Free Butternut Summer by Mary McNear Page A

added, drinking his beer, “she looks hot when she’s not angry too.”
    Will set up his shot and took it. It was a lousy shot.
    â€œHey, Will, if you want to take off with her, that’s fine,” Jason said, watching as the pool balls scattered ineffectually. “I’ll find someone else to play with.”
    â€œNo, I don’t want to go. But you know what? I don’t really want to play pool, either. Let’s get another round at the bar.”
    They both sat down at the bar and ordered a beer, and Will drank his moodily as he thought back to the night he’d met Christy. He and Jason were at a different bar, a dive bar called the Mosquito Inn, where they went sometimes just for the hell of it. Christy was there too, with a friend, and the two of them had sat down at the bar with Will and Jason. Will had seen her wedding ring right away, and he’d been on his guard. He didn’t have many rules in his life, but not getting involved with married women was one of them.
    Still, it had seemed to him, at first, that if getting involved was the farthest thing from his mind, it was the farthest thing from Christy’s mind too. She wasn’t flirtatious—except, maybe, for that adorable pout—she was just unhappy. Very, very unhappy. She’d gotten married too young, she told Will, to a man who didn’t really love her. Mac, her husband, was a salesman who traveled a lot on business, and she was lonely when he was away, but she was even lonelier when he was home. Most of the time, he just ignored her. When he wasn’t ignoring her, he was being mean to her. She started her story sitting at the bar with Will and finished it sitting in his pickup truck in the bar’s parking lot. By then, she was crying, and even with mascara-blackened tears running down her cheeks, she’d still looked ridiculously beautiful. He’d comforted her, as best he could, getting cocktail napkins from the bar for her to dry her tears with, holding her, stroking her back. But when none of these worked, he’d taken her home to her lonely house and made her feel less lonely—all night long. And leaving her house the next morning, Will hadn’t felt especially guilty about it either. He figured if her husband was as big a jerk as she said he was, he probably didn’t deserve her fidelity, anyway . . . That had been a year ago.
    Since then Christy had seemed happier. She rarely mentioned Mac anymore, though that was partly because Will, who tried not to think about him, didn’t want to talk about him either. He’d never met him before, and, except for the pictures of him at Christy’s house, he wouldn’t have recognized him if he had. But sometimes, Will felt bad for the guy. And that wasn’t the only problem with their arrangement. Because between the coded messages Christy insisted they use when they texted each other, and the sneaking around, and the lying, he was starting to feel like Mac wasn’t the one who was the jerk here. He was.
    He had a bitter taste in his mouth now, and he took a slug of his beer, hoping to wash it away, but it stayed there, and thinking about the first night he’d met Christy wasn’t helping. He was wondering if she’d ever been as unhappy as she’d said she was, wondering, too, if Mac had ever treated her as badly as she’d said he had. And, most of all, he was wondering why this was the first time he’d bothered to ask himself either of these questions.
    â€œChristy’s still here,” Jason said now, breaking into his thoughts.
    â€œYeah?” Will said.
    â€œUh-huh. And I don’t think she’s ready to give up on you yet,” Jason observed, looking down the bar.
    Will followed his eyes and saw Christy talking to two men sitting at the other end of the bar. She was pointedly ignoring Will and Jason, but she was lavishing attention on her two new friends, tossing her long