To Court a Cowgirl (25 page)

All history.

“You gonna ask your neighbor out?” Dennis asked with disarming openness. Both he and Brook regularly pushed Levi to date women. Dennis suggested women like the girls who worked the registers at the hardware store or the ski shop. While Brook had a never-ending supply of friends who would be perfect for him.

Sometimes he said yes to Brook's friends, and he'd even gone on more than one date with a couple; but there had never been any spark that compared to what he'd felt for Kimmie. Anything less would be doing both of them a disservice.

“I don't know her name.” The least of the things he didn't know about her, though he was very familiar with the shape of her calves.

He had to figure out how to stop looking at her without closing his damn blinds.

“Don't see why that should stop you.”

“I'm not interested in being married again.” One time had been hard enough, even without the spectacularly tragic ending.

Dennis signaled for his third beer. Levi was still on his first. A part of him wished his friend would finish the shot sitting on the table so he would fall over, and they could both go home already, but his friend seemed determined to get drunk nice and slow. Which usually meant mean. He'd have to warn Brook.

“Hey, man, I'm not suggesting marriage,” he said, draining the last of the bottle while Mary brought a new one.

No, Dennis never suggested marriage. But that was always Levi's first thought after seeing a woman who attracted him.

Or second, after the
she's got nice legs
thought.

He just wasn't interested in a stand, one-night or otherwise. Once attached, he stuck.

“Maybe
you
should ask her,” he suggested to his brother-in-law, as useless a suggestion to Dennis as Dennis's had been to him. “Brook wouldn't be at all mad.”

Dennis's shoulders started to shake with a laugh, which turned into a hacking cough. It sounded worse tonight. They each waited until it passed, pretending it wasn't happening. The one time Levi had offered Dennis sympathy and a pat on the shoulder, he'd been angrily shrugged off, which only exacerbated the hacking fit. The next time they'd gone out for beers, both had been short and angry with each other.

Levi hadn't offered anything resembling sympathy for Dennis's coughing since.

Like Kimmie's suicide, they both found it easier not to acknowledge its existence. Kimmie died and Dennis had a chronic cough. Every Friday night, Dennis came out to the bar to drink and forget, climbing out of bed every Saturday afternoon back in the guise of a devoted husband and father. Levi had learned long ago how to hold on to your drink despite shit things happening in the world around you, rather than letting your drink hold on to you.

He tipped his bottle, watching the liquid slosh around while Dennis recovered himself. Levi was half-done with his beer. It would be his one and only tonight. His heavy drinking days were over, and the days he was willing to watch Dennis pickle himself were numbered. Time to go home.

“Brook doesn't want to be with me when I'm coughing like this. And you think another woman would?” Dennis asked after he'd recovered from coughing and had been able to take another drink of his beer. He shrugged, and his smile was bitter. “Maybe you're right—Brook might not mind after all.”

Levi shouldn't have brought the subject up. Coal dust from the mine accident lingered in every decision they made, obscuring any view at happiness. That was what this conversation was really about. Between Levi's dead wife and Dennis's dead lungs, could either of them be happy again? As much as Brook and Dennis suggested Levi ask women out and encouraged him to go on dates, he wondered what they would do if he found himself happily settled.

And, hell, what would he do if he wasn't spending his Friday nights with Dennis? They were in this wreck together.

“I'm going home,” Levi said. No reason to finish his beer. He wasn't enjoying it any more than he was enjoying the conversation. “Finish your drink and I'll give you a ride.”

Dennis shook his head. “It's Friday. There's more drinking to be had.”

“Not for me.” Could his friend hear his weariness?

“Hot date with the neighbor?”

Levi ignored the slice of resentment cutting through Dennis's question. “Finish and let's get going.”

Dennis's face hardened into belligerence. “I'm staying.” The alcohol had started to hit, and his voice sounded like an angry three-year-old's.

Levi slid out of the booth. “Fine. If you need a ride back here in the morning to pick up your car, let me know.”

“Maybe I'll get lucky and take a girl home. Test your theory about Brook minding.” Bitterness leaked from Dennis's mouth, lingering even after he wiped his chin with the back of his hand.

“Great.” Levi tossed enough cash on the table to cover his beer and at least one of Dennis's.

On his way out, he stopped by the bar and told Brian and Mary that Dennis was staying. He also told them that Dennis's car wouldn't be running, and they should be prepared to call a cab or find someone to give him a ride. Dennis would be pissed, but there was no way Levi was leaving him able to drive home in a drunken, angry fit.

Maybe his friend would get lucky, and Brook wouldn't be too angry that they had to get his car from the bar parking lot on Saturday. Maybe she would even remember that when he wasn't busy playing an angry drunk, Dennis was a good guy.

Maybe Levi would get lucky, and his neighbor would still be up and sitting on her porch, reading.

Copyright © 2016 by Jennifer Lohmann

ISBN-13: 9781488006777

To Court a Cowgirl

Copyright © 2016 by Jeannie Steinman

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