AllFreeNovel
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I tugged her arm, giving her a little jostle. “Hey, I personally think it’s cute. You’ve been crushing on the dude nearly half your life. I’m just waiting for the day when something actually happens. It’ll be like watching a real-life Hallmark movie.”
She snorted loudly. “Please. Like he even knows I’m alive.”
“He knows you’re alive, sweetheart,” I assured her.
“Only as the weird girl who freezes up and goes silent every time he looks in her direction. He probably thinks I’m hiding something with how ridiculous I act. Like a meth lab in my basement or a trucker’s head in my freezer.”
“Forget about him. Tonight’s not about meth labs or trucker’s heads, remember? It’s about fun and showing off these awesome dresses,” I told her as we reached the sign-in table.
She looked over at me with a tiny smile. “They are pretty awesome, aren’t they?”
“Oh my God, Presley Fields, is that you?”
I looked over to the woman manning the registration table who was handing out nametags and forced the smile to stay on my face. “Hey, Anna. How are you?”
Anna Waters was one who’d stayed in town like me after graduation and one I’d have been happy with leaving. I hadn’t been that lucky.
She’d beena pain in high school, and had only grown to be an even bigger pain in the fifteen years since we’d graduated. She was one of those women who felt if you weren’t a wife and a mother who spent their days in the kitchen with a child strapped to their hip, you weren’t doing your job as a woman, and she loved to throw that opinion around like confetti. I was even lower than the other non-mothers because I also worked at a bar, which to her was an insult of biblical proportions or something.
“Oh, I’m just wonderful, as always.” Of course she was, because to hear her tell it, everything in her life was utterlyamazing. It was as though she’d deluded herself into forgetting we lived in a small town where everyone liked to talk. Those picture-perfect children of hers were anything but perfect. It was spread far and wide that her youngest had been kicked out ofdaycare after breaking the skin of the fifth kid he’d bit, and her fourteen-year-old daughter—the one she’d gotten pregnant with just before graduation—had been picked up with an older group of kids who had tried robbing a liquor store in the middle of the freaking day, no masks and only blocks from the sheriff’s station.
Definitely not the brightest crayons in the box.
And her husband... Well, Ididwork at a bar, after all. A bar Garth Waters was a fan of frequenting, drinking too much, and picking fights he didn’t have a chance in hell of winning. More than once my staff had to call the cops to get him out when he got too unruly and started breaking shit. He’d spent his fair share of nights in the drunk tank. But according to her, they were all misunderstandings.
I might have felt bad for her if she wasn’t such a sanctimonious bitch all the damn time.
She looked me up and down with obvious judgment. “Wow. Look at you. Who knew the local bartender could clean up so well?” Her smile was anything but kind, and I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying something nasty. “Looks like someone’s come tonight to find herself a husband.”
My smile was brittle, my eyes flat as I replied, “Oh, no, Anna. No husband for me, at least not at the moment.” I lifted my shoulder in an easy shrug. “I’m still having fun. No quite ready settle for the same old boring dick night after night after night foryearsjust yet. Know what I mean?” I hit her with a sugary smile. “Speaking of husbands. Where’s Garth? He stay home to sleep off last night’s bender?”
So much for not saying anything nasty. But sometimes it couldn’t be helped. That woman just pushed my damn buttons.
Colbie coughed beside me and proceeded to choke while I scanned the table for our nametags. I didn’t bother waiting for Anna to lift her jaw off the floor and answer. I simply snatched them up and handed Colbie hers. “You have yourself a lovelynight,” I told her with over-the-top sweetness in my voice. “Maybe I’ll see you in there later.” I gave her a little finger wave, enjoying the way her face burned beet red way too much. Then I grabbed Colbie’s arm and yanked her along with me into the party.
“The same old boring dick night after night after night?” she asked from the corner of her mouth, her voice trembling with suppressed laughter.
“She deserved it,” I defended. “She pushed until I had no choice but to push back.”
“Oh absolutely,” she agreed cheerfully. “That woman’s always been one of Satan’s minions. That was fun to watch.”
“Yeah, well, the night is young,” I said, hoping like hell that coming here wasn’t a huge mistake. “Let’s hope that’s not the only excitement we have tonight.”
Colbie looked at me and waggled her eyebrows. “Drinks?”
“God, yes,” I exclaimed. Getting through this night was going to require booze.
The gym had been decked out for the reunion, the committee members clearly sparing no expense. I had to admit, I was pleasantly surprised. I’d been expecting balloons and crepe paper streamers, but they’d done a lot better than that. It didn’t look cheesy or gaudy. It was actually nice. Round eight-seater tables were gathered along the sides of a large area left open for dancing, covered in white table clothes and chair covers sporting our school’s colors. A DJ was set up at the front of the dance floor and there were at least four small bar stations strategically placed throughout the gym.
A large screen hung from the ceiling behind the DJ booth, projecting images that had been pulled from the yearbook as well as some personal photographs sprinkled throughout. The centerpieces were also in the school colors but somehowmanaged not to look gaudy. The place reminded me more of a wedding setup than a high school reunion.
“Wow, this place doesn’t look half bad,” I murmured as we headed to the closest bar station. There was a gaggle of women in front of us, waiting for the bartender to finish whipping up their fussy pink drinks.
I recognized a few of them as they huddled together, heads close, voices hushed but excited. The others I struggled to place, but they weren’t a group who had stayed in town.
Colbie and I stopped a couple feet back to wait when one of the women lifted her head, her eyes rounding as soon as she spotted me and my bestie. “Presley Fields and Colbie Hart?”
I was at a loss for who the chick was. Fortunately, Colbie didn’t have the same issue. “Pam Culver?”
