“Don’t remind me…” Sally griped.
“…So whichever one we watch, we should get it on ASAP so we can all fall asleep to it before we go to bed!”
The other three ‘boo’d Tracy good-naturedly, but admitted she wasn’t wrong. Sally rescued the dvd from Llewellyn's white-knuckled grip while Tracy made them snack bowls for the couch. Llewellyn reached for the broom to sweep up the spilled popcorn, but stopped Chet with a hand to his thoroughly muscled, if quite-skinny chest before he could escape into the living room.
“And where do you thinkyou’regoing, Hot Lips?” She placed the broom in his hands. “You’re helping me clean up after that crack on my favorite movie!”
Chet grinned, but took the broom. “And here I thought you liked my lips.”
Lou shrieked as he pulled her suddenly up against him and planted one on her. Her shrieking stopped and she leaned into the kiss, wrapping her arms around his neck. She paused their kiss only momentarily to inform him that his ‘hot lips’ were gonna be put to use later. Chet made anmmmsound in agreement, before capturing her feisty mouth again. He loved her fire. She kept him on his toes.
“Quit makin’ out in my kitchen and finish cleanin’ up!” Sally hollered at them, knowing full well they would just make out on the couch instead.
The escaped popcorn was wrangled and Lou refreshed everyone’s drinks as they settled in for the show. She looked askance at Sally’s cup.
“Sal, how many of these have you had so far?” she asked with narrowed eyes in her best friend’s direction.
“I’m bein’ good!” Sally protested. “I just switched to juice! You know I don’t drink heavy on performance nights…”
“Mmmhm,” Lou tasted, making sure Sally had switched out the Boon’s Farm for sparkling cranberry. Her friend had a three-drink limit forreasons. “Just checkin’. I ain’t ready to put up with hungover Sally this week.”
Sally rolled her eyes, but flushed in embarrassment. She knew she was a menace the day after more than a few drinks. Her body tended to rebel in a truly astonishing fashion.
“WAIT!” Sally hollered as they all went to sit down. The four friends froze mid-sit. “Everyone’s wearin’ clean pants, right??”
Everyone nodded.
“We showered’n changed—why d’ya think it took us so long to get here?” Tracy said, bent over from where she was using the boot jack to pull off her hand-painted Tecovas. She gave a little grunt and staggered back as her foot finally came free.
Chet caught her with a steadying hand as she blew a blonde curl out of her frazzled expression.
“I’ve seriously got to get you to paint me a set,” he told her, admiring the artwork on her boots. She grinned as he took his turn at the boot jack.
“You know where to find me!”
“Are you two done flirtin’ over footwear?” Lou called from the couch. “Come snuggle!”
As the movie started, Sally looked over at the dog-pile of her dearest people. It was a rare moment of quiet for the four of them, these late-night movies. Their days were so full, even when they came to a stop, it was hard to shut down unless they were sleeping.
Sitting still meant something wasn’t getting done, hadn’t gotten crossed off the list. Sally appreciated that the four of them had come to the conclusion that they needed toforceeach other to relax, and that if they did it together, all at once, nobody could feel guilty about it. She surreptitiously glanced at the dimmed screen of her laptop, smuggled into her usual corner so they couldn’t yell at her for doing work during their down-time.
In between dramatic movie moments, she picked away at her dating profile. A word here, a word there. Sally hadn’t told Lou, but she’d been thinking about signing up ever since the Human-Extraterrestrial Liaison Program was announced months ago.
Like everyone, she’d thought HELP was a hoax at first, but after the government had confirmed it and it turned out to bereal… The thought of going to space had lodged itself in Sally’s brain and wouldn’t shake free.
But it was more than just the excitement of going toanother planet.
Sally was lonely.
It was a fact she hid from herself as best she could. She felt guilty for those late-night urges that tempted her to leave her friends and go to a galaxy far, far away. She was grateful for the friends and family and stability she had in her life. Truly, she was. But that only went so far in the dead of night, spiraling away in the vast web of her own thoughts, wondering what was so wrong with her that the men she dated never stuck around for more then a few months at the most.
It had taken her a long time to accept that she wasallowedto want more, that she didn’t need to settle for pretending to have a good lay every once in a blue moon.
Once she’d reconciled that riding broncos for the rodeo was more satisfying than riding her way through the local dating pool, Sally had come to the realization that whatever it was keeping her from finding her match probably wasn’t going to be remedied in wide expanse of rural Texas.
The Andromeda Galaxy was, admittedly, still a bit far out…
Sally hovered over the ‘submit’ button for a moment longer, staring at the screen.
