Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 104766 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104766 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 524(@200wpm)___ 419(@250wpm)___ 349(@300wpm)
The bride-to-be leads the way, wearing all white and a sash that says “BRIDE” while her bridesmaids wear sashes that say “BRIDESMAID” or “MAID OF HONOR.” The entire gaggle of them sports coordinating outfits.
White.
The theme is white.
I glance down at my shirt, wishing I’d packed dressier clothes ’cause suddenly this shirt feels all wrong. And too small, the short sleeves squeezing my biceps ’cause it don’t fit right.
It’s a polo shirt but still.
Too small.
It pulls across my chest in an uncomfortable way, or maybe I’m just feeling self-conscious after my day date with Tess.
She smacked me on the ass and winked at me.
Now what the hell could that mean?
Had she been flirting?
No way.
She’s not…
She couldn’t be into me.
Grady shoves a bottle of beer in my hand, slaps me on the back, and makes a beeline for the mass of bridesmaids, but it’s not to greet the bride.
Great.
I get to lay on the couch listening to him fucking, er, one of these chicks, whoever she ends up being.
I take a swig of the beer, averting my eyes so I’m not caught staring at the group of girls—or unintentionally make eye contact with Tess ’cause, for real, I can’t take them off her.
If she wasn’t Grady’s sister, I wouldn’t have guessed she was a little sister. Does that make any sense at all?
She doesn’t look like anyone’s baby sister…
She looks mature and sexy, and I tug at the collar of this damn shirt that’s choking me and making it impossible to breathe.
White dress.
Thin straps.
I don’t see anyone but Tess standing among that group of girls. Her smile is big, she’s laughing with her head tipped back, and she hasn’t stopped scanning the room as if she were searching for someone.
Dude, stop. Look away.
I glance away toward the dance floor, watching the line dancing there, the Boot Scootin Boogie, the actual name of the hall we’re in. They play the song that’s the namesake of the place several times a night—always have, probably always will. The crowd loves it, and it energizes the place.
There’s cheering as people line up on the floor to kick, step, hop.
Suddenly, a hand wraps around my lower arm, and I’m being pulled.
“Come on, let’s go dance.”
I don’t dance, and I don’t have cowboy boots on. Line dancing in Texas without them is sacrilegious. I’m one thousand percent sure about that.
Even Tess has them on with her strappy, sexy dress. Hot-pink metallic ones that wink at me from her feet.
Damn, she’s cute.
Still, I let her pull me.
She has a drink in her hand, and I wonder if she’s drunk. Probably since it’s eleven and they started their bachelorette party at the same time we started ours—seven o’clock with dinner, drinking, and the honky-tonk.
Lucas and his fiancée wanted to end the night together, so here we all are.
Tess leads me to the middle of the floor, yanking at me until we’re part of the masses, bumping my hip to get me into a position. She laughs.
“You should see your face,” she shouts over the music.
“What about my face?”
“You look horrified.”
She must mean that I look horrified to be out on the dance floor.
Which I’m not?
Not really.
“I haven’t danced in years.”
I wasn’t big into dancing when I was younger, but we would come here in high school to watch the crowds. Tourists. The mechanical bull riding—of course we did, there wasn’t much to do in the small town we grew up in, where Friday nights centered around football and not much else.
The honky-tonk on the edge of town is a staple in this state we live in, and even when we were under the drinking age, we’d show up to watch, standing along the split rails surrounding the hardwood dance floor.
Tess bellows out the starting lyrics to the country song we grew up singing, wiggling her hips as she moves, signing and attempting to get me to sing, too. She warbles it off-key, and off-tempo, which I find absolutely fucking adorable.
I relent.
Why the hell not?
“There’s a honky-tonk,” I shout with the rest of the crowd ’cause that’s what we do. We shout. We drink. We dance.
Just like riding a bike, the moves come back to me, and my body steps into place, my long legs tapping and stepping sideways, back, forward—in sync with the tide.
Across the room, I see a blonde with her arms wrapped around Grady’s shoulders, her face tilted up, listening to whatever he’s saying to her.
“Damn, he moves fast,” I mutter, feet moving on autopilot to the beat of the music as if I do this regularly.
These feet were always meant to be on the playing field, but somehow, this feels right, too.
Weird, isn’t it?
How coming home makes things better?
I feel relaxed, and it’s not because of the beer, which I’ve barely touched.
It’s cold, though, so I take another swig, relishing the way it hits my throat, then my belly, warming me from the inside out.