Chapter Four #2
Nicky chuckled. ‘Not going in soft. Okay, I appreciate that.’ He idly fingered the flickering electronic votive in the middle of the table, staring at it with a faraway look. ‘Uh, right now it’s good. Sometimes it’s amazing. Other times … terrible.’
‘Gloriously vague,’ Lucy said, smiling.
‘I don’t know how to quantify it. Music is more than a job, I guess. More even than a career.’ He paused for a moment, thinking. Looked up to her and added, ‘I don’t want to get all woo-woo on you here. I try to save all my crazy up for the second date.’
Shit on a stick. Is this a fucking date?
Lucy glossed right over the slightly terrifying implication of his comment and said, ‘I work at a liberal arts university, woo-woo is my bread and butter.’
‘Okay, how do I explain it?’ he asked, gazing at her as though she might have an answer.
‘Music is part of everything I do. Every day. It’s how I move through the world.
It’s an internal soundtrack, and the ambient noise of life all around.
So, to call it work, like this thing that I do and then stop doing seems …
’ His voice trailed off, like he was searching for the right word.
‘Insufficient?’ she offered.
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘Insufficient. What about you? What’s your work like?’
‘Not as exciting as yours,’ she replied. ‘I’m a college professor. Well, associate professor, but I’m up for tenure this year.’
‘Something in music?’
‘Sort of, but not— Wait, why would you think that?’
‘You really seemed to love it.’
The fact that he remembered that about her – and the space buns, of all things – sent a warm, fuzzy feeling coursing through her limbs.
‘I did.’ She corrected, ‘I do . But technically my area is American Cultural Studies. Which is just a fancy way of saying pop culture, TV, movies, music. All of it. I mostly focus on the second half of the twentieth century.’
‘College sounds like a lot more fun than I was led to believe.’
‘Well, technically, what I teach is history now.’
‘Jesus,’ he griped.
‘Right?’ Lucy replied. ‘It’s a trip. The students this coming year in my 101 classes were born in 2005.’
‘ What? ’ he bellowed, astonished.
‘Uh-huh.’ Lucy didn’t feel her age often, but when she looked at the birth years of her students it really hit her.
Nicky shook his head. ‘It’s like one minute you’re still dreaming up ways to have everything you want and the next you’re googling “how do I reduce my cholesterol?”’
‘It happened overnight,’ Lucy added.
‘Yes! When was it for you?’
Lucy took a moment to think about it. ‘Forty, I guess.’
‘Me too.’
‘Fucking sucks,’ Lucy concluded.
‘It really does.’
The server returned with their drinks, popping in and out like a phantom.
Lucy took a glug of her Old Fashioned. Delicious. Perfect.
Nicky rucked his sleeves back up to his elbows and sipped his beer. Lucy tried to breathe and not to stare at his tattoos. Failed miserably.
On his forearm was something that looked like it might be a blue narwhal.
Delicately inked words that started on his forearm did a little twist up around his elbow and higher, disappearing under his shirtsleeve.
Lucy had a sudden vision of charting Nicky’s skin, exploring every last splash of ink and recording it like some kind of sexed-up tattoo cartographer.
She couldn’t be the only one, though. Not when it came to Nicky Broome.
There was probably a website dedicated to it somewhere. She’d look it up later.
Nicky leaned over his elbows on the table. ‘Okay, it’s time.’
Lucy’s heart thumped uncomfortably. She knew they would have to talk about it at some point, but she wasn’t ready. Hedging, she asked, ‘Time for what?’
‘First, what’s your poison? Apple Music? Amazon? Maybe Spotify? Tidal?’
Oh, thank God. She took another sip as she waited for her heart rate to settle out of cardiac arrest territory.
‘Spotify,’ she said finally.
‘Me too. Okay, let’s see it,’ Nicky said, beckoning with his hand.
‘I don’t know. That’s kind of personal,’ Lucy teased.
‘Come on,’ he teased right back. He held up his phone and waggled it in front of her. ‘I’ll show you mine.’
How could anyone resist that?
‘Fine,’ she said, ‘but don’t go moving things around.’
‘Promise.’ He mimed crossing his heart.
Lucy retrieved her phone from her little evening clutch on the seat beside her. She unlocked the phone and clicked to open the app. She slipped it into Nicky’s waiting hand, just as he did the same.
She scrolled through his playlists. They had names like Blah and Orange and Wishbone , so she just picked one at random.
‘What’d you get?’ he asked.
‘Marshmallow?’
‘That’s a good one. For workouts.’
Lucy took a deeper look at the list and grinned. ‘Yeah, I see what kind of workout you’re getting.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘These are all sex songs,’ Lucy replied plainly.
‘They are not!’ he exclaimed, with a teasing smile.
‘Uh, you have “Pour Some Sugar on Me” in here.’
‘One song!’
Lucy flicked down the list, laughing as she went. ‘“Tush,” “Crazy on You,” “Give Me All Your Lovin’,” “You Shook Me All Night Long,” “Whole Lotta Love”? Shall I continue?’
‘Okay, okay,’ he griped.
Lucy dug further into his lists.
‘Oh, Nicky!’ she gasped.
‘What?’
‘This playlist called Furniture. The Smithereens?’
‘What’s wrong with The Smithereens?’
‘The best thing about The Smithereens is their name.’
Nicky’s mouth dropped open. ‘“Blood and Roses”? “A Girl Like You”?’
Lucy shook her head. Nope. Not going to convince me.
‘Okay, no Smithereens. Interesting.’ He looked back down at her playlists and said, ‘What made you want to go into teaching?’
Good question. One she’d asked herself plenty.
She tried, ‘It wasn’t teaching so much; it was academia in general, I guess.
I got to college and it felt like, I don’t know, a warm hug.
’ It sounded dumb, but Lucy remembered the feeling of peace and stability that had enveloped her at college.
At eighteen, it had felt like the best kind of drug.
She continued, ‘It was comfortable. Nice. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of backstabbing and underhanded garbage like in every workplace, but it’s just so …
cozy . I don’t know how else to put it. The campus and the old buildings and the library.
The students who mostly don’t want to drink themselves to early cirrhosis.
The dedication to thinking. Valuing thought and experimentation and ideas.
It appeals to me in a way few other things do. ’
Nicky hummed his understanding, but also stared at her lips and clutched her phone like he was trying to Hulk-smash it with his grip.
‘Did you ever go?’ Lucy asked. ‘To college?’
‘Nope,’ he replied.
‘Well, it’s where I’m the happiest, I guess,’ Lucy finished.
Maybe that was still true. Probably. She looked down at Nicky’s phone again, flipped to a different playlist. ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait just one minute. There is an awful lot of David Lee Roth in here and almost no Sammy Hagar. Are you—’ She feigned a look of shock and horror. ‘Are you Team David?’
‘Oh, shit,’ he played right along. ‘You’re a Sammy lover?’
‘Of course!’ she replied. ‘As though David Lee Roth could compete. Ha! Impossible.’
‘Ouch,’ he said pressing a hand over his chest dramatically. ‘It hurts.’
She laughed at the histrionics, and Nicky winked at her.
Lucy felt that wink in her panties, and got the distinct impression that yeah, she was probably on a fucking date. And it was also very likely that she was in deep, deep trouble.