Page 16 of On the Way to You

“I could wait,” I lied, my stomach growling in protest as my feet finally found the ability to move again. I tucked my dirty clothes into the side pocket of my duffle bag, slipping a new hair tie over my wrist as I turned back to face Emery.

“Cool. Let’s hit a few bars before dinner, then.”

“Okay.”

He eyed me. “Don’t look so scared.”

“I’m not,” I lied again. His journal peeked out from where he’d stuffed it back into his bag, and I ripped my eyes from it and back to him.

Emery stood. “First thing’s first — we need costumes.”

“Costumes?”

He crossed the room to me, stopping with less than five inches between us, his own body towering over mine as a barely there smile found his lips. “Well, it is Halloween, isn’t it?”

My twenty-first birthday wasn’t for another three months, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise when I said I didn’t drink. But it was. Every single time. Because even if it wasn’tlegalfor me to have a beer yet, it was stillnormalfor me to want one. Except I didn’t. I never had.

I told Emery this as he picked random headbands off a street cart on Bourbon, placing one after the other on my head and tilting his head to the side as he watched me, trying to decide what I should be for the night. He had a pirate patch over his eye and a bandana tied over his hair, along with a fake gold earring clipped on his left ear. He completed the look with a pirate sword hooked into a brown leather belt at his waist.

For me, the choice was between a cat and a devil.

Neither made sense, since I was allergic to cats and my list of sins was five lines long, the worst of the offenses being that I stole a backpack from Mr. Harold’s store when I was thirteen.

Still, Emery decided the devil horns suited me, and after I was equipped with a red plastic pitchfork and a tail that hung awkwardly from my tailbone, we were swallowed by the chaos that was Bourbon Street.

I couldn’t open my eyes wide enough to take it all in. There were hundreds of people crowding the street, pouring in and out of bars, all of them dressed in costumes and their necks decorated with layers and layers of beads. It wasn’t even Mardi Gras, but I learned quickly that it didn’t need to be for everyone in that city to celebrate and show skin for plastic necklaces.

Emery grabbed my elbow and pulled me closer to him as we walked through a particularly crowded part of the street, his eyes on a bar in the distance.

“It’s like you’ve never been to a block party before,” he said, his mouth close to my ear.

I just laughed, my gaze not catching on one scene for too long before I was finding something else new. “I haven’t. This is… insane. There are so many people, and it’s so loud!”

“And smelly,” he added, and I laughed again. He wasn’t wrong.

Emery had to guide me the entire way until we got to the bar, especially since I was stopping at every street performer we passed along the way. There were saxophone players and flame throwers and magicians, voodoo doctors and bead vendors, and a group of religious protestors holding up signs that read, “Jesus Is Watching.” There was so much to look at that it was impossible to see it all, but I still tried, eyes wide as I took in everything for the first time.

“You sure you don’t want anything?” Emery yelled over the live music in the first bar we slid into. He had ordered agrenade, which made me fear for his life.

“I wouldn’t mind a water.”

His brows knitted together, a curious expression flashing on his face before he ordered me the water, taking the barstool next to the one I’d propped myself onto.

We turned in our seats, listening to the middle-aged man playing an acoustic guitar as he made jokes with a bachelorette party gathered around his tiny stage. It was curious that the bar was so packed and loud and yet felt so intimate and cozy at the same time. It was like we were all just a group of old friends, reunited for the evening.

I sipped on my water as the man on stage started his version of “Sweet Caroline.” My free hand was absentmindedly rubbing my left thigh, but I pretended I was just tapping along to the beat when Emery’s eyes would catch on my fingers. Sometimes it was phantom pains, other times it only felt like pins and needles, like my leg was asleep, and right now I had a combination of the two as my feet dangled from that barstool.

We weren’t there for long before two things happened at once, almost so in sync I thought they were planned.

One, an adorable brunette more than a little blessed in the bust area propped herself right between Emery’s legs, her chest directly in his line of sight as she leaned up to whisper something in his ear. I flushed red, tearing my eyes from the scene and back to the stage, but my view was blocked by a dark-haired, tattoo-covered man as he smirked down at me.

“Water, huh?” he said, appeasing my half-empty plastic cup. “I knew they went hard in NOLA, but no one warned me about girls like you.”

My cheeks heated double-time, and a nervous laugh shot from my lips as I took another sip.

He seemed to be about my age, maybe a little older, and he leaned one elbow on the bar to my right, effectively separating me from Emery and the busty brunette from the bachelorette party.

“I’m Vinny,” he said, reaching out a hand for mine. His entire forearm was covered in ink, and my eyes traced the lines of it as I slid my hand into his.