The Beautiful Truth

**100

Did she just move closer to me? He could not have imagined feeling that. He looked down and the top of her head, and really wanted to kiss it. Instead, he took a pull from his beer can.

Just as they reached the edge of the party, someone called out to them.

"Hey! Sawyer! TJ!" Jason Mandrino yelled, standing tall in the bed of his truck. "'Bout time!"

Jason jumped off his truck and made his way through the masses toward them.

"'Bout time, wut?" Sawyer mocked his twang, still not moving out from under his arm. "I didn't know we were late."

Mandrino couldn't help himself; he grinned widely, almost laughing as he glanced from SF to Talyn and back again.

Fuckin' Mandrino. He always did know what was going on. Or at least he thought he did.

"Uh," Mandrino hesitated, twisting his obnoxious grin into an equally obnoxious smirk. "Nothin' SF, I'm just messin' with you. Hey, stay put, I've got some homebrew for you."

Jason trotted off. Sawyer turned her head and looked up at Talyn. "He's so weird."

Yeah, so weird you used to hook up with him on a regular basis, he meant to say, but instead he was distracted by her pretty eyes and the memory of what her body felt like under his earlier in the day.

She grinned. His shorts felt a little tighter. Not wanting to walk around with a boner all night, he reluctantly dropped his arm and nodded toward the opposite edge of the crowd. "Wanna go see?"

Jason had suddenly rejoined them, a Dixie cups in both hands and his own cup clinched between his teeth like some kind of bird dog, or golden retriever.

"What flavor is it this time?" Sawyer asked him apprehensively.

The contents of Talyn's cup were a thick, bright orange.

"Well, you liked the peach so much last time," Mandrino shrugged.

Of course. Talyn took a long drink. Damn. It was really good.

"Come on, go take a look at the...path? What do you call it where the tornado touches down?" he laughed at himself, slopping along in his boots already caked with mud.

"Jesus," Sawyer breathed, stopped as they came to the apparent edge.

The three of them stood and looked down into the gash today's storm had cut into the airport field. The rarely used runway and helicopter pad remained unscathed a mere 10 yards away, but the tornado's path stretched out the width of a football field for what Talyn could not see the end of out over the flat expanse of the plain. The sky had again become too overcast for the moon to help any.

"What a mess," Sawyer said. "We were lucky, huh?"

The three of them stood there momentarily. "You realize we're staring at mud," she added.

He couldn't help but laugh.

Jason Mandrino did, too. "God love you, SF."

She grinned off into the distance and took another drink. "Y'all playin' football in this later? I figure that was the whole reason for this hoedown."

"Maybe," Talyn offered noncommittally.

"Maybe?!" she protested. "You've got, like, eight years worth of Bulldogs back there, and you're the king! Make it happen, TJP!"

Talyn rocked back on his heels and couldn't help smiling at her.

"Two-hand touch, of course," Mandrino added. "We can't send USC's golden boy back to campus all dinged up."

He had to resist the urge to shove Mandrino into the mud right then and there. That could wait until later. Besides, starting the pre-season with an injury wouldn't make any difference.

"Hey, take a picture of us," Sawyer told Jason, pulling her phone from her pocket and handing it over.

"Is this the 'before' shot?" Jason laughed. "Y'all go stand down in the mud and look this way."

Talyn squeezed Sawyer into his side as Jason snapped their shot.

"It's a little dark, but I'm sure there's an app for that."

"Coincidentally," Sawyer told him, snatching her phone back, "there is."

She gingerly stepped back onto grassier land and headed for the heart of the party, phone in the back of her cutoffs, beer can in one hand, plastic cup in the other, not bothering to see if they were following her.

"God damn, that's a sexy girl," Jason sighed.

They had both been watching as she walked. Talyn wanted to punch him. Instead, he started off after her.

"I hope you know what you're doing," Mandrino said quietly when he caught up.

Talyn stopped walking. "Can you please be done holding this over my head? You want her? Go get her. I'm done competing against you for her."

Mandrino laughed softly. It was infuriating. "You think I can compete with you? Come on, Talyn."

He just stared at him.

"Talyn, I know she's never gonna love me like she does you. I'm jealous, so sue me," he shrugged as if this justified the idiotic things he said and did.

Well, maybe it did. But wait, after all this time, Jason Mandrino was giving up?

"Whatever," Talyn sighed, picking up his pace again.

It was a hot, steamy, surreal night in Pontiac. No one was in a hurry to go anywhere—no one had any electricity. Unlike most...or all, probably, parties past, Talyn stuck pretty close to Sawyer. And unlike most parties past, she didn't just hang out on someone's dropped tailgate. She walked around, catching up with people they knew, both younger and older, and what had gotten into her?

"So're you still datin' that rock star guy?" Jimmy Roller asked her with slurred speech sometime after several people had posted up on the back of Jason's truck.

Talyn, who had been doing a rather intense study of his latest of several beer cans, looked up at Sawyer, opening his mouth as if to speak, although what he could've said, he wasn't sure.

Likewise, she glanced at him before answering. "No, that didn't work out so well in the end."

That was the first time all night she'd sounded anything but happy.

"Ah, I'm sorry to hear that," Mallory consoled her.

Sawyer just shrugged. "Eh, it's OK."

"Yeah, maybe now ol' Talyn can finally get his chance, huh?" Jimmy added flippantly.

It seemed to Talyn that everyone in the field was suddenly staring at him, although it was really only the handful of people around Mandrino's F150.

"Jimmy, what are you—"

"Oh come on, Mal," Jimmy interrupted her. "I know y'all dated for like, I dunno, ten minutes back in the day, but TJ's always been in love with Sawyer. Everybody knows that."

Everybody?

"Well, maybe everybody but Sawyer," Jimmy amended as if he'd read Talyn's mind. Then he laughed. "And Mallory, apparently."

Sawyer met Talyn's eyes across the group. She looked apologetic. She looked apologetic. Jesus. How uncomfortable was she right now?

"Hey!" Jason Mandrino announced as he jumped off the side of the truck bed with a splat. "Who's up for a little...run down memory lane?" He spun a well-worn football in his palm.

Talyn grinned at him, more out of relief than anything. "It'd be a shame to just let all this good mud go to waste."

"Right, the game goes before we all run our trucks through it," Jason explained.

"Christ," he muttered. "OK, get your team together, Mandrino, let's go."