“Jenny’s gone.”
“Already? Okay. Could you zip me up then?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned her back to me and pulled her long, curly hair up out of the way.
It took a moment for my feet to move towards her, my mind stunned by the thought, to the point I just felt numb. A friend would just simply zip it up and be done with it. But damn if my hand refused to behave that way. It was epically slow as it tugged the metal rectangle upward, passing over the bare skin I ached to touch.
She wasn’t even wearing a bra tonight.
I had only covered half the distance when her head twisted sideways. I knew what I was doing was wrong, that my movement was way more intimate than it should’ve been, but whatever her reaction was, she kept it still and silent. She was even slow to react once my hands left her body, brushing against her shoulders as they retreated.
She dropped her hair and slowly faced me. I hadn’t even bothered to look down at the dress, my eyes hypnotically set on hers, when I softly said, “Beautiful.” She gave me a tiny smile, but her eyes drifted to assess my body. I had changed into my tux while she worked on Jenny, but the jacket was still downstairs.
Her hands reached for my hair, her fingers combing through the strands I had set in place with product. My eyes couldn’t help but close, my senses indulging in her touch as her nails swept gently against my scalp. “I know tonight’s a night when you’re supposed to look polished, but you’ve never looked sexier than on the days you came to school with your hair all a mess. Like you were too cool to even bother with it or change out of the wrinkled shirt you slept in.” I could sense the smile in her voice, but I didn’t open my eyes until her hands drifted down to my tie. She was messing with it, after I had spent ten minutes perfecting the knot. “Can I ask you something?”
I murmured mmm-hmm.
“Why did you ask me over instead of your date? Which one is it tonight anyways?”
I shrugged. “Does it matter? I wouldn’t want Jenny looking up to either one of them.” Not to mention I had zero intention of ever allowing Amber or Brittany inside this house to meet my family. They knew they were nothing more than a distraction, and I didn’t want to give them the idea of something more.
Her eyes skirted north to mine, a twisted smile forming. “Good. I was beginning to worry about you in that department.” She finished pulling on the tie, leaving the strand of silk untied and draped around my neck in disorderly fashion. “Much better,” she complimented, patting my chest twice before stepping away.
When she did, I noticed Brad leaning against the door frame, taking us in, lightly patting a corsage box against his thigh. He was family here, so he was welcome to just walk through the door anytime he came over. How long had he been there? What did he hear? How the hell I remained that calm on the outside still baffled me. Thankfully, at some point my hands knew they couldn’t be trusted and hid out in the pockets of my pants, where they now tensed in his presence.
“Brad,” I said coolly. Mel looked to him briefly, then finished stuffing her belongings into her bag.
“What’s going on?” he asked curiously, a hint of accusation in his voice.
“Just finishing up,” Mel answered, grabbing her bag and making her way to the door. She smiled and kissed him on the cheek. “You look nice, baby.”
“I’ll take that,” he said, pulling her bag off her shoulder and handing the corsage her way.
“Thank you. Just let me go to the bathroom and I’ll be ready to go.”
Brad nodded, but his eyes were on me as she left. We just stood there, suffocated with uncomfortable silence, and I worried that he heard enough for her to refer to me as sexy and him as just nice. Finally, my mouth found words. “Well, I’ve got to go get Brittany.”
I shuffled my feet forward, squeezing past him as he merely twisted instead of moving out of the doorway. “Yeah. You do that,” he muttered.
That was the last dance I went to in Berryville. My family moved away two months later.
“Fuck,” I groaned, roughly stroking my eyes with the heels of my palms, still lying there in bed. What if I did play a hand at breaking them up? No wonder Brad lied to me. Looking back and remembering, I was absolutely horrible at covering up my feelings for her that night. It was no wonder I tried to minimize contact with her all through high school. The one time I let her touch me like that, I went into some dumbfounded trance I had no desire to snap out of.
But that Mel, she was the one who made me fall in love with her. The one who came over last minute with curlers falling out of her hair to help a girl she hardly knew just because I asked her to. Who made my sister smile again and go on her first date with the guy she ended up marrying just last year. Who always helped people without asking for anything in return. How was I not supposed to fall for someone like that?
My chest felt strained. This weird burning sensation drowned me all the way from my throat to my heart. It had been forever since I’d felt this kind of suffocation. Years really. And I knew why. Because that was the last time I truly allowed myself to want her. Even after all these years apart, my damn heart was incredibly sensitive when it came to Mel. It still wanted her, needed her. My hands kept fisting, fingertips digging deep into my palms. They remembered the feel of her body beneath them, squeezing and trailing along, seeking the way to bare skin. They wanted her closer, too. And lying there in the darkness, I swear I could smell the spicy floral scent of her perfume wafting through my nose.
I needed to talk to her. Now.
There was still about twenty minutes until closing. If she was working the last shift, she’d still be there. I pulled my clothes off the suitcase and redressed, running my fingers through my bed-head before hurrying out the door. Matt had long gone to bed. Luckily he lent me his spare key, so I wouldn’t have to bother him with what he’d probably call a pubescent dilemma.
At ten to midnight, I pushed through the bar door. Only one patron remained, a man close to retirement age camped out in front of the flat screen currently airing SportsCenter. Closer inspection made me realize it was the same guy who was here last week at closing. No one was working the bar and a quick peek through the passthrough showed that the kitchen was dark and shut down for the night.
I was already here, so I pulled up a chair and waited to see who came back out. After two minutes, my smile partially hitched upward. Her eyes were on the old man as she came out, but once she spotted me at the opposite end of the bar, she paused. My hands were fisted together before my chin, so all she could really see were my eyes. I guess she deemed me a non-threat, because she slowly headed towards me, her skittish eyes never leaving mine.
Couldn’t blame her really. I was sure her mind drifted back to the other night when I was here at closing. Whether or not I made a complete ass out of myself was still up for debate.
“Last call was five minutes ago,” she stated monotonously.
“I didn’t really come here for a drink.”
“Then why did you come here?” She was still several feet away, like she was afraid the two feet of mahogany wasn’t enough space between us.
I inhaled and exhaled deeply, dropping my hands to the bar, trying to appear less uncomfortable than I felt. “I need to know what really happened between you and Brad.”
Suspicious of me, she tilted her chin. “What exactly do you mean by really?”
“I’m not here to fight.”
“Or call me names?” she threw out contemptuously.
I accepted her blow and shook my head in response. “I just want to know if I was misinformed in any way.”
The tension holding her ramrod straight seemed to relent. Turning her attention the opposite way, she called, “Five minutes, Joey!” He waved in response, not bothering to turn away from his program. Hesitantly, she approached the bar and draped her hands over as well. Her hands were just inches from mine, making my fingers twitch sporadically, like they were trying to nudge me closer. “Why now?” she asked softly, her beautiful bright blue eyes seeking mine. “After all this time, what does it even matter?”
“It matters,” was all I said.
“I don’t know what you really want me to say, Shane. You want my honest opinion about what happened between me and Brad?” I nodded and she pointed at me. “You. You happened.”
My eyes widened with fear. Shit. Had that moment between us that night been the catalyst to their breakup? My heart began pounding in my chest, but slowly relented as her explanation told another story.
“After his parents died, you were the one stability he had left. Yeah, I came in towards the end and he had a love with me, but you were the one he really needed. And when you moved away, he took it really hard. He started drinking a lot more. There were days he came to school smelling of beer, like he had it for breakfast. Then he started in on the weed, and it became one more thing he began needing all the time. Said it numbed him. His relationship with his grandmother went to total crap at that point. She could see him degrading and wanted him to stop and get it together, but it only made him rebel more.”
Across the room, metal screeched against the floorboards, making us both turn to acknowledge it. Joey adjusted his jeans and slowly ambled across the room, tipping his hat and saying. “You good to drive?” she asked. He nodded again and slipped through the door.
Her mouth was sucking in her bottom lip, just like she always used to do when she was nervous. But the moment her gaze returned to mine and she realized I was focusing in on it, she released it. Clearing her throat, she continued. “Look I feel bad for all the loss he’s suffered, I really do. But he was drowning and had zero desire to be rescued. I had to let him go before he dragged me down with him. So when he up and disappeared one day, I decided that was the best for both of us.”
I leaned into the back support, digging the heels of my hands into my thighs, scraping downward. How could I miss all that? Shit, how the hell did all that happen in just three months’ time? I began rubbing my eyebrows, anticipating the burn my head was sure to fire up soon. “I’m sorry. When I left, you guys were fine. Every time I called and talked to him, he seemed fine.”
“Well, yeah,” she said with a huff, “he was talking to you. But once the conversation ended, he realized he was right back where he was before it began. Suckville, apparently.”
I returned my hands to the bar and hers slipped away. “Why didn’t you call me and tell me what was going on?”
“Don’t think I didn’t try,” she replied, grabbing a bottle and two shot glasses from the back wall. She began pouring a generous amount of golden liquid, then topped it off with a lime and laid the salt shaker between us. With the wryest of smiles, she said, “Unfortunately, that was around the time I dropped my phone into Lake Palestine.”
I picked up my glass, giving her the stink eye. “How many times did I tell you not to take that out on the inner tube with you?”
She rolled her eyes and muttered, “Shut up,” before downing her tequila, following it with a bite of lime and a lick of salt. I was ready to roll my eyes as well – but at myself, my mind wondering something dirty as her tongue swept across her wrist. “I had it in a plastic baggy to keep it from getting wet but the SOB sank when I knocked it off. I couldn’t find it.”
I just kept shaking my head at her, my lips beginning to curl with amusement. After shooting my own, I said, “Alright. You lost your phone. You couldn’t ask someone for my number?”
“I did!’ she exclaimed, pouring us another shot before I even had the time to recover from the first. I was a beer drinker, not a shot taker, and my insides were inflamed from mouth to stomach. “Well, I couldn’t ask Brad for it because he was so freaking sensitive those days, always making something out of nothing. I didn’t want him to sound off about why I needed to talk to you, so I tried Brittany.”
Ugh. Just the reminder made me groan aloud.
“Yeah. Bitch wouldn’t give it to me. She saw how our relationship was going downhill, so I think she thought I wanted to squeeze myself into the Shane-sex-rotation or something. I had the same problem with Amber, so I just gave up and hoped you would eventually call me.”
But I never did. Because I never realized something was wrong. How the hell could I not know? Not see the beginning of his demise? All this time I thought Mel was the reason he snapped and fell into the deep end. Turns out it was probably a combination of us both.
Mel sighed and downed her second shot, this one a little slower. I followed, closing my eyes as the warmth scorched its way into my chest. Despite its persistent burning, it calmed the jitters just being beside her again caused.
“You really can shoot your tequila, can’t you?” I remarked approvingly.
She snorted and covered her mouth and nose from embarrassment, making me laugh, releasing some pent up pressure weighing me down. “No,” she replied, “I really can’t. I only shoot every once and a while, so it makes me woozy pretty quickly. Any more than two and I can’t drive home.”
“Oh, well, in that case,” I teased, leaning over the edge, trying to grasp the bottle, “let me pour you one more so I can keep you here a little longer.” Driving her home and putting her to bed wasn’t a bad idea either…
“No!” she shrieked, pulling the tequila away from my grasp and putting it back on the shelf where it belonged. Our grins slowly began fading, our eyes softening as the air filled with a silence we weren’t sure how to play, almost to the point it was uncomfortable. I just wanted to reach out and pull her to me, feel her warmth against my body.