“Let yourself love Steel. He loves you. Be the girl he deserves,” she replied. Scarlet then pulled back to look at me. Both her hands rested on my shoulders. “Asher Sutton broke you. He deserves for you to forget him. Steel Sutton, on the other hand, adores you. And he’s nothing like his big brother. He gave you a ring, sweetie. It’s time your heart let go of the wrong Sutton boy and fell in love with the one that deserves it.”
I knew she was right. I just wasn’t sure where to start. Not when everything still reminded me of the one who didn’t love me back.
I patiently sat in daddy’s truck while he filled the diesel tank with fuel. Jack’s parking lot had begun to fill up. Jack’s was a pool hall, that was also a bar, or maybe it was the other way around. A bar that was also a pool hall. I wasn’t sure because I’d never been in there. If my daddy ever heard I was in there—and he would’ve found out quickly because Jack would’ve called him himself—he’d have thrown a fit.
The only reason I would want to go to Jack’s anyway was because of the faded blue pickup truck that was currently parked outside the place. I’d seen three of the five Sutton boys climb from it and enter the establishment. The only one that mattered to me, however, had been the driver. Asher had sauntered inside like he owned the place. All smiles and too sexy for words in the jeans he’d been wearing.
He had those jeans on today at school. I had noticed them as well as the Malroy Bears Football tee-shirt he’d worn. Every day since the first day of school, Asher made sure to walk with me to at least a few of my classes. I knew he only did it to protect me and it worked. Emily James hadn’t harassed me again, and because of that alone, high school was proving to be a lot easier than middle school had been for me.
The day I’d climbed into his truck in someone else’s stinky, oversized gym clothes had changed me forever. I’d become more confident when dealing with Emily’s cruel pranks and at some point, they simply stopped. The last day of middle school she had tripped me. I was walking down the hallway for the very last time with my arms full of my locker contents. When I fell, notebooks, pencils, and even a few tampons went flying into the air, landing all around me. But that had been it and, seemingly, her final act of cruelty toward me. Now it was October and, in a week, I’d be turning fifteen. Emily had never looked my way again since I’d began high school two months before.
Scarlet had texted me that she was going to Jack’s tonight. She wanted me to go with her, lie to my parents, which was common for Scarlet, but not for me. She knew before she even asked I wouldn’t do it. But she asked me anyway like she always did. Now, sitting here and having watched Asher walk inside, made me wish I was braver, wilder, and didn’t care so much about letting daddy down.
She’d tell me all about it tomorrow anyway. The girl Asher took to his truck. Who the twins Brent and Bray Sutton ended their heated night with. Who she, Scarlet, made out with in the dark. Or in front of everyone. To her, it didn’t matter. Even though she had her eye on Steel Sutton these days. He was our age, and he was the Sutton boy to pursue for girls in our grade.
“You good with fried chicken? Jack’s cooking up fried chicken. You can run in the back and get a bucket. Get some of them fries of his, too. We’re fending for ourselves tonight.”
Momma went to church on Wednesday nights. Her ladies’ group bagged groceries and delivered them to the needy every week. Truth was she would have made us dinner if daddy had allowed her. But he insisted we would eat out so she wouldn’t need to cook every night, and so we did. Every Wednesday night, just the two of us, and usually it was fried.
“That’s fine with me,” I replied, a small thrill from possibly catching a glimpse of Asher again made my heart race. I didn’t want to act overly excited about chicken from a bar, or Daddy would have gotten suspicious.
“Let me use your phone,” he said, extending his hand to me.
I didn’t have anything to hide from him, so I gave him my phone without any hesitation.
Daddy took my phone and called Jack, telling him what we wanted. “While your momma is gone, we might as well live it up. Reckon you can whip us up some sweet tea?”
Lately, momma was on a health kick. It wouldn’t last long because they never did, but she wanted daddy to consume less sugar and grease, which were the very things he enjoyed the most. She said he’d live longer that way. But he just ended up eating it whenever she wasn’t around. Like tonight, for example.
“Yeah, I can.” I might as well. If I said no, he’d just go get a beer from the case he hid inside the barn. The real kind, not the light version which momma bought for him.
Although the chance was slight I’d see Asher from the back where I’d enter and Jack would send a server, I still couldn’t stop myself from getting giddy at the possibility. I had seen him today at school, and even though he’d talked to me and walked with me to three of my classes, always interested in what I was learning, my grades, and my new friends, I already couldn’t wait to see him again. Because even when everyone around us was calling out his name, trying to get his attention, Asher only paid attention to me.
“Ask Jack to give us extra of that special sauce he makes,” daddy added as I leapt from the truck. He must have been ravenous for extra sodium and a hearty dose of cholesterol.
“Okay,” I replied, thinking to myself about all the mayonnaise and fat in that special sauce and how unhappy Momma would be about that. But I would do whatever he asked and make him happy. Besides, it would give me more time to stand there while the server ran to get the sauce, which gave me a better chance at catching a glimpse of Asher.
The large, heavy wooden door that had been painted red years before I was born was a familiar sight to me. I’d only entered Jack’s through that back door. And only when daddy brought me here. I’d get the food, then pay and leave. I never got to go inside through the front entrance because Daddy didn’t want me in a bar. High school students weren’t served alcohol, but they were allowed inside. Everyone but me because Jack would rat me out.
Brandon Heely was standing just inside the door with a bag of food I knew was ours. “Hey, Brandon,” I said politely. He’d been working here for years even though he should’ve been off at college by now. But he wasn’t and probably never would be because he preferred to flip burgers at Jack’s and riding his motorcycle around Malroy, pretending to be the badass he wanted to be, but never could be.
“Hey, Dix, here’s your order.”
“Thank you,” I replied, reaching forward. “Daddy wants to add some extra special sauce,” I added, praying he had to go to the front to get some from the cooler.
Brandon chuckled. “This is his third time ordering this week. Jack says your momma has him on a diet. Is that true? Because it ain’t working if you ask me.”
Third time! Jeez! Daddy! I hadn’t realized he was sneaking off for greasy bar food that often.
“Yeah. She’ll eventually give up or catch him.”
Brandon sounded amused. “Stay right here. I’ll go get the sauce.”