“Toodle-loo!” someone called from the front room. “Y’all here?”
“That’d be mine,” Lou murmured and moved to the door, shouting, “In the back, Agnes! Coming right out!”
She stopped at it and looked back at me.
“I never said this because it was too fresh but you really should know it. Keith messed up, girlfriend. I never met her but just your stories make her sound like Tawnee the Hun. I know with things the way they are with Bill that if you love someone, you put up with all the shit that comes with them. I know a lot of people wonder why I put up with his shit but the answer is simple. I love him. And I’m sure Keith loved you. He just didn’t love you enough.”
“Thanks, darlin’,” I whispered.
She wasn’t quite done.
“One thing Hixon Drake is right about, you’re worth getting a second job to buy you a big-ass ring if that was what you wanted. Although I’m pissed at him for what he did to you, at least we agree on that.” She gave me a smile. “And I know that mostly because you’re the kind of woman who’d never want that. You’d like getting it. But that isn’t what’s important to you.”
She was right.
I liked diamonds.
But I had a sneaking, confusing, scary suspicion I’d move into a trailer if Hixon Drake lived in it, and after I’d moved out of my mother’s when I was twenty, I’d sworn I’d never go back for any reason.
“Don’t make me cry,” I ordered. “I didn’t wear my waterproof mascara.”
She grinned. “Okay, I won’t. I’ll just say I no longer hate you because you’re gorgeous and have a great ass. I hate you now because you get to have a scene in the grocery store with a hot guy pinning you against the Celestial Seasonings, getting all wound up on your behalf, shouting in your face then calling you sweetheart. As I’ve said, I’m pissed at Hix. But I wasn’t even there, I just heard it from seven sources, and I still know that was hot.”
“It wasn’t hot,” I shared truthfully. “It was kinda scary and more than kinda annoying.”
“Yeah, I get you thought that then. But now . . .” She shook her head. “I’m pissed at Hix but I might find my way to unpissed if that gives any indication of how much that man feels for you. And not to give you reason to forgive his badass self for acting like such a huge dick, but I’ve known Hixon Drake for years and I’ve heard more about him than is healthy for anyone outside Brad Pitt, and he’s not the man to cause a scene in a grocery store, Greta. If he lost it in the manner half the women of this town are tittering relentlessly about at this very moment that says something I don’t wanna hear about Hixon Drake right now. That man isn’t sheriff. He lives and breathes the responsibility behind that badge. So pinning a woman against the tea selection in a grocery store is not the way he’d go.”
She paused.
I braced.
Then she gave me the rest of it.
“But he saw you with a shiner and he went that way. Yeah,” she said contemplatively. “That might help me find my way to unpissed.”
“Now you are being scary and annoying,” I returned.
She rolled her eyes, puckered her lips in a kiss my way and walked out the door.
Gah!
Lou.
That Friday night, through the applause after I sang Billie Holiday’s “He’s Funny That Way,” I murmured, “Thank you,” into the mic.
Billie, by the way, was one of the artists I didn’t like to sing because you just didn’t sing her songs, seeing as you could never do them justice. These, in my estimation, included Barbra Streisand, Dolly Parton, Tina Turner, Céline Dion, Whitney Houston and Adele (but that wasn’t an exhaustive list).
However, my pianist, Elvan, the man who set my set lists—lists that would be crowd pleasers for Gemini—made me.
It didn’t hurt too much.
But he always gave me something after he gave me a toughie.
And this time he rewarded me, leading the boys into Annie Lennox’s “Cold.”
I loved that song. It fit my voice perfectly. And I loved to wrap it around the icy-hot beauty of the lyrics.
So I was smiling when I felt my eyelids get lazy as the drummer did his thing and the others came in and I fell into the song, standing at the microphone, swaying, my hands suddenly weightless, floating around my hips as my head drifted, the only constant being aiming my lips to mic.
I was finishing the first verse when something caught my attention and I focused slowly on it, seeing with some surprise Gemini standing close to the stage, something he never did. He didn’t sift through the crowd while anyone was performing. It wouldn’t do for the host to interrupt a performance in any way.
But as I caught sight of him standing right there, blocking people from seeing the stage, his eyes shifted.
I followed their direction and saw Hixon sitting at the end of the bar, his eyes locked on me.
And somebody kill me, the minute my eyes hit his, they were caught.
Trapped.
Captive.
I couldn’t look away. Even as I sensed some members of the audience shifting, twisting in their seats, turning to look to see who I was singing to.
But I was singing words about a woman who wanted to swim in her man’s eyes.
And I wanted that.
I wanted my shot at that.
I wanted my shot to swim in the blue of Hix’s eyes for the rest of my life.
What I didn’t want was for him to know that.
But I couldn’t look away.
Fortunately, as they had wont to do, the song ended, I tore myself out of his spell and forced a smile at the audience who were clapping somewhat more enthusiastically than usual. My mind hazily attempted to try to remember what song was next, hoping it wouldn’t get me into more trouble.
Unfortunately it was the nature of the beast for a lounge singer like me that the next song wasn’t much better, but at least it didn’t have lyrics about swimming in someone’s eyes.
It was Eva Cassidy’s “Fields of Gold.”
And I managed to sing that and the next four songs of my set without once looking at Hixon.
I exited the stage concealing my haste (I hoped), expressing my gratitude and saying I’d be back. And I sat in my tiny dressing room backstage (yes, hiding) terrified that Gemini was going to come back like he had just a few weeks before to tell me Hix was out there waiting for me.
When the knock came and Gemini swung in, I was holding my breath.
“He left, beautiful,” he said softly. “Spoke with me briefly. Said he enjoyed the show but was concerned he was making you uncomfortable. So he asked me to tell you that you look gorgeous and then he left.”
I blew out a breath but it wasn’t a complete relief.
No.
Because Hixon might have gone but he’d left only to be thoughtful and only after saying something sweet.
“Not my place, you didn’t ask, heard about the grocery store incident,” Gemini began.
Of course he did.
Everyone had.
“So I don’t know what’s happening. I just know you could do worse. And what I know about that man, not sure you could do better,” he finished.
I wasn’t sure either.