Rowdy. Jay Crownover

she’s a fox and radiates hot sex and good times like it’s effortless. I was just sharing my appreciation of a pretty girl. It’s not my issue that you can’t seem to see her looking at you like you’re her favorite drink and we’re in a drought.”

      Oh, I could see it all right. I just didn’t have the first clue as to what to do with it. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. After that kiss I had a pretty fucking clear idea where everything I was feeling toward Salem was headed, right into my bed, but I wasn’t sure I could handle that. Just her saying Poppy’s name had been enough to tame the raging hard-on kissing her had awoken and had done more to get my head out of my pants than any shock of cold water ever could.

      Could I ever really have loved Poppy the way I thought I had if just the sight of Salem, the idea of putting my mouth on her, did more to wind me up than Poppy ever had? I don’t think there was really any way I would’ve been able to kiss Salem if all those feelings I had for Poppy in the past were really as important as I had always made them out to be.

      I mumbled something that made no sense and picked up my beer.

      “It’s not just some random chick that I’m trying to navigate around. I know this girl and she knows me.”

      Zeb chomped on a piece of ice from his drink and I thought he looked like he could be out in the woods somewhere living off the land. He was the epitome of what a Coloradoan should look like. I thought we should maybe put him on the state flag to represent us all proudly. Yep, I was drunk.

      “That’s your problem, Rowdy. You never want a chick to know you. You just want to hit it and quit it so you don’t have to put any effort into it.”

      I growled a little and motioned for another shot. “I put effort into it once. More effort than any young man should, and it blew up in my face. I learned that lesson the hard way. No more effort . . . just a good time for me and a great time for her. Everybody wins.”

      Zeb made a noise and nodded when Asa asked him if he wanted another round.

      “One girl burned you a long time ago, so that means all girls are made of the same flammable material? Gotta say, I always thought you were smarter than that.”

      I was getting annoyed. We were supposed to be brothers-in-arms—bros before hos—and all that noise. I didn’t ask him to hang out so he could shove logic and brutal clarity at me.

      “You don’t understand.”

      He rolled his eyes at me.

      “No? I was engaged when I got arrested. I loved the holy shit out of that girl. She told me she would wait, that I was her one true love and even bars and time wouldn’t be able to keep us apart. It took a little less than two months for her to stop visiting, a little over six and she was engaged to a ski pro. She has two kids now and drives a minivan. You think that means all women are like that? That there isn’t one out there that would really wait if she loved me?”

      We just stared at each other until he shook his head.

      “I don’t. I think there are good women out there that will stand by their man no matter what. I think there is a woman out there that won’t give a shit I did time and she will love me anyway and be willing to see what I have to offer now. Sure, until I find her I have no qualms about doing easy—easy has its place and can be a good time. But when it gets hard, when the girl is worth it, I’m not scared to do the work.” He laughed. “I like doing the work, especially when it’s hands-on.”

      The liquorish taste of the Jäger danced on my tongue as I tossed the shot back. I needed to stop. Things were starting to get wavy and I felt like if I let go of the grip I had on the edge of the bar I was going to slide off the bar stool and land on my face.

      “There is only one first girl to hold your heart. That first sets the tone for everything and everyone that comes after.” I didn’t sound so sure about that anymore and it wasn’t just because of the booze.

      Asa paused and leaned across from me on the other side of the bar and reached out across the expanse to flick me between my eyes. I swore at him and jerked my head back.

      “You’re a dumb shit. There’s a million first girls for a million different first things. There’s the first girl you slow-dance with, and the first girl you go to bed with. There’s the first girl to give you a kiss, and then the first one you take home to your mama.” His amber eyes lit up with humor. “There’s the first girl you fight with and the first girl you fight for. There’s also the first girl you have to let go of. There’s the first girl you love, obviously, and the first girl to break your heart. There’s always a first girl, Rowdy, but there is also the girl that is going to come after her until you get to the last girl. The last girl is the one that really matters.”

      I always told myself that Poppy had been my one and only but I wasn’t going to lie—she wasn’t my first girl for most of what Asa said. Sure she had most definitely been the first girl to break my heart and she had done so spectacularly. The first girl I had sex with was Joanne Morse when I was fifteen. The first girl I had slow-danced with had been Megan Drake during homecoming the year I scored three touchdowns in one quarter. She was also the girl that had gone down on me for the first time. Once I figured out I could pine for Poppy but still get laid as long as I smiled at a girl and told her she was pretty, I had pretty much run through the entire available and age-appropriate female population of Loveless by the time I graduated high school. The first girl to take home to mama was never going to happen since my mama was in the ground and the girl that had given me my first kiss was the reason I was acting like a drunken idiot tonight. He was right: there had always been another girl after the first and I had never had a last girl yet.

      “You guys suck. I just wanted to get drunk and get laid.” They both chuckled at me and I let my glassy eyes land on Dixie as she sauntered up to my side and put a hand on my shoulder.

      “I am totally willing to help you out with the last part, Rowdy.”

      I liked Dixie. I liked her as a person and liked everything she was working with that made her a pretty girl. She never asked for more than I wanted to give and we always had a good time when we got naked together. She was a sweetheart, but right now, looking at her and the sexy anticipation in her eyes, I knew there wasn’t any way I was going to be able to go through with taking her home. My mind was on someone else and I didn’t want Dixie to be reduced to a drunken hookup because I was acting like the world’s biggest coward by avoiding the woman I really wanted to be with.

      I covered her tiny hand with my own and pushed away from the bar with a lurch. “Not tonight, sugar. These two sorta ruined my mojo.”

      There was no way I could drive, so that meant my SUV was staying in the parking lot and I was taking a cab to my apartment.

      “Sorry.”

      She just shook her head at me and smiled. “I always knew someday someone was going to catch your eye and you were never going to look at any other girl again. It’s the way all of you guys seem to be. As much as it sucks, I have to say it also gives me hope that a guy will look at me that way one day.”

      She was turning my rejection into an act of chivalry. Man, she really was a doll.

      Asa called me a cab. Zeb helped pour me into the backseat and the poor driver watched me in the rearview mirror all the way to my complex like he was afraid I was going to hurl over the backseat. I gave him a fat tip to make up for causing him to worry and stumbled into my lonely apartment.

      I was really drunk. My head was spinning from booze and memories, so I did what I always did when I was that keyed up. I got out a sketch pad and some charcoal and I drew. I was pretty sure none of it would look like anything legible in the morning when I sobered up, but for the moment it made me settle, focus, and some of the things that were chasing me finally quieted down enough that I could shut my eyes and slump over in a blacked-out heap.

      I jerked awake with a start the next day and sent the sketch pad falling to the floor as I scrambled to find my phone from wherever it had landed last night in my train wreck. It was on