SEVEN #2
The waitress arrived with our food. I never let anyone alter their diet around me, but the scent wafting from Kacey’s plate curled around my nose, rich and meaty and grilled. I glanced down at my salad that smelled like nothing and took a bite, mostly for Kacey’s sake.
“So, you have a gallery opening in October?” Kacey asked, dabbing her mouth with a napkin. “It’s too bad I won’t be around to see it. I’ll be on tour for the next bazillion years.”
“A bazillion years…that’s a long tour. I hope you like to travel.”
She shrugged. “Eh. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
“No?”
“It sounds ungrateful. Most musicians would give their right tit to be signed by a label and go on a multi-city tour, right?”
“As I have no tit to give, right or left, I couldn’t say for sure,” I said with a grin. “But from my professional observation—as your chauffeur—it doesn’t look like you’re having the time of your life.”
Her eyes flicked up to the ceiling. “What gave it away? The trashed concert venue or blacking out and puking in your limo?”
“Tie.”
She smiled. “I miss the honest music without all the theatrics, you know? I used to love just sitting with my guitar and picking out a song. Finding a riff or a melody, falling into the zone of writing lyrics.”
“Did you go to school in San Diego for music?”
“No, I didn’t go to college at all,” she said.
“But...I’ve been playing since I was a kid.
My grandmother gave me a guitar when I was ten.
I liked to play, but mostly I liked writing songs.
The guitar was a way to put the tune behind my words.
It could have been anything—a piano, drums… I just wanted to write and sing.”
“You sing too?”
“Only back-up nowadays,” she said, not quite meeting my eyes. “And I don’t write my own stuff anymore. Just songs for the band.”
“Why?”
She traced the line of one dark eyebrow absently with her finger. Her hair was blond, but her eyebrows were darker. And perfect.
“We’re a team now. I write for us,” Kacey was saying. “But in a way it’s better for me. I need the band.” She glanced up at me through lowered lashes. “I don’t do so well on my own.”
I nodded, struggling for something constructive to say. To stay focused on her words and not the little details of her face.
“I feel like everything’s moving so fast,” Kacey continued, “and I don’t have time to sit and sort things out. Like what do I want to do? Is this what I want to do? Be a rock star? Half of me says, ‘Hell yeah!’ The other half of me is scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“The lifestyle. The partying. I feel like I do that so I don’t have to make any real decisions. I just follow the band, play really loud music, and drink a lot because…”
“Because…?” I asked gently
She shrugged casually, even if her words weren’t. “Because I have nowhere else to go.”
An image of the bodyguard carrying her out of the club last night flashed through my mind, juxtaposed with the promo shot of her giving the world the finger. Vulnerable and tough at the same time.
She seems lost…
Kacey sat back and waved a hand, as if her words were cigarette smoke to dispel. “Anyway, that’s my angsty hangover story.”
I knew that wasn’t all of it. I had the impression she had a ton more stories and a ton more songs in her.
Silence fell between us as I sipped my decaf that was growing cold. A half-dozen times I started a sentence, wanting to share something with her. Something deeply personal, as if there were some cosmic scoreboard that needed to be evened up .
But my most personal thing was too much. Too dark. Kacey Dawson was luminous and I couldn’t stand the idea of watching my deepest truth settle over her like a shroud, dimming her light with its awful finality.
I toyed with my medic alert bracelet under the table. I could at least tell her why I had to eat a fucking salad instead of a burger. I started to, then the waitress appeared with her coffee carafe. She refilled Kacey’s mug, then started to fill mine.
Kacey’s hand shot out and covered my mug. “Wait! Is that regular? He can only have decaf!”
The waitress jerked the pot back with a small cry. “Damn, honey, I nearly scalded you.”
“I’m sorry,” Kacey said. “I just…it’s important.” She glanced at me.
“It’s not worth you getting burned,” I said. But the gesture touched me.
“I’ll get the other pot,” the waitress said, and retreated in a huff.
Kacey’s hand was back in her lap and her cheeks were pink. “Sorry. I got a little over-excited.”
“You go all the way up to eleven,” I said, figuring an eighties movie quote would smooth things over.
Her head shot up, a smile breaking across her face like the dawn. “ This is Spinal Tap, ” she said. “A classic.”
I held onto her eyes, felt the moment between us, warm and thick. “Thanks for guarding my coffee,” I said. “It’s important.”
Her eyes softened. “Will you tell me why?”
“I uh…I had a heart transplant,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, sitting back in her booth seat. Her eyes stared far off a moment, then she gave her head a brusque shake. “A heart transplant. But…you’re so young. Twenty-five?”
“Twenty-six. The virus that wrecked my heart didn’t give a shit how old I was.” I smiled ruefully. “Viruses are assholes like that.”
Kacey didn’t smile. She pointed toward my wrist and the medic alert bracelet. “Can I see?”
I slid my arm toward her on the table. She flipped the rectangular tag over, from the red enameled cross to the words inscribed on the other side.
“ Heart transplant patient. See wallet card .” Kacey looked up at me. “What’s on the wallet card?”
“My emergency contact info, my blood type, yadda yadda.”
Her gaze pressed me. “‘Yadda yadda’?”
“What to do in case I get in trouble.”
She nodded. Next, she’d ask what kind of trouble I could get into, and I’d make up something about medication side-effects, which was a hell of a lot easier to hear than total heart failure.
Instead, she asked, “Was it recent?”
“Almost a year and a half ago.”
Her eyes widened. “That’s really recent.
” She let go of the tag and the heel of her hand settled on mine.
A frozen, soundless moment, then her hand slid backward, palm to palm.
Her fingers curled around mine and held still.
I stared as my thumb came down on top of her knuckles and slowly moved back and forth.
The waitress came back with the orange-lipped, decaf pot. The look on her face was sour, until she saw our hands. She smiled as she topped up my cup.
“I’m sorry to hear all this,” Kacey said, when the waitress had moved on. She gave my fingers a final squeeze and let go.
I put my empty, bewildered hand in my lap. “So am I.”
Kacey toyed with her spoon. “Is it hard to talk about?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “Only the people closest to me know.”
“And I’m the newcomer busting into your personal space and asking all kinds of questions.”
“Yes,” I said, “you are goddamn nosy.”
She squawked and chucked a French fry at me. I laughed and plucked it off my lap.
“Wait, shit! You can’t have that!” Kacey reached across the table to snatch it back. “I did not just almost scald myself over your damn coffee so you could eat a fry instead.”
“Your sacrifice is duly noted.” I crammed the whole thing in my mouth, and nearly groaned in ecstasy. I’d forgotten how good a fried potato could be. Salty, greasy perfection. “Holy God, that tastes good.”
Kacey moved her plate out of my reach. “That’s all you get, buddy. I’m not going to be responsible for breaking your diet. I’ve already broken the routine you keep talking about, right? I’m a bad influence on you…”
My laughter died and my smile froze. She was right.
In the space of one lunch, Kacey had not only broken my diet, but she’d put a dent in my carefully crafted routine.
It wasn’t just taking up my time that could’ve been spent in the hot shop.
It was this. Lunch. Easy laughter and sharing.
Trusting one another with secrets. Fingers curled softly together…
This was a forbidden item on the menu.
This was bad for my heart.
I wiped my mouth with a napkin and set it on the table.
“Yeah, speaking of my schedule,” I said. “I only have a few hours before I start my shift at A-1, and you have a show tonight. We should get you back to Summerlin.”
Kacey’s smile faded away and her chin tilted at my obvious change in demeanor. “Oh. Sure.” Her luminous light dimmed. “Ready whenever you are.”