by Tate James
“I’m not here to work hard, child. Don’t expect me to put on a show tonight.”
Kate snorted and drained her beer, tilting the empty bottle from side to side sadly before setting it on the high table behind us. “I bet someone’s getting a show. Your ass looks fabulous in those jeans.”
I saluted her in thanks and put Amy out of her misery, finishing off the solids and calling out the eight ball before dropping it neatly in the corner opposite me. “All right, you two play. I’ll get us another beer.”
“Not for me. I’ll take a mineral water since I’m driving,” Amy reminded me.
I saluted her and left them to rack up again as I headed over to the bar. People had started to trickle in since we’d arrived. I waited my turn, leaning over the counter to make myself tall enough that I knew the pretty brunette behind the bar could see me.
She raised a finger to me and I grinned back at her. Emily had owned the bar since I was in high school. Daddy and his pool buddies had made a point of sticking by her side when her husband, the previous owner of the bar, had decided to take out his frustration on her face one night.
They’d gone looking for her when Bill’s knuckles had belied his story that she was under the weather. Daddy brought her home and Mom tended her wounds and cursed her husband to a long and miserable stint in hell.
She and I had hardly spoken, but I’d received my first inkling of a premonition that night and told her I saw a man with a gun looking for her. Mom had been horrified, Daddy had laughed it off, a nervous half-smile on his face. Emily had believed me without question. She thanked me for telling her and refused to go home until sheriff Collins spoke with him.
Later, Daddy told me he’d been sitting in the dark at home, his rifle in his lap. He made me promise never to tell anyone what I’d seen or said.
I’d forgotten all about it until her eyes met mine and it all came flooding back. She was the one who had unlocked this thing inside me that I’d spent the rest of my life trying to ignore or avoid.
I felt a familiar pressing against my mind, thoughts that I’d learned to control and push away rising to the surface as she neared me. I backed away, bumping into the person behind me.
“Hold on there, Honey. I got you.” I scuttled away from the barrel-chested, ruddy man who was leering down on me.
“Sorry.” I climbed up onto the high stool pulled up to the counter and stared hard ahead of me.
I felt his breath on my neck as I did my best to ignore him. Emily caught my eye and rushed over with an apologetic smile on her face.
“Sorry, girl. It’s been crazy since I lost my other barkeep. How are you doing?” She gestured for me to follow her down the bar and I hopped off the stool and started after her, but the guy grabbed my arm.
“Where you going, Honey? I thought we were gonna talk.”
“Nope. I’m going to talk to my friend who I haven’t seen in forever, then I’m going to take drinks back to my other friends, who also aren’t interested in meeting anyone tonight.”
He gripped tighter and I gave an involuntary yelp of pain. “You don’t need to be a bitch. Somebody who looks like you should be grateful to get a little attention around here.”
My hands were in fists and I reared back before I considered that I was starting a fight I couldn’t finish. Assholes like him were few and far between, but when they crawled out from under their rocks, it was hard not to let them get to me.
“Get your hand off my girl before I flatten you, Merle.” Adam was scowling at him, tugging his long black curls into a ponytail. He snarled, and the guy backed away, looking like he’d just wet himself.
Merle took off, and Adam slunk closer, the look in his eyes making my mouth go dry. “Thanks,” I finally stammered as he backed me into the bar and leaned in, his mouth barely an inch from mine.
“Let me get your beers, and walk you back to your friends, okay?”
I hated letting one jerk make me feel weak. “I should’ve just nailed him in the balls. But I really didn’t want to be the one who ended up getting kicked out of the bar. Especially not in front of…” I almost said your friend, but managed to choke out “my friends,” instead.
“I think for the rest of the night your friends should be my friends. Just to keep the creeps at bay.”
I handed Emily cash and grabbed the longnecked bottles in one hand. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him no thanks, so when I said, “lead the way,” I was too surprised to take it back.
4
We’d arrived too early by any decent club standards in our attempt to escape the hounding of the sewing circle at my parents’, but as nine o’clock hit, the band showed up and we quit the pool tables to remind the locals that New York girls could still line dance.
Loud music and three muscular hunks keeping, as Adam had said, “the creeps at bay” let me relax and almost forget the shiver that had crawled down my spine at the bar. Still, I was in no hurry to talk to Emily again, afraid that she too would remember and bring it up.
Carter had always been one to sit and hold down the table while everyone else danced, but Kate managed to pull him onto the floor for a two-step while I talked Amy into another couple of beers.
“How’s your momma holding up, Sugar?” Cash cozied up to me as we watched Kate and Carter circle the dance floor.
“She’s okay. I guess she had a feeling something wasn’t right for a little while, you know?” I shrugged and wrapped my arms around myself in a hug. “Everybody’s pitching in, helping with the aunties. I just don’t know what to say to anyone.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I left. I went to New York and I went to school and got a job and didn’t call much or write ever, barely said anything to anyone back home except for the holidays.”
Before I could say anything else, his arm was around me and my head was tucked into his shoulder. “It’s okay to grow up and move on with your life. Blue was so goddamned proud of you, you know that? She talked about you like you were her own granddaughter.”
But I should’ve known she was dying. I should’ve felt it, but I didn’t, because I don’t want to know things before they happen, I thought.
He gave my shoulders a quick squeeze, then stood and wolf-whistled at the dancers, stomping and clapping his hands as the song ended.
“C’mon, girl, dance with me.” I looked up into Adam’s storm-cloud eyes. “If I don’t get you away from Cash soon, you might forget I’m the better option.”
I rolled my eyes but let him pull me out of my seat and onto the plank dance floor. He held me tight, my body molded to his as he guided my steps with a press of his thighs against mine.
The music had slowed, and we rocked to the beat, my fingers fisted in his t-shirt, his hands warm on the small of my back. I rested my cheek over his heart and listened to the steady thump-thump.
Too soon, the song ended, and Kate was calling for more beer and another round of pool, this time between Cash and me.
“A legacy battle. Nice.” Carter took out his wallet. “I’m putting ten on Ms. Bonhomme. She’s a goddamned shark.”
Adam sighed, but released me to my friends. “I bet she is. Okay, I’ll see that bet, just to make things interesting.” I busied myself finding a cue so I didn’t have to hear where my girlfriends put their money.
Cash racked, I broke, and we started in earnest. For the first couple of shots, Kate and Adam heckled us, but soon, the only sound was the clack of the balls as they collided in the pockets.
I nailed my final shot and slammed my cue down on the apron of the table. “We’re going again, and this time, you’re going to put some effort into it, LeBlanc. I don’t need you to let me win.”
He closed the distance between us and got in my face. “I didn’t let you win. I distinctly remember you saying you didn’t want to put on a show tonight.”
I shoved him back and jabbed him in the chest with my finger. “That was when I was playing people who don’t
know which end of the cue to shoot with. I had every intention of beating you fair and square.”
“I didn’t let you win, Ms. Bonhomme, but I’ll surely take another shot at humbling you.”
“Good luck with that,” Kate called from behind us. “Ain’t no man can take down our girl.”
Cash groaned aloud and held up his hands in surrender. “All right, we need to take a ten-minute break. You guys keep this table busy, and we’ll be right back.” He took my hand and led me out the back toward the overflow parking.
“Why did we need a break?”
He chuckled and scuffed at the gravel. “I won’t lie, it was hard watching you dance with Adam like that. He’s got a way with women I can’t even pretend to understand.”
“You say that like you’re the ugly friend who can’t get laid. You can’t possibly be spinning that yarn looking for sympathy.”
“God. Do you always say whatever you think?” He was laughing, but I felt my face get warm.
“Yeah, I tend to. You’ve got to be pretty direct when you’re a single woman in a big city.”
I followed him as he walked through the field Em used as overflow parking, or for bonfires on the fourth of July and Halloween. He sat on a stump around the blackened pit where they built the fires and patted the log next to him.
The moon was so big in the sky it was almost within reach. We sat together in silence, his fingers warm on my thigh where he rested it. Neither of us moved, content to be still together on the squat, polished logs.
“So what is it?” I finally asked as the breeze picked up, prickling my skin and making me shiver. “You’re the strong, silent type, and Adam’s the outgoing one?”
He chuckled. “You guessed it. We’re an unbeatable team of sexiness.”
I laughed with him, but the truth was, together they were the perfect man. Each of them separate was darn near perfect to look at as it was. “We weren’t being vain, you know.” There was a pregnant silence as I felt him placing my words. “Everybody was so raw, we were just trying to…”
“Oh.” He cleared his throat. “Hard to feel pretty when you’re putting a loved one in the ground, isn’t it?”
“Hard to feel anything, it seems, even now.”
His hand was warm on my face as he turned it toward him. “What do you feel right now?”
And then he was the moon, pulling me toward him like spring tide. His lips brushed mine softly, gentle and generous, without demanding anything in return. But he made me generous too, my lips parting as a whimper escaped me, my tongue darting out to taste him.
“Gods, girl. You taste like honey wine.” He chuckled again, a deep primal sound that made a shiver run down my spine and things low in me heat up.
I wanted to crawl into his lap, tear his clothes off and kiss him while I melted into his skin, but instead I pulled away, laughing and breathless. “I definitely felt that.” I stood, backing away from him and nearly falling into the bonfire pit. “I’d better get back to my girls.”
He didn’t follow me in, and I didn’t see him again before Amy decided she’d had enough country music, and we needed to go home. Laying alone in my twin bed, I tossed and turned for an hour before sleep crept up on me.
When it finally did, I dreamt of two men, one fair, one dark, and I rocked between them to music no one could hear but us, their bodies pressed tight against mine.
5
We’d planned to stay for a full week, but as the house guests began to taper off, I found myself looking for ways to occupy Kate and Amy. We’d spent the morning arguing, them wanting to be supportive, and me telling them to get back to their lives.
“I can fly up on Wednesday and if you’re really worried about being a good friend, you can save me the Uber fare and come get me.” I wrinkled my nose at Amy.
“Okay, but I’m going shopping before we even think about leaving, Sweetie.” Kate spoke around the remains of the third beignet she was masticating. “And I’d hate to leave without spending a little more time at that cute bar. You could really make a killing down there if you were feeling it.”
“Emily’s already short a bartender. I don’t think she’d appreciate it if we made trouble.” I remembered the frat boys who had hunted me down. “Trust me. There’d be trouble.”
Mom and Dad were grateful to, I thought, for the sudden quiet of an almost empty house. Neither of them complained when I told them I was going to show the girls more of Breaux Bridge center.
“Take them to the Calico Cupboard, dear. They have a lovely soup of the day, you remember?”
I agreed to make sure they were well fed, and Mom reached up to kiss my cheek. “I keep dreaming of you and Blue, honey. You’re in a white dress, and she’s holding a bouquet of flowers for you. What do you think it means?”
“I think it means you’ve been dreaming about my wedding since before I was old enough to know what the word meant.” I hugged her and grabbed my bag. “We’ll be back to help polish off those casseroles, so you can get people back their dishes.”
We decided to walk into town, the mild Louisiana weather a pleasant change from the frigid northern autumn. As always, the wait at the café was almost an hour. I put our names down and we walked down Bridge Street. I reminisced as we wandered in and out of the quaint boutiques and mom and pop storefronts, wondering what the allure of the big city had been.
“God. Your town is like something out of a movie.” Kate was munching on a sliced caramel apple as she talked, masterfully keeping the food out of sight. If it had been me, I’d have spit apple and caramel everywhere. She handed me the box and pulled out her phone, snapping shots of the bridge over the Bayou Teche.
I couldn’t argue, so I simply turned us around and headed back toward the café. Within a hundred feet, a shiver crawled down my spine and I glanced around. Nothing seemed out of place on the road, but I heard raised voices between the brick buildings and turned into the alley, ignoring Amy’s protest.
“Y’all are ignoring the truth, and it’s gonna bite y’all in the ass, Cormier.” Cormier…that was Adam’s last name. I didn’t recognize the voice speaking, but it only made me more curious.
“If that’s a threat. It’s the last one you’ll make, Aldean. You don’t know what’s best for the pack.” It was Cash’s low growl that replied, and my stomach fluttered wildly at the menace in his tone.
The one he called Aldean scoffed. “You don’t have the sack, Cash. If you did, you’d already be the head of the family. You’re not wolves. Y’all are lap dogs, waiting for table scraps from the masters.”
There was a loud bang and I peeked around the corner to see Cash pinning a wiry man against the back of the building. The new man was red and sweaty, with scars on his face and tattoos on his arms. He looked like the kind of guy you didn’t want to run into in the dark.
Cash and Adam were surrounded, with three more scary types hemming them in as they faced who I assumed was the leader of the gang. The man’s face grew even redder and it almost looked like his bones were shifting under the skin as his face contorted in impotent rage.
One of the guys behind them raised a two by four. Before I could do anything, another man stepped out of the shadows. “Hey, I thought I recognized your voice, Cash…” The man dropped his hand as Adam turned around and saw them, and then his gaze fell on me. He glanced down at the wood and back at me, as I caught sight of Cash slowly releasing the guy he’d been threatening.
“Devon, we were waiting for you. What was the holdup?” Cash’s voice was careful.
The newcomer shrugged and grinned. “You know how Burl takes his time. I done waited fifteen minutes for a po’ boy.”
Adam chuckled. “Yeah, but it was worth it, right?”
“Shit. I’d have waited another twenty if he’d taken it.” The newcomer had a smooth, mellow voice. It reminded me of the old school crooners Mammie Blue used to play on her “hi-fi”. But looking at those broad shoulders and smoldering brown eyes, I’d wager if he
was alone with a girl, he wouldn’t be the one singing.
Oh, God, a new low for you, Frankie, I thought to myself. There’s about to be bloodshed in the alley, and you’re thinking about dropping your panties for a complete stranger? Simmer the hell down.
The air was still heavy and tight as the guys bantered, but Adam glanced my way again, reminding them all we were there
“Hey, girl. What you doing back here? It could’ve been trouble makers.” The men were beginning to back off as Kate and Amy joined me. Too many witnesses to start a fight now.
“Have you forgotten? We know each other. I knew it was trouble makers,” I scoffed. “Our names are about up inside for a table. Want to throw a wrench in their works and join us for lunch?” I asked, beaming at him. “You can come too, Cash, if you want.”
The other man scoffed and stepped forward, smoothing down the front of his shirt. “Since when do you associate with tourists, Cash?” The man Caleb had called Devon stepped forward as if he was going to place himself between us.
I threw my shoulders back and handed the apple I was stupidly still holding back to Kate. “Excuse me? I’m Breaux Bridge born and raised, Son. Or were you confused because I choose not to sound like I was educated in the backwater?”
Adam hissed something that sounded like “shit” and stepped between us. “We’d be happy to go to lunch with you ladies. In fact, I think it’s LeBlanc’s turn to buy.”
LeBlanc, Cormier…Football players and frat guys and their use of last names. Though the ones they’d been talking to certainly didn’t seem like the type who’d gone to college.
Cash was quiet, his shoulders tensed until we walked into the café and were led to a table in the back corner. He and Adam positioned themselves so their backs were to the wall, facing the doors, and I felt a premonition press heavily on my mind. Devon was more laid back than the others, and sat between Amy and Kate, flirting with them each in turn.