Heat Wave (Riders Up) by Kraft Adriana

Author:Kraft, Adriana [Kraft, Adriana]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: B&B Publishing
Published: 2014-04-25T23:00:00+00:00

- o -

Ed didn’t blink, staring at the single shot-glass of whiskey and a stein of beer sitting on a tiny, circular table. He gripped its pedestal between his knees. The darkened corner of Mel’s Tavern in Beaverhill provided a welcome hiding place. Almost as good as a cave.

He’d driven for hours after leaving the farm—after running as quickly as he possibly could from that menacing woman. That night was spent in his car. The next morning he’d poked around Clarion, his hometown.

Apparently, not only didn’t he have much of a future, he didn’t have much of a past, either. The building in which he’d grown up no longer existed, long since succumbing to progress and growth. An elementary school sprawled across half a block where several mom-and-pop stores and an apartment building had stood. It wasn’t much of a loss. The town had grown a fair amount, but it still was a small mid-western town.

Sadly, the train station was pretty much gone. When he was a kid, he’d sit by the railroad tracks and count train cars numbering well over a hundred. There’d been a roundhouse for turning and repairing engines. Both the Rock Island and the Great Northwestern ran over those tracks. Trains still ran through Clarion, but probably not nearly as many as in his youth, and it was doubtful that any stopped. Such was progress. It made him feel like a dinosaur—maybe he should be in a museum.

What the hell did she want with a broken down dinosaur?

Kind of like the way a horse would return to its stable when given its head, his truck had led him back to Beaverhill. He’d have to find a way to slip back into the loft and pick up his personal items.

He frowned. The head on the beer had nearly disappeared. Likely it would be warm to the taste by now. Didn’t really matter; it was beer. It was juice for the despairing. He knew it well, could savor its taste without even tasting.

Thoughts tumbled across his brain. He wondered how many hours his dad had spent in bars and taverns across the Midwest either raising hell or drowning sorrows. How many hours had he, himself, frittered away in similar places seeking release from pain? He’d always thought of himself as a hard fisted social drinker, until the rug was pulled out from under him in Chicago.

Then the booze had become a bosom pal, not easily ignored or set aside. He hadn’t liked how it ran his life when time was measured from one drink to the next and fun was a twenty-four hour happy hour, when work was something to survive until he could leave for the nearest bar.

He’d tried to quit, or at least back off, dozens of times. He was no fool. But the brew was seductive, more seductive than any woman he’d encountered, with the exception of one. There were days when he would have done most anything to get the next drink. That scared him when he was sober, so he drank to avoid the fear.

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