4. Temporary State #2
Knox was quiet for a beat, which was unusual for him.
Then Ivy and Daisy passed behind us on their way toward a group of tables, laughing about something, and the sound of Ivy’s laugh cut through the bar noise.
We both turned and watched them. Couldn’t help it.
Daisy’s auburn hair was down for once, and she’d traded her farrier boots for something with a heel that made Knox’s jaw visibly tighten.
Ivy was beside her, gesturing with both hands the way she did when she was excited.
“Women,” Knox said, turning back to his beer. “They’ll make you think about the future, whether you want to or not .”
He wasn’t wrong. That was the problem. If I stayed in Montana much longer, I was going to find a reason not to leave, and that reason was about five foot seven with a mole above her lip, long legs, and a laugh that made me forget I had plans.
Ivy was building a life in this town, brick by careful brick, and I was a man passing through on his way somewhere else. Starting something with her would be selfish at best and cruel at worst, and I was trying very hard to be neither of those things.
A few minutes later, Ivy and Daisy appeared at our end of the bar with three women in tow.
They were laughing at something Ivy had just said and wearing coordinated cowgirl outfits that screamed sorority road trip.
One was a brunette with big earrings and an even bigger smile.
Another was a redhead who kept touching her hair.
And the third, I thought I’d seen around town.
“Boys,” Ivy said, her voice sweet as syrup and twice as deliberate.
“This is Britney and Lisa. They drove all the way from Bozeman for Cowboy Night, and I promised them Forest Grove had the best cowboys in the state.” She gestured as if she were presenting livestock at auction. “Don’t make me a liar.”
Daisy piped up. “And Jake, this is Tina. Her dad runs the bank here.” They shared a shy hello.
Ivy and Daisy exchanged a look that contained an entire conversation, then walked away with their shoulders shaking from suppressed laughter. They knew exactly what they’d done.
Knox recovered first, playing their game. He swiveled on his stool and gave Britney his full-wattage grin, the one that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Great name. Great earrings. You want a drink, or do you want to dance? Fair warning, I’m not the best dancer.”
Britney laughed, loud and obnoxious. “I’ll take the drink to start, then.
” I caught Daisy watching us from a high-top table where she’d settled with Ivy.
Her arms were crossed and her jaw was set, and she was glaring at the back of Knox’s head with enough heat to set his collar on fire.
She looked away the second she realized I’d noticed.
If she didn’t want Knox flirting with other women, why put these two in front of us? I shook my head, not liking this one bit.
“How about you, cowboy?” Lisa’s question was directed at me.
She was pretty. Nice smile. And the polite thing to do was to be present, so I asked about her classes, and nodded in the right places, and none of it registered because over her shoulder, Ivy was watching me from across the bar with an expression I couldn’t quite read.
Eventually, the DJ switched to something with a beat, and Knox pulled Britney onto the dance floor without waiting for the question to form.
Lisa looked at me with hopeful eyes, and I thought, Why not?
This is what tonight is for. This is what Ivy built.
So I set my beer down and walked out onto the floor.
It wasn’t a close dance. I kept a respectful distance, moving to the beat without touching. She was a decent dancer and laughed too easily. And I felt absolutely nothing for her, except awareness of where Ivy was standing at every moment.
She was with Daisy. Arms crossed. Watching. Barely smiling. When I caught her eye mid-turn, she looked away fast, and something hot and electric pulsed through my ribs. Was she jealous? She couldn’t be. We were friends. Plus, she’d literally delivered this girl to me like a pizza to the doorstep.
Ivy had no right to look the way she was looking, and the fact that my entire body had tuned itself to her frequency like a radio finding a signal was nobody’s problem but mine.
The song ended. I thanked Lisa, who was sweet about the fact that I couldn’t keep to the beat, and went back to the bar for another beer. Knox was still on the floor with Britney, who seemed an unsuspecting pawn in the game between him and Daisy, spinning her around, even going for a dip or two.
The next song kicked up, and I watched Ivy and Daisy get pulled onto the dance floor by a pair of guys I vaguely recognized from another ranch.
The taller one put his hand on Ivy’s lower back, and she let him, laughing at something he said, tipping her head back so her blonde hair swayed and her throat caught the light.
The guy said something else, and she leaned in closer to hear him over the music.
The feeling that hit me wasn’t subtle. It was a hot spike of jealousy that started behind my sternum and spread outward until my grip on the beer bottle was tighter than it needed to be.
I didn’t like any of it, and I had zero right to feel that way, which made it worse.
The fact that I wanted to walk across the dance floor and put myself between them was exactly the type of impulse I needed to bury.