Page 67 of The Second Dance
This is the most exciting thing that’s happened in Silver Bend since… well, since the divorce.
We watch Skyler cross the floor. He stops in front of Andy, smiling with that quiet charm of his. A stab of envy courses through me when she laughs at something he says.
She should be looking at me like that.
“She’s just going to keep on breaking your heart.” Cody murmurs.
I glance at him, surprised to see the concern in his eyes.
“You’re probably right.”
We watch Skyler pull her to the middle of the floor. Turning her back to us, he winks at me over her shoulder. He’s goading me, the cheeky fucker.
Cody gives me a long look. “I was just a kid back then, but I saw what she did to you, man. She took you down in high school. It was hard to watch.”
I laugh, but it’s a bitter sound. “It was hard to experience.”
“Don’t do that to yourself again.”
“I’m trying not to.” I turn away from the dance floor. “How about another shot?”
38.
Andy
When Skyler Thomas and I were four years old, we had the same babysitter.
Her name was Jacklyn, and she had a three-legged dog named Smuckers. And when Skyler’s spinning me around the dance floor, I can almost remember how he looked back then.
Dark-eyed, quiet, and usually up to no good.
We were two peas in a pod, but the older we got, the farther apart we drifted, until we went entire years without exchanging two words.
Strange, how two people can spring from the same patch of ground and end up in such different places.
I knew he was at UNL at the same time as me, but he studied Engineering and I was in the Journalism school. Our paths never crossed.
Not once.
Bo was there, too. But he was in the Ag school—a completely separate campus.
The song draws to a close and my little trip down memory lane ends with it. Skyler winks at me, depositing me by the bar.
I step over to it, noticing Dusty Larson leaning at the far end by himself.
He’s usually the life of the party, but at the moment, he looks pretty withdrawn. He looks up with a smile when I lean on the bar next to him.
Dusty was always a good-looking guy, but in that slim black suit, he’s drop-dead gorgeous. He tips his whiskey back. “This your first Farmer’s Ball?”
I look around, watching decades of Silver Bend high society intermingle. “Yes, indeed.”
“What do you think?”
“Well…” I draw the word out, trying to think of something nice to say.
I can’t.
He smiles. “Bunch of rich people playing dress up, am I right?”
