“Addie!” Bobby calls out, and I feel King stiffen beside me. “You’re here.”
“If he kisses you again, we’re going to have problems,fresa,” he says as Bobby makes his way over to me and pulls me into his arms. I just sigh. There are always problems where these two are concerned. They both have me all knotted up, and I’m not sure how I’ll ever get loose.
Thankfully, Manny saves the day with a knowing twinkle in his eye as he leads a short and curvy-in-all-the-right-places woman by the hand toward me.
“Adrienne!” he shouts as he pushes their way through the crowd. “This is my wife, Marisol.”
“It’s nice to meet you!” I chirp with a genuine smile. “There are too many men in this crowd. Can I buy you a drink?”
“Sure,” she says with a laugh and a knowing look to her husband.
“Thank you for the rescue,” I say with wide eyes as we pony up to the bar. “I wasn’t sure I could make it another minute back there.”
She laughs, a tinkling bell laugh that is so beautiful, and her whole face lights up as she does. “Manny told me a little bit about what’s going on,” she says. “I wasn’t sure I’d fit in with this crowd, but he said I’d love you.”
“I hope you do,” I tell her honestly. “I need a friend who’s a girl.”
“They can be a bit much,” she replies as she receives her drink from the bartender and sips it. She seems to weigh her words before speaking again. “So… you and King?”
I sigh and shoot back half of my whiskey.
“That bad?”
“It’snotbad,” I tell her. “The truth of it is, it’s great, but it’s also not mine to have.”
She seems to understand the veracity of what I tell her more than I do, because her face turns a little sad, and she nods once.
“Well, I’m happy to be your friend,” she says. “And if you’re really unlucky, I’ll introduce you to the rest of our family.”
“I would love that.”
We sit and visit for a bit at the bar. But when the live band starts another set, Manny comes up behind her and wraps his arms around her in a playful way that speaks volumes of how much this couple feels for each other.
“Princesa,” he coos into the side of her neck. “Come dance with me.”
“Go,” I tell her. “Have fun.”
Manny waggles his eyebrows at that, and I roll my eyes.
“I can’t say no to him,” she admits.
“And that’s just the way I like it,” he replies playfully. The look they share hints at what they will also share later behind closed doors.
I turn on my barstool so I can watch the room. There aren’t many couples on the dance floor yet, but the ones who are can really move. I’d never seen a two-step outside of movies, but Manny and Marisol swing and sway around the battered floor like professional dancers. They share private words and smiles, and I feel like I’m intruding for watching them, so I look away.
“Want to dance?” King asks from beside me, and it catches me off guard.
“Yeah.”
He holds out his hand for me as the song changes. The band calls out for the brunette behind the bar, and she laughs and steps up to the stage to sing with them. King dances with a quiet confidence, and the smooth way he moves his body around the floor is reminiscent of the way he moves it in other ways.
He twirls me and leads me in a dance I don’t know the steps to, but he does it so well you would never know, all while the brunette and the band sing about a love gone bad in Tennessee. It lifts me up and breaks my heart all at the same time.
“Shit,” he bites out, looking over my head at someone. “I shouldn’t be here with you.”
“Then why are you?” I ask. I shouldn’t, and I know it. It’s like handing him a knife and asking him to stick it in my belly to see how much I’ll bleed when he does.
“Because I can’t stay away,” he admits, and I’d already thought the same, so I can’t blame him. “I wasn’t going to come to you, not here, but then I saw you in that fucking dress across the room. Your tits are so full and pretty, and those straps tease me with the way they look like they’ll break at any moment and give me and everyone else a glimpse of what we want so badly.”
