Chapter 8

“Oh, oh.” Midge is looking at her phone, her forehead creased.

“You’re going to tell me what’s making you go ‘oh’ sometime,” I say, looking up from the screen of my laptop. “Might as well get it over with. Did you find husband number four?”

It’s a Monday night, my night off, and Midge is at my place. She made us a round of drinks, and I’m working on the paperwork for our new liquor license at the bar. Cole said he’s all for letting me make some changes as long as I”m willing to do the legwork. By legwork, he meant paperwork, it seems. But I’m bound and determined. I need something more in my life, and the bar’s what I’ve got.

Midge, on the other hand, already has her business sorted, so she’s looking for a man to have some fun with. She’s been using Matchmake Me, the dating app created by Holly and her twin sister Bryn. The Mayberrys are infamous matchmakers—professional matchmakers—and they just launched their app in the fall with the help of billionaire Rory Byrne, who moved to Highland Hills last summer. Everyone in town, along with half of the rest of the country, is on it. Mostly Midge has been making comments along the lines of oh no or you might’ve looked like that when you were thirty, but you sure don’t now. So oh, oh is a change worthy of notice.

She doesn’t answer, so I angle my head to try to get a peek at her phone. She responds by pressing it to her chest.

“What is it?” I ask. “Did one of those guys get a dick pic past the A.I.? Please tell me it’s not someone I know. The last thing I need is an image of a dick and balls in my head the next time some old guy sidles up to the bar.” The app is run by an A.I. developed by Rory Byrne. The whole place was all aflutter over him for a couple of months, but it didn’t take long for people to realize the score. He fell head over heels in love with Bryn Mayberry, and now they’re gonna have a baby in a few months.

When my mother found out, she sneered, “Baby before marriage. Those Mayberry girls are nothing but trash.” But I could see in her eyes that she was jealous. Before hearing the news, she’d been making plenty of hints that I should throw myself Rory’s way.

No thank you. The last thing I need is the kind of man who has to let other women down easy fifty times a day.

That thought makes me think of Logan. I tell myself again that it’s for the best that things didn’t work out. He’s the kind of man who has plenty of women throwing themselves at him.

“I don’t know if I should tell you,” Midge says, but there’s something in her tone…

“Give me the phone, Midge,” I say, using my best badass voice.

She gives a little shrug and hands it over, and my heart cracks again. Because there’s a photo of Logan on the screen and a username—BlueCollarLo.

But I pull on my big girl panties and hand the phone over. “Means nothing to me. He’s free to do what he wants. ”

“Then I’m going to message him,” she says, waggling her eyebrows. “Because I have this theory I want to test out.”

“That theory better not be about whether he’s got a big dick,” I snap, annoyed with myself even as I say it. It shouldn’t matter. He made it clear he wasn’t willing to put anything on the line for me, and I don’t want to be with another man who’s only half in it.

“Don’t worry, doll,” she says. “I’ve got girl code memorized and codified. Besides, I’ve never gone for the lumberjack type.”

“So what’s your theory?” I ask, setting my laptop down on the coffee table. My mind’s still fixed on the memory of Logan’s photo on her phone. I’ve spent the last few weeks thinking about him, and apparently he’s been off messing around with tourists or anyone who doesn’t know better. He hasn’t been around to the brewery much. I figured we were avoiding each other intentionally, but maybe that’s been a one-woman show. Maybe the reason he’s been MIA is because he’s been busy taking other women out.

She starts typing on her phone, and since she’s obviously a woman on a mission, I let her. I trust Midge. That trust wasn’t easily formed, but it feels good. It feels an awful lot like growth, being able to be good friends with another woman again without wondering if she’s going to plant her knife in my back—or let my ex-husband rail her.

She glances up with a grin. “He’s responding.”

“You messaged him?” I ask, as if I didn’t know that’s exactly what she was about. “Don’t you think he knows we’re friends?”

“And why should he? You’re always at the brewery, and you know I don’t show my face there.”

I roll my eyes at the melodramatics. She doesn’t like beer, that’s all—nothing exciting happened to keep her away. But with Midge, everything’s a story. It’s one of the things I like about her until I don’t.

“You’ll be back once I get my license.”

“Sure, someone needs to keep an eye on you.” She crows and holds up the phone, waving it back and forth. “There are three dots. The three dots of destiny!”

“Why are you excited he’s responding?” I ask, feeling another crack form in my heart, like someone’s taken a boot to it. “Weren’t we hoping he wouldn’t?”

She’s quiet, studying the phone, and everything in me wants to look at it too. Except I also don’t. Because if I see him making the moves on my much hotter friend, then it’s going to just underline and highlight everything I already know. Not pretty enough. Not feminine enough. Not enough.

But after she reads whatever he’s written, she looks up with flashing eyes, and it’s clear she’s not at all upset. I reach for my drink on the coffee table, little beads of sweat on the surface of the glass, and suck some of it down.

I’m clacking it back down on the table when she holds the phone out to me. “Take a look at that, ma’am.”

When I don’t make a move on it, she starts reading, “Hello, gorgeous.”

Iscowl at her. “Not a great start.”

“I’m not really using this thing right now,” she continues, giving me apointed look, “but good luck to you.”

My heart wants to knit back together, but I also refuse to be stupid. He could be with someone else already. He could have decided women are altogether too much trouble, and he doesn’t want to be with anybody. After all, that’s where I’m at. Or at least that’s what I told myself the last time I turned down a date with a good-looking lawyer who was in town for business.

“Doesn’t mean anything,” I say, handing the phone back to her.

“It means he doesn’t want to bone a hot blonde,” she tells me as she takes it. “That’s something, isn’t it?”

Maybe. Maybe not.

“Doesn’t mean he wants an indifferent-looking brunette,” I say, reaching for the amethyst. It’s not around my neck, though, and my fingers tap against the cross that feels anything but holy because two people I don’t respect gave it to me.

She scowls at me this time. “You stop that now. I’m sick of you putting yourself down. There are enough people in this world to do that for you. Don’t go doing it yourself.”

“I’m not putting myself down,” I say blandly. “I know who I am, and I’m not ashamed of it.”

“You don’t know,” she insists, giving my arm a push. “You know what you’ve been told, and you’ve been told a lot of bullshit. You’re a hot bartender babe with an attitude. Men would go feral for you if you’d let them.”

“Sure,” I say, but I can’t deny I’m pleased. If there’s any source to be trusted about this kind of thing, it’s Midge.

“If you’re worried about fucking around with your boss’s brother, find someone else to fuck around with. There’s not one thing in this world wrong with having yourself some fun. You need to get your confidence back, hon. I was the same way after my first divorce.”

I have to grin at that, but the truth is, I don’t know that I ever had much confidence. Not in the way I look. I’ve always been the one who’s looked over, the consolation prize. The wingwoman.

She studies me, then says, “I think it’ll help boost you up if you let me buy you some makeup. I’ve been wanting to take you shopping for months.”

It’s like she just put a puncture in my balloon. “You know how I feel about my mama’s regimen.”

The one she tried to put me on as a teenager. Wear this, use this, and maybe you’ll attract some glances.

“But have you ever tried picking out things you like? I’m not saying you need to do it for a man, Brittany, I want you to do it for yourself.”

My mouth nearly drops open, because my mother’s bible is to wear makeup for other people. To dress up for visitors and men. To look pretty in public for the eyes of other people.

“But why would I bother to do that?” I ask.

Midge laughs. “Because it’ll make you feel like the badass you are. Because you should be the one who’s happy with what you see in the mirror. It feels good when you treat yourself like a damn queen. And if you do it, maybe other people will follow suit. Maybe not, but who cares, because at least you’ll be taking care of your number one.”

My throat feels thick, and I lift a hand to it. When was the last time I did something just to make myself feel good? I honestly can’t remember, and if that’s not a knock to the head.

“Maybe I’ll take you up on that.”

My phone buzzes, and my heart lifts, because what if…

I take it out of my pocket, trying to look like I couldn’t care less. And then I don’t care less, because it’s a message from my ex-husband.

Friday’s our anniversary.I’m missing you.

Rage ignites inside of me,and I’d go ahead and crush the phone if I weren’t stuck with it for another nine months.

Midge, whose nosiness knows no bounds, peers over my shoulder. “Why, that little fucker.”

I sniff out a laugh as I tap out a response. We’re divorced, Tommy. That means we’ve got no anniversary. And I don’t miss you.

I realize as I finish writing it that it’s true. For so long, Tommy was the center of my world. I’d been taught to make it that way. To make my man dinner, and put it in the refrigerator if I wasn’t going to be back early enough to serve it to him. To rub his back. To ask about his day but not complain about mine. To look the other way…

But I wasn’t happy, even before I found out I was right to be suspicious. I felt empty and drained, like a flower withering in a vase someone couldn’t be troubled to fill with water. The past year has been the best in my life, and I’m still growing. Changing. I’d like to keep it that way.

“See,” I say, shaking the phone at her. “This is why I need to take a break from men. I don’t need this shit. I need to keep my eye on the prize.”

But Midge is giving me an almost pitying look. “Living is the prize, Brittany. You don’t need a man for that, but there’s nothing wrong with wanting one.”

Maybe she’s right. Maybe she’s wrong. A part of me would like to test the theory.

“Why don’t we make you a profile on this app?” she asks, waving her phone again.

“No,” I say quietly. Because here’s a truth.

Logan’s the only one I’d want to message, and if I don’t know what to say to him in person, then an app sure isn’t going to help.

“Well, then I’m going to have to twist your arm to get drunk with me,” she says. “Because the only man who’s shown any interest in me on here is seventy if he’s a day.”

I laugh. “No twisting required.”

I think a lot about what she said though, and about what Ivy’s said to me too. And the next day, Midge and I go shopping together on her lunch break. She refuses to tell me what she thinks of anything I pick out, reminding me this is about what I like, not her or anyone else. Certainly not my mother.

I like the things I buy. I feel more myself. I feel stronger.

And even though I feel stupid doing it, I start looking at myself in the mirror every morning instead of hurrying through getting ready for the day. And I tell myself, “I am a badass bitch. I am a hot bartender.”

Little by little, I feel like I’m actually starting to believe it. Which is good, because on Friday night, Tommy and his buddy, Bill, show at the brewery, and Tommy has a bouquet of flowers.