t think you’re funny?” I asked her. “Is this another life philosophy?”

“No,” she shook her head. “There’s not much to be funny about these days.”

“See, that’s nonsense,” I said. “There’s always something to laugh about, you just need to look harder. Like it’s pretty funny that you spilled salt everywhere,” I said, moving my head to the side with a smile.

“That wasn’t that funny,” she said to me, “that was just a mess.”

“Mess can be fun,” I argued. Just not when it was my life, which right now was a disaster.

“If you’re going to make outlandish claims, you should at least mean it,” she called my bluff and I nodded.

“Fair,” I said and finished my whiskey. “And I’m a doctor, not a businessman.”

“What hospital?” She asked.

“Why? Do you have an emergency?” I asked, the whiskey starting to warm my chest and stomach with confidence as it blanketed the anxiety and concern.

“No, so I can avoid the hospital with the drunk doctor.” She smiled.

“She does have jokes.” I snapped my fingers at her. “I work at the stadium, I’m the chief medical officer for the athletic department.”

“That’s impressive,” she said, not looking up from her funnel.

“If you’re going to make outlandish claims…” I started and she looked up with a death glare in her big green eyes. “You walked into that one,” I said.

“You look like you had a rough day,” she said, her eyes flickering back down.

I cleared my throat and looked down at myself. My tie was everywhere, and my shirt was rolled up around my elbows in a bunch of messy wrinkles. She wasn’t wrong. I looked homeless.

“It’s been a rough couple of months,” I admit, “today was just…”

“Enough to make you want to drink?” She smirked, her watchful gaze flicking to my glass.

“Yeah, exactly…” I sighed. “I don’t usually. It’s kind of a new habit.”

“A bad one,” she corrected.

“One I don’t need,” I admitted, running my hands through my hair and exhaling hard. “You’re a good listener and I’m officially becoming a bar creep.” I laughed, the boys would harass me for how embarrassing I’m being. “Wow. How the mighty fall.”

I hated that the conversation between us was doing more for my mood than whatever the hell Kayla was trying to do. What was wrong with me? Rhetorical question, the answer was a lot and everything all at once.

“I’m Silas,” I said after a minute, realizing I hadn’t introduced myself yet.

She smirked at the introduction but didn’t say anything.

“What?” I asked.

“Oh, Kayla said not to give my real name to college kids,” she confessed, and I couldn’t help but lean forward on the bar.

“I told you, I’m a doctor,” I said.

“And I’m supposed to take you at your word?” She said quietly. Her confidence drained like I’d popped a balloon. I don’t know what bruise I poked, but something upset her.

“You can give me a fake name if it makes you feel better,” I said to her, hoping that she didn’t make good on the offer.

Her brow rose, and her smile had faded, but she was thinking about it.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and opened the directory to the University to find my page. The picture was outdated, I looked so young and fresh, nothing like the overwhelmed graying man in the reflection of the bar back.

“Look,” I said and slid the phone gently across the bar to her.

She leaned over, looking at the picture before looking back up to me.

“Drew,” she said after further inspection of my listing.

Drew. I thought… that was a pretty name.

“Why are you in Harbor?” I asked her hoping that the introductions would open her up to more conversation.

“How do you know I’m not from here, just a new face to you ?” She challenged me.

“You aren’t from the East Coast,” I said, “I’d bet on California, maybe San Francisco.”

“Too loud, too busy.” She doesn’t look up from her task.

“Seattle?” I guessed.

“Too wet,” she laughed.

“Kansas,” I said.

She looked up from the salt and smiled.

“Wichita,” I said.

“Newton,” she corrected.

“Small-town girl, I see you,” I hummed. I would talk for hours if it meant getting to see that cute, argumentative smirk. “So why Harbor? Newton is small enough, dry enough…” I joked.

“Just looked like a nice town,” she said, clearly not wanting to talk about it.

She looked until her eyes landed on Kayla across the bar.

She was looking for an out and I wasn’t sure how I had swung out so badly on the interaction.

Usually I was smooth, quick to answer, faster to get a girl's pants off.

But there was something about her that screamed, slow and cautious.

Maybe it was just that the rest of my life was barreling toward the end of the tracks or that I had no control over anything, but I appreciated how careful she was.

“If you’re a doctor, why stay here?” She asked.

“Family.”

It was like the word had flipped a switch in her.

“That’s usually a reason to leave,” she said. “You must really love them.”

“I won’t bore you with the details, I’ll save them for my therapist,” I said and set the empty glass on the bartop.

What the hell was I doing? It wasn’t the time or the conversation, but it was just second nature, the flirting rolled out of me and the next thing I knew I was asking her out.

I sat on it for about thirty seconds, my usually very calculated decision-making thrown to the wind.

“Would you want to get dinner with me this week? ”

Drew stopped screwing on the lid of the shaker and I watched her jaw tighten.

“I promise I’m not a creep?” I added.

She opened her mouth and closed it again. I watched her throat bob, it was becoming very apparent that she was trying to come up with a way to say no that didn’t involve escalating the situation. She was scared, skittish and just trying to let me down easily.

“You can say no,” I said to her and she looked up at me finally. There it was, the fear in her eyes that if she did, I would overreact. “Although I don’t think I’ve ever been rejected, so be nice?” I added with a small, pathetic smile that was fueled by shame and whiskey.

“I don’t think it’s the right time for me, I’m just getting settled into Harbor and you’re very nice, handsome but…” she cleaned her hands on the little black apron she was wearing around her waist and held one out for me to shake.

I chuckled and entertained the awkward moment before she excused herself and told Kayla she was taking a fifteen-minute break. I wandered over to the front desk as Drew disappeared into the parking lot and leaned over on my elbows.

“She’s like a mouse,” Kayla noted. “She’ll warm up to the crowd soon enough.”

“She was nice,” I said, “when did you hire her?”

“Yesterday, she came in asking about the job and she’s got more experience waiting tables than all the girls in here combined. She’s just…” Kayla took my card and sighed, “a little quiet.”

“Not everyone can be loud,” I said, glancing out the tinted glass door for a peek at her before she was gone.

“She’s a little weird, cagey I guess?” She said punching in some numbers.

“Yeah I noticed, she said she was from Newton?” I said and Kayla scowled.

“Like Kansas? No, she put Seattle on her work forms,” she responded confused when I started to laugh. She had lied to protect herself and I admired it, I was almost impressed at how easily she had side-stepped me. Clever.

“Hey thanks for the drink, sorry I wasn’t much fun today.” I tapped the card across her knuckles after taking it back and gave her a wink. “Next time? ”

“Yeah Si, see you later,” she purred and went back to work.

I tapped my finger on the desk before putting myself back together and wandering out into the sunlight of the parking lot. I looked around for her, noticing her jeans and sneakers poking out from the driver's side of a shitty little car packed to the brim with boxes and suitcases.

“Thanks for the jokes,” I said, waving as her head popped back out of the car. In the warm sunlight, it was easier to admire how pretty she was. Her red ponytail frizzed around her heart-shaped face and freckled cheeks, everything working in tandem with her cautious evergreen eyes.

She gave me an awkward smile, fixing her shirt and waved back. Something moved in the car, and I noticed a young boy in the front seat talking to her. She gave me one last look before disappearing back into the car and leaving me standing there like the nosy idiot I was.