“She forced you to swipe right, huh? Some kind of BFF,” Willa gently teased.
“Force is a bit strong,” I conceded as the wind flew out of my rage sails. “And I guess it’s not her fault the dumbass stood me up…”
“Don’t let her off the hook, Molly. She deserves to haul her butt out of bed and come get you. Clara is bossy. You should teach her a lesson.” My head tipped back with a thump against the wooden booth as I contemplated my crappy night. Letting my eyes drift across the crowded bar full of people dancing, laughing, throwing darts, and singing along to the live music, I wished I could be as carefree as they seemed to be.
I spied my first school friend, Jackie, who was now an ex-friend and also one of the current town gossip queens, across the dance floor and let my head crash forward to land on my arm on the table. The weight of my future embarrassment made it too heavy to hold up. She’d had it out for me since we were fourteen and took every opportunity to rub whatever was going wrong in my life right in my face. Now that she’d spotted me here alone, everyone in town would absolutely know about my lack of a date along with whatever other stuff she was likely to make up to make me look even more pathetic. Damn. “Nah, it’s okay, I already texted Becky Lee to come get me,” I mumbled into my arm. Becky Lee Monroe used to babysit me when I was a kid. My older brothers and I used to spend every day at her house from toddlerhood until junior high. She used to be friends with my mother, but now she was my friend and sort of like the mother I’d always wished I had. Becky Lee was also Willa’s mother-in-law.
Willa nudged me and pointed. I lifted my eyes and squinted down the length of her finger. Just like Jack popping out of the box, my head shot off my arm as I noticed it was Becky Lee’s youngest son, Garrett, she was pointing to. “Coop!” I saw him shout to me from across the dance floor with that same slightly crooked smile he’d always had lighting up his face.
Willa grinned knowingly at me. “Looks like Becky Lee recruited Garrett to come get you. Holler if you need anything else.” She waved to him before heading back to the bar with my empty shot glasses on her tray.
“Hey, Garrett,” I returned with haphazard enthusiasm after he made it to the circle booth and nudged me over with his hip. Garrett and I used to be close. We were the same age and had been the best of friends until hormones, other friends, and teenage angst—mostly mine—caused us to drift apart somewhere around age fifteen. We’d remained cordial to each other during our high school years, often running with the same crowd and sometimes even hanging out, but we’d no longer been best friends. I hadn’t spent a lot of time alone with Garrett over the last decade and a half; he’d blown out of Green Valley after graduation to go to college, then enlisted in the Marines right after. He’d been back for about four years and the laws of small-town living dictated that I saw him all the time. Small talk was our thing now—chitchat, a gathering of mutual friends here at Genie’s, the occasional family barbeque, that kind of stuff. “I got stood up, there are too many assholes named Chris in Green Valley, and now I’m totally freaking drunk and alone.” I felt like I could admit it to him. Garrett had always kept my secrets, and he’d know everything soon enough anyway.
His gaze warmed on me as his easy smile slid to the side. “Well, whoever he is, he’s a fool. And, weirdly, I’ve only met one Chris who was worth a damn. The rest? All pricks. So, it seems like you’re better off.” He was decisive as he stole my water and took a sip with his eyes twinkling at me over the rim of the glass. I watched him set the glass down and my own eyes narrowed as his grin broadened and his dimples deepened within the dark whiskers that covered his square jaw. He was close to having a full beard. He was also pretty dang close to being the finest man in the whole stinking bar too. He leaned in, right into my space. “You should have stayed married to me,” he murmured into my ear, then his eyes met and held mine as he pulled away.
My eyebrows hit my hairline and I barely managed to prevent my jaw from dropping before I shot back a response that I hoped conveyed the proper amount of flippant wit and not the fact that he had completely flabbergasted me. He hadn’t flirted with me like this when I saw him at the Piggly Wiggly last Saturday. No, he surely did not. “We were six years old, Garrett. I don’t think it was legally binding, since your dog performed the ceremony. Plus, you never even gave me a ring. Ring Pops don’t count.” I mean, two could play at whatever strange game this was clearly becoming.
Instead of answering me right away, he winked and studied my face with a grin. That wink hit me right between my eyes like a Nerf dart from our days of yore—I didn’t just see it, I felt it. Bam! Tingles shot from my head to my toes. My brain scrambled inside my head and my mouth opened to say something smart, but nothing came out. Freaking tequila! I shook my metaphorical fist at the liquor that had stunted my normal standard of witty banter.
“But we pinky swore it, Coop.” His comically exaggerated pout was adorable. I felt my cheeks heat as I found myself staring avidly at his mouth in lusty contemplation, rather than just merely reading his lips. Why had I never noticed how full and bitable his lower lip was? I bet it was tasty too. “Remember how we spit into our palms to seal the deal?” he asked. I shook my head while my eyes roamed all over every inch of him I could see above the table.
“How soon they forget.” His chest rose and fell as he let out a huge sigh, and to my shame, my eyes bugged out at the sight. All my thoughts fluttered around in my brain like drunk, demented butterflies. Why was winky-flirt Garrett messing me up? I decided to place the blame on the tequila instead of the fact that he was looking ten different kinds of hot tonight. I finally managed to haul my gaze from his broad chest, which was currently testing the strength of his black T-shirt, and back up to his whiskey brown eyes that were still freaking twinkling at me.
Ugh! There was nowhere to look on him that wasn’t sexy, damn it.
And was he flirting with me?
Me?
We’d known each other since babyhood, for crap’s sake. We used to take baths together—me, him, and Mr. Bubble. We’d never flirted before. Ever.
Had we?
I tried to recall our last talk at the Piggly Wiggly, but all I could remember was that I’d been almost out of toilet paper and Dr. Pepper.
I silently took a vow to never drink again. This was not good. It felt like he was flirting with me, but I was just too damn drunk to be sure. I had been accused of being blind to flirting in the past. Was I blind to the opposite now? Was he not flirting with me? Was something in his eye? Or had he winked at me? Was any of this making any sense? NO! Being drunk is hard.
But before I could figure out what was up with Garrett, Jackie planted herself at the edge of my booth, full of false sympathy and smiles. “I heard you got stood up.” And there it was—the passive-aggressive biotch. She’d had it out for me ever since Duane Winston asked me to the eighth-grade dance and not her. I hadn’t even said yes; I’d been positive he’d only asked me to make Jessica James jealous, and duh—they’re married now. But she had hated me ever since.
“You’re mistaken. Obviously.” Garrett gestured to himself with a bemused expression as he scooted closer to me to wrap an arm around my shoulders. “No one in their right mind would stand this vision up. Her date is right here.” I listed into his side and gazed up at him with big eyes. Just what in the name of Jose Cuervo was going on here? I said a quick prayer to St. Patron—the patron saint of tequila, of course—but no divine intervention intervened on my behalf and my brain remained a liquor-soaked mess of confusion.