Parker Turner had two left feet, but all stepped-on-toes could be forgiven because he’d brought me a Jack and Coke, with lime. He kept turning around the wrong shoulder. But he was willing to look like a fool while two-stepping and I found that endearing.
Beau was nowhere to be found when we’d walked through the billiards room together, and he wasn’t at the main bar, where the bartender had selectively ignored Parker handing me my drink.
And I didn’t see him on this dance floor, and that was fine by me because he would’ve taken the drink from my hand and probably poured it on Parker’s head. Was it wrong to like Beau for that? He’d kill for me. He saw me as belonging to him. It was nice to belong to someone. To have someone who wanted you like that.
Who valued you, even if it were like property.
“You can’t shoot the buck if you never aim your rifle,” he’d said the night he met me at that bonfire.
While I’d been throwing Sprite cans in the fire, watching the flames lick the stars, he had marched his way to the sunflower field across the creek, and he’d picked me two dozen sunflowers that stood over my head, all to ask me on a date.
Never mind the fact I’d come to that fire with Cary Edwards. Cary, the 5’11 running back for the high school’s football team, who was running straight out of this town to Auburn in six months anyway. He didn’t care much when Beau presented me with the bouquet.
Even if he had, the Williams get what they want in this town. And Beau Williams wanted me, and I’d been his for about a year now.
I was his from the moment he’d brought those flowers. Cary Andrews peeling off in his Neon Blue Wrangler, leaving me abandoned, head barely peeking out from behind the towering sunflowers, a man five years my senior promising a ride home through slurred breaths.
“Hey!” Parker’s out-of-breath call brought me back to the dance floor, where the partner step had started.
“I don’t very much feel like throwing you around unless that’s something you’d like.” He touched my elbow lightly, guiding me out of the way of one such undulating, acrobatic couple.
Parker was a sweet kid. I put one hand to my abdomen, aware of my labored breath, and the sweat that pricked the top of my scalp.
“I’m ok.” I downed the rest of my drink and placed the empty plastic cup on a nearby counter.
“Would you want to say hey to the old crew?” Parker pointed in the direction of a long table near the far corner of the bar, where the karaoke stage and mechanical bull battled it out for the noisest attraction.
“Sure!” I mustered, and he led me through the bustling crowd toward our old friends, or really, Parker’s old friends while I licked my lips and ran fingers through the ends of my hair.
As if reading my thoughts, he turned over his shoulder, crouching towards my ear to say, “You look great. It’s the robotics team anyway, they think you’re cool just breathing air.”
The robotics team was an all-encompassing term for the eight or so friends Parker spent the majority of his time with before they all graduated two years ago. While only two or three of them were actually ON the robotics team, they all touted the same vibe.
Buttoned-up, super-geniuses, who’d left this town in the dust for the greener, more intellectually stimulating pastures of the North East Ivy ribbon. I was surprised they’d wandered into this honky-tonk bar willingly.
But sure enough, as Parker slid onto a high chair, I recognized none of the people who’d once been my academic aspirations.
Where there were once glasses, there were contacts, and once acne-ridden faces, there were nose rings, dark purple lipstick, and denim jackets that held pins toting communist slogans, and a slew of lettered abbreviations signifying varying queer identities or support for such. It had been a year since I’d seen them, and then they’d all worn funeral blacks and tear-stained faces.
I realized I looked like a backwoods barbie next to this crowd. But Parker did his job, trying to ease me into the reintroduction.
“Hey guys, y’all remember Safiya Remmel, right? Safiya you remember Dodie, and Josh, and Hayleigh Lee, and Cody Anne? Right?”
Some glimmer of recognition passed before each robotics team member’s eyes, till Dodie, who at Lee Grange High had been captain of Speech and Debate, spoke up,
“Parker, how can we forget, when Safiya here’s the only one giving you trouble with Valedictorian?”
I realized quickly that they’d kill the little buzz I’d been able to curate.
“Oh, I’m not giving him any trouble.” I watched as Hayleigh Lee brought a clear plastic cup to her lips, a lime floating in the carbonation.
“Yeah, I’ve got no dreams of catching up to her now, she’s double enrolled at JNC.” Parker offered.
Josh, an engineering major at the state college perked up, “What? What kind of classes are you taking there?”
“Is that a Sprite?” I asked, my lips drying out, ignoring Josh’s prying about my community college credits.
“Tequila Soda,” Hayleigh Lee offered, as she placed in front of me. I contained the squirm of glee that rang up my chest, and opted to tilt the cup towards her, in a soft “cheers.” Taking a measured swig, before going to pass it back to her.
“Oh it’s fine, I’m driving tonight anyway.” She winked at me.
Parker quelled Josh’s prying, which opened up the floor for Cody Anne, who was precisely the person I would have loved to avoid tonight.
“How’s your mom holding up?” Her brow pinched in and up, and she gave me that annoying pitying look everybody his age did. Henry’s age, my brother’s class.
I tipped the remainder of the drink into my mouth, letting the bubbles tickle my tongue, and the tequila warm my throat, as the lime clicked up against my teeth.
I picked it up out of its icy tomb, and took a bite of it, letting the pulp and acidy juice run down my chin, before returning it to its grave.
“She’s real good, thank you.” I let out a breath of air, pushing my hair from my forehead and notting it into a bundle on my shoulder.
“I think–” I said, looking to Parker, his gaze never pitying, only understanding, as he tipped his ear towards me, trying to listen. But before I could say anything, I saw Ansley across the giant room, sneak towards the ladies' room, with her purse in hand.
“I think I need to go to the bathroom, I’ll catch you later.” I hoofed across the room, through the thrush of dancers towards the high I knew Ansley could provide. Only to look back to see the results of my presence and hasty departure.
Cody Anne biting her nails, the hunched shoulders and shaking heads, and Parker looking right through me.
A wake only the dead golden boy’s sister could leave.
