NATE
My headache had grown steadily worsethroughout the day and the constant tap-tap-tapping of my passenger’s shoe against my dashboard wasn’t helping.
That’s all I’d heard for the past eight, nearly nine hours, that fucking tap-tap-tapping. Well, that and her snarky comments and bitchy attitude when she forgot she was supposed to be giving me the silent treatment.
I let out a sigh of relief when the sign for Whitecap came into view, knowing this nightmare of a car ride was nearly over. We’d finally made it to the small beach-side town in Oregon where I’d grown up, the very same one I’d left so many years earlier because I was convinced I was meant for more.
The irony was that I’d come back for the very same reasons I’d left in the first damn place. Used to be, I couldn’t stand how damn small this place was, how everyone knew everyone, how secrets didn’t exist in a place like this, and that gossiping about everything was practically the religion for most of the townsfolk. I’d felt like I was suffocating, growing up here. Hell, half the time I got in trouble for stupid shit wasn’t because my parents caught me, but because someone else had seen me acting like a dumb kid and reported right back to my folks. My friends and I hadn’t been able to get away with a damn thing. I was counting on that still being the case.
Back then, the one thought that had been at the forefront of my mind for most of my life was how I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to get the hell out of Whitecap, and the moment I could, I made good on that promise to myself.
To my parents’ dismay, the only colleges I applied to were the ones that took me out of state, the same for law school as well. Then, instead of coming home upon graduation like they’d hoped, I took an internship at a prestigious firm in San Francisco that eventually turned into a full-time job.
For the past twenty years, northern California had been my home, and I’d been happy there. Well, maybe not happy, exactly, after all, a marriage that felt more like a prison sentence followed years later by a contentious divorce tended to put a damper on pretty much everything. But at the very least, I’d been content because I had Evan. Then everything changed.
“For the love of God, will you knock it the hell off? That damn tapping is about to drive me insane.” I took one hand off the steering wheel so I could pinch the bridge of my nose, my headache growing to the point I could feel my heartbeat behind my eyeballs. “And get your feet off my dash, already. I won’t tell you again.”
Evan’s response was to grumble and mutter under her breath in that surly teenage girl way that had evolved into an art over the centuries. At least she took her damn feet down, but not before scuffing the hell out of the dashboard in the process.
Whoever said parenthood was a blessing either hadn’t experienced what it was like attempting to raise a teenager, or they were simply full of shit. My vote was on the latter, personally. It seemed like Evan’s sole reason for existing was to push my buttons and tell me on a daily basis all the creative ways I was ruining her life, of which there were a ton apparently.
To be fair, she wasn’t making my life all that easy either. I swear, the instant she turned fourteen the sweet little angel I met and fell ass-over-elbows in love with twelve years earlier when she was just a little doe-eyed toddler was taken over by some kind of pod person. Overnight she became a moody, sullen version of herself who hated everything and everyone and didn’t hesitate to say so.
I flipped on my blinker and made a left, suddenly swamped with memories as the Boardwalk Inn came into view.
To say Evan had taken the news of our impending move badly was a laughable understatement. The entire evening before my trip had been filled with yelling and tears and threats of running away. It had been so bad I’d considered nailing her windows shut before I left the next morning.
Because of the drama that had unfolded beforehand, when I’d made this very same trip from San Francisco to Whitecap a month ago, I hadn’t exactly been in the best of moods. I’d come back to my hometown to get everything in order for this move. I’d spent three days with a real estate agent, looking for somewhere to set up my office, somewhere I could make a home for Evan and me. Office space had been easy enough since I wasn’t all that picky, but I hadn’t managed to find a single house I thought a bratty, emotionally turbulent teenager would like, so I’d settled on a two bedroom apartment in the middle of town.
I’d turned into the parking lot of that dive bar because it was the first place I’d noticed outside Whitecap’s town limits that served alcohol, and after the belligerent voicemail I’d just gotten from my daughter, I’d needed a drink more than my next fucking breath. Stumbling upon the redheaded stunner working behind the bar had been an unexpected silver lining to an otherwise miserable trip.
There hadn’t been a single day in the past month that I hadn’t thought about our night together, and every time it happened, I found myself fighting a hard-on like some pathetic teenager instead of a forty-year-old man who was supposed to have more self-control.
To say that had been the best sex of my life would have been putting it mildly. I was pretty sure I’d had an out of body experience every time I came that night. Which made it a crying shame it was only a one-time deal. She’d made that perfectly clear when she refused to give me her name and bailed out of my hotel room before the sun had even risen. Not that I was complaining. With the move and trying to get a new business off the ground and a kid who was a hop, skip, and jump from a juvenile detention center, the last thing I had the time or inclination for was a romantic entanglement. The fact the woman lived one town over and I’d more than likely never see her again was icing on the cake, really: a pleasant memory amidst months of unpleasantness and worry.
On autopilot, knowing these roads like the back of my hand, even after so many years, I made another turn onto the main drag through the center of town. Evan sat up a little higher and leaned forward to get a better view through the windshield, pulling me from my ill-timed thoughts of a certain redhead. “Wait... where are we?” she asked, her voice holding the smallest tinge of panic, and I knew exactly why.
“Welcome to downtown Whitecap,” I said, the shit-eating grin I fought to keep from my face ringing clear as day in my tone.
“Oh my God,” she said with a dramatic whine as she threw herself back into the seat. “Are you kidding me right now?”
That was her new favorite thing to say. Are you kidding me right now was the question that followed anything she didn’t like, and nowadays, the list of shit my daughter didn’t like was ungodly long.
“Nope, not kidding you.”
“This place is a joke! I haven’t seen a single Starbucks in like, forever.”
I pointed through the windshield to the long row of shops and storefronts that stretched across the whole block on my left. The once-red brick was now bleached, thanks to the sun and salty breeze, and housed the Whitecap Bank, the ice cream shop that stayed open year-round, no matter how frigid the winter months were, and a few other businesses. And right there, in the middle of it all, hung a shingle that read “Welcome to Drip. Come on in and stay a while.”
Don’t mind if I do, I thought as I turned the wheel and guided my car into one of the diagonal spots that faced the large plate glass windows on the face of the building. “You don’t need a Starbucks when you can support your local businesses. That’s the kind of stuff small towns thrive on.”
Back in the day, this spot had housed a popular deli. The owner at the time, Burt Macklan, had always talked about retiring to Florida where it stayed warm year-round but still had plenty of beaches. I guess he finally made good on that plan. Now it was a coffee shop that seemed to be doing pretty damn good business for midday during a work week, at least from what I could see beneath the flare of the sunlight on the sparkling clean glass.
“Let’s go,” I said as I pushed the button to kill the ignition and unclipped my seatbelt. Our new home was less than ten minutes away. My parents’ general store—our destination before heading to the apartment complex—was at the end of the block. But if I didn’t get some caffeine in my system to help beat back this headache and improve my sour mood, I was liable to explode, and the aftermath wouldn’t be pretty.
“I bet their coffee sucks,” she grumbled as she burrowed deeper into the passenger seat and crossed her arms over her chest with an indolent pout. “I’m not going in there.”
“That wasn’t a request. Now, quit your sulking and get out of the car.”