––––––––
It took about five minutes for Angie to get home from the Cave and about five more for her to work up the courage to strip off her clothes in the car. There was so much natural greenery around her house that being spotted by either Mrs. Eldwood to her left, or Mrs. Bridger to the right wasn’t much of a fear. And anyway, Mrs. Bridger at least enjoyed naturist hikes, so she wouldn’t think a single thing about it.
What took building up courage though was the fact that she was doing something she hadn’t ever even thought of doing. This was something straight out of a rom-com, something that people only did in college and then told horror stories about how they were expecting their boyfriend but forgot he was having a Super Bowl party with a dozen guests who all got an eyeful. That was stupid. Dawson wasn’t the party type, and anyway it wasn’t even seven in the morning.
One by one, she dispensed with these fears by reading and re-reading Dawson’s incredibly sweet, panty-melting text messages. She’d heard of people being heartbroken over callused text message breakups, but she’d not yet heard of someone falling in love because of one. Although she thought maybe she’d fallen for him the second they caught eyes over that pan of fried chicken.
“I’m being an idiot,” she announced to her car. “I am sitting in my driveway, without any clothes on, and I’m probably leaving a sweaty spot on my seat. Time to put up or shut up, girl. Get out there and do something wild and crazy.”
Her mirror didn’t respond, and neither did the steering wheel, but as it always did, her little out loud pep talk worked wonders for her bizarre brain. She decided to reapply some lip gloss, and put her socks and shoes back on because there were some goathead stickers in her lawn last time she mowed, and nothing in the world would be less sexy than a naked girl appearing in the doorway of a bedroom hopping around on one foot and picking at stickers. She wished her driveway connected to the walkway up to her door, but that was no time to think about pouring concrete.
The mental image of her doing that gave her a little shot of laughter, and that was all it took. One last look toward Mrs. Eldwood’s house confirmed that the octogenarian ferret-shifter wasn’t gardening. Giggling madly, Angie kicked open her door, ran halfway to her house, ran back to the car to shut the door she’d accidentally left open, and then back to the house.
She grabbed the door handle, and then remembered that her keys were in her jeans. She gave it a tug anyway, hoping it was open, and when the door swung to greet her, she was so surprised she just about fell over herself on the ground.
Aside from the sizzle of bacon on the stove, her bear was standing there, tending the skillet and singing along to some sexy, slightly-dirty sound of Thin Lizzy’s Dancing in the Moonlight that emanated from the radio on her windowsill.
He waved back over his shoulder, but didn’t turn. Jeans hung loosely about his muscled waist. Dawson’s sides were wrapped in thick bandages, but from the way he was moving back and forth from foot to foot, he was in vastly less pain than he by all rights should have been.
“You’re up early,” she said as she came up behind him, purred softly and buried her face in the muscles of his back. “And... oh my God your pants are undone. You are straight out of a Chippendale’s show.” Without a second’s pause, she kicked her shoes off, and used her toes to slip off her socks.
Angie slid her hands down Dawson’s stomach and into the tuft of hair that would have been hidden if his jeans were buttoned. “What are you trying to do to me?” she asked. “Make me kill you with desperation?” she bit him softly on the shoulder and dragged her teeth down his arm just a bit. The groan Dawson let out thrilled her to the core of her being.
“Oh, just figured you’d be hungry. Just about to put the pancakes on. But,” he paused, and an unseen smile spread across his lips. “You’re naked, aren’t you?” The heat of his back spread through her. “Holy shit, you are.”
She just hugged against him for long enough to fill her nose with his scent. “You are a man that I cannot believe has wandered into my life.”
Just as the raspy chorus of the song lilted into life, a smile danced across Dawson’s lips, like it was coming home to roost. He grabbed her hands, both in one of his, and his fingertips danced against the small of her back. “It’s just pancakes,” he said with a smile. Somehow, just those words, and the gentle way he watched her eyes got Angie’s knees a little weak in the sweetest way. “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” she whispered as her bear swayed back and forth in tune with the sexually-charged saxophone’s moaning. “But I think the pancakes can wait.”
Dropping to her knees and trailing her fingernails along the ripples of Dawson’s muscled stomach, she dripped them along his bandages and down further where his jeans lay open. The thick hair, attached to that on his chest by a long trail, was soft as she buried first her fingers and then her face, against him.
Her breath tickled his cock to life. Thicker and harder, as the seconds ticked by, he swelled in her hands. She held him like an axe, hands one atop the other. “God,” she moaned, sliding her lips along his shaft, “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Believe it,” Dawson whispered, punctuated with a gasp as Angie took him into her mouth. Her tongue flashed across his tip, then swirled around his head before she backed off for a breath. His scent, and his taste, filled her entire body. The warmth radiated out from her center, sending goosebumps and a hot, red flush, up her neck. Involuntarily, she squeezed him and then slid her lips around his tip again.
“Teeth,” he whispered. “Just a little... just... yeah... God yes,” he sucked a breath between his clenched jaws. “More... more.”
Angie moved her hands around to her bear’s thickly muscled ass, and pulled him hard into her. The deeper he slid into her mouth, Dawson’s groaning grew louder, hungrier, more desperate. He tangled his fingers in her hair and took a deep breath.
Angie looked up at him, opening her eyes wide and drinking in the way Dawson’s tilted-back head made her feel like she had finally found someone who she could just be with. Here was someone who just seemed happy to be around her, happy to touch her, to feel her and to breathe her in.
As she watched his face, he swelled in her mouth and pulled back. He left her with a soft pop as her lips sucked and nothing was there. Angie went forward again, trying to pull him back, but he dodged her with a smile, and lifted her easily to her feet.
“You just about embarrassed me there,” he said with an easy smile. He kissed her hard, deep and hungry, sucking softly at her bottom lip, then biting it as they parted. “I can’t let our first real time together end in thirty seconds.”
“There will be plenty more,” Angie said, reaching down and sliding Dawson’s cock upward so that it was wedged between them. His heat pulsed through her belly. She was so entranced that she hardly noticed when Dawson slid his hands slowly down her sides.
After another, softer kiss, her big bear framed Angie’s face with his hands. His thumbs stroked the skin near the corners of her eyes as he stared into her eyes. “I just want to remember this,” he said softly. “Whatever happens, wherever this goes, I don’t ever want to forget the way I feel right now.”
A tear slipped out of Angie’s left eye, which Dawson swept away with a brush of his thumb. “What is it you’re feeling?” she asked, kissing his neck but going right back to studying his face. “Show me yours and I’ll show you mine,” she urged, giggling softly and kissing him again to try and tease out whatever he was wanting to say, but wouldn’t.
“I’m not so good with the open emotions thing,” Dawson said. “You might have guessed at some point.”
Moving her body in a slow dance that went just in time with the grinding music, Angie was just about to let herself slide down his body again when some cosmic force stopped her. “We have to be able to talk,” she said. She kissed Dawson’s collarbone, then his chest, and traced a circle around his nipple with the tip of her tongue. “I think there’s something going on here that I don’t understand. I’ve never been like this before. I’ve never given myself up to—”
“I think I’m in love with you, and I don’t think I can do a goddam thing about it.” He took her head in his hands, tilted her back and caught her gaze. “I don’t have anything, any reason to think I’m anything but crazy.”
Dawson bent his head and kissed her neck, a slow, nuzzling, toe-curling kiss. “But I think for once in my life, crazy is a very, very good thing.”
She reached up and pushed a fallen curl of hair out of Dawson’s eyes. “I know I’m crazy,” she said, “but this is the first time I’m happy to be.”
Dawson grinned, pulling her close. His cock throbbed against her belly, and she could tell that he was aching for her. The way his breath hitched in his throat, the way he kept running his hands up and down her back; Angie hadn’t ever burned for anyone like this, like there was a furnace blasting away inside her.
“I’ve never felt like this,” he said out of nowhere. His hands slid up, tickling as they went. He cupped her breasts, thumbs painting slow circles against her nipples. They stiffened and peaked, prickling with sweet agony against the restraint. “I’ve always been in control, always needed to be. But with you?” his voice was a low growl, almost dangerous in its hot, thick hunger. “I can’t stop myself.”
Before she knew what was happening, Dawson lowered his head, kissed and then sucked at her nipples. She quailed softly, and when next the hard warmth of Dawson’s palms enveloped her, she let her mouth fall open slightly, and leaned her head back to drink in the swirl of emotion coursing through her body. Tingles swept from her head to her feet. Angie’s scalp prickled, the hairs on the nape of her neck stood up stiff and hard, and she couldn’t help but wrap her hands back around the thing pressed against her belly.
Dawson’s hands devoured her. Every inch of her body responded to his touch, and before she knew what was happening, the copper fur on her forearms began to prickle out of her skin. Dawson noticed when it brushed against him, looked down and laughed. When he held up one of his hands, the same thing was happening – his fingers were thicker and longer, his chest hair fuller and darker, but his eyes. Oh dear God his eyes. The deep blue had gained silvery-gold flakes of color sprinkled through them.
“This really is it, isn’t it?” she asked as he kissed along the line of Angie’s neck. He muttered ‘mhm’ as his kiss slid between her breasts and he tasted the salt of her sweat mixed with the scent of her sex lilting into the air. The smell sent him into something resembling a fury.
His kisses turned hungry and hot, sucking on her skin, then her nipples. Every inch of her drank in the pleasure; her nipples puckered, her fingers curled involuntarily against his back. The further down his kisses trailed, the more she responded, arching herself helplessly against him.
Her skin took in the coolness, and as she first felt Dawson’s tongue weave through the hair above her sex and taste the cleft of her body, Angie groaned from deep in her belly. Her eyes rolled back, and without a second thought, she slowly lowered herself to the ground. Rolling back on her hips, she opened herself to Dawson’s hungry tongue.
He slid it up her line and then down the left side before teasing her entrance with a finger. There were words on the tip of Angie’s tongue, but actually speaking them was completely impossible. The sound of her breath hissing between her teeth was like music to Dawson’s ears, and just got him going faster, harder and deeper. He dipped his tongue inside, tasting her deeply and whispering a moan. “Yes,” she whispered, the word trailing out into infinity before it disappeared. Her heart thudded heavily. Her breath came hot and quick.
“You’re gonna make me come,” she whispered, and then laughed softly. “You can’t keep going I’m gonna...”
Her speaking was instantly squelched by a clench in her throat. “You’re gonna...!”
Dawson moaned hotly against her sex. His tongue found her clit and he flicked it back and forth first softly and then harder and harder as Angie bucked her hips. He pressed a finger against her entrance and then slipped it just inside. He curled it against her inner walls, and then rotated it slowly until her breathing fell into a rhythmic pattern with his push and pull.
Angie bit hard on her bottom lip, squelching a yelp, and then grabbed Dawson’s wrist to make sure he didn’t stop what he was doing. She couldn’t help what her body was doing – she bucked her hips hard against Dawson’s nose, his lips, his beautiful tongue, and his finger.
Wet heat slipped out of her sex, slicking Dawson’s mouth and his finger. He slipped a second one in beside the first, and used his forearm to hold Angie down against the ground. She pushed against him, and he drove his fingers deep, lashing her fiercely with the tip, then the flat, of his tongue.
The seconds stretched into what felt like hours. Pulses emanating from deep inside Angie’s belly shook her to the core, then radiated outward until the pleasure forced her fingers to curl against Dawson’s neck. She dug her fingernails in, leaving hot tracks where they were.
In a mixture of pain that gave way to pleasure seconds later, Dawson hissed her name, and she felt that as deeply as she’d felt anything else he’d done.
With a breath that seemed to fill her toes and fingertips, Angie felt every cord and muscle in her body tighten with tension. The tendons in her neck were so tight they could have been plucked like an E-string. A split second later, a rush of sweetness took her, and the moment after that, not even long enough for a single breath, all the air in her body rushed out, leaving a tingling energy behind.
Clutching his head between her legs, Angie didn’t even realize she was squeezing him with her thighs until she felt his laughter shaking inside her. The flicks of his fingers and the panting of his tongue against her clit heightened. Her body went stiff, and as she hissed out her first climax, she whispered his name with a shudder as he pushed her right up to a second ledge.
His kisses painted the lines of her hips, and the almost invisible hairs running up her belly. Pinned between his body and the floor, the alternating waves of heat and cool, warmth and chill felt otherworldly as Dawson kissed between her breasts, took a quick detour to her left nipple, and then cupped her breasts in his hands as he sucked her throat.
The scent of her sex on his lips and his fingers sent a swirl of electricity down Angie’s back. “I don’t want this to ever stop,” she whispered with a smile in her voice.
Dawson lifted his head from behind her ear, and stared down at her. His gold-silver-blue eyes burned with something right on the line between passion and fury. This bear, she knew, was dangerous... but he was hers. “I couldn’t stop if I wanted to,” he paused to suck again on her neck and nibble ever so slightly. Where he nipped, red traces remained. “I need you more than I have ever needed water, or food. If I don’t have you right this second, I don’t think I’ll be able to keep breathing. The way you taste, the way you smell, it’s like the most powerful drug I’ve ever heard of. And I never, never want it to stop.”
She felt his thick, hard tip against her entrance, and reached down to guide him in. “I can’t imagine waking up with anyone but you, ever again,” he almost growled in her ear. “Whatever happens, you’re mine.”
There was such definite finality in what he said that Angie’s core trembled at his enormous strength, at the same time as her body shook from his entering her.
“Slow,” he said. “I want these memories to last forever.”
She couldn’t do anything but smile.
Nothing in the world had ever felt as good as Dawson’s tauntingly slow stretching into Angie. Her sex clenched around him, squeezing and holding him tight. She didn’t want him to go, and apparently, her body agreed.
Every time he pulled back and teased himself back in, the fire inside her burned hotter, brighter and hungrier, but it wasn’t until he had somehow gotten his entire cock inside her that she realized he was staring right into her eyes the whole time.
“I hope I’m not gonna hurt you,” she said with a quick grin, and then a gasp of pleasure as he pushed into her deepest place. “Oh God do I ever hope I’m not gonna hurt you.”
“Scratch me,” he groaned. Dawson’s voice was husky, dangerous and delicious. When Angie curled her fox nails against his back again, leaving another set of hot, red tracks on his skin, her bear let out a sound that was halfway between a moan and a roar.
“Harder,” he urged. As she did, he pulled himself away and then drove into her, shooting sparks up her back that made her nipples prick up hard against his chest. The hair on him rubbed them just the right way; it hurt just enough to swing past pain and into pleasure. As he thrust into her again, she knew there wasn’t anything she could do, but give in.
And as he stroked again, squeezing her breasts against his body and filling her every inch, she realized that she didn’t want anything else in the world.
The two of them moved together, their bodies intertwining as though they’d been made for one another. Angie looped her long legs around her bear’s ass, and pulled him inside with as much strength as she could muster. And then, just as she felt her second climax building, she flattened her hands against his chest. “Wait,” she whispered with a mischievous grin. “As rough as I need you to be right now, I better be on top, or you’ll give yourself a hernia.”
He didn’t protest, but instead just rolled to a side and took her with him. With her legs on either side of his huge body, Angie drove her hips down, thrusting Dawson even deeper than he’d been before. She threw her head back, let a soft yelp escape her lips, and then as he looked up at her, she raked her hands across his chest. She took a deep breath and lifted herself up his shaft until she felt the shape of his head teasing her entrance, and slammed down as hard as she could.
Dawson let his head fall to the tile where before he’d been holding it up. His hands though, never stopped. With Angie’s breasts against his palms, he pinched her nipples, then ran his thumbs in slow, delicious circles. “Just a warning,” she whispered in between lifting herself and driving down, “I’m never gonna let you get away.”
“Deal,” he said, smiling as he closed his eyes. An instant later, when she felt him thickening inside her, Dawson’s eyes shot open, and he clutched Angie to him hard. Where before he had been lost in a sea of warmth, he suddenly clutched her lower back and wouldn’t let her move.
“Give me... your hands,” he managed in between hitched gasps. She offered them, and he grabbed. He pulled them down to his thighs, forcing Angie’s back to arch. He drove up into her, less thrusting than deep, hard, make-you-see-stars grinding. She took a deep breath, but couldn’t hold it.
“I can’t wait,” he whispered. “It’s... it’s too much.”
Trying to open her eyes, Angie looked down at her bear with glazed, half-open lids. “Good,” she said. “It’s about time I win for once.”
He let go of her hands, grabbed her head with one hand, and held her against him with the other. Dawson pulled her down to him, enveloping her in a kiss so deep and desperate that the only thing able to break it was her orgasm forcing her to pull away and suck air.
She bucked against him, grinding against him so achingly deep she’d never felt anything like it. Dawson grabbed a handful of hair and forced Angie to kiss him again, erupting inside her as their tongues intertwined.
The two of them jolted together in a staccato rhythm punctuated by gasps, then moans, and finally a long-trailing sigh of ecstasy.
There was nothing to say, nothing to do, and for a long time, no way to move for either of them. They just were, together, and that’s all that mattered. As the sweat on Angie’s back dried, and the claw marks on Dawson’s chest cooled, all either of them wanted to do was just keep doing exactly what they were doing.
They just wanted to be. And for minutes that seemed like hours, that was enough.
Finally, Angie sat up with her bear still inside her. She sighed when he slid away, and reached down for him, softly dancing her fingertips across his softest skin. “I’ve been thinking,” she began, then left off, shaking her head. There was just the slightest stir in Dawson.
“About doing that again?” he asked. “I think the doctor said we shouldn’t get too wild, you know? I’m thinking going at it again might constitute reckless. Although I think I might want to risk it anyway.”
She snorted a laugh. “No, I think even if you survived, I might keel over dead. I think we’ve had enough hospital visits for a while, huh?”
“Well if it’s as good as the last one, I might be amenable,” Dawson said, that playful half-grin crossing his lips again. “But I think we better look out for the future. After all, those drunks at Tenner’s aren’t gonna entertain themselves.”
With another soft laugh, Angie pushed herself up on an elbow, letting the air dry the sweat that gathered between them. She took another long pull of the air, letting their mixed scents fill her nose one last time – for now, anyway, she was sure a repeat performance wouldn’t be long behind.
“You’re probably right,” she said, “but that’s not what I was thinking about either.”
“No sex,” he said, counting on his fingers, “and not thinking about the bar... that only leaves one thing. Algebra. You must’ve been thinking of the formula to find the mass of a pyramid.”
“Right,” she said. “E equals MC... whatever. Pancakes, you jackass, you said you had pancakes and then—well, and then you distracted me with something way better than pancakes. Of course, I didn’t know it could be better than pancakes until just then, but hey, when you stop learning, you’re dead, right?”
The big bear heaved himself to his feet, thought about pulling his pants back on, but then just tossed them across the back of a chair. “I’m gonna get a shower,” Angie said. “Watch out for popping batter. I don’t want anything happening to that, uh, thing, that I don’t do.”
He let out a booming laugh and watched as she walked, similarly naked, back to the hallway and disappeared. Dawson turned back to the stove and busied himself mixing the flour with the sugar and the baking powder, then adding a dash of cinnamon and—this might have been when Angie realized she was going to love him forever—chopped up a banana and dropped it in the mix.
“I don’t know how I found you, Dawson,” she said to herself as she watched him from the shadows in the hallway. “And I have no idea how you found me, but for right now, for as long as I can, I’m just going to let things be how they are.”
Her whispers felt like the last drops of rain in a thunderstorm after the sun had already broken through the clouds.
“I’m gonna do the same thing,” he said, startling the living hell out of Angie. “Sorry, bear ears. We hear everything. But I’m going to do the same thing.”
“Promise?” she asked.
“Are there bananas in these pancakes?”
“I knew I loved you from the second I saw you in Tenner’s, Dawson,” Angie said. “But when you put those bananas in the pancakes? That’s how I knew it was real.”
He went back to stirring, and threw a towel over his shoulder. Angie plodded softly to the shower, turned it on, and let the steaming water clean off the day. But there was one thing that wouldn’t ever be the same. One thing she didn’t want to ever be the same.
After a few minutes, she’d almost fallen into a shower trance when the glass door swung open, and Dawson stepped in. “Pancakes are ready,” he said. “But I think the first thing we need to do is test what that doctor said.”
“Deal,” she said with a laugh. “Oh God is it ever a deal.
*
“Well, well, where’s the big guy?” Dora asked, throwing her purse on the bar and looking around the joint. “I was told you had a big, hot, piano playing bear in here looking for a mate?”
“I think he found one,” Eve said, perching herself on a stool next to Dora’s. “At least, that’s the last I heard. You heard from either of them?”
“Not since they left a couple days ago,” Tenner said, still holding his side, but slinging drinks as well as ever. “Damned if it didn’t take me every day of those two months to heal up. You know him and Angie kept this place going while I was gone?”
“Not just them,” Colton said, humping up to the bar. “I had no idea how hard it was to run a place like this and not want to kill half the customers.”
“They got their own charm,” Tenner said with a smile that almost peeked out from under his mustache. “So it really worked, huh? I almost can’t believe it.”
He poured four beers, and took his own stool on the business side of the bar. “Almost seems like plans like that never go right, and if they do, it ain’t for long.”
Dora and Eve exchanged a glance. “Well,” Eve said after taking a long pull, “with friends like you two, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise. Although really, I had a feeling about those two from the second I laid eyes on ‘em. Sometimes you just get that feeling, you know? Actually, do you know the address for the hotel they went to? I almost had a heart attack when I heard they went to Branson, but you know, what the hell? I guess someone has to keep that dancing water thing in business.”
The four of them laughed for a second, and then fell silent, each staring at their own drinks. Dora took a sip, Eve took a longer pull. Colton pushed his mug back and forth between his hands, sliding it on the ancient oak bar, and finally lifted it to his lips.
“I got it back there somewhere, I think,” Tenner said. “That damned bear, he left the address and phone number, and told me if anything happened to give him a call and he’d take care of it. Halfway across the country, on what may as well be a honeymoon, he’s still taking care of me. How the hell that works, I’ll never know. Why do you need it?”
“Oh,” Eve said, “just a thing I do. I’ll give you something to send later. Why isn’t Colton drinking?”
“Colton isn’t drinking,” Colton announced in third person, just before taking a swig, “because Colton has to go run the dispatch tonight. We’ve got a couple trainees down there, but none of them hold a candle to Angie. Hell, I don’t either, but at least I can fake it enough to get by.” He checked his watch and saw it was a quarter to seven. “Speaking of, I gotta get out of here.” With a certain dramatic flair, he polished off his beer and put the glass back down with a decided thunk.
“Give us a call sometime,” Dora said. “We’ll all go out for dinner when they get back. We like to... you know, check up on our matches.”
Eve lifted an eyebrow, but said nothing.
“Sounds good,” Colton said as he stretched his back and headed for the door.
“And as for you,” Eve said to Tenner, “I thought you weren’t supposed to work until you were completely healed up? Living dangerously?”
“Nah,” Tenner shook his head. “I got the kind of injury that never heals.”
Eve and Dora exchanged another telling glance.
“Old,” he said with a smirk. “That’s all it is.”
Eve pulled a letter from her back pocket and went to hand it to the bar man, but held off when he reached for it. “Let me check something,” she said. “Gotta make sure I didn’t misspell any names. Here,” she handed it to Dora, “make sure I didn’t do anything grammatically awful.”
As Dora slid open the envelope and unfurled the thick, marble-looking paper, Eve climbed off her perch and headed to the ladies’ room.
“You can’t always see what the future holds. Sometimes you can’t even see it when it’s right on top of you, and there shouldn’t be any way to miss it.” Dora’s eyes scanned the words, letting each of them soak into her brain. These letters were Eve’s way of not only imparting some fleeting wisdom, but also her way of telling people that once they were in her heart, they weren’t getting out. She kept reading.
“Once, there was a little girl who reminded me a lot of you, Angie. She worked herself to the bone, she did everything she could to help other people, and when love—a love a whole lot like you, Dawson—she had second thoughts. She tried to make herself let it in, but just couldn’t do it. There was too much work to do, too many matches to make, too many people to help be happy. She convinced herself never to take the chance. She kept telling herself that she’d make it up someday, when there was time.”
Dora felt her eyes getting a little misty, and wiped it away before anyone noticed. She sniffed, but smiled as she continued. “Time doesn’t matter,” the letter read, “and it isn’t ever right. Not really. There’s always something to trip you up, something to make you stop and think that hey, I’ve got to wait a while, I’ve gotta make sure things are all lined up. Listen to someone who’s been there. They never line up, not perfectly. But when you have someone like Angie, Dawson, you don’t need things to line up. And when you’ve got someone like your big, burly, piano-playing bear, Angie? Don’t ever let your brain outthink your heart. Brains know a lot of things, but they don’t know love.
We’ll see you when you get back. Have fun, somehow, in Branson.”
Dora held onto the letter for a second, and when Eve emerged from the back, hurriedly stuffed it into the envelope, licked the glue, and handed it to Tenner. Eve sat, and Dora grabbed her old friend, hugged her tight and held her for a few seconds. By the time she let go, the old walrus had disappeared into the kitchen.
“That was perfect,” Dora said. “They’re lucky to have found someone like you to help them.”
Eve nodded slowly. “Yeah, well,” she said, “it wasn’t just for them. I have perfect grammar, so I think I just wanted you to read it and see if I got too sappy or anything. And,” she paused. There was just the slightest hitch in her voice that no one except Dora would ever catch. “I guess the advice was for me as much as it was for anyone. Anyway, enough of all that.” She raised her glass, “here’s to the best friends anyone’s ever had,” Eve said. “Tenner, get out here you old son of a bitch!”
He reappeared, slightly red-eyed and sniffling.
“Not a word,” Eve said with a smile.
“Yes ma’am,” Tenner said. “And here’s to friends.”
“To friends,” Dora agreed, “and everything else we are all thinking about, but not allowed to say.” They all clinked their mugs together and drank.
The jukebox that rarely got used began to hum, and when the three looked over at it, old Wally raised his glass too. The theme from Cheers started up, and even though they all knew it was cheesy as hell, there wasn’t a pair of lips in the whole place that wasn’t smiling and singing right along.