“Leave it to me. Just go to the door,” she replied on another shout.
“Kellie—” I started, but I was talking to dead air. She was gone. “Fuck,” I hissed, deciding the next time she called that I’d prove my new leaf by ignoring the call, phoning her the next day, and having her over for Stroganoff or some other brilliant meal I taught myself how to make.
I then hoofed it to the door, knowing no way with this crowd they were going to let in a forty-one-year-old woman who might have good hair, a great suede jacket, and fabulous high-heeled booties because she was still forty-one and no one in line looked over twenty-three.
However, when I got to the door, the bouncer gave me a top to toe, grinned, and then turned to look behind him when he heard shouted, “She’s with me!”
Kellie was head and shoulders out the door. The bouncer nodded to her, turned to me, lifted a hand, and did a “get your ass in there” gesture to which someone at the head of the line groused, “Seriously, dude? Been standing out here an hour. What the fuck?”
I ignored the discontent coming from the line, muttered, “Thanks,” to the bouncer as I moved swiftly past him, got a, “No problem, sweetheart,” which was nice but probably had more to do with Kellie being a regular than me having good hair (or a great jacket). But I still turned my head and gave him a smile.
He gave me a wink.
He couldn’t be more than thirty-two, so that felt nice.
I let it feel nice, then let it go and moved to Kellie.
“This’ll be so worth it,” she declared before I could even say hello, her words strangely heavy with meaning.
She reached out a hand and nabbed mine as she spoke.
Before I could reply or figure out the weight of her words, she tugged me inside, the door closing the cold behind us, leaving us in the warm that wasn’t just the inside of a building but the inside of a bar heaving with people.
And this was when I realized my mistake.
I’d gone cold turkey on life when I’d ended things with Logan, so I hadn’t been to a place like this since then, except my brief visit to Scruff’s a few weeks earlier.
That didn’t count.
This was it.
This was where it was at.
This was one of a bevy of things back in the day that filled me up and kept life beautiful.
The sights. The lights. The people. The sounds. The vibe.
Electric.
Alive.
Not me.
So, so not me.
Not anymore.
I was there, feeling it, immune to it and missing it all at the same time, the last like an ache because when I’d had it, I’d had it with Logan.
Yes.
Big mistake.
Huge.
I had to get out of here.
I couldn’t go.
Dragging me with her, Kellie wended her way expertly through the crowd to a table back in the jumble around a stage where music was blasting.
Good music.
The band was excellent.
I didn’t look at the band. I concentrated on getting where Kellie was guiding me without slamming into someone in a chair or a waitress negotiating tables and bodies.
Kellie got us to her table, which was populated by two men and another woman, none of whom I knew, all of whom looked to us as we got there.
“These are my best friends for the night since they let me sit at their table,” she shouted, Kellie being one who could make friends anywhere (and did) and thus could go out without a girl posse (and did). She threw her arm out their way. “Jeff, Mark, and Helen.”
“Hey,” I yelled.
“Yo,” Jeff or Mark yelled back.
Mark or Jeff threw up his chin.
Helen smiled, gave a slight wave, then looked back at the stage.
Kellie tugged my hand again until I was sitting in one of the two vacant chairs.
She sat in the other one and expertly snagged a passing waitress.
“Twelve shots of tequila!” she shouted at her, and I felt my eyes get big. “Two for all, and four for my girl here so she can catch up!”
Four shots?
“Gotcha,” the waitress yelled back, and took off before I could stop her.
I leaned into Kellie.
“Babe, I’m driving!” I shouted.
“You’re also gonna be here awhile and my new buds got popcorn to soak up the booze!” she shouted back, tipping her head to the table.
I looked to the wax-paper-lined red basket on the table that had, on a quick count, seven popped pieces of corn and a plethora of unexploded kernels left in it. Then I looked back to Kellie, who was now eyes to the stage.
“Babe!” I yelled. She kept staring at the stage, bobbing her head and not turning to me, so I yelled again, “Kellie!”
She leaned back my way, attention never leaving the band, and yelled back, “They so need a dance floor here. This band makes you wanna move.”
She was not wrong. They were currently kicking the Black Crowes’ “Hard to Handle” and doing it so brilliantly, if Chris Robinson was standing at the bar, he’d be smiling.
My eyes started to move to the stage but stopped when someone slammed into my chair and my entire body jerked as my chair moved three inches toward Kellie’s.
“Whoa!” a man shouted, and I looked up at him. “Sorry!”
I smiled. “That’s okay!”
He grinned back and moved on.
I again was about to look at the stage when I heard, “Rumor was true! They get their old front man back whenever they come to Denver. And fuck if he doesn’t rock!”
This was shouted by Helen and I looked to her just as the band ended the song and she jumped up, as did everyone else at our table, at other tables, all the people obscuring my view of the stage, and the crowd roared its approval.