in the dark booths to my left and the high-top tables and stools scattered about.
There aren’t a lot of people in here, and surprisingly, I’m not the only woman in this place. There are three men, who I assume belong to the bikes parked outside, playing pool with a woman who most definitely is a bottle redhead and looks as though she takes fashion tips from Peggy Bundy. Two older gentlemen sit at the bar, and there’s a man draped in darkness, sitting in the booth farthest from everything else.
The pouch of bones blaze against my hip, and the anxious clenched-feeling in my chest immediately subsides as I lay eyes on the man in the booth. I’m tempted to immediately walk over now that I know he’s the one I’ve been summoned to assist, but I stay on my route to the bar. Nerves scramble inside of me like ants over an abandoned picnic lunch. All at once, I feel like I’m in sixth grade again, standing on a high riser, blinded by a spotlight, and completely forgetting the words to the song I spent months practicing for the choir performance. My mouth grows dry, and I realize I have no idea how to do this.
Do I just walk right up and say you called? Does he even know that he summoned me, or is it more like I’ve been guided here by the universe? I try to think back to what Grammy Ruby used to say about this, but I’m drawing a super helpful blank. Are the people of Sweet Lips, Tennessee, going to burn me at the stake if I walk up to a complete stranger and ask if I can read his bones?
I cringe at the thought. Even if they don’t string me up, I sound like a freakin’ serial killer with a line like that, or a really bad prostitute. I go over the options in my head for how to approach the lone figure in the booth, without looking like I want to take him home or cut him up into little pieces, but everything I think of makes it seem like I’m going to try and sell him something. He doesn’t look like the type who needs lipstick that never wipes off or a pretty new set of earrings, so I abandon that line of thought and start stressing about how to even help him if he lets me. Will it be as simple as a reading? Will there be more to it than that?
“What can I get you to drink, miss?” an older woman with a kind face asks me.
“Oh. Uh...do you have Michelob?” I ask, embarrassingly frazzled.
“I do, hon. That’ll be four dollars.”
Shit.
I tap my pockets like I’m going to somehow magic money there, but I didn’t even think to grab my wallet, and my phone with my emergency credit card isn’t tucked anywhere on me.
“I got it,” a deep and annoyingly familiar voice announces, his strong arm rubbing against mine seconds later as he presses next to me at the bar.
I release an exasperated breath as I look up into moss-green eyes, and I shake my head in frustration. “Where’s Hoot?”
“Asleep in the car. I cracked the windows,” he states evenly, ordering something for himself and handing over a twenty. “Keep the change,” he tells the obliging bartender, but instead of it making her more endeared to him, a suspicious gleam enters her hazel eyes. I decide I like her right there and then.
She hands me my bottle of beer, and I pull a small sip from it, enjoying the cool liquid and the light taste in my mouth before I swallow it down. “Well, I hope someone breaks your windows because they think you left a dog in the car to die,” I tell him with a tilt of my bottle in a faux cheers, and then I leave him at the bar and approach the man in the booth.
Here goes nothing.
11
I take a deep fortifying breath, and then without working myself up any more than I already have, I slide into the booth on the other side of the man. He looks up at me, confused, and quickly shoves something in his pocket.
“Nice night for a drink,” I tell him, taking a sip of my beer and internally wanting to flick myself in the eye.
Really, Lennox? That was the best you could do?
“It is,” he agrees awkwardly, looking around for a moment before his gunmetal-blue eyes land back on