Practice Makes Perfect: A Novel

Hank’s is lit on Friday nights. The whole town comes out to line dance and drink and socialize. If you’re not at Hank’s on a Friday night, you’re a certified loser. It’s why even I manage to turn up. (And I enjoy being here, so there’s that.)

I’ve done this enough times to know how to manage it, though. Hank’s is one of my comfort spots. Me and my sisters show up a little earlier than most—somewhere around seven, drink a few beers and catch up on our weeks even though we see each other literally every day and know nearly all of each other’s business at all times. But…I guess I have things they don’t know about right now. Why does that send such a thrill through me?

It suddenly makes me wonder if they have things I don’t know about their lives too.

I glance around the table, assessing my sisters with fresh eyes. Sherlock eyes. What are they hiding? On the outside Emily looks normal. Her blonde hair is parted down the middle, tucked neatly behind her ears, curls she created with her wand this morning are brushed out into soft luscious waves. But her strong features, high cheekbones, and knowing eyes remind you that she could kick your butt in a second. Emily is our fierce protector. Although my grandma raised us, at the end of the day, she still felt like a grandma more than a mother figure. But Emily always feels more like a mom than a sister to me. I’ve never known anyone to keep it all together like she does. And in case anyone needs any more convincing that she’s a fierce queen, Emily has taught second grade for nine years with twenty or more children in class each time. Superhero status.

So what is she hiding? I’ve often wondered why she hasn’t married. It’s not for a lack of men trying, but as far as I know, she’s only ever loved one person. Her high school sweetheart. None of us really know what happened there. It was all very hush-hush. One day he was the love of her life, and the next, he was packing up his truck and leaving Rome for good. I remember Emily spending an entire twenty-four hours crying in her room, and then she wiped her tears and never mentioned him again. Didn’t let us mention him either.

And then there’s Madison. Just look at her. A sprite if I’ve ever seen one. A spunky little brunette with a bouncy shoulder-length haircut, wild brown eyes that are always seeking trouble, and a small adorable nose that is all too boopable. Maddie looks like a sugar cookie, yet she’s wild to her core.

But she’s hiding something, I’m convinced. She looks at me and smiles, I smile back. I’m onto you, lady. So what is it? Hates her job? No, wait, that’s not a secret. Madison has always been quick to follow in Emily’s footsteps, even when the rest of us can see it’s clearly wrong for her. Madison also teaches second grade at the same school as Emily, but she complains about her job 90 percent of the time—usually while anger-cooking us something fantastic in the kitchen.

So…Madison, what’s your secret?

“Annie, are you okay?” Emily asks. “Your smile is super creepy.”

I wipe my face blank. “I was thinking about a…movie I just watched.”

“Was it a movie about a serial killer? Because those are the vibes you’re putting out.”

I scoff. “It was clearly not a serial killer’s smile. You guys just don’t know your smiles.”

Amelia suddenly pops over my shoulder and pulls out a chair at the table, slightly out of breath. “Hiya! I’m back from L.A.! Who has a serial killer’s smile?”

“Anna-banana.”

Amelia grins and settles into the chair. “It’s always the quiet ones you have to watch out for.”

With Amelia’s presence comes a spike in my blood pressure, because if Amelia is back in town, that means Will is back too. I’m more confused about that man than ever. He and I have been texting nonstop since he left town a week ago. And the weird part is—I miss him. A lot.

I’m not supposed to miss him. He’s my no-strings-attached practice person. It’s not supposed to be difficult to keep my face forward rather than craning my neck to see if he’s anywhere in this bar.

And then Noah steps up, tosses his keys on the table, bends down to kiss the side of Amelia’s neck in a lingering not-safe-for-work way, and then tells her he’s going to grab them drinks from the bar. Her eyes give him the most I’m-desperately-in-love-with-you look as he walks away, and all of us sisters notice, sharing a knowing smirk. I’ll bet all my money that they leave this bar early tonight.

Amelia notices us giggling like schoolgirls at her expense, and her face turns beet-red. “Stop! All of you. Stop it right now!”

We’re all laughing obnoxiously now as Madison makes over-the-top making-out gestures. Amelia throws her hands over her eyes. “Y’all are so mean. You’re not supposed to point out stuff like that.”

“Hard to miss it when Noah is chomping on your neck like that,” I say, taking a sip of my beer.

Amelia peeks over her hands to flash me a playfully offended face. “You too? My sweet Annie is going to stab me in the back like that?”

I reach over and fix Amelia’s sweater, which is a little askew. “Sorry. Your bodyguard is being a bad influence on me.”

Maddie grins and raises her beer in a toast. “And speak of the devil.” She nods over my shoulder.

My stomach leaps into my throat and tap-dances. I don’t need to turn to realize he’s here. I can feel him. The temperature changes, the air grows thick. (Which shouldn’t be happening because he doesn’t mean anything to me.) Remember, Annie, No Strings Attached! “Oooh, he can sit with us now that he’s off the clock, and he’s dating Annie, right?” Maddie says with way too big a gleam in her eye while air quoting the word dating. Maddie’s hand shoots up in the air, waving frantically. “Will! Your woman is over here!”

“Hush, Maddie! You’re making the whole bar look.”

She flashes a self-satisfied expression that lets me know that was her aim in the first place.

I can’t take it anymore. I peek over my shoulder—just one quick, tiny little glance to the side. But my eyes instantly connect with his, and I shoot my gaze forward again, pulse rushing in my ears. That tiny glance was enough to take in every inch of Will, and it’s making everything worse.

Tonight he’s wearing black jeans, white sneakers, and a denim button-down shirt rolled up over his forearms. His hair is sort of purposefully messy, and he’s wearing a black watch on his tattooed wrist. He looks too good to be real. And now that I know what his skin looks like and feels like under that shirt—the way the lines of his tattoos are subtly raised to add the most delicious texture—my face heats.

“Annie’s been saving your seat!” Madison says unhelpfully, making me sound desperate even though I had no idea he’d be here tonight. I widen my eyes to signal her to cool it, but she just grins her mischievous smile back at me.

Amelia points over my shoulder at Will. “Okay! Rules first. You can hang out with us, but you have to interact like a friend and not a bodyguard. No subtly protecting me!”

And then Will’s butterfly knuckles enter my vision, and my skin curls up with tension. I keep my eyes on the table—hand wrapped around my drink. “Deal. If a fight breaks out, I’ll use you as my shield.”

Will takes the seat beside me, and his shoulders are too broad for this small space. He’s almost touching me. Out of the corner of my eye I see him look at me. I cut my gaze to him for a fraction of a second, and his mouth suggests a smile—a hidden one. Secrets.

“Annabell,” he whispers making the hairs rise on the back of my neck.

“Wilfred.”

We grin quietly at each other until Maddie’s voice breaks through our moment. “Hey, did you see the latest articles floating around about you from this week?”

“No. I try to stay off social media as much as possible,” Amelia says, and then her expression turns weary. “But what are they saying now?”

Maddie chuckles. “Not you, pop star. Him.” She nods toward Will. “There’s a fresh batch of photos of him guarding you at all of your events from the past few days, and they are calling him…” her smile grows, “A stern brunch daddy.”

“A what?” Will asks, sounding horrified. “Wait—do I want to know? It sounds disturbing.”

“What’s disturbing?” Noah asks, finally making his way back to the table, and this time, he has James in tow.

Amelia looks up at Noah as he sets down a beer in front of her. “Will is a stern brunch daddy.”

Noah looks like he just stepped in cow manure. “I can’t even begin to know what that is.”

James, however, takes a chair from the table beside us and whips it around to straddle it, forearms resting on the back. He steals one of Maddie’s fries, earning her glare. “A stern brunch daddy is a term romance readers use to describe a character type. It’s when a dude who looks scary is actually all soft and sweet to the person he loves.”

Noah looks at him in dismay. Actually, we all do.

Madison plucks the fry out of James’s fingers. “Stop acting like you’re a super progressive man who knows about romance. You only know that because I showed you the article ten minutes ago at the bar.”

James shrugs. “But I get points for actually listening.” He pauses and looks up at my scowling brother. “Actually…now that I think of it, Noah, you’re kind of a stern brunch—”

“If you say the word daddy one more time, you’re going to be scraping your teeth off the floor.”

James pretends to shiver with delight. “I love it when you go all alpha.”

I wish I could say I’m enjoying this conversation, but the truth is, I’m hardly listening. The majority of my consciousness is laser focused on the place Will’s knee is resting against mine. A soft, yet almost intentional, pressure that I try not to overthink. But the thing about quiet people is, we’re only quiet because our brains are so busy overthinking everything.

Does he know his leg is touching mine? Does he want his leg to be touching mine? Tactile, Annie. He’s just tactile, remember? The man needs to be touching something at all times. He’s probably touching Emily’s leg on the other side. I glance under the table to sneak a peek, but nope. Their legs could fit an entire watermelon between them. And then my gaze shifts to his hand resting on his thigh. I have the strongest urge to reach over and run my finger over the wings of the intricate butterfly. To take that hand and put it back on my hip and tell him to squeeze because it’s the memory of that touch that will likely haunt me until I’m in my grave.

And then his hand flexes, and I realize I’ve been caught staring. I suck in a breath and shoot my gaze up and forward. But in the corner of my eye, I can see Will looking at me. He turns forward abruptly when Amelia addresses him. “I bet you’re wishing you’d never sat down right about now.”

Will laughs and it’s warm and inviting. “Nah—I kinda like the absurdness. It makes me miss my brother.”

“You have a brother?” she asks. “How did I not know that?”

“I don’t get to see him a lot. You know…working and all that.”

The look on Amelia’s face says she feels personally responsible for his lack of time with his brother, but I know better. I heard the hesitation in his voice and the blasé way he delivered that sentence—there’s more there that Will doesn’t want unearthed. I have the deepest urge to take a shovel and get to digging.

Will interprets her expression too. “Amelia, don’t worry. You’re not overworking me.”

Her face skews up. “I feel like I am. You need a break! Take one now. Starting today, no more working until after the—”

“Like hell I will. I like working. It’s what makes me happy. Now, enough about me. Please.” This man really hates talking about himself. He has deflected any sort of personal revelations from the day we met. And yet I’ve still managed to understand him more than he’d like me to. I know that he kicks all the covers off when he sleeps because his body heats up to the temperature of the sun. I know that he adds extra salt to his fries—and that he hates soda. I know that he’s an early bird and wakes up with the sun. And I also know that something in his past hurt him because he used to hide in a magnolia tree but absolutely won’t discuss it. I think he has scars he keeps safely hidden behind his charm.

Suddenly I realize my family is all staring at me like I have a horn sprouting from between my eyes. “What?” I ask, alarm running through my voice.

“He just said a cuss word. Why doesn’t he get a tally in the sacred notebook?” Emily asks.

“Oh. Well, because…” I turn my eyes to Will and contemplate it. The answer springs to my mind immediately, but I know I can’t say it out loud. Because I like it when he does. So instead, I smile. Not even meaning to, really. And Will smiles, too, like he can read my thoughts. Like he’s remembering our secret stolen moments together in the flower shop, in my truck, in my room—and that just maybe he knows me in different ways than my siblings do. “He gets one freebie.”

That seems to appease everyone enough for their attention to turn away from me.

“Speaking of freebies!” Amelia starts. “Guess what I brought y’all back from L.A.”

I tune out as Will leans in close to my ear. “Is it okay that I’m here? I figured it would be because everyone in the town thinks we’re dating now. But maybe I assumed wrong, and you want to keep our hangouts on the down-low?”

Hmm, is it okay that he’s here? That his warm breath is caressing the shell of my ear and making my head spin? That just the nearness of him has the blood in my veins pumping with fire? No. It’s not okay. And I think it’s only fair that he move far, far away because whether he means to or not, he’s slowly wrecking my plans.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I say with a quiet grin. “And my family knows we’re not really together now. They guessed it the other day, so there’s no pressure to act like it at the table.”

“Hmm,” he says making a deep noise in his throat. “That’s too bad.”

And something happens to me that I’ve never experienced before. The world around me falls away, and for once, I’m not worried what anyone is thinking of me. All I know is Will’s eyes are fixed on mine, and his mouth is curving softly and his hand is dropping to my leg where it splays out like it’s been in that same spot a hundred times before. And before I know it, I’m tipping forward. He meets me in the middle and our lips brush.

It’s not enough, though, and instinctively my hand raises to clutch the back of his neck, my body curving toward his as his hand contracts against my thigh. Our mouths move and press and it feels so right. So hot—his touch burns me from the inside out. I feel the subtle glide of his tongue across my mine and that’s when reality grabs me by the scruff of my neck. Oh my gosh, we’re making out at the table in front of my family. Me! Annie Walker is making out in a public setting. I rip my mouth away from Will’s and pat my lips with the back of my hand.

Everyone—and I do mean everyone in this bar—is wide-eyed, staring. They look like cartoons with jaws unhinged.

Emily speaks first as a laugh courses through her voice. “Well, I think Hot Bank Teller is wishing he’d asked you out right about now.”

“What?”

My eyes fly over Will’s shoulder, and sure enough, John is here, watching—looking just as shocked as everyone else. Of course my sisters don’t know that I actually went on that date with John and that it was a disaster, so they move on from Emily’s statement pretty quick. But because I did go out with him and he damaged my self-esteem by leaving mid date, a whole new layer gets added to that public make-out session with Will.

I didn’t do that to get John’s attention or prove anything to him—but knowing that he’s having to eat his words, that maybe I’m not as boring or awkward as he suspected, has a surge of joy rocketing through me. But would I have kissed him in public? Would I have felt safe enough with him to ever let him touch me the way I let Will? I don’t think so.

Will notices my triumphant expression and turns his face to see where my gaze is landing. And I can feel the moment all the dots connect for him. His body stiffens slightly, and when he looks back to me—his face is a little too void of emotion. “That was the guy, right?”

I don’t need for him to expound. “Yes.”

He nods a few times. “Nice. I think you successfully made him jealous,” he says in a low voice so the rest of the table can’t hear.

“No, Will, that’s—”

“It’s exactly what I would have done. Great job. All this practicing is paying off.” He gives me a smile that feels so fake I want to wipe it off his face. I hate that smile. That’s not his smile. That’s a shielded self-preservation smile. And it only serves to remind me that Will doesn’t want me to know him. He promised me from the beginning that this would never be anything more than practice, and he’s reestablishing those boundaries now.

I hate practice.