“So you see the problem. The nearest bar with a dance floor is like forty minutes away.”
“Screw it. Rent a motel room and we’ll split the cost. We can put up signs that the library and the barbershop won’t be opening until ten on Friday. I need to get out and so do you.”
She hadn’t really done anything but work and hide in her apartment since the Super Bowl, which had been the least fun she’d ever had watching football. Without Josh, it wasn’t the same, and the other men at Max’s had acted weird, like they were looking at her differently now. Instead of just being one of the guys, she’d been a girlfriend. Apparently, it changed things.
She knew that would pass, as the pain eventually would, but for right now everything was awkward, all of the women in town were fussing over her and she was in real danger of becoming a hermit.
When the night came, Katie wore the black dress. It was too nice to be kept as some kind of shrine to sleeping with Josh for the first time, so she put it on and made up her mind to attach fun new memories to the dress.
“Damn, you look hot,” Hailey told her when Katie slid into her passenger seat.
“So do you.” Hailey was wearing a red jersey dress with a gold necklace and hoop earrings. She closed her door and buckled her seat belt. “Let’s dance.”
Four hours later, Katie was hot, tired and her stomach hurt from laughing. She hadn’t danced like that in years and she was going to be sorry tomorrow when she had to be on her feet all day. Tonight, she didn’t care.
Sliding onto her barstool, Katie pushed the half-empty glasses, which they’d abandoned when ABBA blasted out of the speakers, toward the bartender. “Two fresh drinks, please.”
“This is the most fun I’ve had in years,” Hailey said, still slightly out of breath. “We should do this more often.”
Katie was pretty sure she wouldn’t survive doing this more often, but she nodded anyway. At least the blaring music, the alcohol and the crush of dancing bodies kept her from thinking too much.
After their next trip to the dance floor, Katie switched to straight-up soda while Hailey ordered her cola with rum again. It was probably a good thing she worked in a library, Katie thought, because she was going to want things quiet the next day.
They gently brushed off the men who approached them hoping to get lucky with single women on Valentine’s Day. Katie flat-out wasn’t interested, and she’d stopped trusting Hailey’s ability to judge genuine interest about an hour after they’d walked in the door. They laughed and danced and sang along with the songs until the DJ called it a night and the bartender turned off the disco ball.
Katie hooked her arm through Hailey’s as they walked the hundred yards or so to the motel room they’d checked into earlier. Hailey was definitely going to wake up with a headache, she thought. But it had been worth it.
Hailey flopped onto the queen bed and almost immediately started snoring, so Katie took her time taking off the black dress and changing into the pajamas she’d tossed in her overnight bag. There was no waking up her friend, so she took off Hailey’s necklace and the big hoop earrings and left her alone. The jersey dress would look like hell in the morning, but it wouldn’t be too uncomfortable to sleep in. Or be passed out in, as it happened.
Katie had to nudge and push to get enough space in the bed for herself, but then she sighed and felt her overworked muscles relax as the exhaustion and low alcohol buzz zapped the rest of her energy.
She was just drifting off to sleep when her phone rang, and she knew before she looked at the caller ID screen it would Josh. The whole time zone thing was something he struggled with.
“Hey you,” she said, smiling so he’d hear it in her voice.
“How’s it going?”
The low timbre of his voice across the line made her chest ache with need. “Not bad. Did you call to wish me a happy Valentine’s Day?”
“Oh, shit, it’s Valentine’s Day? I forgot. I’m sorry. Did you do anything to celebrate it?”
Just nursed a broken heart on the day dedicated to love. And hearing his voice wasn’t helping any. “I went dancing and had a few drinks. It was fun.”
The silence on the other end of the line went on so long, she checked the phone’s screen to make sure it hadn’t dropped the call. “Did you go dancing with anybody?”
The tension in his voice made her want to laugh and cry at the same time. He was jealous, which meant he cared a lot more than he wanted her to know. But the fact she knew he cared about her, but not enough to stay in Whitford, made it harder to keep her voice on an even keel when they talked. She didn’t want Josh to know how much it hurt or he might stop calling her out of some misguided idea it was for her own good.