Page 32 of Friends to WHAT?!

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small town entertainment > every other entertainment

Wolfe

As I enter the bar, I discover I’m correct. Leora isn’t here yet.

Looking around, I wonder if there will even be capacity for her to squeeze into the room when she arrives.

“Stars,” I curse, adopting Leora’s verbiage. Turning slightly as the door to the stairwell closes behind me, I reach the exactly one foot needed to be able to grab someone and pull them toward me.

Wide-eyed, Mr. Teague stares at me. “Yes?”

“What’s going on?” I ask, narrowing my gaze beyond him at the packed bar. “Why are so many people here.”

“Um,” he hedges, glancing sideways at his wife, a short-haired woman who watches us with no small amount of amusement. Her eyestwinkleas her husband waffles under my grip.

Beyondher, my brother glares out at his many, many patrons. His eyes catch mine, and he directs his glare atme.

My brows lower.What?I ask, telepathically.

Get these people out of my bar, Wolfe, or so help me…he replies.

I pull back, affronted, dragging Mr. Teague with me.What is going on?

Fox glares, sending not another word into my brain, then turns to snap at one of our mother’s walking friends as she leans over the bar to grab a slice of lime. Poem sidles up to them,bumps Fox aside with her hip, and smiles warmly at the older woman while deftly shooing her hand away from the lime well. Smoothly, she grabs a shot glass and shoves two lime slices into it. She passes the fruit over the bar. Then, she grabs Fox around the wrist and marches him to the other side of the long counter, where she begins a classic Poem-to-Fox lecture.

I return my attention to Mr. Teague, who grimaces under it. “We’re not going to interrupt,” he promises nervously.

An unpleasant suspicion wriggles at the back of my mind, and my eyes move back to the room at large.

This isn’t just a lot of people. This is a lot of peoplethat I know, I realize. Beside my mother’s lime-happy friend sit the rest of their walking group, complete with the woman who birthed me herself. My father sits some feet away, eying the group—and specifically his wife—fondly as they prepare for their evening’s entertainment.

In the booths, I see not only Poem’s sisters, Sonnet and Muse, but my sister as well. Sterne occupies his usual back corner booth. Old man Rory gabs with bar regulars Harry and Wilma at a high top. Tattoo clients, friends from high school, and even a few men and women I know as parents of Amia’s friends converge at the rest of the tables and booths and spare feet of space in between.

K-Pop blasts from the juke box as possibly every single person above the age of twenty-one that I have ever met pretends not to look at me.

Oh no.

Oh. No.

“Mr. Teague,” I say slowly, worried that if I speak the thing too loudly, too quickly, the spark will hit the end of the line, and the bomb will go off, and I will be forced to accept my designation as the targeted casualty. “Are you all here to watchmy…” I can’t call it a date. It’snota date. “Meeting?” I finish instead.

Mr. Teague blinks up at me. “Um,” he repeats with more distress.

His wife takes pity on him. “It’s date night, dear,” she informs me, slipping his arm from my grasp. “Let’s all get on with it, then, yes? I think Leora Mouton’s just come through the door.”

My lungs cease.

Leora is here.

Everyoneis here.

I shift, peering past heads and bodies as they step out of my way to give me a clear line of sight to Leora.

My frozen lungsburn.

Goodness, she looks beautiful. Has her hair always been that glossy? Has it always twinkled like a shining supernova, mimicking the glitter in her soft, gauzy dress?