Why did he wait until she was off the stool to feel chatty? Ugh.
“I want to.” She was there, after all.
Brek nodded, seemed like he wanted to say something else. But there was another customer and Ashley still waited for her and her drink.
To describe the rest of the evening would take one word: odd. Maybe even awkward. At first, Ashley wasn’t herself. Two more Jack and Cokes and then she didn’t seem to care who she was.
The band finished the set, and they all headed back to the cul-de-sac where Tanner and Mach’s place was situated. But they didn’t go there. They went to Bax and Courtney’s house so they could be where baby Harley slept.
Bax and Courtney had a pretty epic backyard. No pool, but they had an in-ground trampoline and a pirate ship. There was a fire pit with chairs around it and everyone settled in, but definitely didn’t settle down.
Becca and Ashley hosted a dance party on the deck of the pirate ship, and they even got Hans up there to do part of Meghan Trainor’s latest TikTok dance. Courtney filmed it, but she swore to everyone she would not post it online. This was purely for scientific purposes to prove that Hans could move his hips.
Tanner jumped right in, but Sam wasn’t ready for that kind of thing with everyone watching. Especially when there was video involved.
“You’re not gonna dance?” Mach asked, dropping to sit in the Adirondack chair next to Sam’s.
“No.” She shook her head.
“Because you can’t dance or you don’t wanna?” He tilted the bottle of beer to his lips.
“Oh, I can dance.” She could. She hadn’t danced in ages, but she could.
“A chick showed up at the concert tonight,” he said, out of the blue.
Her small talk skills might be off, but that was a weird thing to say. “Me?”
“No.” He seemed to weigh his words more carefully than usual. “I don’t know how much Tanner’s said, and bro code means I can’t get in the middle of it.”
“What are you talking about?” She turned in the chair to face him more fully.
“I’m just gonna tell you a story, ’kay? Let’s pretend it’s not a real story. It’s only a story.”
“But it is an actual story,” she confirmed, so she had a better idea of what the heck he was going on about.
“I’m not admitting to anything.”
“Fair enough.” Fine.Let’s just see where this goes.
“There was a kid with a lot of baggage I used to know.”
Sam nodded. “Tanner?”
“Let’s call him Banner.”
“Right.”
“Banner was super into this chick. They’d been buddies forever and, finally, they became more than that. Each other’s firsts in everything, as far as I know. Not like I did too much digging, if you get my drift.” He winked.
A little nugget of anxiety spirals settled in her stomach. She nodded again, but didn’t love the idea of Tanner with anyone else. The jealousy was unreasonable. She’d had other guys in her bed before. She totally expected he’d been with other people, too.
“They’re at Prom—Banner and… this girl.” He pursed his lips. “His parents just went down the river for thirty plus. You name it, they’d done it at some point. Arson, theft, dealing, too many charges to keep track.”
“Okay.” That apprehension snuggled deeper in her belly.
“They’re at prom, and swear to fuck this matters, but some blowhard decided the theme should be Sharknado.”
She laughed a little at that, grateful it relieved some of the tension in her tummy.
