At the Next Table Read online

  How do I face this damn day?

  I’m not exactly sure when I started coming daily to Lover’s Landing, or why it even became a thing. But it did. I relive it over and over again as if this is Groundhog’s Day or that movie Fifty First Dates. I try to have fifty anniversary coffees. Except I’m all alone.

  Betty and Harold Connelly, owners of the café for thirty years, introduced Harper and me. They had this story of their magic brew creating love, or something like that. Harper really dug all the mystery and hoopla about it. Especially when our “meet story” got told to other townspeople who often would then get all excited and tell us their “meet story” right here at Lover’s Landing. It did seem like there was an unusually high number of couples from Love who actually fell in love thanks to Betty and Harold.

  I often rolled my eyes at the Connellys, humoring them and thinking they were cute and harmless, crazy old coots who liked to serve coffee to the locals.

  Until I fell in love right there, too.

  Betty did it. She made it so we met.

  One Valentine ’s Day morning, she gave Harper my drink and Harper’s drink to me. Harper and I switched our cups back, smiled at each other, and I asked her how she tolerated all that sweetness she ordered. I drank straight black coffee. She had sipped it before realizing the switch… which I absolutely know Betty did on purpose, but she never admitted to it. Anyway, Harper’s face scrunched up into the most adorable little bunny-faced squint. I could literally hear her brain say “ooh, gross!” at the same moment I downed her sugary, vanilla-laden syrup she pretended was coffee. We had glanced at our cups and the H-names that had been the confusion Betty pretended. But I’m sure there was no confusion for Betty. She’s a sharp cookie. Maybe even more so now.

  We sat down at the table almost center of the room, as it was the only one open that day. I stopped in there because the ranch owner, Ray Klendon, had me in town to grab some vaccines he’d ordered from the big animal vet whose office was in downtown Love. Waiting on the vet to open, I’d wandered into Lover’s Landing. It’s not a place I went very often. I sometimes grabbed a coffee or one of their treats, but I wasn’t a die-hard customer.

  Oh, but Harper was. I used to tease her we might have single-handedly kept this place in business all these years for how much money she spent on her specialty coffee drinks. She went in there every single morning without fail, and oftentimes for lunch, too.

  But the morning we met, the switched drinks, and our reactions to the other’s choices started us on a flirtation that had us agreeing to sit down over the most ordinary thing, a cup of coffee. It had been magic. An instant, warm chemistry and friendship. I asked her to dinner, and that became several dates, meeting each other’s friends, and it only blossomed from there until two years later… on Valentine’s Day, we stood in the small Baptist church in town to get married.

  She’d been a small woman, in height and weight, with pixie-like features and shoulder-length brown hair. I knew the moment Harper first smiled at me, she was above me in every way, but she didn’t care. She’d just finished her dental assistant course and was back in Love to work for the dentist she’d gone to her entire life. She made me better, and she smoothed the rough edges my mom had never shown me how to. For a few years there, I believed I’d literally touched the sun in being on the receiving end of someone as innocent, kind, decent and wonderful as Harper McCree. She was my golden road out of the kind of careless squalor I was raised in. Her parents should have shoved my ass out of the door and her life when they met me. But they seemed to think I was a broken little bird and they took me in, much as Harper did. They showed me what a family could be like. I had no idea that family could mean people who were kind and caring and positive additions to life.

  My parents weren’t a big part of my life. My dad split when I was a kid, and I have no idea if he’s dead or alive. I was the very definition of a young, dumb, and broke roughneck when I met Harper, but she taught me a different way to be and a better way to live.

  Because of her influence, I had intended to ask Ray to consider putting me on track to be foreman of his ranch. Harper wanted two kids, and she wanted them to have a nice life. I wanted to make sure she had all her dreams come true, even if she married a poor cowpoke who didn’t deserve her. We started out renting an apartment just on the outskirts of Love. Then, her parents offered up a small parcel of their acreage for us to start building our first house. We lived in it only six months before she died. I’ve never stepped foot in it since.

  My mom, a single mom who lives in a trailer park just on the other side of town, went and grabbed me some clothes and essentials after Harper died. That was about the nicest thing my mom ever did for me in my life, and I’m not sure we’ve spoken more than three times since then.

  The McCrees were heartbroken when she died. They tried to reach out to me, but after the funeral, I could not bear to face them. I refused their calls. I refused their care and concern. I know they did it because they believed that’s what Harper would have wanted. For all my flaws, Harper did truly love me. But without Harper? The house? The nice life? Being no more than a hired hand that worked too much, drank in my off time, and screwed whoever said yes, was back to being my destiny. Ironically, I was given the foreman job on the ranch after all, but after Harper died, I begged Ray to get someone else and to let me go back to being a ranch hand. I couldn’t handle the stress or even find the will do the job. With Harper’s death, my life’s path was back to where it most likely belonged: working the grunt work on a cattle ranch with no real future. I drank way too much most nights at Riding Rough, a seedy little bar on the outskirts of town that served other ranch hands and construction workers, and a place I never once took Harper.

  And now? Now, I bunk down in a room at Klendon’s ranch in one of their barns. They are long-time citizens of Love, with their huge ranch and range cattle. It’s something to keep me busy and fed and allows me to get up and stumble through my days. All while still carrying around this black hole that has taken over where my heart used to sit.

  She is why I come to Lover’s Landing on my first Valentine’s Day alone in six years.

  Not to remember Harper and me together, or how we met. Not to remember how lucky I was to even meet a woman like her, let alone love and have a relationship with her. Or how we spent two years meeting here in the mornings, since we didn’t live together before we married. She was very traditional. No sex. No living together. Not until we got married. It made our wedding night… the most extraordinary and special thing to happen to me in my life. When before that, there had been nothing. Not one damn special thing. Then? After Harper? Every single day was.

  But now I come to Lover’s Landing and relive the morning we should have had. I mimic what Harper would have been doing that morning if I had remembered to come. I relive the sequence of exactly where Harper should have been at seven forty-two in the morning. She should have been across the table from me with a Vanilla Latte and Holden written on her cup because we always, on Valentine’s, repeated the great switch that I’m sure Betty orchestrated. We recreated our meeting, simply because it made Harper laugh each time. That was worth it to me. She was easy to make laugh. Valentine’s Day last year, we should have been making eyes at each other and flirting… even after five years of being together. Then, I would have walked with her, across the street, and kissed her goodbye in front of the dental office and gone back to the ranch.

  If I had remembered that morning, Harper wouldn’t have been angry at me, talking to me on the phone about it, chiding me and forgetting to clearly look before she set foot off the curb.

  So now, each morning, I relive the morning that should have happened and would have meant I still had a life to lead, a wife to love, and a future to want, instead of an empty chair and two cups with two separate drinks—both of them untouched—and yes, Betty switched our names on the cups today. On purpose. For me. Because I asked her to.

  Because it always ma
de Harper laugh.

  I turn this morning from Betty, this excruciating Valentine’s Day morning, a year after I all but murdered my wife, and a damn woman is sitting in my wife’s chair. I blink. She doesn’t disappear. I don’t know her or recognize her. I glance around, stumped. No one has ever sat there. Most customers here this early in the morning are definitely Love regulars and not strangers to my odd routine. So no one got in the way of my ritual. My self-punishment, as Betty sometimes calls it, though she generously humored me, with soft, kind words of care and concern. But still she always had our drinks ready. Betty might have warned other customers to let me have that table for ten minutes. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that’s exactly what she did.

  But not this morning. This morning someone is at my damn table. Even worse, in my wife’s chair. My jaw hurts I clench it so hard, and my temple starts to throb. No. Fuck, no. She has to get out. She has to get out of my wife’s chair. Especially this morning. I need this morning… especially today. Because without the anger, the rage at myself, how will I get through the grief of this day? Of Harper’s death. What if… what if I actually start to feel it? No. I can’t fully feel the grief; I need to stay in this place of anger. And to do that, I need to relive how the day should have gone, so I can feel the fresh stab of guilt at myself, which in turn refuels the anger.

  But I can’t do that in this stranger’s presence. So she must move. Go. Disappear. I don’t care. Just get out of my wife’s chair!

  Chapter 2

  ALICIA

  Oh dear lord, Holden’s temples are going to burst. His hands gripping his two precious cups look like they are about to squeeze the cups so hard the liquid will erupt upward and explode all over his hands and puddle on the floor. Jeez, I don’t want that or to cause him this much grief. But dude needs to get a grip. For real. I blink and play dumb, keeping my face neutral. I’ve brought my black, leather-bound folder I keep my most pressing paperwork inside. Today it’s a soils report that is to be submitted as part of River Runs Wild’s environmental assessment. I peruse it even though I know the words aren’t sticking.

  I sip my caffè macchiato. I have gotten something different every day so far, and I don’t use a to-go cup. Which really, Holden shouldn’t either. Especially two when he throws them away still full of liquid.

  “Excuse me…”

  Oh, my God! He spoke to me! He finally notices me. I glance up, peeking over the edge of my glasses for effect, though I’m not being all that dramatic as I actually need them to read. I have one eye that is weaker than the other. One eye sees perfectly clear, the other gives me trouble when I read… so one eye glass piece is totally clear glass, the other prescription. Just part of my specialness.

  I give him a warm but generic little tilt up of my lips. “Yes?”

  He fidgets. Yes, for real. The cowboy shuffles his hips and weight from one booted foot to the next. “I… I was hoping I could have this table.”

  I clasp my hands over my folder. I raise an eyebrow in question. “Oh? Well… I was using it.”

  “But…” I wait for him to continue. How do you ask someone to leave a table they had first when there are several vacant tables surrounding us? It’s just odd.

  “There’s…” What possible excuse will this crazy man have? His expression morphs into full confusion. Then—good God—almost anger. “I like this table.”

  Lord, we know! I keep the thought to myself and bite my tongue to not say it out loud.

  “Just sit at the next table over there.” It’s the exact same table, a four-seater in the center of the room. Just not directly in line of the window.

  “No. It’s… more than that. I just… I really need to sit here today.”

  I bite my lip. Wow, if I hadn’t been prepared, I’d be worried and backing out of my chair, hands in the air, ready to give into the crazy here.

  “Well, I suppose you could sit, cowboy. But I’m not moving.” I wave my hand at his usual chair.

  His face freaking contorts. “I can’t sit across from you while you’re in that chair!”

  I swallow and slowly lean back. “Then sit there.” I wave at the chair kitty-corner of me. Wow, this guy has issues. Far more than I first realized, and I’m regretting thinking it might be interesting to talk to someone who does the same exact things, at the same exact time, in the exact same way, every single morning of their lives.

  He’s going to kick the chair. I’m sure of it. His lips twist, and his eyes gleam. He’s fidgeting and his booted foot lifts up… but then he slowly drops it. Jaw clamped again, he mutters, his tone almost defeated, “I wish you’d just switch tables.”

  “You know, that’s your issue, whatever your deal with this table is. It’s not mine. I was here first. All that I’m doing is sitting in a public place, where I purchased a beverage from, and I have every right to sit here. All alone, even. But I’m willing to let you share it. I won’t move, and you’re going to have to deal with that; find a different table or leave. Or wait for it. I’ll be,” I glance at my phone, “maybe another ten minutes.”

  He jolts at the time frame, as I suspected he would. He’s sensitive to that number, and these ten minutes I plan to be here are the exact ten minutes he seems to need with his precious table and chair for whatever reason.

  He flops down on the chair next to the one he usually commandeers. I go back to reading my report. I don’t really, however. Nothing computes. I glance over from the corner of my eyes. He’s frowning at me… hard. Not me per se, but at the place in front of me. He really doesn’t like me here. A minute of strained silence goes by. I sip from my drink and I take a piece of the muffin on the plate before me and nibble on it. Finally I say, “Is your friend late?” I wave at the cups in front of him. “Harper? So you must be… Holden? So, is Harper late?”

  He starts, his entire body jolting upright. Spine straightening, his gaze toward me is first shocked and then almost murderous. What? It would have been a reasonable conversation opener. A normal one given our circumstances here. And since he hasn’t caught on that I’ve been right before him, sitting at the next table over for several weeks witnessing him, he deserves it. I smile a warm, friendly greeting.

  His tightened—no, more like painfully locked up—jaw finally lets loose so his lips can utter with an almost comical forced tightness, “She’s not coming.”

  “Oh. That’s a shame. Stood up on Valentine’s Day?”

  He jolts as if I’ve taken out a gun and simply shot at his heart. I try again with a smile, pretending I haven’t noticed his reactions. “Well, I’m from out of town, working here, and I get to spend it completely alone, too. So I guess the day sucks for both of us, huh?”

  His gaze finally lifts off the place before me and up to my face. He scrutinizes me and holds my gaze. I’m flustered by the intensity, the spark in his dark black eyes. He’s giving me a death-stare, but also, I think he just finally noticed me as a person before him and not some kind of place holder that simply took his chair when he wanted it empty.

  Is he going to flip the table over? Stand up and throw his coffee cups at me? I really am not sure. Something flutters down my chest. I’ve overshot this. I wasn’t trying to mess with the guy, but it wasn’t a harmless thing I did by sitting here. I had been trying to evoke some kind of response from him. But this? No. I didn’t mean for it to be like this.

  “This day sucks for you?” He lets out a rude snort. “Yeah, I guess you could say today sucks for me, too.”

  “Including the fact that I took Harper’s chair?”

  “Please quit saying her name.”

  Chastised, I raise my eyebrows. I don’t expect the quiet tone or the oddly polite “please” at the start of his sentence, which doesn’t match his demeanor in the short interaction we’ve had. I nod, my stomach tightening a bit. I really affected this guy this morning. Far more than I predicted or meant to. “Sure. Of course.” I drop my head down. Drink. Nibble. Then I suck in more air and glance his way. H
arper must have pulled a giant number on this guy, but what? Cheated? With his best friend? And then took his dog?

  “So if I can’t say her name, would you like to know mine?”

  He blinks at me. “What?”

  “Name? Since she’s not here, and I am, would you like to know my name? After all, I know yours.” I smile breezily, keeping my tone uber cheerful. I pretend as if I’m so clueless I can’t figure out just how much this guy doesn’t want me sitting here, or for whatever reason how emotionally affected he is by Harper’s actions to cause her not to be sitting here.

  He’s as confused by me as I was him for the fifteen days of his sameness. “Uh… fine.”

  Not even a ‘sure.’ But I smile overly big now and hold out my hand. “Alicia Anderson. From the west coast, in Love on business.” I laugh at the statement. His grim, harsh mouth doesn’t even twitch. I keep on chattering as if I am so dumb I don’t notice his complete lack of interest in me or what I have to say. “You must get that a lot around here.”

  “What?” It isn’t a polite ‘what.’ It’s a rude, annoyed ‘what’ with an eyebrow twinge and mouth pucker added for emphasis.

  “In Love… you know the name of the town. Oh my God, I’d never stop doing that. I’m in Love to buy groceries. I’m in Love to get gas. I’m in Love for coffee.” I twirl my cup for effect. “I’m in Love to get my teeth cleaned…” He flinches. He doesn’t take jokes well, does he? I add, “I’m in Love on Valentine’s Day! Oh my God, I’ll never stop now. Get it? In love…on Valentine’s Day?” I crack up at myself because he’s really the hardest person to make smile that I’ve ever been this damn bubbly and cheerful with. It just usually happens; I don’t have to work like this.

  He taps his fingertips on the table but nods. “I get it. And I’ve never heard anyone go on about the name of the town like that.”