7
On Friday night, Savannah knocked on a door near the end of the hall—the door currently separating her from the muted voices of her friends. In response, it was yanked open from the inside, and a hand reached out and grabbed her by the arm.
“Finally!” Brooklyn blurted, pulling Savannah into her bedroom and shutting the door behind her. “Where have you been? Never mind, did you bring clothes?”
Savannah chuckled. “Sorry! I have this thing called a job, and it gets in the way of my social life.”
Brooklyn waved the words away as if they didn’t matter, and Ashlyn laughed from where she sat on the floor in front of a full-length mirror. “Ignore her, she’s a little high-strung tonight.”
Savannah laid her outfit and a small cosmetics bag on Brooklyn’s bed. “Why?”
Ashlyn smirked at Savannah’s reflection and leaned forward to sweep another coat of mascara over her lashes. “She’s hoping to meet a guy.”
“Aren’t we all?” Savannah quipped.
Again, Ashlyn made a face. “Yeah, but Bee’s a baby freshman who’s hoping to hit it off with one of Jonah’s older friends.”
Brooklyn scoffed from the adjoining bathroom. “I mean, can you blame me? Guys my age are still high school stupid.”
Savannah smiled and shook her head fondly.
The three of them were headed to Jonah’s birthday party at the Hawk’s Nest—a retro sort of restaurant-slash-pool-hall in Cypress Valley—and excitement already buzzed deep inside her veins, not at the prospect of Jonah’s friends, who would all be two years younger than her, but at the idea of eating, dancing and laughing with people who weren’t her clients or coworkers.
“Well, don’t get your hopes up; when it comes to boys, there isn’t much difference between eighteen and twenty,” she said.
She stripped out of her purple scrubs and pulled on a white sweater and dark blue jeans; then she unbraided her hair.
She’d had it up all day, so the natural wave remained even when the ties were gone.
She bent at the waist and shook it out before tossing it back again.
As she stood upright, her gaze landed on a framed photograph on Brooklyn’s dresser: four young women arm in arm.
She recognized Brooklyn, Ashlyn and their older cousin Hannah standing with a beautiful blonde in a white wedding dress. “Where was this?” she asked.
Brooklyn came out of the bathroom to see what Savannah was talking about. “Oh, that’s from Jake’s wedding! His wife’s name is Lexie.”
Savannah leaned forward to study the photograph. The cousins were wearing matching bridesmaids’ dresses, and Lexie was beaming the way only a bride can. “You all look happy. I take it you like her?”
“Like her?” Ashlyn piped up from the floor. “We love her! I wish Jake had found her ages ago.”
“She’s like another cousin we should have had,” Brooklyn added. “I’m glad they worked everything out.”
Savannah frowned. “Did they have problems?”
“Well, they broke up for a while last year, right after Thanksgiving. I don’t know exactly why, but I think it was something Drew said,” Brooklyn explained. Then she froze and cast an uncertain glance at Ashlyn.
Savannah frowned when the other girl gave a stern look in response, almost like this wasn’t something Brooklyn was supposed to talk about. “Why would you think that?” she asked.
“Well, he and Jake have had issues for years, but they’re working on it now,” Brooklyn offered. She looked at her cousin again, as if seeking confirmation that what she’d said was right, and Ashlyn sighed.
“Jake tends to be naturally good at things, and Drew tends to take it personally. It’s just something he needs to work through,” she said.
Savannah unzipped her makeup bag and began sorting through the products inside. “I remember them being really close.”
“Oh, they were as kids, but things changed in high school,” Ashlyn replied.
She shot another of those odd glances toward Brooklyn—almost a silent warning.
“Besides, Drew had just broken up with Alaina when Jake brought Lexie home, all happy and in love, and I just think it was more than Drew could handle.”
Savannah frowned and gathered her cosmetics before taking Ashlyn’s place on the floor in front of the mirror, her mind spinning.
Drew and Jake had had a falling out? She didn’t remember that.
The summer leading up to high school had been full of bonfires in Drew and Brooklyn’s backyard and game nights in their basement.
That had also been the year Savannah had bent over backwards trying to catch Drew’s attention, only to be disappointed time and time again.
She’d ultimately gone out with Jake instead, but Drew wouldn’t have cared about that.
He’d barely been able to stand her at the time!
“So, who’s Alaina?” she asked, zeroing in on that piece of information instead.
Brooklyn scoffed. “She was a tramp.”
“Bee!” Ashlyn scolded, though Savannah heard laughter in her voice. “Alaina was . . . fine,” she said. “She didn’t spend a lot of time with us, so we don’t really know.”
“That’s the point!” Brooklyn declared as she tucked her jeans into a pair of brown cowboy boots.
“She never wanted to do anything with us. We weren’t good enough for her, just like Drew wasn’t good enough for her!
” She yanked a wide-brimmed cowboy hat off a hook on the wall and jammed it angrily onto her head.
Savannah caught Ashlyn’s eye, and the two older girls shared an indulgent smile.
Brooklyn clearly had strong opinions when it came to her older brother’s abandonment and wasn’t going to be convinced otherwise—which was just fine.
Savannah could only imagine it took a special kind of stupid to give Drew Tanner up once you finally had him.
As it turns out, Jonah knew everybody! Or so it seemed.
His birthday party had morphed from a small gathering into an event that filled the Hawk’s Nest from wall to wall.
Savannah didn’t think he’d actually rented the place—that seemed like a stretch, even for Jonah—but everyone who came in the door seemed to know him in one way or another.
His lab partners, gym buddies and coworkers mingled with his cousins, high school classmates and random people he’d befriended in grocery store checkout lines.
He was just one of those people who never met a stranger, and it showed.
The venue was part restaurant, part pool hall, with an open dance floor in the middle.
Someone had pumped the jukebox full of quarters and queued up a long list of classic country hits, and someone else had started a line dance.
One had turned into two, which turned into nearly an hour of the girls stumbling into each other in a half-coordinated blur of laughter and adrenaline.
But they’d finally found the swing of things, and Brooklyn had managed to pair off with an attractive young man wearing a belt buckle the size of a small space station.
Ashlyn tapped Savannah on the shoulder in the middle of a turn and jerked her thumb toward a booth near the back door. “Look who finally wandered in!” she shouted.
Savannah looked in the direction she’d pointed and saw Drew sitting alone in a booth nursing a dark-colored drink.
He looked like he’d rather be anywhere else—but he was there, despite his obvious discomfort, and there was something to be said for that.
“I’m gonna say hello!” she told Ashlyn, and she danced her way from one line to the next until she reached the edge of the floor.
Then she dropped ungracefully onto the bench beside Drew.
“Howdy, partner!” she called, though the music wasn’t quite as loud in this corner of the restaurant. His entire body seemed to tense.
You probably should have given him more space, a voice chided as Savannah eyed the wide, empty bench across the table, but oh well. She was there now, and it would be worse to move than to stay put.
“You don’t have to keep me company,” Drew assured her without preamble. “I’m not staying very long.”
“Au contraire, my friend, you are keeping me company,” she countered. “Every time I sit down, some overly persistent guy finds his way over and tries to be my new best friend, so you’re doing me a favor just by sitting here.”
Drew didn’t look up, but something about the hard line of his jaw seemed to soften—almost like he was . . . laughing at her.
“What?” she demanded.
He shook his head, wrapping both hands more securely around his glass. “Nothing. It’s just funny that you’d put it that way.”
“Why?”
His lips twitched at the corners, but he kept his attention on his drink. “I seem to remember when someone overly persistent decided she was going to be my new best friend not too long ago,” he observed dryly.
A laugh burst from Savannah’s chest, and she bumped him with her shoulder. “And look how well that worked! You tolerate me now and everything.”
Drew’s smile straightened out, and he swirled the contents of his glass before raising it to his lips and taking a long swallow, almost like he was avoiding forming a response.
When he finally put the drink down, he leaned back against his seat and crossed his arms over his chest. “This is basically my worst nightmare,” he said.
“The music and the dancing and the . . . people.”
He said it like it was a dirty word, and the expression on his face made Savannah laugh again.
She knew he was changing the subject, but she decided not to press the issue; whatever he had to say probably wouldn’t be what she wanted to hear anyway.
“Yeah, well, you know Jonah—always up for fun. He was a golden retriever in another life,” she replied.
Drew scoffed and tugged his cap farther down over his eyes. “I think I was an ogre,” he grumbled.
She smiled and stretched her legs beneath the table, mimicking his position. “Well, ogres have layers, you know. They made a whole movie about it,” she pointed out.
He huffed. “Yeah, it could be worse, I guess. I could have a talking donkey.”
“See? I knew you’d find the bright side!” she said happily, pleased that he’d understood her reference.
He shook his head and looked out across the dance floor, relaxing against the back of his seat, but his body language shifted again before Savannah could truly process it.
She watched as two young women a few tables away made eye contact with them and waved.
Drew raised his hand and stiffly returned the gesture.
“Who’s that?” she asked, letting her intrusive thoughts get the best of her.
Drew grumbled something she couldn’t hear above the noise, and she slid closer to him.
“Who?” she prompted.
He glanced toward where their arms were touching and then at her face. “They’re Alaina’s friends,” he said, apparently repeating his earlier answer. “A girl I dated last fall.”
“Ah,” Savannah acknowledged. “I’ve heard about her.”
“From who?”
“Brooklyn.”
Drew pressed his lips together and frowned. “Ah.”
Savannah looked at the two girls again and found their attention still on her and Drew, their expressions condescending.
She recognized women like them—the kind who passed judgment on a whim and would probably be thrilled to tell their old friend how they saw her ex-boyfriend sulking alone at a party.
But Savannah wasn’t going to let that happen. Not on her watch. She shifted again so that her knee was against Drew’s under the table—a motion the girls could probably see from their vantage point. “Talk to me,” she urged, bumping him with her shoulder.
He studied her with an air of confusion, like he didn’t understand the assignment.
“Drew, talk to me,” she repeated again, more slowly this time. “Set the record straight, if you want. I’m listening.”
A rush of air left his lungs, and he wiped one hand down his face in what looked like resignation. Then he turned so that his back was against the wall and gave Savannah his full attention, though she noticed his leg was still touching hers—probably by accident, but still.
“She was a fashion merchandising major, and we met at a gas station. I don’t think she’d ever filled her own tank before,” he started.
“That should have been my first sign.” He was quiet for a moment, but then he shook his head with a huff.
“We dated for most of the summer, and I could never quite wrap my head around why a girl like her would want to be with a guy like me.”
Savannah couldn’t help it; she reached over instinctively and squeezed his hand. His attention zeroed in on that spot, but he didn’t pull away. “What do you mean ‘a guy like you’?” she asked.
“I mean I’m a farmer. I’m not fancy or polished or high society.
She was always trying to dress me up for her friends, always complaining about how much I like to ‘play in the dirt.’ It just never felt like she actually liked me,” he explained.
“Looking back, I think I must have been some kind of bingo square—‘Rehabilitate a Redneck’? Check.”
He said it with so much bitterness that Savannah’s heart ached. “We weren’t good enough for her, just like Drew wasn’t good enough for her,” Brooklyn had said. Now, Savannah’s chest burned hot as the words replayed inside her mind. No wonder his sister hated this woman!
“One time,” Drew went on, obviously lost in his own thoughts, “she’d wanted to go to a concert in Nashville, but it was right in the middle of bean harvest, and I couldn’t get away.
Afterward, I got a big basket and packed all kinds of food and took her down to the creek after dark to listen to the crickets and the bullfrogs, like our own little outdoor concert, you know?
” He chuckled darkly. “That did not go over well.”
“She didn’t like that?” Savannah blurted, her mouth hanging open in disbelief. It sounded like the sweetest thing she’d ever heard.
Drew shook his head. “No, she did not,” he said curtly.
Savannah looked down at where their hands were still joined, both surprised and gratified that he hadn’t reclaimed his fingers.
She could feel the heat radiating from his skin, and she thoughtfully ran her thumb along the backs of his knuckles.
“I would have loved it,” she said softly, unsure if he could even hear.
It was probably better if he didn’t.