44 Book Five Read Free Page A

heading to the parking lot. I sat in the Jeep, drinking water while texting Kate that I was heading home.
    I jumped at the knock on the window.
    “Oh, sorry,” Tim said as I rolled it down. “Uh, we’re going out for drinks next week. Just wanted to invite you and let you know.”
    “Thanks. I’ll be there.”
    “Hey, have a good night. And be careful out there.”
    I didn’t know what he meant for a minute, but then remembered that he was just referring to my day job. We had talked a few times about me being a river guide and he told me that going on rivers freaked him out ever since he was a kid and had a bad experience. I didn’t ask him what happened. I didn’t want to start swapping drowning stories. But since finding out what I did during my days, Tim usually said goodbye with a worried expression and a reminder to be careful.
    “I will,” I said. “Goodnight.”
    It was a dark, moonless night. But down in the city it was bright. Bend had become popular over the last few years, maybe because of all the breweries in town. It was a record year for beer festivals. BrewFest, Fermentation Celebration, and The Little Woody all seemed to keep bringing more and more tourists in.
    Ty was spending his weekend pouring at an event. He invited me to come along, but I passed. I was pretty tired and was looking forward to hanging out and watching some black and white movies and catching up on my sleep.
    Yawning, I thought again about the soccer ball way up in the sky as I turned toward home.
     

 
    ***
     
    The sound of a lone frog echoed in the darkness. I was sitting in the big Adirondack chair pushed up near the pond, staring at the dark silhouettes of the moving trees.
    The air smelled heavy, like it was raining somewhere far away. But there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky, just thousands of glittering stars in the darkness, reminding me of Ty.
    He had been teaching me a little bit about the night sky this summer, showing me the details of the world above. I had never given it much thought before, but there was an entire universe up there, full of life and myths and stories and passion.
    And sitting out here like this, when I thought about Ty, I usually also thought about Jesse.
    It didn’t make any sense that I loved them both. But that’s how I felt. I couldn’t help it.
    I had seen Jesse only a couple of times during the summer. We walked through the park along the river and I told him about work and a little bit about my new friends. I asked him about what he did but he never said too much about where he was spending his time, just that he was somewhere else.
    We rarely talked about Ty, but I was sure he knew about him. He had to.
    Thinking about Jesse standing in the shadows of my life and watching me fall in love with someone else sent a wave of sadness through me.
    I held the air in my lungs and then blew it out slowly.
    “I’ll always love you, Jesse,” I whispered into the wind, hoping it would take the message to him.
    Hoping that he would understand.
     

 
    CHAPTER 4
     
    “Really?” I said to Ty. “He really asked that?”
    We were sitting outside on the upstairs deck, overlooking Bond Street, eating dinner at the Deschutes Brewery Pub. Cars rumbled below us and people walked, some stumbled, along the sidewalk.
    “Yep,” he said, smiling and wiping his mouth with a napkin. “It happened just like I said. The guy was from out of town and with a straight face, he asked me for a butt beer.”
    We both laughed again, my nose stinging from the Coke shooting up.
    “He said it,” Ty said. “Really. It’s a direct quote. ‘I’ll have one of those black butt porters.’”
    “So what did you tell him?” I said.
    “I told him he’d have to go to Deschutes Brewery for the butt beer. That they made it, not us. The group he was with busted up and someone told him that the beer is called Black Butte Porter, not Butt Porter. The poor bastard turned all red.”
    Ty smiled in that way that sent