53. Chapter 53
Pulling over for the night wasn’t the popular opinion.
What should’ve been a six-hour drive through western Texas stretched to an eight-hour grind waiting out storms from off-ramps and gas station parking lots.
An hour outside Lubbock, lightning clawed across the night sky, reaching its crooked fingers to the north in the last cell of a severe storm system daring them to finish the drive.
They could’ve made it. Helen practically combusted when Lindsey saw the red Vacancy sign in front of a roadside motel across from a tavern lit up like cowboy Christmas and refused to drive another mile.
Lindsey also refused to join Jase for a drink after she saw Graham and Helen leave their room and head across the parking lot to the bar.
He wasn’t crazy about leaving her alone, and not only because she was a flight risk. Jase settled for her phone number and told her to text him if she needed anything or if the storm got too bad or if she changed her mind about a drink.
He was on his second beer at the Lonestar Ranch, a joint filled with longhorns and peanut shells, dusty boots with actual spurs for actually kicking a horse’s ass, listening to an old geezer wheeze through a Garth Brooks classic onstage, and she hadn’t texted.
She might’ve been watching TV, taking a shower, sleeping.
Gone.
He flipped open his phone and thumbed a message.
It’s karaoke night.
He picked at the fries in his basket, grease and salt coating his fingers. He wiped them on a napkin and thumbed, you sing?
Graham and Helen were in a booth on the far wall.
At least he didn’t have to play nice with them tonight.
Jase tapped his knuckles on the bar and checked his phone.
Lindsey wouldn’t drive all the way to…where the hell was this?
She wouldn’t spend all day cooped up in the Squire just to skip out now.
Would she?
His phone finally buzzed. Christ, it was a pain giving a shit about someone, twitching on the edge of his stool until she answered.
Not if I can help it, she said. Then, after a few beats in which Jase tried coming up with a witty response, she texted, You?
Put on one of your dresses and find out.
His dick twitched at her reply: How do you know what I’m not wearing? Are you watching me, creep?
A blonde took the stage singing a Carrie Underwood song.
She even resembled the country star, if Ms. Underwood spent her fortune on self-tanner and tattoos.
Jase ordered another beer and spun his internal rolodex of pickup lines for something clever to convince Lindsey to break the rules she made this morning.
He chanced that it was raining, though he couldn’t hear the storm over the music, and texted, Getting wet out here.
If she said something about also getting wet, there’d be black marks on the pavement between the bar and motel from how fast he’d move in his boots.
She didn’t answer right away, and Jase wondered if suggestive texts would cost him his fortune.
He set his phone on the bar to stop checking the goddamn thing and waited for his turn with the mic.
While Jase wasn’t above turning a wrench and doing odd jobs for food and gas money at the places he frequented, he made most of his money with a microphone.
Nothing serious. A handful of regular gigs.
A few sets with house bands in need of a singer.
An impromptu performance at a bar in Madison for a bunch of bachelorettes who shoved enough singles in his pants to pay for his motel room.
Backup vocals for his dad’s band in Dayton.
Graham knew about Old Men Play 3, Dad’s group of misfit men who relived their younger years through classic rock covers, but he didn’t know Jase sang with them occasionally.
That he’d shared a mic with their dad and belted out classics to packed houses at Dayton dives where aging groupies flung their bras at the stage.
Jason Sr. only sang, he’d said, for something to do, and it was too late in life to develop any real talent. He stopped after his first round of treatment.
Jase hadn’t sung since then either. Tonight he signed up for “Fat Bottomed Girls,” the last song he sang with his old man.
He was five drinks deep and Lindsey still hadn’t texted when they called his name for the stage. He waved at his brother and started to sing.
Carrie Underwood smiled at him from the table she shared with a group of similarly dressed women near the stage.
They were all forty, or close to it, trying to look twenty in low cut tanks and heavy makeup, with glittering skin and big hair that managed to survive the weather.
Carrie, whose name was actually Britney, thrust a beer in his hand as soon as the song ended, and convinced him to join her for “Love Shack.”
After their duet, Britney hefted a karaoke song binder to a couple of open stools and dropped the book on the bar. Jase ordered another round and checked his phone to make sure the paperweight hadn’t died because it sure as hell hadn’t buzzed while he was singing.
“I’m definitely singing Madonna tonight,” Britney said. “What about you? Do you stick to classic rock?”
“No, I’ll do anything,” he said. There was plenty he wanted to do with the black rose disappearing between her tits. He clocked at least three more tattoos and bet she was covered in ink underneath her jeans.
“If I sign up for ‘If I Didn’t Love You,’ would you be my Jason Aldean?” she asked.
“Babe, I’ll be whoever you want for a tour.”
Britney flipped a laminated page without looking up. “Tour?”
“Of your tattoos.”
The line felt clunky on the way out. Britney lifted her big browns from the karaoke book.
“That’s a good one. Do you have a lot of success with it?” she asked.
“Wouldn’t know. I’ve never tried it.”
“Okay.” She shifted on her stool to face him. “I’ll play.”
Britney started at a set of roman numerals on her forearm, the only tattoo he could see without a rose in the design.
“This was the day I took the Hippocratic oath. I’m a doctor.” She pulled aside the collar of her tank top, the tip of her finger separating her breasts. “This is for the first patient I lost.”
Jase thought he could fit inside a shot glass. Nothing about her tattoos or the way she gave the tour was sexy. How did he misread her this badly? She’d approached him and dragged him onstage for “Love Shack.”
Britney pulled down the strap of her tank top and angled the roman numerals interlaced by black roses on the back of her left shoulder at Jase.
“This is the date my husband was killed overseas.”
He stopped her as she twisted to show him the name Trent etched in bloody thorns on her ankle.
“I got it,” he said.
She raised her dark eyebrows and set her ankle back down.
“I wasn’t trying to be a dick,” Jase said.
“How old are you?” she asked. “Thirty? Thirty-five?”
“About that,” he admitted.
“Doesn’t it get old? Picking up women in bars?”
He never gave it much thought. Where else would he pick them up?
Where else did he go?
“I’m just here with my friends to drink and sing, not go home with some guy.” She gave him half a smile. “Not even one that looks and sounds like Warren Zeiders.”
Britney closed the karaoke binder and went back to the table with her friends, leaving Jase with a headache and a new text on his phone.
You’re not going to pick up anyone tonight if you look like a drowned rat.
He wasn’t going to pick anyone up at all. His thumb hovered over the keys with the question he would’ve asked Lindsey if he didn’t mind getting rejected twice in one night. As much as he wanted her, it wasn’t worth risking millions of dollars to try.
Jase finished his drink and hunched his shoulders under a steady rain as he headed across the parking lot to his room.
He paused outside Lindsey’s door and considered knocking.
Not for sex, just to know she hadn’t bolted.
He pulled out his phone instead and thumbed, Does your room smell as bad as mine?
After a few beats his phone buzzed.
Twisted Sister’s definitely been here too.
He smiled, fished the key from his pocket, and retreated to his room.
Alone.