“I just spent the last twelve hours driving to the middle of nowhere. I’m getting a drink and laid tonight and I don’t care in which order,” he’d said with fervor. I was torn. On one hand, I was exhausted. On the other, the possibility of seeing Nora again had me unable to think straight. And now that I knew she was still in town, I knew that on a Friday night, the chances of seeing her at one of the two bars in town were high.
“We can’t very well turn him loose in Halstead alone.” I laughed as I followed Brett to his truck. Letting Brett go into town alone would inevitably result in one of two things. One, he’d end up in jail. Two, he’d end up hitting on the wrong girl and end up in a fight, which would probably still end with us picking him up at the County Sheriff’s office. I sure as shit didn’t feel like posting his bail… or seeing Sheriff Harden again—if he was even still the Sheriff around here. It was just as easy to go with him and stop him from stirring up trouble to begin with. Plus... Nora. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since she’d hauled ass down the lane.
When we pulled onto the town square and found a parking spot outside of Vera’s Tavern, Brett practically jumped out of the Expedition and skipped to the door. I, on the other hand, took a minute to look around. Not a damn thing had changed. A few of the businesses that I remembered were gone, but as a whole, it was still the same. A large gazebo sat on a grassy lot at the center of the square. A few pieces of park equipment were to the left and a large concrete slab that served as dance floor during the town’s annual Founders’ Day Picnic to the right. If I hadn’t been going into the bar to drink beer I would have thought I’d somehow stepped into a time machine.
I held her hand walking down these streets many times. I’d kissed her on the dance floor in front of the whole town one night. We’d made memories that didn’t seem to want to let up their constant replay in my head.
“You coming?” my brother asked when he saw me staring off into space. I’d gotten pretty good at getting lost in my own thoughts over the past twelve hours.
“Yep.” I nodded and followed him inside. Brett had already ordered a bucket of Miller Lite and had secured us a high top table to the left of the bar. The sticky floors and stale beer smell was exactly what I had always imagined Vera’s was like on the inside. I was still underage when we moved and never did venture into any of Halstead’s hotspots. A few of the bar patrons looked our way, but didn’t give us a second look once we sat down and started drinking. That was the nice thing about motocross. On the circuit we were recognized, but we could still live a pretty normal life in the outside world. It was only occasionally that a fan recognized us and that was fine by me. The only place I cared about being recognized was on a track.
We ordered from the small offering of Vera’s menu and within the hour we’d consumed burgers, cheese balls, and an order of loaded nachos. Coating your stomach with greasy bar food was the best way to avoid a hangover, right? That’s what I told myself when we ordered our second bucket of beer. To be honest, I needed the alcohol to stop the nervous anticipation of seeing Nora again. At least if she didn’t show by the end of the night, I’d be too drunk to remember.
“What do you mean Reid’s back?” Georgia wanted a play-by-play of my meeting with RTR Incorporated. I’d already replayed the encounter on a continuous loop in my head the entire drive home, so I was familiar with the storyline. “Like… back for good?”
“Who knows? I’m betting no, but he’s here for now,” I answered as I changed out of my work clothes. I suggested to Georgia that we stay in for our “Sister Date.” Ice cream, pajamas and a Netflix marathon sounded like a much more appealing evening to me, but she wasn’t having it.