Honky Tonk Christmas by Carolyn Brown

her mouth and backed away. “Don’t tell that big old bouncer to ban us. We drove two hours from Wichita Falls and we’ve been waiting forever to get inside. It’s all our friends talk about. They got off work earlier than we did and they’re already in there.”
    “Come back in the fall and the place will be twice this size. We shouldn’t have to turn folks away very often when the addition is built,” Sharlene said.
    “We’ll be here every week until we get inside. We heard it was the most fun bar in this part of Texas. Is there really a woman in there who is pro at pool?”
    “There is and a jukebox that plays three songs for a quarter on weeknights. It’s not nearly as crowded then as it is on the weekends.”
    “Well, damn. Hey, y’all, guess what?” The girl went running back to her group.
    Sharlene went on inside and found Tessa hustling to get the orders out.
    “That was a hell of a long ten minutes. We need to think on hiring another bartender. This is getting crazier every night,” she fussed. “You out there kissin’ on that cowboy?”
    “I was not!”
    “You ain’t never lied to me but I still don’t believe you. Was he kissin’ on you?”
    Sharlene smiled sweetly. “Just which cowboy are we talkin’ about, Tess? There was a lot out there who might have been kissin’ on me. There was a bunch with fried chicken in a bucket and beers in a cooler and at least two Chigger women were doing business in the front seats of pickups. Thank goodness the windows were fogged over or it would have been pure old Honky Tonk porn out there.”
    “Oh, hush and make two pitchers of Coke and Jack while I fix a couple of buckets. You might talk too much but you sure know how to beat around the bush and I ain’t got time to kick every bush between here and Houston to get the truth out of you,” Tessa said.
    “I see Loralou made it.” Sharlene changed the subject.
    “Yes, and Merle is in a pout. She says that Kent is almost as good as Chad. She’s down at the far end with her third beer for the night. You’d think she’d be fat as much of that as she puts away every night,” Tessa said.
    “I’ll work my way toward her. She might want to prop her feet up with me after two and bemoan the fact that lust will win out over eight ball most of the time,” Sharlene said.
    Merle left an hour before closing at two a.m. Tessa and Luther were out of the joint by ten minutes after. The parking lot was empty when Sharlene carried her bottle of beer to the porch.
    Strange as it was, those same stars up there in the sky sparkled down on Baghdad the same as they did Mingus, Texas. There were still women over there saving lives, filling out papers, carrying guns, and doing what they’d been trained to do. She didn’t figure there was another woman doing what she did because that job was closed to women. Some kind of special decree from two notches under God had to be signed in blood before she was allowed to get her name on the sacred classified list.
    She sat down and leaned against a porch post with her feet on the steps. She could see the very place where she and Holt sat on the block foundation, where he’d kissed her, and where she’d come close to swooning. Lord, but that cowboy could have caused a holy woman to fall backwards and pull him down on top of her.
    “It would be so easy, but it ain’t happenin’,” she said. She left her half empty bottle on the porch and went back inside. She turned out the lights and went straight to the shower.
    It didn’t do a bit of good. Relaxing wasn’t possible. She paced the floor and finally picked up her purse and headed back to the rent house north of the Tonk. She parked on the road to keep from waking anyone and sat down in one of the orange rockers on the porch where she often went in the middle of the night to think. She pulled her knees up and propped her chin on them.
    Holt also had trouble sleeping that night. Every time he shut his eyes he saw her