If this girl is really worth it, we’ll be there for her. In any way she needs.
7
Sierra
The jukebox in the corner plays the kind of music I like. Rock n’ roll, more seventies than anything else. The place is a dive, the kind that litter small towns in California, owned by hippies or veterans. It’s dark, shadowy, and a good place to hide.
Katie begged me to meet her here, claiming she needed a drink and female companionship. I refill her glass with the remaining beer in the pitcher and push it toward her.
“Why are you serving me?” she asks. “You don’t work here.”
“Old habits die hard, I guess.”
“Do you miss the Wayward Sun?”
Achingly, I want to tell her, but I play it off. “Sometimes. I needed a break from the grind, once the house is finished I’ll probably go back.”
“Good.” She licks the foam off her upper lip. “Then we don’t have to come to dives like this. We can get classy beer at the Epic.”
Katie lives in a camper in a tiny campground in Lee Vines. She has a red, white, and blue bikini. Classy is not how I’d describe my friend. It’s not how I’d describe myself either, but I get it. This place is loud and a little smelly.
We catch up until her phone rings. “It’s Mrs. Nye,” she says, grabbing it off the table. “I’ll be right back. Hello?” She heads through the crowd, finger shoved in her other ear, and slips out the door.
I pick up the pitcher and start to slide out of the booth. It’s the kind with the high backs and a dim bulb hanging overhead, allowing for discreet privacy. I’m about to stand when a shadow crosses the booth and a large, male body corners me in.
“Sierra,” Reid says, his words sloppy and slurred. He tosses his arm over my shoulder. “Thought I saw you come in.”
“Reid, hi.” I try to get out from under the weig
ht of his arm, but I’m trapped in. I hold up the pitcher. “I was headed to the bar. Let me go get this refilled.”
He tilts his head downward, eyes glazed and lips pouting. “Are you trying to avoid me?”
“What? No.” I wave the plastic pitcher. “Beer, right?”
“Tell me, who that guy was today?”
“What guy?” I look toward the door, hoping Katie will come back in.
“At your house? With the beard?”
“Holden?”
“Is he your boyfriend?”
Part of me, the self-preservation part, tells me to say yes. But the independent streak pushed me to tell the truth. I open my mouth to reply when he bends down and kisses me, not giving a fuck either way.
It’s like a switch flips and gone is the lazy, easy going guy from the hardware store and back in front of me is the bad boy from high school. But not the good kind, the dangerous kind. His hands are everywhere and his tongue shoves down my throat. He presses me into the corner of the booth and I fight to catch my breath. His fingers slide up my thigh, between my legs, and push under the hem of my shorts.
“Reid, no,” I say, pushing against his chest.
“Come on, baby. I know you want it.”
“No, I don’t.” But I’m not even sure he can hear me.
Lynyrd Skynyrd wails through the speakers, and I know to anyone on the outside we just look like two drunken fools making out. But that’s not what it is, I don’t want this. I don’t want him, and as his fingers wiggle underneath my panties, I manage to come up for a breath of air and make eye contact with someone at the bar.
No.