Secrets in the Sand by Carolyn Brown

            Before long, there were at least twenty couples in the middle of the floor, dancing in one way or another. Several were doing something between the twist and the jerk, and an older couple was executing a pretty fine jitterbug. Angel kept looking down at the table where Clancy Morgan sat alone while his friends tried to keep up with the beat on the dance floor. Evidently, Melissa—if he had married her—couldn’t accompany him tonight. Or maybe he hadn’t married her. Now wouldn’t that be a hoot?

            ***

            Angel put her left hand on her hip and struck a pose, and memories from that summer ten years ago flooded Clancy’s mind, again. What had happened to the Angela Conrad he’d known? She was supposed to marry old Billy Joe Summers and raise a shack full of snotty-nosed kids. She was supposed to work in a sewing factory, supporting Billy Joe’s life-threatening drinking habit. She wasn’t supposed to be on a stage, belting out songs by famous artists.

            Patty started a strong rhythm and Angel stepped off the stage and mixed with the people in the dancing crowd, singing into a cordless mic. Then she sat down on the table right in front of Clancy, wiggled her shoulders, and sang to him as she looked right in his eyes. He wanted to say something, but what could he say? Words wouldn’t turn him from a jerk into a decent guy, so he just sat there without saying a word, shaking his head in disbelief.

            She looked something like the old Angela, except she wasn’t wearing glasses. She leaned toward him far enough that he could see down the front of her vest, and a red heat stirred inside him as he remembered her body against his. She kept singing while the girls provided backup on the stage. Then suddenly, before he could blink, she was back on the stage.

            ***

            “Hey, Mike Griffin, pull that woman up a little closer. You sure danced closer than that when we were in high school,” Angel teased in the middle of another song, a more romantic one, while the band played the break.

            She glanced at the table to her left and saw that Clancy still had a bewildered look on his face, as if his eyes couldn’t believe his ears. Angel could still list his every accomplishment. Quarterback from tenth through twelfth grade, taking the team to the state championship all three years. Debate champion, too, winning the regional trophy during his senior year.

            Angel would bet dollars to doughnuts that if Clancy had to hop up on the stage right now and speak, he’d be as awkward as he’d been that summer night just before everyone was leaving for college. He couldn’t hide his feelings then, and he obviously still hadn’t learned how. Because his long face told her he was having a hard time dealing with her putting on a show for the alumni organization. In fact, his ego appeared to be severely deflated.

            “We’ll have a fifteen-minute break while we grab something to drink.” Allie pulled her microphone close to her face. “See y’all in a quarter of an hour.”

            ***

            Before Clancy could make sense of his thoughts, Angel had gone out the side door, surrounded by her band. He stretched out his long limbs, amazed that he’d sat still for an hour and a half while memories and her presence tormented him. He smiled and nodded at several of his old friends as he made his way to the doors leading out to the balcony, from which he could see the bus parked in the lot behind the ballroom. It was black with gold metallic lettering that sparkled in the light from the streetlamps. The word Angel had a crooked halo slung over the capital A, and The Honky Tonk Band had little gold devils with pitchforks sitting on each o.

            He remembered the nights when she’d sung along with the radio in his new red Camaro, and he hadn’t been able to tell which was the real singer and which was Angela. Who would have ever thought she’d be running around in her own bus with a band of women who looked like candidates for the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders?

            Tonight had been crazy. Clancy hadn’t even thought about Angela showing up. She was almost the one voted most likely not to succeed. Although hardly a day had gone by in the past ten years that something didn’t make him think of Angela Conrad, he’d long since learned to disassociate himself from what had really happened that summer. It was as if it happened to someone in a book, and he’d just read about it. He hadn’t really sat on the creek bank with her late into the nights and let the minnows nibble their toes. He hadn’t actually walked away that last night, knowing she was crying. No, it couldn’t have been him. It was someone else in a novel or a movie, and he just remembered the details too well.

            ***

            “Whew.” Allie dabbed her face with a tissue. “Pretty lively crowd for a bunch of has-beens.”