Grace
True!
What’s Kade doing on his first legal Friday night?
Despite the dubious legality of shipping beer into Maryland, on Tuesday she’d sent the other guy in his double suite a twenty-first birthday case of Seattle microbrews. Damn, this girl was nice.
Jay Bongo’s downtown.
They were leaving together in thirty minutes, with Kade’s wife driving. He felt like ballast, but the sports bar promised a dose of real life and his roommate wanted support for his first trip without an official group.
An hour after he and Grace texted goodbye, he had more action than his whacked brain could process. The bottle in his hand was cold, the air was hot and two blondes were grinding each other on the dance floor ten feet in front of his chair.
It sort of sucked. The bass thump matched a thump in his forehead, and he realized he’d pushed himself too hard today. At least the noise meant no one expected him to talk.
“Hey, hero.” A curvy mega-blonde leaned close to be heard. Brittney, Version 2.
“Hey.”
She clinked a nearly empty bottle against his nearly full one. “Stella.”
Name or drink?he wondered. “Rey.” He understood the next move and lifted his arm for a server. While they waited for her refill, she gyrated to the music and thrust her short dress and bare thighs into the airspace above his wheels.
“You must have quite a shtory.” She stuck the end of her beer bottle in the circle of her red lips and locked eyes as she twirled it, as if that would attract him. Instead, it made him uncomfortably aware of two things. First, he might once have been interested, and second, tonight he remained one hundred percent unmoved.
“Come on, Rey.” Her real-estate display wasn’t even subtle, and with her grip on his chair he wasn’t sure how to move away.
“En-joy.” He indicated the bottle the approaching server held, stuck a ten on the tray and used Stella’s distraction to turn his chair in the direction he’d last seen Kade.
July
Grace had no ideawhere Jenni acquired her flair for karaoke. She must have discovered it at college, because there wasn’t a karaoke place within fifty miles of Salito. Fourth of July weekend had brought her little sister crashing on Grace’s couch and issuing invitations to join her college friends, friends of theirs and random friends made that day. Empty plastic pitchers crowded alongside half-eaten plates of walnut prawns, spicy fried chicken and gimbap at the latest song-fest.
It was eight fifty-eight. She and Rey had settled on a 9:00 p.m. routine that she wasn’t going to alter for karaoke, so she debated whether to sneak outside with the smokers or respond to Rey’s messages with her hands under the table. One or two exchanges would slide under Jenni’s radar, but a twenty-minute text session, not so much, unless she maneuvered her sister out of the way.
“Why don’t you sing the next medley?” Grace asked.
“I’ve sung three times. Join me?” Filled with rhythm and beer, Jenni wiggled on the booth’s padded bench.
“No thanks.” The phone felt hot and slippery in her palm. Singing in public was not for her, not even after a beer, and especially not at nine o’clock.
The phone vibrated. She looked at Rey’s regular hi, and the noise lost several decibels.
Hi back. Hard to text because I’m at karaoke with Jenni.
Rey
Later?
No!
Wait, he could misunderstand that. She slid to her right.
Now’s okay.
“Whatcha doing?”
“Nothing.” Her cheeks felt warm, but maybe Jenni would assume the red was the cursed Asian beer-blush.
