I open my mouth.
Nash beats me to it. “Yeah,” he says, no hesitation. “We are.”
The word lands inside my chest like a stone in deep water. The ripples keep going.
Brooke squeals again, clutching my forearm. “I knew it. We allknewit, back in high school, that you two were endgame. I owe Ariana twenty bucks.”
I groan internally. Ariana Allen has been betting on my love life since we were fifteen.
“Small towns,” I mutter as Brooke flits away to inform the rest of the bar.
“You wanted believable,” Nash says.
“I wanted subtle.”
“Wrong town for that.” He orders us drinks. I settle on a beer because anything stronger seems unwise. We claim a spot at the edge of the dance floor.
The DJ spins a fast line dance song and people flood the floor, bodies moving in synchronized chaos. The Eager Beaver is good for exactly two things—getting drunk and pretending your life is simple as long as your boots hit the right beat.
“You remember this one?” Nash asks, nodding at the dancers.
“Yes. I also remember you refusing to do it because you said choreography was ‘an affront to free will.’”
“It is.”
“And yet you make your bed like a military manual.”
“Structure in the bedroom. Anarchy on the dance floor.”
The words leave his mouth.
We both hear them at the same time.
My face heats.
His ears do, too.
“We are not acknowledging that sentence,” I say.
“Agreed,” he says immediately.
We drink. We watch people we used to know. Some of them have children now. Some of them have divorces. Some of them are exactly the same, just with more laugh lines.
It’s… a lot.
I’m halfway through my beer when the tempo shifts. The first notes of a slow song slide through the speakers, syrupy and familiar.
“Uh-uh,” I say. “Nope. Not happening.”
Nash sets his bottle down. “Laney.”
“No.”
“We kind of have to.”
“Why?”
“Because half this bar has been waiting ten years to see what we look like slow dancing.”
