Kerri was drunk. She was cute as hell swaying in the booth to the music playing, tapping her fingers on the table. Jase and Reagan, on some sort of truce tonight, got up and danced with the rest of the crowd. My preference was to sit there and watch her, relieved that Kerri was no longer with her ex-boyfriend. From what Reagan had told me, purely unsolicited on my part, he sounded like an ass.
“Warren?” Kerri peeled the label off her fourth beer and reached for a fifth I pushed just out of her reach.
“Yeah.” I let my arm drape around her possessively. It would’ve pleased me just fine to let everyone know she was mine.
“How come you’re not drinking?” Her voice squeaked drunkenly, an interesting question but easily answered.
“I’m not of age to drink yet.” Kerri stiffened under my arm and I expected this. Squeezing her shoulder, her eyes came back to me, swimming with questions.
“How old are you?” Her face puckered sourly and I wanted to smooth out the frown between her eyebrows.
“I’m only twenty. Give me a few more weeks and it won’t matter.”
“Only twenty?” Kerri tapped her lips with her finger and I pushed the beer back to her. She took it and happily peeled the label off in one tug. “I’m twenty-two. My birthday is in June, though.”
“A regular old lady then.” She leaned into me and I took a chance playing with a tendril of her loose blonde hair. She moaned and took a swig of her beer when our friends joined us again.
“Come on, you two, get up and dance!” Reagan pulled me out of the booth on my side and Jase hauled up a tipsy Kerri to join us.
Worried that Jase was jostling her around too much, I stepped between them, holding Kerri against my chest and speaking to them over my shoulder. “I don’t think that’s the best idea.” Her nose rubbed against my neck sniffing, and my hips wanted to press against her.
“Dude, I’m pretty sure that’s not a good idea.” Jase pointed to Kerri, who looked up at me with a dreamy expression.
“Oh boy, did you give her that fifth beer?” Reagan was worried and buzzing around us, lifting Kerri’s sweaty hair off her neck and rubbing her back.
“Nobody told me not to and she reached for it several times before I let her have it.” I couldn’t see what the harm was in giving it to her. Kerri was an adult and made her own decisions, which I respected.
“She is going to have one super-human hangover, genius.” Hands on her hips, Reagan lectured me and sent Jase to the bar to get some bottled water.
“I didn’t know,” I told her, because I didn’t drink the stuff. How could I have known?
“It’s the bartender’s special brew.” Reagan could get all mother hen she wanted, but it wasn’t my fault that whatever it was in the pub’s special batch of homemade beer got humans drunker quicker. Maybe that was Vider’s lure, but it was none of my business what the lone wolf pub owner did.
Annoyed and feeling like my friends were crawling up my back for no reason, I gave a short retort. “I am the medical expert here, Reagan.” I held Kerri and checked her pulse. Regular, maybe slightly elevated, but perfectly normal. She leaned into me all soft curves and smiles.
“Yeah, yeah and you’re the youngest EMS captain voted in by Woodland Creek. You’ve also got zero experience with girls, buddy, even if you live with a regular lothario here.” Thumbing at Jase, who returned with the bottled water, Reagan was relentless.
“Kerri-man okay?” Jase handed the water over and I uncapped it, giving it to Kerri, who quietly sipped the water down when I put it to her lips.
We both nodded and sat back down in the booth, except this time I kept her on my lap, arms around her and the beer far away, pushing more water on her to help sober her up.
At the end of the night the girls danced, and Jase and I watched like predators while they indulged in some fun. I drove everyone back being the only true sober one, and Jase promised to pick up Reagan tomorrow to get her car from the pub’s overnight lot. We helped Kerri up the stairs because the dang elevator was out of service again and tucked her into bed. I was going to offer to stay, but Reagan propped her on her side with some pillows and shooed me out of their room with a wicked grin, letting me know Kerri had a study date tomorrow in the library…which I’d already conveniently decided to interrupt.
Chapter Nine
“The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
KERRI
Sedately pausing through the stacks of the library looking for a specific book,
my head ached from my lingering hangover from the night before. What the hell was in the beer last night? My steps were measured to avoid feeling nausea. I looked at my phone seeing the time and then slipped it into my back pocket to keep looking for my book. Now that I knew the local pub had a ‘special’ home brewed beer, I likely wouldn’t be drinking that anytime soon. My time in Woodland Creek had passed quickly, almost in the blink of an eye. Between the classes I was taking and student teaching at the elementary school, life was full and held meaning again.
An old clock dial sat above the librarian’s desk where a student I recognized but didn’t really know that well was sitting. Shannon, whose last name I didn’t recall, looked up from her book and red-framed eye glasses, giving me a small smile. She was nice and we had a child psychology course on Wednesday afternoons together. I could ask her if she was familiar with the book I needed, but I wanted to find it on my own, determined to hunt it down.
My fingers touched each leather-bound volume, dipping and jumping to the next book. The raised gold titles sparkled against the antique aged bindings. I looked for the research volume outlining cornerstone developmental behaviors for middle school aged children. Leather volumes smelling slightly musty filled the tall shelves as I rounded a corner, unexpectedly finding a new friend.
“Hey.” Warren Boone leaned against the bookshelf, arms crossed over his chest and that damn watch sitting pretty cool against his tan wrist. My heart skipped and I stuttered. He was wearing a navy puffy vest over a flannel button-up shirt he’d rolled up the sleeves on to show off his muscled forearms. Arms that haunted my nights when I thought of how he’d rescued me, caught me, and held me in the short time I’d known him. Dark jeans and navy Converse sneakers covered the bottom half and I was a little embarrassed looking down at my hastily put together outfit. My cheeks flushed when I remembered that he’d likely seen me in all my mismatched glory the night he’d pulled me from my car.