Page 16 of Lady Sings the Blues

5.

Elise

“Elise fuckin’ Manning! Where the hell you been girl?”

At the sound of her shrill voice the entire bar turns to look at the figure shadowed against the backdrop of streetlamps pouring into the room as she stands, filling the doorway.

And when I’ve only managed to stand halfway from my stool, I get tackled by that shadowed figure who moves surprisingly fast for such a little thing.

We both fall to the sticky floor. As she squeezes the breath from me, men’s laughter fills the space around us.

“Okay baby,” Tommy Doyle says through his laugh. “Don’t kill her before the reunion even starts.” Then she’s plucked off me as seconds later I’m peeled off the linoleum and pressed into Mark’s arms.

He’s all crooked smile. Tommy smiles. Then I look to Maryanne. She’s even prettier now then she was in high school, if that’s possible, because Maryanne Buckley was a freaking knockout in high school. Small, thin, but curved in all the right places. Porcelain skin still flawless. Chocolate brown hair with natural highlights swept over her shoulder in a long, awesome braid, a braid like Elsa from Frozen, if Elsa had chocolate brown hair.

Marriage looks good on her. Of course Tommy Doyle being her husband, it doesn’t surprise me. He was always, always so nice to us when we were being pains in the asses of the seniors while Maryanne and I were still juniors. And he was hardly hard to look at then, or now. Now even more so with that fit ‘I’m a badass cop’ physique he’s got going on.

Still despite how good she looks, Maryanne is Maryanne. Which means she goes from hollering redneck to crying just that fast. Since I have this rule where no one cries alone in my company, as her pretty brown eyes tear up and spill, so do mine.

“Oh shit,” I whisper. “My mascara. I’m gonna look like a raccoon.”

Mark presses a kiss to my jaw. He’s a touchy-feely guy. And, I don’t know, maybe it’s because I deprived myself from human contact for so long, but I don’t mind it. Being here, surrounded by Mark and my old friends, reminds me of how it felt so many years ago, when I first arrived in Thornbriar. Reminds me of what made me want to stay.

Maryanne certainly doesn’t mind Mark’s PDA, smiling, but turns up the pressure on her waterworks. “Holy shit!” she cries. “You two really are together…after all this time.”

Tommy, still holding Maryanne, kisses her cheek and says something in her ear for just the two of them to know. She nods then speaks to Mark. “We need drinks.”

“Toby,” Mark calls out to the bartender working tonight, every bit as bearded and tattooed as Mark, but with big, black gauges in his ears. They look like small drain stoppers, not the open ones. His hair is so brown it’s almost black and his eyes, they’re equally as dark. Must be a job requirement to be a bartender, to be so ridiculously handsome.

Toby walks over to us. “What can I get you pretty ladies tonight?” Mark throws a slightly playful, mostly menacing look to his bartender. “Anything they want. They both have rides home so let ‘em have fun.”

“You got it, Bossman.”

“My car was trashed this morning by vandals who want me out of town,” I tell him for whatever reason. “What do you suggest to take away that sting?”

“Whiskey Sour it is.” He grabs a bottle of Maker’s Mark from behind him.

“Make it two,” Maryanne tells him.

Maryanne and I pull up stools at the bar to sit. I’m rewarded by a kiss from the “bossman” while she’s rewarded by a scorcher from Tommy before the men head to the opposite side of the bar. The last I see of him before Maryanne snags my attention is the two of them racking up at the pool table.

Toby knows his way around a Whiskey Sour, for sure. I’m just happy to be enjoying a drink with an actual friend but apparently she’s done waiting on me to pony up the information.

“I’m serious,” she says looking me directly in the eyes so I can see how serious she is. “What the hell happened to you?”

“I left.” And I say it with a shrug.

“You left? That’s all you’ve got for me? We were best friends. You called layin’ all that shit in my lap. Then Logan. And you just disappear from my life without a trace. I lost my whole world. You, Logan, and Beau in one fell swoop.”

“I’m sorry.” I really am. We were a Manning, Hollister clusterfuck, but over the past five years I neglected to take into account how many other people we brought down along with us.

“You’re sorry?” Her tone hardens as she takes a huge swig of whiskey sour. “I barely survived. If it hadn’t been for Tommy, don’t think I would have.”

“The shit with Logan—the whole town turning on me. Then Beau turned his back on me. I was so lost. My whole world fell apart too, but I didn’t have Tommy to fall back on.” I want to cry but am so angry the tears, they won’t fall.

“Did you give it up?” she asks.

Now I can’t keep my voice under control.

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