Hannah

I woke up this morning in my own bed and was immediately confused as to how I got here.

The last thing I remember was dancing with Erin to ‘Creep’ at my parents party and now here I am, waking up in my own bed dressed in only the underwear that I wore last night under my dress.

I rolled out of bed and unhooked my bra – letting it drop to the floor, and sighing with relief at the amazing feeling of being free from the restricting clothing. I padded across my room while stepping out of my panties and shivering a little as the natural breeze of my bedroom reached my most intimate areas but I quickly relaxed and enjoyed the freedom down below, too.
In nothing but my birthday suit, I cracked my bedroom door open and poked my head out into the hallway to listen for any sign of
Erin wandering around the apartment but I could only hear the shower running so I guessed that she was getting herself ready for work and that meant that the coast was clear for me to strut my naked, pregnant stuff through the apartment, grab a glass of water and my vitamins and hurry back to my bedroom before she got out of the shower. Not that it would be a problem if she saw be in the buff, it wouldn’t be the first time she has seen me naked and, honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if she strolled through the apartment naked and dripping wet like she had on many occasions.

I swear, the two of us living together is, like, every straight guys wet dream.

Humming ‘Creep’ to myself while I walked through the apartment, I wasn’t exactly paying attention to my surroundings but as far as I was aware I didn’t have a reason to. It wasn’t until I was halfway into the living room and heard a loud smash and someone cursing ‘holy shit’ that I looked up with a start and saw Matt coming into the living room from the kitchen.

For the first couple of moments, I was like deer caught in the headlights – we both were, and we just looked at one another with wide eyes before I started screaming while darting to the sofa for the throw to wrap around myself.

“What the fuck are you doing here?!” I squealed at him.

“I spent the night!” He screamed back, clearly as embarrassed as I was “Why the fuck are you naked?!”

“It’s my apartment!” I pointed out “Why the hell did you spend the night?!”

“I was too exhausted to drive myself home after bringing you home!”

Silence filled the apartment as the two of us avoided each other’s eyes for a few minutes – the only sound that either of us could hear was the sound of the shower continuing to run.

“I’ll go get something to-“

I cut Matt of by bounding over to him and throwing myself into his arms, crashing my lips against his. For a moment, neither of us
moved our lips but we soon started to move them in our most lustful kiss yet.

Matt’s arms were wrapped around me to hold me in place and he was squeezing me against him tightly and my hands were tangled in his hair. I pulled lightly on his long locks and he let out a moan that I swallowed before moaning myself and my moan made him hold me tighter and buck against me involuntarily.

“Bedroom,” I murmured into the kiss.

~~~~

Ever since I first got the store up and running, I’ve gotten the same feeling every single morning when I open up for the day. The pride that I feel while I slide the shutters up and expose the store windows to everyone passing by, and the amazing excitement that takes over my body when I step inside and turn the ‘closed’ sign to ‘open’ and flip on the lights and watch the whole place come to life – those feelings have never faltered, not once since I first got everything going when I was basically still a kid.

Just like every morning, I walked through the store, ducked under the counter and dumped my stuff at the side of the computer before stepping into the back room and turning on the music – smiling the second that I hear the music flow through the store.

Ten minutes after I arrived, just as I was logging into the computer, Dale walked through the door with a tired smile on his face.
Dale always managed to look amazing… even when he had a pretty bad hangover.

“Need some Advil?” I asked with a laugh as he ducked under the counter and dumped his things next to mine.
Before he said anything, he stepped behind me and wrapped his arms around my shoulders and squeezed me tightly.

“I already took some,” He said eventually, resting his chin on the top of my head “But I hope you know that we’re having the greasiest burgers in town for lunch today, my treat.”

“I’m not going to say ‘no’ to that,” I laughed, shrugging him off once the computer finally logged me in “We have a tonne of orders we need to send out today,” I reminded him.

“I’m on it!” He called out, walking through the back into the store room to fetch the orders that needed to be posted “Should I just make a run with these today?” He asked “Hand deliver them right from the store?” He laughed.

“You could do that,” I nodded, turning to look at him as he walked back out from the back “Well, the local ones, sure, but the rest are going to have to be posted,”

“Damn right,” He laughed, placing half of the order pile in front of me “I’m not driving out of Huntington,”

Dale and I sat for the next hour and packed up all of the orders that we would be sending out today. We sang along to every song
that came through the speakers and served the odd customer who wandered in at this early-ish hour of the morning.

Once everything was packaged up and ready to go, Dale loaded up the ones with Huntington address on them and loaded them
into his car that was parked in the parking lot around the back of the building.

“I’ll be back as soon as I’m done,” He promised, planting a kiss on the top of my head.


“Bring those greasy burgers that you promised me,” I sang “It’ll be lunchtime by the time you’re done with all of those orders,”

“Yes, your pregnant highness, I’ll be right back with your burgers,” He teased before leaving the store.

~~~~

There were no customers in the store and I was all alone. I doubted any of the stores surrounding my own had very many
customers either – judging by the pouring rain outside.

I slid myself off of my stool and ducked under the counter, then, with my right hand draped over my protruding stomach, I slowly
wandered down through the store until I reached the door and turned the inner lock to the right – locking myself in the building, and
then I turned the ‘Open’ sign to ‘Closed again. I just needed to be alone for a little while.

I went into the back room and shut off the music and filled the store with silence. When I walked out of the back room, I realised
that my feet were killing me and without another thought I kicked off my shoes and looked down at my horribly swollen feet.

“Ugh,” I grunted in disgust before I grabbed my set of keys for the store out of my bag.

I shook it off and padded into the corridor through the back and walked to the end of it; past the stock room, the bathroom and the
back exit until I reached the door at the end of the corridor – the one door that was rarely ever opened. I unlocked the door and
pulled it open, revealing the black, metal, spiral staircase behind it and made my way up the stairs.

At the top of the stairs there was a loft – it was a pretty big loft, but there was only a single stool with my old song book on top of it
and an acoustic guitar sitting in the farthest corner of the room where the sun shining through the large window barely reached.

It had been a long time since I was last up here, and I was the only person who knew about this. When I bought the store, there
was a door that didn’t open at the end of the corridor and a spare key on my chain – neither of which had been explained to me by
the guy I bought the place from before he left the country. Of course, I did the maths and quickly worked it out, finding my own little
loft.

At first, I kept a few boxes of my own stuff up here until I cleared space in the apartment for it all, and then I realised that every
musical sound from the strum of a guitar to the highest note I could possibly sing sounds absolutely amazing up here. Once I
worked those things out, that’s what I would come up here to do.

I dragged the stool into the middle of the room and carried the guitar and notebook over, too. I sat up on the stool and leaned the
guitar between my legs while I opened my old song book, my smile growing wider as I read through more and more of my songs I
wrote between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one.

I reached the most worn-out page in the whole book that had the song title ‘Whiskey’ scribbled at the top of it. I skimmed through
the lyrics and a smaller smile tugged at my lips now while I remembered who I wrote the song for and why I wrote it for him.

My ex-boyfriend from high school – Andy Carter, I wrote the song when he moved to Washington.

With a small sigh, I pulled the guitar into my lap and started to play.

Everybody down in Houston calls him ‘Texas’
Everybody way up North calls him ‘Cornbread’

You shoulda heard the way that his Momma called him ‘baby’,
Daddy called him ‘Boy’, his friends call him ‘Crazy’”
My smile grew wider as my voice bounced off of the blank walls and met my ears.

Shoulda just called it like I saw it,
Shoulda just called for help and ran like hell that day.
The burn and the sting, the high, and the heat, and the ‘left-me-wanting-more’ feeling when he kissed me.
I shoulda just called him ‘Whiskey’.”

Warm my body to the core just like a blanket.
His face was so sweet then he took my breath away.
Hit me so hard like a rock through a window.
I knew I was in trouble from the moment I met you, boy.

Shoulda just called it like I saw it.
Shoulda just called for help and ran like hell that day.
The burn and the sting, and the high, and the heat, and the "left-me-wanting-more" feeling when he kissed me.
I shoulda just called him "Whiskey"

Now the numb has set in.
He's gone like the wind.
And I can barely feel the pain.

Shoulda just called it like I saw it.
I shoulda just called for help and ran like hell that day.
The burn and the sting, and the high, and the heat, and the "left-me-wanting-more" feeling when he kissed me.
The burn and the sting, and the high, and the heat, and the "left-me-wanting-more" feeling when he kissed me.
I shoulda just called him "Whiskey".
Shoulda just called him "Whiskey".
I shoulda just called him "Whiskey".

“You never told me that you could sing,”

I jumped at the sound of another voice filling the room once I stopped playing and almost fell off of the stool but caught myself before completely losing my balance. I looked over to the door and glared at Dale who was leaning against the entryway with a smug smirk on his face.

“What are you doing up here?” I asked.

“You locked yourself in and then I couldn’t find you downstairs anywhere when I got back, so I tried the only door in the building
that ‘doesn’t do anything’,” He mocked me at the end of that statement, using the exact words that I had used on him when he first
started working here “Why have you been keeping this awesome loft from me, Hannah?” He teased, walking further into the room
and stopping beside me.

“I honestly don’t know,” I admitted “I’m the only person who knows about it, I never told anybody that it was here,”

“You come up here a lot?”

“Not for a while,” I shrugged “I used to come up here and sing a lot once I moved the boxes of my stuff out of here,”

“I honestly didn’t know that you could sing like that,” He admitted.

“You’ve heard me singing before,” I reminded him.

“Sort of,” He accused “I only really hear you down in the store, and you’re only really singing to yourself and I can’t exactly hear
you over the music you’re singing along to… this is different because it’s all you,”

“Thanks,” I blushed.

“You’ve got a crazy strong voice,” He added “Like… Izzy Hale or something,”

I laughed aloud for a moment and stopped when I saw that his expression was totally serious.

“We need to do something with this place, H.” He insisted “We could totally turn it into some lost-slash-club place at night where
we play music, we can have open-mic nights and you can sing all of your own songs and even some covers of other songs – we’ll
bring in so many people and make even more money,”

I laughed again, but calmed myself as quickly as I could. I got off of the stool, leaned the guitar against it again and set the song
book down on the stool again.

“Tell you what,” I sighed upon turning around to see the pleading look on Dale’s face “If you can draw me up a ‘blueprint’ of
whatever you’re thinking we can turn this place into… I’ll seriously consider it and I’ll even check to see if we could afford to build
it,”

While Dale cheered with excitement and did a little happy dance with himself, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket and quickly
pulled it out and saw that I had a text message from Matt.

When are we going to talk about what happened this morning at your place? – M

I sighed and typed my reply.

Maybe when I get off of work, maybe tomorrow, maybe never… you sure seemed in a hurry to leave afterwards anyway,
why do you want to talk about it? – H

I pocketed the phone again and pushed Dale out of the loft and followed him down the staircase and locked it all back up once we
were into the corridor again. Dale was blabbering in my ear about his ideas for the loft when we walked back out into the store, but
while he kept walking over to the counter and started to rummage in his backpack I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw who
was standing at the counter waiting to be serves.

“Hannah…” The customer smiled when he looked up and noticed that people had returned.

“Andy?” I choked out, my eyes widening “What are you doing here?

Notes

Cliffhanger!

~ LMV