All I Have. Nicole Helm

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      Cara shook her head in disgust as she hopped out of the truck and slammed the door. Mia looked at her expression in the mirror. Stupid or not, a little positive self-talk always helped calm her nerves and bolster her confidence.

      “I can do this,” she said to her reflection. “I am a confident, capable adult. Talking to a guy will not kill me. In fact, it’ll probably be fun.” It was time. Past time to fight anxiety and really go after this. Did she want to be alone forever without even kissing a guy? No. So she needed to make this work.

      With one final “I can do this,” Mia hopped out of the truck and met Cara at the door to the bar. “Okay, I’m ready.”

      “Because, gosh, darn it, people like you.”

      “Shut up and move.”

      Cara led her into the crowded bar. A few people greeted Cara and she waved. Even though Mia recognized a lot of the faces, no one called out to her. Her social circle was slim. Oh, sure, she talked to a few of the ladies at the market, had something passing as a friendship with some of the women there her age, but mostly her tried-and-true friends and confidants had the last name Pruitt. And did not hang out at Juniors.

      Cara found a little table in a back corner. “You sit. I’ll go order us some drinks.”

      “Just get me a soda.”

      Cara shook her head. “Yeah, right. An alcoholic beverage is exactly what you need.”

      Mia sat and looked around the room while Cara went up to the bar to order their drinks. People talked and chatted and yelled and laughed. In the corner, she felt somewhat separate from it all. Nobody looked at her. It was as if she wasn’t even there.

      Depressing thought. Funny how she’d spent so many years wishing to be invisible but always somehow ended up the butt of the joke, then finally getting the invisibility thing down and now she was wishing for attention.

      Cara sauntered back over, two guys following her. Mia recognized one as C. J. Pinkerton, who’d been in her class. The other guy looked familiar, but she didn’t remember his name. He unabashedly stared at Cara’s ass as he walked behind her.

      C.J., though, smiled and took a seat next to her. Mia froze a little. He was smiling at her. “Hey, I’m C.J.”

      Mia smiled, biting her tongue in time so she didn’t say something stupid like, Duh, we went to high school together. “Mia.”

      He squinted, leaning in closer. “No shit. Mia Pruitt.” He didn’t say the rest of it, but she knew what he was thinking. Queen of the Geeks. “You look a lot different than you did in high school, huh?” Then he smiled, pretty and white, a little crooked. He was definitely cute, if a little skinny.

      “I guess I do.” Mia took a sip of the drink Cara had put in front of her. She gave herself a mental high five. She sounded like a normal human being.

      C.J. laughed. She’d made a guy laugh. Holy moly. For the next twenty minutes she managed to hold an entire conversation with a kind-of-cute guy without once hyperventilating. She might have blushed a few times, but maybe he didn’t notice in the dim light of the bar.

      She talked about the farm. He talked about working at the Ford plant in Millertown. It was going well. Hell, it was going perfectly. He even scooted his chair closer to hers.

      “Want to dance?”

      Hopefully the involuntary squeak she made was inaudible over the hum of the crowd and music. Who knew a little lipstick and some cleavage could make such a difference? Mia smiled, hoped her laugh didn’t sound like some kind of nervous hyena. What if—? Nope. No what-ifs. “Give me a sec to run to the bathroom?”

      C.J. leaned back in his seat and smiled. “Sure.”

      Mia stood, walked calmly to the bathroom. Where she would normally go into the stall and hyperventilate, she walked over to a sink instead. She washed her hands slowly, deliberately. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. She could totally do this. If she ever hoped of getting even remotely close to having sex, she had to do this.

      Her stomach pitched, but she wasn’t going to let that thought derail her. This wasn’t about sex. This was about a dance. One dance. A step. Just like all the other steps she’d made to get here.

      She looked at herself in the mirror. She looked put together and cute, and no one had to know all the anxiety in her mind if she didn’t show it to them.

      With a determined nod, Mia pushed out of the bathroom. Shaking her hair back, she put a little bounce in her step and walked back to the table. She faltered for a second when she realized C.J. was no longer at their table. Two new men had joined Cara.

      Never should have given him a chance to realize what a colossal mistake he’d made by asking her to dance or the time to remember all her embarrassing moments. Well, that was fine. Mia swallowed down the hard dip of disappointment. Two new guys were sitting with Cara. From the back, they were pretty cute.

      If step one had been talking to a guy without acting like a goof, then doing it again didn’t need to be a deal or a problem.

      Mia stopped in her tracks when the first man’s profile came into view. It wasn’t some cute guy in her seat. It was Dell.

      He lounged in the chair as if he owned it, the lip of a Budweiser bottle perched at his mouth. He must have seen her out of the corner of his eye because he turned and grinned.

      “Well, well, well, this is a surprise,” he drawled, setting the bottle back down on the table. He made no effort to move, instead hooked his arm over the back of the chair. “Come here often?” he asked with a wink.

      Mia clenched her hands into fists. She wasn’t sure whom she wanted to kill more. Cara, C.J. or Dell.

      * * *

      THEEXPRESSIONON Mia’s face was enough to keep Dell from being uncomfortable with her appearance. It was the “if I could shoot lasers you’d be dead” look, and it amused him to no end.

      Although, now that he noticed, he was about eye level with her breasts while she stood in front of him, and that took care of amusement. Dell cleared his throat, took another swig of beer. “Gonna join us?”

      She mumbled something incomprehensible. With Kevin sidled up to Cara, Mia had no choice but to take the chair next to Dell.

      She wasn’t at all happy about that, and she made no bones about showing it.

      “Buy you a drink?”

      “I have a drink.”

      Dell raised an eyebrow at the fruity mixed drink and its floating cherry. “Want me to buy you a real drink?”

      She smirked. “No.” As if to prove a point, she took a dainty sip. She looked all around the bar, pretty much everywhere but at him.

      Dell took another sip from his bottle, his eyes never leaving her. “C.J. said to let you know he was sorry, but he had to go.” Not that Dell had realized he’d been talking about Mia. Not that C.J. had said it to him. His “let her know I had to go” had been said to Cara.

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