It was rum. Good rum — it hardly burned on the way down, which was the most dangerous kind because you forgot you were drinking it until you were already somewhere else entirely.
Preferably not on your face.
“You're smiling,” Billy observed.
“I smile.”
“Not like that.” He looked pleased with himself. “That's a different smile.”
“It's the same smile.”
“It’s fucking not, doll face.” He refilled my cup. “This is the smile of a woman on theloose.”
I looked across the field. Judah was where he'd been for the last hour — at the far table, talking to men whose names I didn't know, doing the thing he did at every gathering where he was technically present and actually somewhere else entirely. Working. Always working, even here, even with the fireflies and the zydeco and the whole town loose and easy around him.
He hadn't looked at me in twenty minutes.
Which was fine. And absolutely wasnot.
“He's very good at that,” I said.
“Hmm?” Billy turned his ear toward me but didn’t look up from the drink he was spiking with the rum. It was something that tasted like Dr. Pepper but hadn’t come in the labeled can.
“Judah,” I said, suddenly feeling very honest. “He hasn’t looked at me. He’s good at that. At wanting me and not wanting me in the same breath.”
Billy’s eyes finally landed on me. He had a cocked eyebrow. “Mercy, now comes the hard question. How much of this have we poured down your whistle?”
“Enough,” I admitted, taking another sip. “But not enough to not understand what I'm saying.”
Billy laughed, but it didn't reach his eyes. He glanced over at Judah, then back at me. “You know what they say about men like him?”
“I suspect you're about to tell me.”
“They're like those big old gators in the bayou. Pretty to look at from a distance, but you don't want to get too close.” He leaned in, his voice dropping. “They’re like logs. They look like nothing at all until they’ve got their teeth in your thigh and they’re dragging you into the black. That’s Judah. This type doesn’t stop feeding just because they’re full.” As he said it, his eyes found Dice — smoking and laughing with the two men from the bar. I couldn’t remember their names. Billy looked like he wanted to be there. With them.
Withher.
“I feel like you’re not talking about Judah anymore.”
Billy's eyes snapped back to me. “Careful there, doll face. You’re implying things I’m not entirely sober enough to be thinking about.” But — again — his glossy eyes drifted back to Dice. She had thrown her head back in laughter. The tip of her cigarette glowed orange in the dusk, a firefly caught in her fingers.
“Are you in love with her?” I asked, the rum making me bolder than I should’ve been.
Billy's smile went tight. “We don't use words like that around here, Mercy.”
“Why not?” I asked, turning to look at Dice again. She caught me staring and raised her cigarette in a small salute. I nodded back, feeling awkward.
“Because love complicates things,” Billy said, his voice suddenly stripped of its usual playfulness. “And things here are complicated enough.”
I looked down at my cup, swirling the amber liquid. The rum had loosened something in me, some knot of caution Iusually kept pulled tight. “Everything in St. Francisville seems complicated.”
“It is. If you look too hard.” Billy's smile returned, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. “Most folks here don’t. They just float along. Don't ask questions they don't want answers to.”
That may’ve been true. And I should’ve been like the most. Docile. And easy. Like I had been with my father.
“No.” I shook my head, my dark hair spilling over my shoulders — the waves had loosened, the pins had come out, and I was just plain old Mercy, sitting in the grass with a man too in love to declare his love.
“No?” he asked, leaning back on his elbow; he was half lying on the ground by then, his white pants in places covered in grass stains.
