Stirred: A Love Story (29 page)

Sage had a full bar and three orders from the floor forty-five minutes after they opened. She thought maybe Garrett had the right idea because she was thankful for the work, grateful for the familiar hum of conversation, laughter, and clinking of glass. She fell into a numb routine, her hands moving as if they didn’t even need the rest of her. Which was good because the rest of her wasn’t there. Turning toward the register to cash out three guys at the end of the bar, she realized she was out of register paper. She gestured to the bar that she’d be back in a minute and pushed through the door to the back office. She managed to make it around the corner before she collapsed. The pain came out of nowhere, as if someone was lying in wait for her and the moment she stepped into the silence, they’d punched her. She bent over, hands on her knees, and cried.
Oh God, please God take this away. Please.
Sage closed her eyes and tried to stop. Breathe in and breathe out, she told herself right as Logan soared around the corner.

“Sage! What the hell is going. . .” His words fell when he saw her, and she quickly wiped her eyes.

“Oh. . . okay, hold on.” He walked up to the front kitchen and whispered something to Travis, who went to her bar.

She knew they were covering, that she should suck it up and get the hell back out there, but she simply stood and watched them as if she were watching a play.

“Okay, we’re good. Come here.” He pulled her into his arms and Sage was suddenly filled with the memory of her first mock trial in high school. She’d lost because she’d become too emotional and that skewed her focus. The coach had hugged her almost exactly the same way Logan was now, helped her accept defeat. In high school, she’d graciously pushed away, embarrassed by her failure and dreading facing her family in the audience. Now, wrapped in the arms of another man trying to help her through defeat, she held on tighter. Clearly adult failure packed more of a punch.

“I’m fine,” she said, stepping back as Logan let her go.

“I need to get back to work and so do you, so I’ll make this quick. He is. . .” Logan’s eyes teared up and Sage thought she might die right there. “Shit, sorry.” He blinked back his emotion. “When he says he doesn’t know how, he means it. We are a million shades of screwed up. Our mom left and we became a tribe to survive. The tribe is scattering now, changing, and he’s in a free-fall whether he knows it or not.”

“Logan, you don’t need to tell me this.”

“I do. He’s given me so much in my life. It’s the least I can do for the idiot.”

She laughed and wiped the rest of her own tears. “You need to get back.”

“I do.” He took her hands. “Don’t give up on him. I know, believe me, I know exactly what this is, but he loves you. He’ll figure it out. Don’t give up. He’s like. . . what’s the hardest crossword?”

“
New York Times
, Sunday.”

Logan nodded and let her hands go. Larry, the pizza guy, called for him. “Yup, that’s him. He’s Sunday. A pain in the ass, but once you get him”—he turned back right before he disappeared into the kitchen—“well, I don’t need to tell you.”

Sage caught a few more tears, wiped them away, and returned to her bar.

She did know, but there was no solving Garrett. She had tried, and going completely against her nature, she had failed.

Chapter Thirty

B
y the grace of some higher power, Garrett heard his father before he saw him. He’d planned on spending the day in his office catching up on all the paperwork he’d put off until Kenna threatened his life, but then George called saying they still hadn’t received the new seat for tractor four. Garrett followed up and learned it had been delivered to the main house instead of the office.

That was why he was there unannounced. It was the middle of the damn day, so he hadn’t thought twice about walking right into the house he’d grown up in. He’d been in a shit mood and wanted to check off the damn tractor. As he stood in the entryway, he heard them. At first he thought he was delirious and then he distinctly heard a female moan, followed by his father’s voice.

“You like that, baby?”

Garrett looked around and turned to check the front door, making sure he was in the right house.

“Oh, Herb, right there. Don’t stop.”

Garrett froze, closed his eyes, and wished he had the set of earplugs he normally carried in his pocket during harvest. The front door was still open about halfway. Hopes that he could back up slowly and get out of the house unannounced right when he began to hear Libby’s voice chanting, were shattered when a gust of wind hit the porch and slammed the front door closed.

Garrett felt like one of those deer on the hunting shows his grandfather used to watch. Frozen, unsure what his next move was, only his eyes moving.

Following a few thuds and some muffled laughter from upstairs, his father emerged at the top of the stairs buttoning his shirt.
Jesus Christ!

“Garre, I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Obviously,” he said under his breath and cleared his throat. “Yeah, did Newmark deliver a tractor seat to the house? They said it was dropped here.”

“Yes, yesterday,” his father said at the foot of the stairs, now with a mixture of happy and busted on his face. “I put it on the side table in the kitchen. I was going to bring it down after—”

Garrett raised his eyebrows and glanced at the stairs. “After?” He wasn’t in the mood to let even his father off the hook.

“Right. After. Let me get that for you,” his father said with that look that said Garrett was near the line, close to being disrespectful. His dad handed him the box and he tucked it under his arm.

“How’s the arm?” Garrett asked.

“Better every day.” He held up his arm and Garrett noticed his shirt wasn’t buttoned correctly.

They both looked down and before the look on his father’s face grew any guiltier, Garrett left.

He couldn’t have been more shocked if he’d walked in and found his father having tea with Oprah.
Holy shit!
How had he not seen this, not known his father was in a relationship? It seemed like everyone now knew how to move on, to have someone in their lives—except him.

Entering The Yard through the back kitchen, Garrett found Logan at the prep table.

“Did you know Dad and. . .” He could barely get it out. “Libby. Did you know Dad was. . .”

“Come on Garre, use your big boy words.” Logan rounded him, went into the walk-in, and returned with butter. “Did I know Dad and Libby were in a relationship? I found out last night.”

“And you didn’t think that was worthy of a text or a phone call? You texted me a picture of tennis shoes last week to ask me what I thought. But our dad, oh I don’t know, sleeping with the woman who runs our favorite diner, the woman we’ve known since we were kids, didn’t warrant a call?”

“It was late. Kenna called me and we agreed you were in a crap place already since you screwed up with Sage, so we decided to wait. Oh, and I bought those shoes by the way. Love ’em.”

Garrett stood there for a minute, willing his pulse to slow down before he lunged at his smug brother.

He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and even that simple act reminded him of Sage. Being there reminded him of her.

“Well, thank you for letting me know because I walked in this morning to find my tractor seat and Dad and Libby were. . .”

Logan stopped chopping.

“They were having sex.”

Both of them yelled like they’d been kissed by a girl in kindergarten and held their hands up to their faces.

“Huh, monkey dumb and monkey dumber. Did I get it right?” Kenna asked as she walked in.

“You tell her,” Logan said, hands still to his eyes.

“I walked in on Dad and Libby going at it.”

“Holy shit, did you see anything? Oh wow, was she on top?”

Garrett dropped his head. “What the hell is wrong with you? What are you even asking me?”

“Oh, I would have loved to have seen the look on your face.”

Taking his hands away from his eyes, Garrett saw Kenna chewing on licorice, genuinely interested in the position their father and his girlfriend were in. He looked at Logan, who started to laugh and before he knew it, the three of them were close to tears. It was funny, like something out of a comedy sketch. Garrett felt the bond of his siblings and thought maybe that would hold up anywhere.

Maybe it had nothing to do with him, a house or some job. Being with them in the kitchen, the ability to forget his troubles and laugh with them until his sides hurt, maybe that was their whole foundation. What if something as abstract as their feelings for one another was what made up the rock? Garrett looked at his brother and sister and suddenly felt some room open up in their ever-growing family. For the first time since Logan left for culinary school, the shift didn’t scare the hell out of him.

Chapter Thirty-One

M
itchell’s Cove was on the northern end of Tomales Bay and just under a two-hour drive north of San Francisco. Sage flew into San Francisco, had lunch with her parents, then rented a car and drove up Highway One. She could have taken the 101 as her family did every summer since she was a little girl, but she loved going through Stinson Beach. Hollis came out to meet her car when she pulled up to the cabins a little after five. She had a bottle of wine and two glasses.

“I thought we’d watch the sunset,” Hollis said, kissing her on the cheek.

“That sounds like a very good idea. How are you?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, that question is off-limits here on the beautiful bay. Throw your bag in my cabin and get your ass on the dock or I’ll start without you.”

Sage laughed and watched her sister walk away wearing fuzzy slippers. Hollis wore her hair in a ponytail and sported big dark sunglasses. She should look like crap, but somehow Hollis managed to pull off breakdown as if it was some new trend everyone should try.

The Cove was a place from their childhood, owned and operated by their Uncle Mitch, who was the junior to her grandfather Mitchell Edward Jeffries. He bought the restaurant and eight bayside cabins in the 1930s at auction. Mitchell’s Cove had been in the family ever since. It was a place of celebration and healing. Her family had gathered there for years and Uncle Mitch was like this icon in her life, in all of her sisters’ lives. He was both a wise sage and a kick in the pants when they needed it. Sage had been filled with memories on the drive up, longing for a time when all she or her sisters cared about was getting their parents to play Monopoly and buying ice cream at the only store in town before it closed. It was fitting that Hollis had come back here to try and figure out her way forward. Sage still wasn’t sure what had happened to her. She wasn’t exactly speaking unless she had wine, and then the truth was muddled somewhere behind her biting sarcasm. Sage’s oldest sister was only two years older, but she had played up those twenty-four months for as long as Sage could remember.

Hollis was a force, and similar to watching a racehorse fall during the derby, seeing her sister down was almost unfathomable. But here they were, propped on their forearms, leaning on the dock, and looking out as the last bits of sun tickled the smooth surface of the dark water.

“This is a bump,” Sage said, shifting to her other foot and squinting at the sunset.

“Yeah, well, it’s one of those big ones. Remember the speed bumps in the parking lot at Christ Lutheran? The ones that always scraped the bottom of Dad’s Wagoneer, no matter how slow he went?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“If this is a bump, it’s one of those damn things.”

They both laughed at the memory.

“Come on, you are crazy successful. You have so much under your belt and—”

“And, I’ve worked my entire life. Since I was like fifteen when I lied to the Dairy Queen so they’d hire me.”

“Oh God, Mom was so pissed.”

Hollis nodded and poured them more wine.

“That’s been my whole life. I’m thirty-four. Not that I care much, but maybe I want to get married or hell, have a man in my life for more than a couple of weeks when he gets tired of sleeping with my laptop between us.”

They watched as the horizon faded from orange to purple while the dock creaked and moaned and swayed beneath them.

“So how long are you going to stay here?” Sage asked.

“No idea. I’m not sure why the hell I’m even here. Mom wanted me to get away and Uncle Mitch said he’d make me chowder and I could help him out come spring and summer. I have an MBA from Stanford, but shit, I’m sure I can still make a bed and put that paper strip on the toilets.”

Sage laughed and sipped her wine. “I’m sure he’s not intending for you to clean. Like we ever cleaned here when we were growing up.” She bumped shoulders with her sister and noticed she was too thin.

“I was perfectly happy drinking myself blind and staying in bed all day back at Mom and Dad’s, but this just in, that’s not healthy.” They both laughed and clinked glasses. “I didn’t think they were going to summon you. I’m sure you have better things to do.”

“Not really.”

Hollis looked at her. “Oh no, is your life all fucked up too?”