Yeah, okay, he’d seen a lot of her “other stuff” too. Not bare, but…
He stopped those thoughts right there.
He was good at that. He’d been doing it for the past four or five years on a regular basis.
And of course, she had great legs. She had always been athletic. She loved sand volleyball, and to swim, and could kick his ass at a game of one-on-one basketball up until he’d really had his growth spurt. They’d continued to play though. She was fast and had a really great three-point shot.
He guessed she was working out in hotel gyms now, though.
He rolled his eyes about that too.
But now, of course, he couldn’t stop looking at her legs and thinking that, yeah, daaay-um worked.
It was the dress.
The fucking dress.
Jordan wasn’t a dress girl so when she did wear them, they always kind of knocked him on his ass. Because they did make him think of her as a girl.
That had been happening a lot more since about the time they’d turned eighteen.
Then when she turned twenty-one, it got worse. She’d started going out to clubs and bars with her girlfriends and she’d started dressing up more. Lipstick. Curls. And dresses.
And she’d often asked him to join them. Or to pick them up after.
But beyond the dress, the lipstick, the heels, Fletcher homed in on something more important tonight.
Jordan looked terrified.
Some of it was probably having to walk across a stage in front of thousands of people in high heels.
But he also knew that she wasn’t a huge lover of the spotlight or big public displays.
And she had to know what was about to happen. Everyone knew what was about to happen.
And a knot formed in Fletcher’s gut as he watched her. He breathed a small sigh of relief when Jason met her partway and took her hand. At least she wouldn’t end up on her ass on national television.
“Oh my gosh,” Maddie said. “This is pretty exciting.”
“I would die,” Paige added. “I hate public proposals.”
The group, sans Fletcher, laughed. Paige had been proposed to five times before she had come to Autre and fallen for Mitch. And at least a couple of those had been public, from the sound of it. She was somewhat of an expert.
But it was the word proposals that made the knot in Fletcher’s gut tighten and, for possibly the first time in his life, made him regret even the few bites of jambalaya.
“You already promised me that you would ask Mitch to marry you here at the bar in front of all of us,” Ellie told Paige.
“I guess I don’t consider you all public,” Paige said with a smile. “You’re family.”
“Awww,” Juliet and Tori said together.
“Shhh!” Ellie said, sharply waving her hand to shut them up as Jason pulled Jordan to the microphone at the front of the stage.
The girls exchanged wide-eyed looks but grinned.
Ellie often had Jason’s music playing in the bar. She also had a signed poster of him hanging behind the bar near the cash register and watched him on TV every chance she got.
Some of it was because he was a local boy, but a lot of it was because he was connected to Jordan. Jordan had been like another granddaughter to Ellie growing up, constantly in and out of the bar and on and off the boat docks where Boys of the Bayou, the family business, operated their swamp boat and fishing tours. She’d swiped cookies, boudin balls, and fried pickles right alongside the other grandkids.
Ellie adored her. But Fletcher had a sneaking suspicion that as Ellie had listened to Jason’s music she’d actually decided it was good.
The casino crowd had been cheering this whole time, but as Jason swung his guitar to his back and went down on one knee, they quieted.
Ellie’s bar—and, miraculously, the Landry family—also fell silent.
“We’ve known each other forever,” Jason said, with Jordan’s hand in his.
Fletcher felt his heart squeeze and the jambalaya in his gut roil.
He wasn’t sure he could watch this.
Yes, Jordan was his best friend and this was a huge moment in her life. That was how Ellie had gotten him to come to the bar and sit down in the first place. Well, that and the threat of cutting him off from gumbo for two weeks. But he’d been dreading this moment for at least two years.
Jordan and Jason had been together for a decade. Of course at some point he was going to propose. Jordan was amazing and Jason was a lot of things, but an idiot wasn’t one of them. Of course he’d want to get a diamond ring on her finger. And of course she’d say yes. Fletcher had given her a chance to break up with Jason in the past. Two chances actually. To choose him instead. And she’d turned him down flat.
So yeah, Fletcher had been expecting Jordan and Jason to get married.
Though he’d figured he’d get this news by phone call. A phone call where he could fake a happy tone of voice and say all the right things even as he was cussing internally and planning to break things as soon as they hung up.
Witnessing it in person, and with an audience who would be very interested in his reaction, was pretty much hell.
Especially because the look on Jordan’s face was even more terrified now than before.
Fletcher frowned. Surely she’d been expecting this. The entire country had been expecting this. There was no way she’d gotten all dressed up like that just to stand backstage all night.
Then again, he didn’t really know how any of this worked for her now. Maybe she did get dressed up like this every night. It was true that every time he caught a glimpse of her on television on the entertainment news—always at Ellie’s because he didn’t watch that shit—she looked fixed up.
He supposed that when you were a big star touring the country with other big stars, there were people like hair and makeup artists to help out. Maybe that extended to the significant others of the big stars.
They wouldn’t want to risk having Jordan make Jason look bad, after all.
Fletcher realized his hand had curled into a fist and he consciously made it relax.
He and Jordan were friends. The best of friends. They’d known each other since first grade. He’d known her longer than Jason had and she’d told him, more than once, that no matter what happened they would always be friends.
But, over the past couple of years they’d drifted apart. Especially since she’d moved to Nashville with Jason and started only substitute teaching so that she could travel with him more.
And especially since April, when she’d been home for the family weddings and told him that Jason had gotten a spot on this big tour and she was quitting her job entirely to go with him.
Fletcher had told her exactly what he thought of that.
Jordan was a teacher. A gifted teacher who loved her chosen career. Fletcher had bitten his tongue a lot over the years when it came to Jason, but that time he hadn’t been able to.
He’d also given her the chance to stay in Autre. With him. As a lot more than his best friend.
She’d turned him down.
And she’d cried.
And they’d not spoken for over a week. For the first time in their lives.
He wasn’t doing that again. Jordan knew that if she ever wanted to leave Jason, Fletcher would be there for her. Hell, she knew that he would be there for her no matter what. She knew he thought she should be teaching and that she deserved to have dreams too. He’d had his say, she knew where he stood, and it had made her cry. So he was done with that.