And twice, those meanderings put me in Deke Hightower’s path.
It was clear that Deke thought it uncommon for someone like me to recognize life’s bounties.
But watching him work on my outlet, the sandwich I bought him in a bag curled in my fingers, knowing I was going to share one with him, and by the end of the week, I’d have a study (though, for me it’d be a music room) where I could hang and stay warm because he’d made that so, I wondered how he thought I’d ever miss them.
* * * * *
“Selfie!” Lauren yelled. “Everyone, back of the bar.”
The music was loud. Bubba’s was packed.
It was Saturday night in Carnal.
“I don’t do selfies,” Jim-Billy declared. “I don’t even do pictures,” he went on.
“C’mon, Jim-Billy,” Lauren cajoled. “I’m gonna send it to Krys. She won’t be back in for a while, she’s already stir crazy, and we should let her know we’re thinking of her.”
“Right, I don’t do selfies but more, my ass doesn’t leave this stool,” Jim-Billy retorted.
Lauren was undeterred, ordering, “Everyone, surround Jim-Billy.”
Jim-Billy looked unhappy, but considering his ass actually didn’t leave that stool, he was not about to vacate it to avoid a group selfie.
“Specific kinda torture, the genius who decided to put a camera on a phone. Fuck,” Tate muttered but he did this doing as his wife told him.
I gave Faye, sitting beside me, a smile, not for the first time since I met her several hours before thinking that Lauren was the perfect match for Tate, Lexie’s lush gorgeousness the perfect match for Ty’s outrageous handsomeness, but Faye’s redheaded sweetness was beyond the perfect match for Chace’s lawman with an edge.
I did not know Chace and Faye’s story. I knew she was the town librarian. I knew he had the same mountain man good looks that it seemed all of Deke’s friends had (though his was the only one that was fair rather than dark). And I knew she was the one who’d been buried alive.
I hadn’t thought about it, considering most of my interactions with Chace were during my drama or on the phone (after my drama).
But seeing him with his wife, I realized there was something different about him.
It had been Faye who’d been buried alive, but chatting with her, I’d noted that utter insanity seemed not to have touched her.
It was Chace who had somehow been broken and you could see the shards that had been carefully glued together.
Unless he was with his wife, who was definitely pretty but in a much more subdued way, not to mention a lot shier and more soft-spoken than all the rest.
But when Chace was with Faye, only then was he whole.
It was a beautiful thing.
And they were both so cool, I was glad they had each other. That Chace’s obvious strength led Faye to seem completely unfazed by an event that would probably break most people, and Faye’s clear but quiet love was what smoothed out the dents in a knight’s armor.
I stopped thinking this when Deke claimed me with an arm around my chest, pulling me off my stool, shifting me and securing me in front of him, my back pressed close to him, Deke not a guy, I was noticing, who had a problem with having his picture taken.
Lexie pressed in at my right side in the same hold with Ty behind her. Lauren had handed her phone off to Tate, a good choice since he had a long arm. She then curled both her arms around Jim-Billy in front of her, Lexie sandwiched in between Laurie and me.
Faye and Chace got close at Deke and my other sides and Tate leaned over his wife as he held the camera out in front of us.
“Give Krys a big, fat smile!” Lauren yelled.
I had no idea about the others, but in our huddle, mellowed by several beers, in good company, it was not hard for me to aim my eyes at the camera and give Krys a big, fat smile.
I saw the screen snap a bunch of images before Tate dropped his arm and we all shifted, separating, the men going back to their drinks, the women forming a new huddle around Lauren so we could bend over her phone and check out the pictures.
But when I caught sight of the photos, my body stilled and I stared.
Everyone had given Krys a big, fat smile. Even the men hadn’t held back.
Drinks and bonding in a nowhere biker bar in the mountains of Colorado.
Me right there in the middle surrounded by these good people, smiling huge.
Me.
Jussy.
There it was in that picture.
Proof.
Here, I was not a Lonesome.
In Carnal, I was just me.
I was just me, and in that instant I understood something that I was getting, but it hadn’t quite come to me.
After a lifetime as a gypsy, I’d found home.
“I’m so totally printing this out, framing it and putting it up behind the bar,” Lauren declared then her gaze came to me. “If you’re cool with that, Jus.”
Not only taken out of my thoughts, also taken aback by her saying that, I asked, “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Don’t want to raise a profile you want to keep low,” she replied.
Good people.
Surrounding me.
Home.
“I’m totally cool with being a part of this bar, Laurie,” I said quietly. “And can you text those to me?” I asked, not sharing I wanted them not only because I dug those pictures, me surrounded by friends, but also because they were the first pictures taken of Deke and me.
“Sure,” she replied.
“Me too,” Lexie put in.
“And me,” Faye added.
Laurie bent to her phone, mumbling, “On it.”
“Cool, thanks, Laurie,” I murmured, intent on moving back to my beer, and Deke, who had been standing behind me while I sat on my stool gabbing to Faye on one side, Jim-Billy on the other, Lexie beyond Jim-Billy. Deke had been standing in a man cluster, talking with Ty and Chace, as well as Tate, when he wasn’t with Lauren working the back of the bar.