Chasing River (Burying Water #3) (15 page)

She rolls her eyes. “Right.”

River reappears, his arm flexed with two wooden stools. Customers chirp at him about needing a seat as he passes but he only grins, making his way back over to set them on either side of the table for us. “Now you have a place to sit and relax, so I guess you’re staying.” His hand brushes against my shoulder on its way to settle along the back of a neighboring chair. “Now, what can I get you?”

Woman’s V-neck or not, River’s proximity and his charm is sending my nerves into a tailspin right now.

“A pint of Guinness?” I ask, more of a question.

“I knew you’d like that.” His eyes dart to my bottom lip, where the injury is more of a dark purple splotch now.

“Double Jameson, neat,” Ivy orders, tossing her purse and phone down on the table.

River’s brow arches. “Good on you. Most people coming in here stick with beer. I’ll have to dig our compulsory bottle out. It’s probably coated in dust.” He nods toward her arm. “And nice work, by the way.”

The first soft, genuine smile that I’ve ever seen on Ivy’s face takes over. “Thanks.”

“Who did them for ya?”

“I designed them, but I have a few trusted friends who I let work on me.” That edge to her voice when she talks to me has vanished. I’m not that surprised. River can probably charm the rude out of anyone.

“I’m looking to get another one done soon. The stag on our family crest.”

My gaze starts searching his arms, looking for the one he already has. If it’s there, it’s hidden.

“I work at The Fine Needle if you’re ever looking for someone. I’m awesome,” she says so matter-of-factly. “My cousin, Ian, is pretty good, too. He just finished this one for me last week.” She holds out her arm and taps the colorful Day of the Dead skull on the inside of her slender forearm.

River leans in closer to study it, his fingertip tracing the outer lines. Suddenly I’m wishing I had an armful of tattoos. Any excuse for him to touch me like that.

As if he can read my mind, he turns to me and asks, “You have any?”

Ivy bursts out in a cackle unnatural for her tiny body and her cool demeanor. “Miss Sheriff’s Daughter marring her perfect skin? Are you kidding me?”

Now River’s arched brow is reserved for me and it’s much higher. “Sheriff’s Daughter?”

“It’s nothing.” I shoot a glare Ivy’s way but she only smiles back. A secret, vindictive smile.

“Oh, it’s something, alright.” He winks. “And you’re going to tell me about it later. I’ll be back with your drinks.” He squeezes my bare shoulder on his way past, making me jump. I watch him go, catching more than a few glares from female customers lingering around the bar, likely waiting for seats to free up. Or maybe for River’s attention.

I meet a flat gaze from across the table. “So this is why you showed up at my work today.” Ivy’s hard to read, with her dry tone, but I’m pretty sure she’s upset. She hasn’t even sat down yet. “You don’t really want to get to know me. I’m your excuse for coming here . . . ‘again.’ ” She air-quotes that word. “You were afraid to sit alone in a place like this.”

I open my mouth to deny it but she cuts me off, shaking her head. “Save it. I should have known.”

I sigh, suddenly feeling like a jerk. “You’re right, okay? You’re the only person I know in Dublin and I didn’t want to come here alone to see River again. But . . . so what? We’ll have a few drinks, get to know each other, I get to see him . . . What’s the big deal?”

“I don’t like being used.” She tightens her jaw. “Alex emailed me to tell me you were in Ireland. She was afraid you might be lonely. She asked me to give you a chance, if you came by. I didn’t think you actually would.”

“I’m not lonely!” My cheeks flush. Sure, once in a while I get homesick, but lonely?

“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if you were. You could never survive so much as a library hour without your harem of girls fawning all over you.”

“My
harem of girls
fawning all over me? Okay, first of all, I’m not a lesbian . . .”

Ivy’s eyes narrow. “Funny you should mention that.”

I bite the inside of my mouth.
Does this girl ever hold a grudge or what?
“So then . . . we’re even. You didn’t come here to get to know me either. You only showed up here tonight because Alex asked you to.”

“Exactly. Because she’s my friend.”

I guess I should have expected all of this to come up. Just because Ivy obviously didn’t tell Alex about what happened in high school doesn’t mean she simply forgot. But it was a freaking decade ago.
Let it go!

Two glasses land on our table, delivered by a waitress instead of River. A glance at the bar finds him laughing with a customer while pouring pints. I guess I shouldn’t have expected him to be serving us, especially with waitresses to do that. Plus, he did go above and beyond already, getting us a table. Still, disappointment stirs inside me.

I sigh. “Listen. Can we please start over?”

“Until the second that bartender says he’s done his shift and you ditch me, right?”

I roll my eyes. “I don’t do that to my friends.”

Her jaw clenches. “We were
never
friends.”

“That’s because we didn’t really have much in common.” I stare pointedly at her, but if she sees my meaning, she doesn’t let on. “But we could be friends, now.”

She snorts.

I bite my tongue before I agree with her, which I’m tempted to do. If this is the real Ivy—and not just a bitter exterior that she’s saved for me—then I can’t see myself lasting through this pint, hot bartender or not. “High school was a long time ago, Ivy. Maybe we can bury this hatchet you’re intent on sticking in my back and actually get to know each other. Who knows . . . maybe you’ll find out I’m not so bad.”

After a long pause and a look around, she slides into her seat. Tipping her head back, she downs the entire shot of whiskey in one gulp. “I’m going to need a few more of these to find that out.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with starting those rumors. I swear!”

The flat look on her face tells me she doesn’t believe me. “Well, I know that Bonnie did, because I confronted her about it and she said that she had a highly reliable source who saw me discharged from the psych ward.”

“And you thought my mother, a reputable surgeon, would tell me something like that, and I’d run off and tell Bonnie?” My mother didn’t even tell me who Alex really was. Why would she divulge private information about a complete stranger who has no impact on my life at all?

Ivy slams back her whiskey and I follow, twisting my face up with disgust, the vile taste burning in my gut. It’s taken four rounds for Ivy to break out of her spiky shell and tell me exactly how awful I apparently made high school for her. She must be feeling the alcohol because she’s a lot louder and more animated than she was an hour ago.

“Three weeks into my sophomore year, in a new high school, in a town we had just moved to, and I was dubbed ‘the crazy girl who might stab you.’ Great reputation to have, right? I spent a lot of time at home, hanging out with my little brothers, that first year.” She keeps her eyes on our empty shot glasses as she balances them on top of each other. “When those rumors started, Jesse gave me some lame excuse and broke it off. Just like that.” She snaps her fingers, her short nails painted with black lacquer. “I know we’d only been seeing each other for a few weeks, but it still hurt . . .”

I groan out loud. Why does everything in my life somehow lead back to my brother? Of course Ivy’s heart would fall casualty to his good looks and poor judgment calls. And, of course the blowback would land on me. I sigh. “For what it’s worth, I never knew you two were ever a thing in high school.” Jesse had a lot of “things” with a lot of girls and got bored easily. I could never keep up, and by our junior year, I didn’t want to. “And I can’t make excuses for my brother except to say that he was an idiot back then.”

“An idiot who didn’t want a girlfriend that apparently sets houses on fire and tortures small animals. I don’t blame him. I would have stayed away from me, too. I figured your dad demanded as much.”

I snort. “Please! If my dad told him to not date you, he would have proposed.” A quick replay of my words in my head makes me cringe, realizing that hearing that isn’t going to help heal Ivy’s deep wounds. “I’m sorry someone started saying those things about you. But it wasn’t me.”

Ivy’s lips purse. “And are you gonna try and convince me that you didn’t accuse me of spray-painting the side of Poppa’s Diner?”

There it is. I knew this would come up. I knew that Ivy figured out I was the one who reported her to the sheriff. “No. That, I did do. Poppa showed up at our ranch in his El Camino in tears. Do you know how awful it is to see an old man cry?”

“Funny, because when your dad hauled me into the station for spray-painting the side of the diner, I
did
cry. Your dad scared the shit out of me.”

“What did you expect? You can’t cover walls with racial slurs and swastikas and get away with it.”

She simply stares at me for a long moment, as if in shock that I would even suggest it. “I didn’t do it, Amber. You did!”

My jaw hangs open as I stare into those accusing black eyes, looking for the joke in them. There isn’t one. She’s serious. “What?! You are insane!”

“Okay, fine . . . maybe you didn’t actually paint the wall, but I know you were in on it. Don’t sit here and lie to me, now, after all these years. You and your little posse of mean girls and dickhead boyfriends planned it all.”

I roll my eyes and start laughing now. “Oh come on! Everyone in school knew you did it. You practically lived behind Decker’s with that big box of spray paint.”

“That’s because Sue and Roger let me.” The owners of the bowling alley were known to be really nice, fine with letting kids cover the massive brick wall in graffiti, as long as there was no profanity or gang symbols, or any sort of hate speech.

“Your tag was on the bottom right corner, Ivy. I know what your tag looks like because every new thing you added to Decker’s wall had that little pink squiggly line.” Her brow quirks sharply and I shrug. “What? So I admired your work. You’re good.”

She shakes her head in disbelief. “First of all, whoever did that to Poppa’s was an idiot and a complete amateur. I’m better than that. I was better than that when I was seven years old. Second, do you really think I’d be stupid enough to vandalize a store and tag it?”

“Maybe you wanted people to know that you did it.” I shrug. “You did seem kind of angry back then.”

She throws her arms up in the air in a rare bout of melodrama. “I
was
kind of angry back then! Because high school sucked! But it had nothing to do with the Jews or the Middle East. I was set up!”

I give a furtive glance around, hoping no one’s paying too much attention to us. My gaze catches River’s and a distracting blip of excitement flutters inside my stomach. He frowns and nods toward Ivy, then mouths, “Everything okay?”

With a quick nod, I turn back to her, not wanting her to accuse me of ignoring her for a guy. “Why on earth would I go to all the trouble to do that to you, Ivy? We weren’t even in the same grade. We didn’t have a single class together!”

She exhales heavily and her scowl softens. “Do you remember that big party in Piper’s Mill Park in the spring? The one where Ashley Johnson tripped over a case of beer and broke her nose?”

“Yeah.” I chuckle. She ended up needing two rounds of plastic surgery to fix it. I was at home, sick with the stomach flu that night.

“Well, Jesse and I had just started talking again, after breaking up the September before. He invited me to go, so I did. Anyways, that night we got really drunk and broke into the park office.”

My eyes widen. “That was
you
? Man, my dad was pissed . . .”

“Yeah, well . . . young and stupid and drunk, right? Anyway, Bonnie barged in on us . . .
you know
.”

I groan, seeing where this is going. At least she isn’t trying to give me details, as Bonnie has tried to do on more than one occasion.

“She was pissed. Screamed at him for slumming with a psycho slut like me. Then, a week later . . . voilà! I get arrested for graffiti that I didn’t do. By
your
father. I figured Bonnie told you and you got mad because you didn’t want your brother with the ‘psycho slut,’ so you and her concocted that graffiti plan.”

“Ugh . . . this sounds like the plot of a really bad teen movie. I hate drama!” But it’s also shedding some new light on those years. “When did you say you and Jesse started dating for the first time?”

“The first day of my sophomore year, in art class.” A soft smile touches her lips. “I was so nervous; I didn’t know a single person. I spent most of the class with my head down, sketching tattoo designs on my notebook. I guess he looked over my shoulder and knew what I was doing because he asked me if I could design a tattoo of a ’69 Plymouth Barracuda.”

“The one on his back.”

She nods.

I take a deep breath, because this is my best friend that I’m about to throw under the bus. Though, from the sounds of it, she may deserve it. “Did you know that Bonnie and Jesse dated for the summer between our sophomore and junior year?”