Page 78 of Most Eligible
The table is sticky. I press the pads of my fingers to the wood, and when I pull them away, my skin follows a second behind the rest of my hands. Across the crowded room, Rhett is at the bar, his own non-Rhett-Auburn-branded baseball cap pulled low over his face.
On the raised stage at the other side of the bar, a singer is tuning her guitar, adjusting the microphone in front of her. The ceilings are low, covered in stickers and graffiti.
Rhett saunters back to me through the crowd and slides into our circular corner booth, positioning himself so his back is to the rest of the bar. He sets two cans of club soda and a plastic basket of chicken wings on the table.
“Not very country boy of you.” I gesture to his drink. “Aren’t you supposed to eat, sleep, and breathe beer?”
“I don’t drink.” He shrugs out of his worn leather jacket. “It’s been about a year.”
My mind races back through every memory of him, slotting this new information into place. It’s so like him—reserved, focused, careful—that it hardly makes sense that I didn’t notice until now.
He takes a swig of his club soda and scoots closer on the bench until our thighs are pressed together. People buzz around us, but no one pays us any attention. We could be the only ones left in the world.
“This is where I wanted to bring you,” he says. “Last year, when… this is where I meant.”
Last year, when I said I loved Nashville and he told me it was his home, he said he’d take me. We were half asleep, tangled in my untucked sheets, and he put his pinky up to mine, pressed the pads of our fingers together.
“I promised,” he says now. “I’m a little late, though.” He takes another sip of his drink and sets it back on the table. “This is where I played my first big gig. A producer was here, and she signed me the next day. I owe this place everything. If I hadn’t been here—if she hadn’t been here…” He shrugs. “I wouldn’t be here now.”
“You would be, trust me.” I pick up a chicken wing and inspect it. “How hot is this?”
He takes a wing and bites into it, running his tongue along his lower lip to catch the dripping sauce. “Hot,” he says.
It shouldn’t be sexy—especially since spicy food gives me indigestion—but it is. I take a bite of the chicken wing and fan my open mouth. “Shit, thatishot.”
Rhett laughs and reaches forward, tugging playfully on the visor of my cap.
“I’m taking this off the second we leave,” I say.
“What, you don’t want to be a groupie?” He catches my cheek in his hand. For a second I think he’s about to kiss me, but he just wipes a smudge of hot sauce from my lip. He pulls his thumb back to his own mouth and runs his tongue over the spot. Something tugs low in my stomach. I take a giant bite of chicken to distract myself.
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
He doesn’t owe me a response, not with everything I’m still hiding, but he props his arm around my shoulders and leans in. “Anything.”
I’m not sure I even want the answer, but if I never ask, I’ll never know.
“Was I right? About the payoffs? Were there… others?”
The woman onstage starts playing.
“Christ,” Rhett mutters, glancing behind us at the stage.
“What is—oh.” I laugh and lean into his warm shoulder.
The woman is singing the title track of Rhett’s second album. Not the most popular, but one of my favorites. It’s well suited to her voice, thick and sweet as honey.
She’s the wind in my hair and the blood in my veins,
The creak of a stair when it’s starting to rain.
There it is again, the elusive “she.”
Rhett clears his throat, studies the table in front of us. “You were the only one,” he says. “Youarethe only one.”
The words melt into my skin. I’ve dreamed of him saying these words, but I never knew how it would feel: warm, safe, whole.
He reaches up, takes my chin between his thumb and forefinger, and looks deep into my eyes. The second payoff hangs in the air between us, but I leave it for now.
