I shook my head at my pitiful reflection, then tried to suck it up even though I wanted to cry. And open the door and bury my face in her shoulder and tell her I wasn’t near all right. That I’d lost my one chance to meet Kyra Kelley and tell her about Finn, like he asked me to do. The one thing he’d asked me to do. And now the one thing I’d failed at, all because I’d been trying to show off for Rusty. Thank god I hadn’t had the tickets with me. Or his letter.
I tried to clear the regret lumped at the back of my throat. “I’m fine, thank you,” I called through the door. “I’m just gonna get cleaned up.” I reached out a shaky hand and turned on the water, hoping that was enough to send her on her way. Right now, all I wanted was a shower. And a magical cure for my own stupidity.
“Grease,” Bru said, when I stepped into the kitchen. “Best cure for a hangover.” He was sitting at the table, finishing up what had been a plate of eggs, bacon, and potatoes. Rusty stood at the stove with his back to me, pushing something around a pan with a spatula. I swallowed down my nausea.
“What about bad decisions?” I asked, pulling out a chair next to Bru. “Got a cure for those too?” Rusty turned around then with a smile that confirmed my fear that I hadn’t just thought about kissing him. I dodged his eyes and turned to Bru. “I think I might’ve made a few last night.”
Bru raised an eyebrow. “That one’s a lot trickier.” He looked from me to Rusty in a way that seemed like he’d added some things up, then sopped up the last of his runny egg yolk with a bit of toast. “Nothing easy for that. Humility, mostly.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin and pushed his chair back from the table, then walked over to Rusty with his empty plate. “I gotta head out, but you can use whatever tools I got out there, all right?”
“Thank you,” Rusty said.
Bru patted him on the arm. “And thank you for breakfast. That’s the best cookin’ I’ve had in a while. Truly.” He grabbed his hat off the hook and put it on. “I’ll be back before you go.”
I nodded as Bru stepped out of the kitchen, leaving me and Rusty alone, which was awkward in about eight different ways. He didn’t look nearly as bad as I felt. Actually, he was all bright eyed and clean shaven. He walked over with two plates of picture-perfect breakfast and set one in front of me, then sat down across the table. I waited for it. For him to come out with some comment about me, and him. And me kissing him. He didn’t, though. He just picked up his fork and used the edge of it to slice into his sunny-side-up egg.
I watched him chew and decided he was holding out to make me bring it up first. “I didn’t know you could cook,” I said, intent on not bringing it up at all.
“You didn’t know I could dance, either, until last night.” He smiled, then shoveled a bite of egg and potatoes into his mouth. There it was. I knew it. I did kiss him. He pointed with his empty fork at my plate. “You should eat something. It might help.”
That would definitely not help. “No thanks,” I said, pushing my plate away. “Still a little queasy over here.” A new strategy for dealing with this whole thing occurred to me, and I tried to sound as casual as I could. “So . . . we must’ve had a lot to drink last night. I mean, I don’t remember anything. I probably had no idea what I was doing.”
Rusty laughed. “Oh, you knew what you were doing. Between the dancing on the stage and the body shot you took off Shana, you seemed like an old pro.”
“What? Are you serious?” I needed to get up and run far, far away before this could get any worse.
Rusty almost choked on a laugh. I wished he would have. “Calm down, I’m just giving you a hard time.”
I tried to be relieved. “So . . . I didn’t, then . . . do those things?” Actually, those things might’ve been better than having kissed him.
Rusty smiled and took another bite, taking a long moment to chew and swallow before answering. “No,” he said. “You didn’t.”
“Okay, good.” I pulled my plate back toward me and picked up my fork like I might actually eat. “So . . .” I took a deep breath, braced myself for the worst. “What did I do? Besides have Wade Bowen autograph my chest?” Rusty’s eyes went to the black smudge that peeked out of my tank top, and he smirked. Again. At me.
God, this was getting old. I was gonna have to suck it up and ask. Just get it over with, pride be damned. I rested the fork on my plate and leveled my tired eyes as best I could at Rusty, hating the question that was on the tip of my tongue. Then I stalled. “I need to ask you something.”
Rusty sat forward and folded his hands on the table. “Ask away.” He grinned.
I took a deep breath and let it out slow. “Okay. Um . . . did we kiss last night? Because if we did—if I kissed you . . . that was a big, tequila-filled mistake. Huge.” I spread my hands wide in the air to show just how big. “Because I don’t even think of you . . . it’s just wrong, and I didn’t mean it. I mean, if I did. Kiss you. Which I don’t remember.” I stabbed a potato and shoved it in my mouth to shut myself up and chewed it with plenty of humility.
Rusty looked at me like the question surprised him, then like he was entertained by the prospect, and I saw a tiny glimmer of hope. Maybe I hadn’t. Maybe we’d just danced and I never tried. But now he knew I’d thought about it, or else why would I ask? Damn it. My head throbbed again.