Mila and Jared crossed the parking lot, and the second he yanked open the door for her, music spilled out into the night. The thrumming, guitar-laden sounds of “Little Miss Honky Tonk” pulsed through the wide-open space and, despite her aversion to country music, drew Mila in like a spell.
Giant well-loved beer signs and an endless array of stickers covered the towering walls, while long communal tables lent the only bit of organization to the otherwise chaotic space. A buzzing hive surrounded the bar, and all manner of people shouted in jovial tones into one another’s ears to be heard over the live band. Mila’s cheeks warmed in the humid air as Jared sidled up next to her.
“Good surprise?” He leaned in, maybe to be heard over the music. She let her mind roam free.
“Good surprise.”
He tilted his head toward the hostess stand and held up two fingers at a bubbly young woman with a clipboard. They followed her to two empty seats on the same side of a table far from the main stage, where a six-person band sawed and swayed and jammed out to Brooks and Dunn covers. Despite their distance from the stage, the music still rattled Mila’s bones and forced a wide smile to her face.
“Drinks?” the hostess shouted.
Jared stood to give their drink order, gesturing wildly and trying to get his point across to the confused young woman. Finally, she nodded emphatically and gave Jared a thumbs-up.
“Got you an IPA,” he said. Again, he leaned in close, his warm breath whispering across her neck and raising goose bumps despite the tropical atmosphere.
“Thanks.”
The band announced a short break, ushering in slightly softer hard-rock tunes over the sound system, and their waitress reappeared to set down two overfilled pint glasses and sticky menus.
“What are you in the mood for?” Jared asked. “Or better yet, what would you have ordered if the Indigo weasel himself were here? Cute-girl side salad? Dainty-lady hummus and carrots? Ooh, look, they have a ‘diet’ section on the menu! My favorite. Cottage cheese and half a grapefruit.”
He leaned on his elbows, hunched over the menu, and tilted his torso toward her to deliver his corny jokes. She rolled her eyes, but her brain rattled with his close proximity as the scent of his subtle cologne and vaguely vanilla-scented hair product wafted toward her.
He licked his lips and turned back to the menu. She physically shook her head. The stomach flutters, the leg fuzzies, the light-headedness. No time for all that. No time for adolescent foolishness. No time for inconvenient crushes on lifelong friends.
“Did you guys decide what you want?” the waitress asked abruptly, roughly three minutes after she’d set down menus.
“I’ll have the fried chicken sandwich with fries, please,” Mila said.
Jared ordered a burger before lifting his gaze and pursing his lips. “Fried chicken and fries, huh? Not a very date-friendly meal.”
She resisted the urge to smack him. He’d known her too long to assume she’d alter her eating habits for a guy. “Oh, if I’d been with Vin, I’d have ordered that cottage cheese deal you mentioned.”
“I knew it.” He sipped his beer and glanced around the room. “I want to know what you’re like on a date, Lee.”
“First of all, no one I’ve ever dated has called me Lee Lee.”
“No one outside your family calls you Lee Lee.”
“Nicole does.”
He grinned. “I said ‘family.’ ”
Mila’s chest warmed. Her older sisters had always had each other, even going so far as to move to Buffalo together after college, and Mila had Nicole. When Mila lost Jared to crushes and school sports for a couple of years in middle and high school, she’d bonded with Nicole in ways she’d never known were so valuable. She considered Nicole and Jared as close as family. Closer, maybe. For better or worse.
“All right,” he said, leaning back to survey her. “So we know what you’d wear. We know what you’d prefer to be called. We know what you’d eat. What would you say?”
Her stomach fizzed. What would she have talked about with Vin? In their minimal interactions, she deduced that he’d probably carry the conversation. She’d sit pleasantly across the table and smile when appropriate and, if she felt secure enough, add her own anecdotes about a controlling mother and a docile father and overbearing sisters. She’d tell him she went to a state university nearby, but she’d leave out the part about her family not being able to afford student housing.
“For you!” the waitress said, breaking into their intimate cocoon of conversation. She set down two shot glasses filled with clear liquid and a tiny dish of lemon slices. “On me.”
Before the waitress turned away, Mila caught her wink. Jared’s lips curled into a smile—that smile—and the waitress squeezed his shoulder and sashayed away to the next table.
“I bet you wouldn’t do that on a date,” Mila said. She snatched one of the shot glasses and downed it, not caring what the liquor was, only that it stung her sinuses and relaxed the knots in her shoulders. Holy shit, cheap vodka. She tightened every muscle in her face and tucked the tart lemon slice between her teeth, sucking on the citrus like a baby on a bottle.
His smile deepened, his eyes sparkling in the neon lights. “Nah, I try not to flirt in front of dates. But sometimes I just can’t help it, you know?”
She raised one eyebrow. “Gosh, J, I thought you weren’t like that anymore.”
An icy wall crackled between them, and he sat straighter in his chair, his eyes darting around the room. He reached a strong hand out and nudged the second shot glass toward her.
“Go ahead.”
He never drank vodka.
“You sure?” she asked.
“Yes. Just the smell of it makes me want to puke.”
She narrowed her gaze. “Why is that? I know you don’t prefer it, but I never realized it was a visceral hatred.”
A dark cloud settled over his face, drawing his sharp, beautiful features down into something grave and somber. “Just makes me think of my dad. The bad times.”
As if propelled by the memory, she tossed the shot back, sucked the lemon, and followed it quickly with a long drink of beer. Would she smell of it now? If they kissed, would she taste of it?
Her stomach turned sour. Why would they kiss?
“What’s with that look?” His eyebrows lowered as he studied her face.
“Oh, nothing.” Just fantasizing about your mouth on mine. No bigs. “I didn’t know that. About your dad.”
He took a long drink of his beer and licked the froth from his cupid’s bow. “He mostly stewed in silence when he was home, but a couple of times he got belligerent, and I started to recognize the smell of vodka on those particularly fun evenings.”
The word “fun” fell off his tongue like a bad penny.
“I thought he never got violent?”
“He didn’t.” A wry smile settled on his lips. “Never violent. But Jesus, could he yell. I’m not even convinced he knew how loud he was. Just pissed off at everything. The batteries in the remote were dead; the commercial breaks on TV took too long; one of us left the front door open too long when we walked in. The guy lived like he had rocks in his shoes all the time.”
Mila had never spent time around Mr. Kirkland, only truly befriending Jared after he’d passed away. The stories Jared told about his father always made light of his frequently inebriated state. In the moments when Jared turned morose, the truth seeped out like poison.
“Must’ve been hard on you guys,” Mila said. “Walking on eggshells all the time.”
“Oh my God,” he groaned, his face slipping into a smile. “Was that a baking joke, you goofball?”
She tilted her head and gave him her best Are you kidding me? glare. “No.”
He scratched his chin, turning his attention back to the room as the band took the stage again. “
They’re good, huh? I’m not the biggest Brooks and Dunn fan, but they’re killing it.”
“So we’re done talking about real things?”
“I thought you wanted to know what I was like on a date. I wouldn’t bring up my dad until at least three months into a relationship.”
He offered her his cheesy smile again—the one that reduced most women to puddles at his spotless shoes—and raised his eyebrows.
“I never asked to know what you’re like on a date.” She drank the hoppy IPA to settle her suddenly frayed nerves. Maybe she hadn’t melted, but part of her did liquefy. “You asked me.”
“Oh, right. Okay, so far, we’ve got the smokin’ hot outfit, the desire to be called by your full legal name, Mila Beauregard Bailey, the fried chicken, and the . . . two shots? Is that right? Damn, Vin has no idea what he missed out on. It’s like having dinner with a bangin’ truck driver.”
Laughter exploded from her lips. “Mila,” she choked out, “Beauregard Bailey. I forgot about that.” She clutched her middle as tears pooled in her eyes.
He joined in, the two of them attracting curious stares from the strangers at their communal table. She finally caught her breath in time to watch Jared dab at his own ruddy cheeks, the traces of laughter still skipping off his tongue.
“It was tough sneaking that long-ass middle name onto Ms. Mac’s attendance sheet,” he said, “but oh man, was it worth it.”
Mila’s smile hurt her cheeks, but she couldn’t stop. “I was so pissed at you until somehow that middle name made it to my school record, and my mom’s head nearly exploded when she saw it on my report card. That was priceless.”
He trailed his teeth over his bottom lip, the joy glittering in his eyes as he looked at her. “You never ratted me out to her.”
“It was easier to blame it on the school.”
Tingling warmth cascaded across her shoulders as he continued to stare. It’s so easy with him, she’d tell Nicole before her friend rolled her eyes and raised one accusatory eyebrow. Nicole hated that excuse. She’d tell Mila that of course it was easy. No sex involved. The minute sex entered the equation, everything went haywire.
“You have to stop looking at him like the gold standard,” Nicole always said. “He’s not perfect. And no guy will ever measure up to him if you keep seeing him that way.”
But Nicole didn’t get it. She’d met her husband, Calvin, in their first year of nursing school and hadn’t looked back. They bonded over their Jamaican heritage, their career interests, their love of baseball, and their shared goal of having lots of babies and a house on the lake before they turned forty. Nicole considered sparks and chemistry and soul mates as reliable as astrology.
Mila read her own sun and rising sign horoscopes every day.
As the band settled in to begin the next part of their set, someone clapped a weathered hand on Jared’s shoulder. Jared leaped out of his chair, his energy shifting dramatically.
“Patrick!”
“So good to see you, Jared.” The wiry man extended a hand, and Jared shook it vigorously. “Sorry it took me a minute to get over here. We’re slammed tonight.”
“I can see that.” Jared scanned the room before turning back to Patrick. “I haven’t been here since it reopened. You’ve got ’em packed to the rafters.”
Patrick lifted narrow shoulders and ran a hand over his shockingly black hair. Judging by the leathery texture of his skin, Mila guessed boxed hair dye was to thank for the coif.
“Patrick, this is my friend Mila.”
Friend. Oof. What had she expected? Patrick, this is the woman in my life I stare too long at and give wobbly knees to but can’t really say anything more about.
“Very nice to meet you,” Mila said, standing to shake the man’s hand. His grip made her wince.
“Pleasure, Mila. Have you dined with us before?”
“Never,” she said. Nerves snapped like rubber bands in her stomach as she suddenly became the focal point of the conversation. What if this guy didn’t want to part with his grapes? Concords were harvested in the fall and hard to come by in the off season, and if Patrick made wine, he’d surely need every grape possible to make his profits.
“Well, I do hope you enjoy. Try the banana pudding. It’s my wife’s recipe, and it’s kept me in Weight Watchers since I met her.”
Patrick patted his concave stomach, and Mila shot a side-eyed glance to Jared. He raised his brows as if to urge her forward.
“Uh, Patrick,” Jared said. “I actually brought Mila here to meet you.”
“Is that right?” Patrick’s toothy smile appeared behind wrinkled lips. “Well, what can I do for you, Mila?”
Her throat tightened, the words lost somewhere on the back of her tongue, stuck there like autumn leaves in wet cement.
“Ah,” she said. “I’m in this pie-baking contest. Well, not necessarily pie baking. The contest is for baked goods in general, I just happen to be making a pie. Or . . . I hope I’m making a pie. And you have grapes. Or, um, Jared told me you grow grapes.”
She grimaced as Patrick looked to Jared for further explanation. Damn those vodka shots. Instead of giving her courage, they’d shot her insecurities into overdrive. Patrick would surely think she was some sort of idiot, unable to string words together like a toddler trying out her voice for the first time.
“Mila is an incredibly talented baker,” Jared said, smoothing over her gaffe. “She finally entered the annual Pine Ridge Spring Bake-Off, but she’s such a perfectionist, none of the available produce is up to her standards. I told her I knew an amazingly generous guy who had Concord grape reserves frozen, and he might be willing to part with some of it.”
How did Jared do that? The sales pitch floated effortlessly from his mouth, melodic and easy.
Patrick tucked his arms across his chest, his lips pinching suspiciously. “Hm. Well, I do have grapes.”
The tightness in Mila’s gut loosened momentarily. “You do?”
“Yes, but unfortunately, they’re slotted for ice wine. Have you had it? It’s a dessert wine, and we sell it in spades over at the winery. You should come out and try it sometime. Are you familiar with Skaneateles Lake?”
Mila forced her face into a neutral smile despite the disappointment dragging her down like gravity on steroids. “Uh, yeah. Sure. Skaneateles Lake.”
“It’s really a treat,” Patrick said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you out, Lola.”
“It’s Mila.”
Patrick’s lips pinched again. “Forgive me. Mila. Enjoy your dinner. I’ll send out some of that banana pudding when you’re done.”
Patrick shook Jared’s hand again and turned away as quickly as he’d arrived. Shame bloomed in Mila’s cheeks as she slid back into her chair and tried to avoid Jared’s pointed stare.
When he didn’t sit down, she looked up. His lips parted in confusion.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he said.
“I know, right? The guy can’t part with a couple cartons of grapes? How much ice wine could he possibly produce?”
“Not him,” he snapped. “You. You’re just gonna take that answer? One no and you’re out?”
The embarrassment on her face deepened to something bordering on painful. “What am I supposed to do? Follow the guy home and steal them?”
“Get your butt up and convince him.” Jared stepped back and lifted an arm as if to guide her toward further humiliation. “I know you, Lee. You’re already thinking about Concord grape recipes, aren’t you?”
She gnawed on her thumbnail. A leftover fiber from the lemon stung a raw patch of skin on her lip, and she winced. “No, not really.”
His jaw tightened. “Ask him again, Mila. And don’t take no for an answer.”
“It’s not the end of the world. Nicole said her uncle can hook me up with apples. . . .”
/> “Mila.” He bent at the waist, his nose nearly brushing hers. His steely eyes forced her hand to her lap. “I put myself out there for you. Now you have to put yourself out there for you.”
Maybe it was the vodka. Maybe it was his smooth, creamy skin so dangerously close to hers. Maybe it was the fear of disappointing him. Whatever forced her up and out of her chair, the relieved tug of his lips as she stood made it completely worth it.
“Go get ’em.” He squeezed her upper arms before gently turning her around and nudging her toward the bar.
Patrick stood tucked between two patrons, chatting conspiratorially with a server waving her hand around. For a moment, Mila faltered. Their heads bent toward each other, deep in conversation. She shouldn’t interrupt.
I put myself out there for you. She refused to appear weak in front of Jared. She’d been his easygoing best friend her whole life. Tonight she wanted to be more. More than just his hometown friend. More than just herself.
“Excuse me, Patrick?” She touched his elbow, and he turned abruptly, holding a finger up before turning back to the server.
Mila firmed her shoulders and stood her ground. The band started up again, the blaring guitar filling any quiet space that formerly existed in the raucous restaurant.
Patrick finally turned to face Mila, his face twisted in discomfort. “Yes?”
She gritted her teeth, realizing she’d have to lean in and shout if she wanted to be heard. Meek Mila took a step back as she reached down deep for her boldest self.
“I know you said you didn’t have any grapes to spare,” she said, nearly shouting six inches from the man’s ear. “But I had to give it one more shot. I have this idea for a savory sweet pie, and I’ve already dreamed up the recipe, and I’d only need two pints. Max. I’d gladly pay you for them, and I’m told there will be media coverage for the finalists, so if I make it that far, I’d plug your winery every chance I got.”
Patrick blinked as if she’d startled him with the idea. She blinked back. She’d startled herself.
Sweet Love Page 7
