Page 127 of Touchdown, Tennessee
He came up beside me, putting his warm hand on the small of my back.
“You doing okay?” he asked softly. “With… all of this? The bar?”
I pulled in a slow breath, leaning into him.
“I swear you can read my mind sometimes, Peachel.”
He furrowed his brow a little, his attention like a spotlight only on me.
“Why? What’s up? You know if you’reeveruncomfortable in a bar, we will leave. Point blank. No questions asked.”
I swallowed.
You are so nice to me.
So much kinder than I’ve ever deserved.
“Actually, I was thinking the opposite,” I told him. “Everyone around me is sauced up, but nothing here feels like… like the past. Nothing feels bleak.”
“People at the Hard Spot Saloon just know how to havefun,” Andrew said.
“Right. And no one in here looks like they just want to hurt someone. Well, maybe in afunway.”
Andrew chuckled. “Exactly. Ever since I started coming here more, it just feels like a home. You know?”
“Yeah.”
I felt a strange sensation in my body.
My heart started pounding a little faster, and it was like I could feel walls going up inside me, all of a sudden, like some weird habit from the past.
Don’t say it to him,I told myself.
But another part of me thought something else entirely.
Or maybe you should fuckin’ say it.
Maybe it’s about time you take risks like those.
“Peachel,” I said, looking up at his brown eyes. “I feel at home with you, too.”
It was the sort of thing I never used to let myselffeel, let alone say to someone.
My heart raced.
I felt exposed, vulnerable, andrawall over again.
Goddamn it.
This.
This is what it feels like to trust someone.
“I feel at home with you too,” he said. It felt like feeling myself drop out of a plane, but then finding that I had a parachute, all along.
He felt it too.
He was right here with me.
