I don’t know what I was expecting today, but that wasn’t it. How could I not know that was Savannah standing there? I should’ve known. We’re connected. I know we’re all grown up now, but we were close. We were friends for a long time. Hell, I’d even seen her naked a time or two even though it was long before she was looking like she’s looking now, and damn is she fine now.
I pull into the dirt parking lot of Reds and shut off the engine. Not too many cars are here tonight which is just perfect for me. This is the town’s watering hole – for everyone. Red doesn’t care. He’s been serving minors for as long as he can remember, never afraid that the law will crack down on him. We’re the epitome of Small Town America and that means the police chief is someone’s daddy, uncle, brother or cousin and probably sitting at the bar with a cold one in his hand, not giving a rat’s ass if some minor is in the bar. Just don’t speed. If you’re caught speeding, he’ll bust your ass and make you pay a hefty fine. I never speed.
When I walk in, my best friend Jeremiah is leaning over a table full of girls getting his flirt on. I saddle up to an empty stool and tap on the bar. Della’s working the bar tonight. She smiles and nods, giving me the indication that she knows what I want. I look over my shoulder at Jeremiah and have to laugh. He’s the town’s poster boy for a redneck. He’s always dressed in plaid with his big shiny belt buckle, cowboy hat and boots. The boy even walks like he just dismounted a bull and always has his thumbs in his pockets. He’s who the Yankees make fun of. The chicks dig him though, especially the ones just passing through. They all think they’ve found themselves a real-life cowboy. They just don’t know that he’s a real-life horn dog too.
Jeremiah is a man who can’t form a proper sentence, unless you’re a chick he’s trying to pick up. Then he becomes mister cool cat or whatever corny ass nickname he’s given himself. He’s articulate and smooth and the girls are putty in his hands. It makes me sick sometimes, but he’s still my best friend and I know he’d do anything for me, as I would him. Still grates me that this oaf gets any chick he wants, whereas I have to work my tail off for a little attention. It dawns on me that I have to keep Savannah away from him. Even though they know each other, he’ll really want to get to know her now.
Reds is everything you want in a bar. It’s open all week long, they serve the greasiest burgers in town, beer’s always cold and the women are a-plenty. The bartenders know everything about everyone. There are so many peanut shells on the ground that it’s a new type of flooring. Music’s always playing and you’re bound to find at least one of your friends hanging out. On the weekends there’s dancing and a few bands stop through every now and again. Red even has a mechanical bull-riding contest once a year, and that brings in a lot of city folk. Reds is the place that those city girls like to escape to find their “cowboy”. We don’t mind. It’s always nice having Southern Belles around.
The cold amber liquid feels good coating the back of my throat, but I don’t have time to savor it as a slap on the back makes me spit and choke. I swipe the back of my hand across my mouth as I cough and regain my composure. Jeremiah sits down next to me, his own mug of beer resting in his hand.
“She here?” I look at him out of the corner of my eye and shake my head. His eyebrows are waggling. He does that when he talks about any girl, but what he doesn’t know is that Savannah McGuire is beautiful. What he also doesn’t know is that I messed up the reunion and her attitude is less than friendly.
“Yeah, man, she’s here.” I chug the rest of my beer and set the mug on the bar, signaling for another one. I’m not about to sit here and get drunk, but the liquid definitely curbs my piss-poor attitude where she’s concerned. “She arrived with legs that are fucking a mile long and she wears them damn high ass heels that we’re always making fun of.”
He looks at me questioningly. “Mousy?”
I nod and tip my mug back. “I wouldn’t call her that though. She looks nothing like she did when she was twelve. Hell man, when she got off the bus, there was another chick with her and I thought that she was the other one. Mou… Savannah gave me such attitude that she ignored me all the way back to Bobby’s.”
“She smokin’?”
I nod, reluctantly. I don’t want to think of her like that and I definitely don’t want Jeremiah thinking of
Savannah in that way, but damn it all to hell, she’s the most gorgeous girl I’ve ever laid my eyes on.
Jeremiah laughs and slams his glass onto the bar. It’s a good thing it’s half empty; Della hates it when her bar gets messy. “So if she has legs for miles and she’s smokin’, why aren’t they wrapped around your waist?”
I sigh out of frustration that I shouldn’t feel. The thought of her and I like that overtakes my mind. Savannah and I didn’t keep in touch. We weren’t able to. To me, she was a friend that I was growing up with and teasing along the way from when she got braces, to when she’d come running into the house because we drenched her with water. She wasn’t supposed to grow up and be beautiful. She was supposed to stay the same so we could pick up where we left off. Now she’s like that senior girl in high school that all the freshman boys had hard-ons for.
“Savannah…” Even saying her name overloads my senses. I had hoped she’d say hi to her aunt and uncle and we’d hop in my rig and come here to Reds to talk and hang out. “She doesn’t belong here,” I sigh with a hint of sorrow in my voice. I know I shouldn’t care, but deep down I do. I’ll wake up tomorrow, go to work and pretend that I’m not watching for her. When lunch rolls around, I’ll opt to eat in the barn and stay far away from the house and Aunt Sue’s cooking. I need to keep my distance and not let lines get crossed.
“Did you pick her up and spin her around like they do in the romance flicks?” Jeremiah’s always watching movies to learn how to impress the girls. It works for him and maybe I should do the same, but by the way she was standing there all high and mighty, I think she would’ve handed my ass to me with her purse.
“That was my plan, but I picked up the wrong girl.” I shake my head. “She stood there with this attitude and I was like, ‘what’ and she pointed out that she was Savannah and not the other girl who I kept calling Savannah. Then she goes and tells me to call her Vanna. Can you believe that shit?”
“I can’t believe you picked up the wrong girl. That’s some mean shit, Ty.”
I shrug. “Yeah, well, she sure showed me what her big city attitude is like. Girl needs to remember where she came from.”
Jeremiah laughs and beckons for a refill. “You gonna show her?”
I nod. “Bobby says she needs to work on the ranch. I guess she did some shit that her momma ain’t too happy with. Little Miss Savannah is gonna have to sling some shit.”
“I’ll be there to watch that. There’s nothing like a fine ass chick bending over to pick up some manure.” Normally I’d disagree with him, but knowing I’ll be watching her get dirty is pretty exciting. “What’d’ya say we take these two behind me out and show them a good time?”
I look over my shoulder at the two girls behind us and wink. A good time is exactly what I need to get my mind off of Savannah.
Chapter 4 – Savannah
My eyes squint, trying to block out the bright sunlight beaming through the windows. I can’t cover my face with a blanket or pillow because it’s too damn hot and I’ll suffocate. I’m going to have to ask Uncle Bobby to take me to town to buy some blackout curtains because I’m not going to be able to sleep once the sun rises.
I roll over toward the wall and open my eyes slowly. This was my room when I was little and nothing has changed. The bubblegum-pink walls are dull in color and in desperate need of being revived or painted a different color. My basket of My Little Ponies still sits in the corner from when I was seven. They were my most prized possessions and Tyler always tried to steal them from me. Why Aunt Sue kept them is beyond me. She had to know I was going to grow out of playing with plastic horses with multicolored hair. Unless Tyler still likes to play with them. That thought alone makes me giddy.
I can hear the dull buzz of a mower off in the distance. It’s something I don’t hear in the City unless I’m walking through Central Park or am at a friend’s summer home. Can’t say if I’ve missed that sound or not, around here it means work and that means Uncle Bobby and his ranch hands are already working the fields. Last night we didn’t talk about what chores I’d have to do. If I had my way, the list would be non-existent. It’s bad enough that I have to do homework and mail it in once a week. “Homeschooling” is what they called it when my mom was filling out the paperwork to send me here. It was the only option, because I refused to start a new school. If she’s going to send me away, I’m going to make it difficult on her. I thought I had outsmarted her until she told me that I have to pass the rest of my classes with flying colors or I wouldn’t be allowed to go to Paris in the fall, and I so want to go to Paris.
I throw back the sheet and blanket that’s covering me. It’s blazing hot and there’s no air conditioner in my room. That’s another thing I’m going to have to ask Uncle Bobby about. I don’t know how anyone can sleep up here with this stifling heat. Sleep evaded me last night because of the humidity and the noises from the outside. I’m used to horns honking and sirens every half hour, people yelling and gunshots being fired, not crickets and coyotes howling at the moon. I don’t want to be here and it’s not because I don’t love my aunt and uncle, it’s because this place isn’t for me. Maybe at one time I fit in, but that was another time. I’ve adapted, changed. I don’t know anything about haying or working a ranch and I definitely don’t have the necessary wardrobe to be here.
My feet touch the hardwood floor and I relish in the cool feeling of the old wood. I could sleep on the floor. I could move my mattress down here or even sleep outside on the covered porch like I did many times when I was younger. Uncle Bobby never liked that though and would sleep out there too, always afraid of a wanderer coming onto his land looking for a place to sleep or a day job to make some quick cash. No, I can’t imagine he’d agree to me doing that now, not after what my mom told him.