What’s A Good Argument Among Friends?

It’d been the longest running feud on all of Solsken that the McClellans, not the Larssons, were the first to settle here. Therefore whisky—yes, without the bloody “e”—as opposed to vodka, was the established town drink. With good ale, of course.

Most residents who weren’t from either family, were smart enough not to have an opinion. But ask any Larsson and they’d say they were first to the island and that’s why they got to name the place. Ask any McClellan and they’d tell you, if they had the choice between the town name or the town spirit, they would’ve chosen the spirit like any good Scotsman. Therefore, that was proof they were first.

Just to be clear, the McClellans have never forgiven the Swedes for naming the town after a burning ball of gas.

Sunshine aside, Ian McClellan continued this long-running argument with Danny when the whisky and ale flowed. Call it family pride. Call it fun to argue over something that couldn’t be proved since the town hall fire destroyed the records over eighty years ago. Nevertheless, this was their way of carrying on their families’ tradition of following a damn good fight, fueled by drinking and arm wrestling, followed by more drinking.

This was precisely what Ian planned to do with him to get his mind off things until he saw Danny shuffling up the hill toward him. His chin rested against his chest, hands shoved deep in his pockets.

The sight of him both squeezed the air out of Ian’s lungs and boiled his insides. Not once did Danny lift his head as he made the long trek up, weaving between rocks and stones covered in fanning dried grass. With each heavy step, his thick frame sank lower, as if he had reason to be ashamed of what happened. As if what she did to him was his fault.

The entirety of Danny’s communication with him over what happened consisted of three short texts: Moved in to hotel ... Coming home ... I wasn’t enough.

The last text was all Ian needed to put the pieces together, and it’s also what sent him spiraling into his old self—the self he was still recovering from.

Nearing the top of the hill, Danny still hadn’t bothered to look up, and Ian glanced to the sky, whispering, “Give me strength,” before shouting, “oi.”

Danny lifted his head.

“You said you were arriving at eight.”

He looked at his watch. “It’s a little after seven.”

“Exactly. I was just leaving to come get you.”

“I never said I’d be flying in at eight, just that I’d be here by eight.”

Ian crossed his arms, pretending to be pissed. He knew why Danny left out that detail. He wanted to delay any uncomfortable conversations for as long as possible—by walking the whole damn five miles from the airport.

Adjusting the small ponytail that held the top of his blond hair away from his shaved sides, Danny dropped his head again before stopping in front of him. He stood to the height of Ian’s scruff-covered chin, with his hands still jammed into his pockets, kicking a few small rocks aside.

Ian let out a heavy sigh. This wasn’t Danny. This wasn’t the confident guy he’d knew most of his life. The same guy who always made eye contact with a firm handshake to anyone he met.

No, this was her. The woman who not only stole his dignity, but his confidence too.

Ian had news for him. He wasn’t going to stand around and let Jessica keep her claws on him, making him a broken shell of himself. Besides, what were best friends for except to build you up and encourage you?

“Well,” Ian said.

Danny slowly looked up.

“You look like shit.”

The corner of Danny’s mouth tipped up. “I missed you too, Ian.”

He grinned. “How was your flight?”

“Besides having to pay for first-class because they overbooked?” He shrugged. “Okay.”

“Pay? Nah, my cousin that works for an airline said they can do that for free when they mess up. Usually offer it.”

Danny stared at him and rolled his tongue over his teeth.

Ian pinched his lips together. “Of course, they could leave out that detail if ... say ... the customer wasn’t nice.”

Danny pointed a finger at him, ready to go off, and Ian smiled, waiting. He huffed instead and edged past him. “What are the numbers?”

He should’ve seen this coming. The “let’s talk work instead of feelings.” Not that Ian expected him to gush about feelings. That wasn’t his way with the deep stuff. Those things had to be chiseled out of him one small detail at a time.

They walked along the outer rim of a tall, stacked-stone wall with sharp, jagged points like little soldiers in formation on top, keeping kids from climbing over it. Danny scanned the dark wooden building towering inside the wall. A nearly hundred-year-old replica of an ancient Viking design with trusses that crisscrossed at the top point. A structure Danny’s great-grandfather had built.

A sign with the name Flygande Norseman dangled above a heavy wooden door. Painted under the Swedish name was the English interpretation, “The Flying Northman.”

Danny unlatched the neck-high, picketed gate that opened to a pebble path leading to the entrance. He frowned when it yawned with a loud creak. “I should oil that.”

“Don’t you dare,” Ian said. “How will you hear when one of the kids sneaks in at night? It’s a rite of passage for them, you know.”

“They never succeed. I don’t get why they keep trying to break in here.”

“Are you kidding me? They love it.” Ian followed him along the gravelly path, past Danny’s mother’s dormant kitchen gardens, up four flagstone steps to the solid wood entrance. “I mean, all you have to do is swing open this door with that old sword of yours and roar like the Viking you are,” he said. “They run screaming and are greeted by friends with high-fives for their bravery. You can’t deny them their first feeling of manhood, Danny.”

Danny shook his head with a small smile.

“I’d be ready for a big one too.” He wiggled his brow. “Last I heard, they upped the ante.”

He didn’t add that they did so because Danny left, and they thought it’d be an easy victory.

“I better make it worth their while then.” Danny forced a full smile.

With me? He should’ve known better than that, but Ian let it slide when Danny’s shoulders dropped and he dug out his set of keys. He pinched the key he needed between his thumb and forefinger and hovered it over the lock.

Ian gripped his shoulder.

He didn’t turn and Ian didn’t speak. They stood still and let the silent messages pass between them. The same way they’d done from day one. The day Danny stomped into kindergarten, declaring, “This place is for idiots,” and Ian knew he’d found his best friend for life.

They’d never needed a lot of words between them, only the right ones. But there were no words to be said that could fix what dripped off Danny’s hunched posture.

Finally turning, he gave Ian a short nod, letting him know his silent assurance was enough—for now.

The door groaned inward, and they both stepped through. Ian waited as Danny stopped inside and lifted his cyan-colored eyes, scanning over all the corners of his past.

Memories stared back at him between the exposed beams dangling Swedish flags and old family crests mounted with swords and axes on the wall. Aged wooden tables that he’d spent half his life maintaining dotted the main room, with upside-down chairs resting on top.

His scanning stopped on the words V?lkommen Familj, carved on the wall over a polished oak bar his father and uncle had installed by hand that spanned the length of the back wall. Danny let out a deep sigh.

“Numbers,” he said again, and Ian knew that was all the wallowing he’d allow himself.

Ian motioned to the office and Danny stepped through, wiping his thick-soled black boots on the fiber mat inside the door. A habit he’d picked up from his grandfather who used to say, “What’s outside this door, stays outside this door. What’s in here is all business.” Ian smiled because Danny didn’t even know he did it.

Danny rounded the massive oak desk in the center of the wood-paneled room and sat in the swiveling chair behind it. “This it?” He scanned the single piece of paper with reported sales lying in front of him and lifted gaping eyes. “Ian, am I going bankrupt before I even get back?”

“Okay, so maybe that was a bad coming home joke.” Ian lifted five more folded sheets of paper out of his back pocket and tossed them to Danny. “Biscuits are in the drawer.”

“Not hungry.”

“But you’re too skinny. Eat.”

“What are you, Marco’s nonna?” Danny looked down at himself and lifted a brow. “I’ve been called many things in my life, but never skinny.”

Ian clanked a stiff wooden seat in front of the desk and plopped down with a pointing finger. “Do not speak that vile Italian’s name in my presence.”

Danny smirked, knowing exactly why Ian reacted. Marco De Luca’s family owned the only Italian restaurant on the island, and though they’d not been there as long as the McClellans or Larssons, they were well established in the community.

Marco once tampered with a whisky vat at the McClellans’ distillery and left a bottle of Chianti under it. A harmless prank. None of the new whisky was ruined, but when he tried to avoid getting caught, he ran through their whisky storeroom and kicked over an entire case of imported eighteen-year-old single malt.

Ian was still bitter.

“Go on, open the drawer and eat,” he said. “You may not be normal-people skinny, but you’re Danny skinny, and I don’t like it.”

Danny grumbled and rolled his eyes, but opened the drawer. Ian waited with a small smile hidden under his hand.

“Annie.” Danny pulled out a plate of Scottish shortbread decorated in tartan ribbons with a large tag that read, “Welcome Home, Danny Boy.” Her biscuit recipe was famous on the island. She baked and sold the flaky, buttery gold at the local café when she wasn’t busy being the town’s head nurse for the town’s head doctor—who also happened to be her husband.

Danny rubbed the ribbon between his fingers and said quietly, “Does everyone know?”

“You know I don’t spread gossip, but I didn’t think you’d want me to keep it a secret that you were coming back. Otherwise, you’d be mobbed on your first day.” Ian tilted his chair up on the back two legs and stretched his long legs on the desk. “Pretty sure George bellowed, ‘God save the Queen,’ though.” He spotted a small smile on Danny’s face and continued, “These island traitors always did prefer a Larsson running this place over a McClellan.”

Danny’s smile grew. “I think customers prefer bartenders who let them drink what they want without lessons on why whisky and ale are the only proper drinks.”

Ian threw up his arms. “A Cosmopolitan is the devil’s drink, Danny. And just the other day a woman asked for a Blue Hawaii. Can you imagine it?”

“We stock blue Cura?ao for a reason.”

“This isn’t a damn Tiki bar.”

Danny rocked back in his seat and crossed his arms. “You told her no?”

“No, I called Emelie over.”

“You called Em, my cousin, our only server, behind the bar to make a drink you could do in your sleep?”

“It’s the principle, bràthair.”

He puffed a small laugh and Ian grinned. A laugh wasn’t a big victory, but he’d take it.

Lifting the plastic wrap, Danny grabbed a biscuit. “Thanks for telling them for me. I didn’t want to make a big announcement.” He studied the biscuit in his fingers. “I’m not looking forward to all the questions tomorrow night, though.”

“There won’t be any questions.”

He paused mid-bite. “You know where we live, right? Any news is big news.”

“Well, these people love you, and you won’t be alone with anyone who suddenly gets nosy. I’ll make sure there aren’t any questions.”

“Aren’t you supposed to head to seminary?”

Ian shrugged.

“You said you were going to live on campus once I got back. You’re not still discerning, are you?”

“Maybe. Yes. No ... I don’t know.” He ran a hand over his face and into his dark waves. He thought he’d finished discerning. Checked and rechecked his heart and it very clearly pulled him in the direction of the priesthood. But when he received Danny’s texts and the old him resurfaced, he’d left holes in the storage room drywall. Since then, all the old doubts had resurfaced. How could he shepherd a flock when all he wanted to do was murder sheep like Jessica?

“If anyone is meant to be a priest, it’s you. Don’t drop out, Ian.”

Ian met the bright eyes that read his doubts. “I just need a few more days here, that’s all.”

Danny’s stare hardened, and he leaned back in his chair, recrossing his thick arms. “There’s no need. Flygande isn’t for sale anymore since I’m back, and I won’t let you stay just because you think I’m so broken I can’t stand on my own two feet. I’ll adjust.”

“I’m not staying because of that,” Ian lied. He also declined to inform him that he’d never put Flygande up for sale. He couldn’t bring himself to let it go into anyone’s hands but a Larsson.

“I’ll give you one more day.” Danny held up a finger. “Then you’re in your car and over the bridge, if I have to throw you there myself.” He picked up the papers of sales records, thinking he’d settled the matter. But Ian would be coming back every weekend, using whatever excuse he could, for the foreseeable future.

Ian snatched a big piece of flaky goodness off the plate and watched Danny. The man was a genius with numbers. He could look at all the data and within minutes see where the sales were down and know why and how to fix it. It’s how he turned Flygande Norseman from a just-getting-by business into a booming tourist destination. It’s also why his father wanted him to take it over when he retired. Danny had always planned to—until Jessica.

Nope. Not thinking about her right now. Ian munched and groaned. “This is Auntie’s best batch.”

“You say that about every batch.”

“And it’s not a lie.” He shoved half of it into his mouth and savored how it melted on his tongue. “So, besides living it up in first-class, anything else happen on your trip?”

Danny’s head shot up. “What? Why?”

The rest of Ian’s biscuit fell to the desk.

“I mean, it was fine.” He shrugged, but it was too late.

“Nuh-uh.” Ian picked up his crumpling biscuit and shook it at him. “Now you have to tell me.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Bullshit.”

Danny intertwined his fingers on the desk, trying to act casual. “Future priest means you have to get rid of your potty mouth.”

“Have you ever met an army chaplain?”

“You want to be a parish priest.”

Ian licked all his fingers. “Stop changing the subject. How pretty was she?”

“What makes you think this has something to do with a woman?”

Ian slowly smiled. “Because you’re avoiding the conversation.”

“There was nothing and no one. Now, go ... go stack glasses or something.”

Ian grinned and let his chair bang forward on all fours. “I really missed your ability to order me around.” He crumpled the biscuit wrap and threw it at him. “I never got the mail from yesterday. I’ll be right back.”

Ian’s fingers were on the handle of the door when Danny quietly said, “Thank you. For everything.”

Ian swallowed down the pang of emotion before turning and plastering a smirk. “You don’t have to thank me, but you do have to tell me who turned your pale-as-ass face beet red a minute ago.”

A biscuit smacked his head. “Oi. Not the precious biscuits, Danny.” Ian snatched all the crumbs from his clothes, popping them into his mouth like a starved man, and Danny snickered. He swung open the door and spread his arm, wide. “Parting is such sweet sorrow that it shall be until tom—” Ian slammed the door before another blessed biscuit lost its life and whistled all the way outside.

His smile dropped when he opened the mailbox and pulled out a manila envelope. There wasn’t a return address, but he saw her name, Jessica Wilson, scrawled in red ink.

Wilson, not Larsson. Ian was relieved to see it changed back, but wondered if she’d done so before she even told Danny it was over.

A clinking sound came from inside the package, and Ian’s gut twisted. His gut was never wrong, and it told him whatever hid inside could tear apart what little Danny barely held together.