So I’d changed into jeans and a blousy, drapey, yet still clingy tee, strapped on fabulous spike-heeled sandals, fluffed out my hair, and took myself out to J&J’s Saloon, the local bar, a bar owned by Feb.
Feb was working. As was Cheryl.
This was good since I knew no one in Brownsburg but Vi, Cal, Kate, Keira, Angie, Colt, Feb, and Cheryl, plus a few more friends of Vi’s (who were also friends of Feb and Cheryl) that I had met at the wedding and bonded with over Bellinis. They were all married, most of them with kids, so we had yet to do what we promised to do at the wedding: hook up for a girls’ night out. So I didn’t count them. And Angie didn’t count either because she couldn’t yet cogitate. And since Vi and Cal were still in Virgin Gorda, and Kate and Keira were not of age to go to a bar (and they were still in Chicago), this left me fortunate that Cheryl and Feb were both working that night so I didn’t end up looking like a stylishly dressed barfly.
Once I got there, I wished I hadn’t left it until that late in my sojourn in Brownsburg to go.
Granted, I was more the subdued lighting, fabulous décor, every-drink-served-in-a-martini-glass type of establishment kind of girl, and this was not that. It was mostly made out of wood, rough and worn with age, and undoubtedly had more than its fair share of bar fights. There were pool tables in the back, and pool tables usually heralded a joint that was not my scene.
I still liked it.
Maybe it was because I walked in, Cheryl and Feb looked my way, and both of them called out greetings, Feb’s being, “Hey, babe! Cool you finally showed,” and Cheryl’s being, “Yo, Frankie, how’s tricks?” and that felt good.
After being away from everything I knew and found familiar all my life, to walk into a bar and have the women behind it give me a smile and a greeting, it made me feel home in Brownsburg for the first time since I’d been there.
It felt better gabbing with them both as I drank glasses of chilled white wine and people watched.
Though, now, I didn’t know what Cheryl was talking about.
“You’re givin’ up on what?’
“Men,” she decreed.
We’d been discussing the best brands of extra hold hair spray.
How did we get here?
“Uh…why?” I asked.
“’Cause, see, I’ve been livin’ in this ’burg for, like, ever, and the minute I hauled my shit over the city limits was the minute that commenced a dry spell unprecedented for me. And I work in a bar. That shit’s impossible.”
“A dry spell?” I asked.
“Babe, a dry spell. As in, I haven’t been laid…in forever,” she shared.
Clearly, as she barely knew me outside of us being in a waiting room for a joyous event and us mingling at a wedding reception during another one, she had to get this out. And as a sister, even without years of bonding over martinis (or tequila) and discussions of the best beauty brands of anything, I had to let her.
“That sounds like it sucks,” I noted, though I didn’t share with her that I had possibly the world record in dry spells after Vinnie, so I knew her pain like no other.
“It does,” she agreed. “And it does more, seein’ as you been in this bar once, and Tanner Layne has been checkin’ you out. From the moment he walked in the door, his eyes went to your ass and his eyes have been strayin’ your way the last twenty minutes.”
“Tanner who?” I asked.
She jerked her head along the bar and my eyes went to the other end, where a very good-looking, dark-haired man was sitting, smiling, and talking with Feb.
“Tanner Layne. Now, I’d go there,” Cheryl announced. “I’d go there the last four times he’s been in. I’d go there when my radar pinged when he moved to town not long ago and I’d never even met him, I just sensed his off-the-charts ability to provide quality orgasms. I’d go there right now in the bathroom or the office. But he only looks at me to order a drink. You, though…”
She trailed off so I said, “I’m taken.”
“Yeah, you’re you and that’s all a’ you,” she replied, rounding my head with her hand, including my big hair. “And your man is way hot. But he’s in Chicago. You look like you, Tanner Layne looks like him, your man is in Chicago, shit happens.”
“I gave him a calendar for his birthday with my schedule written in it, family birthdays, shit like that, and he told me that’s all he ever wanted. A life reflected in the busy family times written on a calendar stuck on a wall in the kitchen. He asked me if I was gonna give that to him and I said yes. So that guy is hot and Benny might be in Chicago, but that shit is also not gonna happen.”
I finished my pronouncement and Cheryl stared at me but did it saying, “He said that’s all he wanted out of life?”
“Yep.”
“And that doesn’t freak you?’
“Absolutely not.”
“What do you want out of life?”
“A man who wants a calendar on the wall in his kitchen written all over with busy family times.”
“Then you’re sorted,” she noted, her eyes lighting, her lips curling up.
“Yep,” I agreed, knowing my eyes were lighting and my lips had curled up.
“’Cept you live here and he lives there,” she pointed out.
“My lease is up in October and then I’ll live there.”
To this, her eyes got big, her mood deteriorated, and she surprisingly snapped, “What?”
“Well,” I started hesitantly, uncertain of her sudden mood swing. “I’m movin’ in with Ben.”
“Great,” she bit out. “Finally, you stroll in J&J’s and I’m ready to groom you to be my wingman. Feb can’t do it ’cause she’s taken and has a baby, and Colt would lose his badass mind if I took her out carousin’. Vi used to do it, then she got hooked up with Cal, and he’s arguably more badass than Colt and would definitely lose his mind if Vi went out carousin’ with me. And I know this for fact ’cause I asked, she told him I asked, and he lost his mind. You look like you’d be a good wingman and you’re the only semi-kinda-single woman I know in the ’burg that I like. Now you’re leavin’?”
I felt for her. A good wingman was hard to find.
Still, I answered, “Yep.”
“Freakin’ awesome,” she said, not meaning it. “Now how’m I gonna get laid?”
“We could go carousin’ while I’m still here. You’ve got a coupla months.”
“What you doin’ Wednesday?” she asked instantly, and I grinned.
“Carousin’ with you,” I answered.
That was when she grinned.
Feb moving caught my eye and I looked down the bar to see that Tanner Layne was now taking a phone call.
He really was hot.
But Benny was so totally hotter.
This thought and the man’s age made my eyes go to Cheryl and I asked, “Tanner Layne have kids?”
“Yep, word is two boys.”
“One named Jasper?” I asked.
“No clue, seein’ as he hasn’t fucked my brains out so we could get down to the pillow talk of sharin’ how many offspring we might bring to a Brady Bunch scenario.”
I smiled at what she said but kept eyeing Tanner Layne as I muttered, “I wonder if he’s Jasper’s father.” I said this as I hoped he was because those genes would undoubtedly be dominant and that would mean, once Cal lifted the ban, Keira would get a live one.
“Who’s Jasper?’ Cheryl asked, and I looked back at her.
“The boy Keira has a crush on.”
She jerked up her chin high on an “Ah.” Then she said, “I’ll find out,” and moseyed toward Feb.
I sipped my wine, and after a couple of minutes, Cheryl moseyed back.
“Jasper is the oldest,” she confirmed. “His other one, Tripp, is younger. Neither have been picked up doin’ stupid shit by Colt or anybody as far as Feb knows. But she’s willin’ to interrogate Colt about Jasper’s suitability for Keirry.”