Page 56 of Blue Jeans in Low Beams

“You like her. Like, more than she’s a little sister like her,” Hux comments.

“Nope.” Yes. I sure fucking do… “Don’t you have some place to be? I thought Dolly was in tears?”

Hux grumbles, pushing up from the bar. “She is. I need to get over there.”

“Here, take this.”

Reaching into the cooler under the bar, I pull out a forty filled with our latest creation. The still unnamed creation.

“This is the new one?” he asks, appraising the bottle as I hand it to him.

“Sure is. It’s light and happy, full of…” I don’t know how to finish that sentence, so I don’t. Fuck, I need to wrap my head around this damn thing. “It’ll help lift her spirits, promise.”

“Thanks. And if you want my opinion⁠—”

“Sure fucking don’t.”

“Best friend’s little sisters are bad news,” he continues, ignoring my retort.

Giving Gus and me a wink, then a click of his tongue with accompanying finger guns, he heads out of the bar and back to the parking lot. We wait for a moment, letting the door fully close behind him before we look at each other, both of us clearly thinking the same thing.

“If he knows that because he messed around with Whitney…” Gus mutters.

“He wouldn’t. I don’t think.” Hux might be the tomcat of the family, but even he has limits.

“You need to end it.”

Gus changes the subject with ease, but it doesn’t make my stomach hurt any less at the thought.

“Nothing to end. I did what I said I would do, and that’s that.”

And I have. Two dates—that’s what I said I would do. Give her the second date she’s never had. Just because everything within me is clamoring to figure out a third date, doesn’t mean there has to be one. Because there can’t be. Brenna and I are friends and temporary roommates. And that’s the way it’s going to stay.

Even if it kills me.

17

BRENNA

Nineteen days.

Not that I’m counting. At least, not really. Not for that reason.

It’s more that the countdown to my test has been ticking away ever since graduation, and with each passing day, it looms closer. That also then makes one more day since Milo stopped speaking to me.

Mell

Still nothing?

Nothing

Nothing nothing? Or just nothing?

I laugh at her question, not sure what’s more amusing—the fact that I’m able to hear her tone just by reading the words, or that I know exactly what she meant repeating the same word three times.

Stretching my legs out in front of me, I look up at the front door, as if I’m expecting it to open at any moment. I know it won’t. Milo left a note saying that he was going out with his brothers tonight. Knowing the Hayes boys, that could mean something as simple as a quick dinner, or an all-night backwoods adventure. Given the way things are going between me and my roommate, I’d bet the latter. Leaving me a nice quiet apartment to study.

A too quiet apartment.