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We spent the next few hours talking through a series of details and a schedule. Evie needed to turn this around quickly for the client’s timeline—to show she was capable of meeting a deadline—and for her own reasons. The faster the extra money started flowing in, the better for her.
The conversation came easily, with minimal jabs from either Sawyer or me. It was weird, but nice, but also disconcerting to just talk. I’d say it was like yesterday, but there was no competition today.
For both of us to go so long without insulting each other’s manhood was new.
It was almost ten when we started wrapping up, and we had a solid roadmap for moving forward.
“Inquiring minds want to know.” Evie glanced at Sawyer between collecting and neatly folding plans. “Where—why—did you learn to line dance?”
Sawyer huffed a laugh. “I assume the same place as most people—a local bar. I did it for a man.”
“So you got the Scorpions tattoo for a woman and—”
“You what?” Evie talked over me.
Sawyer pulled up his sleeve to expose the image, faded with time. “Yes. To catch the attention of a girl who liked the band.”
Evie quirked her mouth in a half smile. Was she amused or impressed? “You know you can have those covered up,” she said.
“I prefer not to forget my mistakes.” Sawyer covered the band logo again.
And how’s that working out for you? I swallowed the snide retort. I wasn’t in the mood to push his buttons. What was wrong with me? “Who was the guy? The one you learned to line dance for?”
“Tony.”
I heard that name yesterday, when he was talking about his husband.
“Oh.” Evie’s soft exclamation made me think she knew who that was too.
Sawyer shrugged. “It’s okay. Some of the memories suck, and some of them are really good.”
“I’m glad; they should be,” Evie said.
“What I want to know, since we’re sharing”—Sawyer’s tone shifted toward neutral in a blink—“is how Gage has lived here all his life and doesn’t know how. Isn’t line dancing part of the adulthood ceremony in a town like this?”
“Yeah, but I failed that part.” I adopted a twangy drawl. “I disgraced my entire family. My mother-sister and father-uncle disowned me, and now I’ll never marry my sister-cousin.”
The smirk Sawyer wore as he leaned closer was telling. “Does she realize—your sister-cousin—that she wasn’t in the running anyway?” He asked in a stage whisper as he jerked his head in Evie’s direction.
She gave a light laugh. “You ever live in a town that doesn’t have a bar?”
“There are dry counties in Georgia.” Sawyer straightened in his seat.
Evie pushed away from the table, and tucked her carefully folded robot plans inside a binder that sat on the center kitchen island. “We didn’t have a bar here until a year or so ago.”
“You still don’t have one.” Sawyer’s retort was uncharacteristically light. “Joystick’s is not a bar.”
We’d take what we could. “That’s as close as it gets here.”
Sawyer looked amused. Like he was genuinely having fun. “Backwater town with no booze? Kind of surprised you two aren’t way more boring.”
“There’s booze, there just wasn’t a bar. There’s a liquor store at the end of the street,” I said.
“It’s old,” Evie added. “It’s been here longer than there have been laws that said that all liquor stores have to be state owned, so its license was grandfathered in.”
Sawyer leaned back and crossed his arms, brows raised. “Does it do any business?”
He had no idea. Haddarville was half openly sinners, and the other half was the pearl-clutching alternative. At least in public. I chuckled. “They’ve been doing home delivery longer than it’s been a thing.”
