Friends Don't Fall in Love(2)
She snorts into her glass, making the ice cubes clink. “Might as well have done. I was going for subtle.”
“Fun fact: subtle and stadium aren’t as synonymous as you think.”
She makes a face. “Where were you with that wisdom two days ago?”
I accept my beer from a harried Georgie with a nod and raise my brow to my friend. “Would it have made a difference?”
She doesn’t respond. Doesn’t need to. It is what it is. Lorelai can’t change, and I wouldn’t ask her to. Before she became famous for country crooning, she was a schoolteacher. She’ll never be able to shed the trauma of hiding twenty-five eight-year-olds in a tiny bathroom during active shooter drills every other month all while knowing if someone ever threatened her students with a gun, she would place her own tiny body between that person and them without hesitation.
That shit doesn’t fade just because you sing to arenas full of people and accept gold statues. It imprints on your DNA and bleeds out in every interaction. Lorelai Jones couldn’t hold on to that mic night after night and stay silent about her biggest heartache.
And I love her for it.
So instead of criticizing, I take a long draw from my beer and say, “‘A Boy Named Sue.’”
A relieved pretty smile spreads across Lorelai’s flushed face and she immediately picks up on our favorite game of Best Song Ever Written. She thinks a minute and says, “‘Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.’”
“Hell,” I mutter. “I handed you that one.” I concede that round and start another. “‘Night Moves.’”
“‘Tennessee Whiskey,’” she counters.
“‘Jolene,’” I fire back. This time, she concedes my win with a tilt of her head, her dark waves falling over her shoulder. There might be better songs than “Jolene.” Arguably, Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colors” or even “9 to 5” are mighty contenders. That Lorelai doesn’t even try is plenty telling. That’s not what we’re about tonight.
“Next round’s on me,” she offers, tipping back the rest of her drink. I work to catch up, gulping my beer down. If Lorelai wants to sit in this bar and get drunk, then that’s what we’ll do.
* * *
An hour later, Georgie’s is packed to the rafters with inebriated bodies and the off-kilter soundtrack of a cover band that is quite literally ruining the originals. Not that Lorelai cares about the travesty that is Lynyrd Skynyrd being played with a calypso backbeat. She pulled me to the suffocating dance floor three songs ago and hasn’t let up.
If I’m being honest, I’m an excellent dancer, so I don’t mind much. Typically, when we’re back in town and hitting up the local bar scene, I’m too beat down with exhaustion and jet lag to hold cohesive conversations with pretty girls, so I’ll cheat and head straight for the dance floor. What I lack in physique, I more than make up for in rhythm. Many a hookup was born out of my ability to two-step. Which is a good thing, because otherwise, I completely missed out on the three tenets good old southern boys are supposed to excel at: hunting, football, and/or rodeo. I’m an embarrassment to my hometown. A proud vegetarian who couldn’t catch a fucking yoga ball if you threw it directly at my head.
But I can roll my hips like the devil himself blessed me. And according to my older sister, he has.
It’s not a lot, but it’s what I have, and you can be damn sure I’ve learned to use it to my advantage. Except with my current partner, who is at least two drinks ahead of me while also weighing seventy pounds less. I twirl Lorelai out and drag her back in. Her entire body accidentally on purpose brushes against me before she grabs my hips with her small hands, steadying herself on wobbly legs, and lets out a breathless giggle.
“Do it again, Huckleberry.”
Yep, proof in the pudding right there. We’re at least four shots in when “Huckleberry” comes out. Back when I first met Lorelai Jones, I told her my name was Craig Boseman, and she immediately shut that down, saying, “No way. I can do Boseman. Bose, even, but definitely not Craig. My first singing coach was a Craig, and he was a dick.”
Eventually she found out my middle name was Huckleberry. (Yes, like Finn. Yeah, I know, I can’t believe I can’t catch a football, either. All the key elements are right fucking there.) Whenever she’s feeling really good, she calls me Huck, and when she’s feeling really, really good, like “three sheets to the wind” good, she calls me Huckleberry. Consequently, Drake has always hated the name. Because Drake hates fun.
I wink, rolling my hips in an exaggerated effort, and she throws her head back, smoky peals of laughter erupting from her golden vocal cords before she starts singing along to the band, outshining them from the middle of a crowded bar where no one cares she’s someone trending on Twitter.
Damn, she’s fun.
The band transitions into the next tune, and it’s something sultry, sexy, and way too familiar. Lorelai freezes in place as the singer breathes into the mic, doing a terrible imitation of Drake Colter’s signature raspy tenor.
Even in the dim glow of the bar, I can see the color leach out of Lorelai’s flushed face. Her eyes grow wide and her pulse flutters against her long throat. I immediately take action, stepping into her space, my hands grasping hers, still fisted against my hips, and I lean close to her ear. She’s mostly drunk, so what I’m about to tell her probably doesn’t matter. She’s likely to forget this in the morning. I’m counting on it, actually. But for the moment … it’s the one thing I can think of that might snap her out of her heartache.