Chapter 10
Hannah wipes the high-top table with a napkin, then produces a folder from her bag and slaps it down.
“Here you go,” she shouts over the sound of the terrible singer on the corner stage and the testosterone-fueled guffawing at the table next to us. A group of guys who look like they’d whip you with a chain as soon as look at you are playing a drinking game that seems to involve impugning each other’s masculinity and banging their fists on the table.
If only we could move, but it’s a busy night at The Wolf’s Tooth Tavern and we were lucky to get a table at all. And I’m certain we got that only because the host took a shine to Hannah’s ass.
The length of time he stared at it, after pointing toward the one empty table and making her lead the way, made me want to kick him in the nuts—which likely isn’t enough of a crime in here to get me thrown out.
I couldn’t exactly blame him, though. She looks phenomenal. Those tight blue pants are a treat to behold, and the spike-heeled ankle boots seem to lift her grabbable round butt to a whole other level. The fact it’s topped by a vintage The Cure T-shirt pulled tight with a knot at the waistband and a battered old biker jacket just adds to the sexy rock chick look. Or maybe it’s the hot pink lipstick that does it. Who knows? But combine it with the way the inside of her head works, and the whole spicy package is like a rocket to my crotch.
And my crotch does not require rockets. From Hannah or anyone. I only just got divorced, for fuck’s sake.
“What is it?” I shout back, pointing at the folder and wincing as the singer searches for a high note nowhere to be found.
“Your first band package,” she says with a satisfied smile.
“Band package?” I hang my wool coat on the back of my chair. Then instantly take it off again and lay it across my lap. I’m not leaving anything where I can’t see it.
“Yup.” She nudges the folder closer to me, indicating I should just open the damn thing and look.
And there inside, tabulated and labeled, are bios of each band member with an accompanying photograph, a short history of the group, and a table of their online follower numbers.
Wow.
“Have you done this for all three bands?”
“Yup.” She reaches across, encouraging me to lift the folder off the table and save it from the beer slopping from two glasses the server’s plonking in front of us.
“Enjoy,” he grunts as he squeezes his way behind my chair, knocking me into the table, slopping more beer.
I hold Hannha’s work of administrative art in the air to save it from the mess.
She yanks more napkins from the napkin holder and mops it up. “And there’s this.”
She reaches back into her bag, produces a laminated grid, and holds it up in front of her like a proud magician who’s just made the rabbit reappear.
“What’s that?”
“A scorecard,” she says with an implied duh.
Across the top are the names of the three bands we’re seeing tonight—The Romeo Club, Divine Justice, and Jane Doe and the Stags.
“You rate each of them out of ten for these categories.” She points at the rows labelled Appearance, Music, Charisma, Commercial Appeal, Audience Reaction. “Then you add them up and write the total here.” She indicates the bottom row named Rank of Awesomeness.
“That’s very…”
I stumble for a word that isn’t hot, sexy as all hell, or cute because for some reason this level of organizational delightfulness is all three. Or perhaps it’s just the fact it’s Hannah’s organizational delightfulness.
“…thoughtful.” That’s nice and innocuous. “How on earth did you manage to do all this in the last week, as well as all the other work I gave you? And on top of the cleaning and the two days you worked in Jude’s shop?”
“I’m efficient.” She hands me the scorecard as the gang of semi-humans next to us slam their shot glasses on the table and punch the air with a roar.
Our attention is taken by a faint ripple of applause that fans out from the corner near the stage as the dreadful singer holds his guitar in the air, jumps down, and heads out back.
He’s replaced by a bearded guy with a straggly ponytail who’s obviously never met a bar of soap he got along with and who appears to be the MC for the evening.
“That was Sean Murphy. Now welcome The Romeo Club,” he says with all the enthusiasm of someone about to have a root canal.
Four guys who look like their parents might be worried about them being out so late jump on stage and take their spots at the drums and mics that had been sitting unused behind Sean Murphy.
A group of eager fans at the front stand up and clap their hands over their heads.
The scrawny lead singer checks that his bandmates are ready to go and clutches the mic stand. Behind him the drummer smacks his sticks together four times and then the stage erupts with drum banging, guitar thrashing, and some sort of chanted lyrics that if played backward probably contain a message from the devil.
I turn back to Hannah, who’s staring at the stage, open-mouthed, her eyes full of what might be about to become tears.
This is the first band of the night and her first pick.
And it’s obvious after three seconds that they are truly fucking awful. If I gave the drunk Neanderthals on the table next to us a couple of trash can lids and a kazoo, they’d probably come up with something more melodic.
Hannah gets to her spike-heeled feet, stares at the table, and shakes her head. “Enough.”
At least I think that’s what she said. It wasn’t audible over the racket behind me, and I’m basing it more on reading those bright pink lips.
She looks like she’s trying to head for the door, but she’s taken only two quick steps when her way is blocked by a man’s back approximately the width of a bus, across which is stretched a shirt bearing the words Megadeth. Wake-Up Dead Tour. 1987.
She tries to get by, but there’s a pillar on one side of him and a table on the other.
Eventually, she gingerly taps his meaty bicep, and he turns to look down at her with a glint in his eye that suggests he’d quite like to fling her over his shoulder and lug her back to his cave.
Shit. My only path around our table to get to her is blocked by a couple shot-slinging Neanderthals.
Hannah points ahead of her, indicating to Mr. Megadeth she’d like to pass, and his face broadens into the type of smile seen only on horror movie villains.
Fuck it. I grab the lovingly made folder, shove the blank scorecard inside, and tuck it under my arm. Snatching up my coat, I plant my ass on the table and swivel my legs over to the other side.
My feet hit the floor, and I lunge for Hannah’s waist just as one of Mr. Megadeth’s giant meat hooks heads for her shoulder. I yank her to my side and out of his reach in the nick of time.
“What the—” She shoots daggers at me.
“Maybe not the best choice of exit route,” I tell her, before turning to Mr. Megadeth. “Sorry about that. She’s with me.”
He scans me from head to foot, then turns to Hannah and raises a pair of eyebrows a Weedwacker would struggle to bring under control. “Like ’em fancy, huh?”
Her face flames as she opens her mouth to probably get us into way more trouble than anyone needs. And by “anyone,” I mean “me.”
“How about I find us a better way out?” I shout into her ear and pull her toward the bar.
“I don’t need you to?—”
“Argue with me outside,” I say, turning her away from me and placing my hands firmly on either side of her waist.
Over the top of her head, I give my most gracious smile to a woman swinging her beer bottle to what might be the beat of the thrashing band, and shout, “Excuse me.”
Keeping a tight grip on Hannah, I walk her ahead of me through the crowd, pushing between grizzled bikers, a group of women wearing the state’s entire supply of black eyeliner, and some student types who must surely have fake IDs, until we eventually reach the front door.
Hannah flings it open.
The wall of cold, damp air slaps me in the face as she rips my hands from her waist and spins around.
“I’m quite capable of getting out of a bar without being manhandled by you.” She hitches her bag onto her shoulder and runs her fingers through her hair, which gleams like white gold in the lights of a passing car.
For the love of God. “I wasn’t about to have that thrash metal giant put his sausage fingers all over you.”
She fans herself like she’s about to swoon on a fainting couch. “Oh, however have I coped until ten days ago when you swooped into my life to save me?” Then slams her hands into her jacket pockets and bores holes into my face with her defiant eyes. “I can handle myself, Tom. Because I’ve had to handle myself.”
She stomps toward where our driver’s parked, the damp sidewalk shining in the light of the streetlamps. After a few steps, she turns to face me and walks backward. “And it’s none of your fucking business who puts their hands all over me.”
Then her knees buckle. One of her spike heels is caught between two paving slabs. As her legs crumble underneath her, her arms windmill, trying to keep her upright. But it’s too late. Her angry momentum carries her back until her ass lands slap in the middle of a puddle.
“For fuck’s sake.” She tries to scrabble to her feet but fails at everything other than looking like a four-legged dancing spider with one trapped foot.
All I want to do is wrap my arms around her waist and lift her upright. But given her reaction to the Mr. Megadeth incident, I can’t assume that would be considered helpful.
I stand over her, coat and folder still tucked under my arm, gripping the inner lining of my jeans pockets to prevent myself from reaching out. “Am I allowed to help you now?”
She stares at the ground and silently reaches up with one hand.
This is the first time we’ve held hands for seventeen years. But it’s not the type of hand-holding filled with emotion or affection. This is purely practical, to get her backside out of the puddle. But there’s something natural about it. Like her hand has always belonged in mine. Like for the last seventeen years my hand has been empty without hers.
As soon as she’s upright, she immediately lets go. No unnecessary touching required, obviously.
“Thank you,” she says with all the gratitude of a homeowner receiving a bill from an emergency plumber.
“Take this.” I hold the folder out to her.
She shoves it back into her bag. “Yeah, pointless waste of time,” she mutters as I crouch down beside her and take hold of her ankle and stuck boot. “What are you doing?”
“Helping.”
I sense her hand inches from my back as she almost allows herself to lean on me for support but changes her mind, preferring to wobble.
It takes two tugs and several defiant arm flaps to extract her heel from between the paving slabs.
“And the band package was not a waste of time.” I straighten, but she doesn’t step away. “The scorecard was a great idea. And the summary of everything in the folder was great too. I’m terrible at remembering things like that, so putting it all in one place was great. It’s all great.”
“Well, the band was shit.” She lifts her previously trapped foot and runs a thumb along the fresh scrape on the heel of her boot. “So obviously I have no clue what I’m doing and I shouldn’t have bothered and I shouldn’t be here and you shouldn’t have given me this job, which you don’t need me to do anyway, and we should just go back and?—”
My hand on her upper arm silences her word vomit.
Her foot drops to the ground, and her eyes dart to where my fingers rest. Slowly, her gaze slides up my arm, over my shoulder, and up to meet mine.
I give her a beat to move away, but she doesn’t. “One bad band choice does not a bad evening make.”
She looks down at the sidewalk as the mist from my breath brushes her face. “But I watched some stuff online and they seemed like they had real promise, so I’m obviously a terrible judge.”
“Hey.” I let go of her arm, pinch her chin between my thumb and forefinger, and tip her face up to look at me. “It doesn’t matter. All it cost us was two beers and twenty minutes in a scene from a Saw movie.” She almost laughs. Almost. “I once signed—actually signed—a band who it turned out had been singing to a backing track the whole time, and we didn’t find out till they got in the studio. Cost me a whole lot more than two beers and twenty minutes to get out of that one.”
She grimaces in sympathy.
An inconvenient urge to slide my hand over her cheek and push my fingers into her hair rises within me. But that would be problematic in ways too numerous to count, so I shove it back down and let go of her chin. “And the last live music you saw was Nickelback coming out of a violin and a cello, so it has to be the third time’s a charm, right?”
I get the one-shouldered shrug. “At least I think the other two venues will be better than that bar.”
“Then if nothing else we’ve gotten out and gone to a couple bars. If the bands are great, bonus. If not, you and I will have had a good evening. Right?”
“Well…” She looks along the street to where the car’s parked. “The driver has brought us all the way up here. And your mom is already looking after Dylan.”
“Exactly. So let’s not waste the opportunity.”
She nods.
Hallelujah.
We head off, side by side, toward our waiting driver.
We might be spending only a couple months in each other’s company, but we might as well try to enjoy it. Also, I’m itching to know what her life’s been like. What the story is with why she left the last guy. And why she’s so fixated on California being the solution.
I open the car door and she climbs in.
“Ew.” Her face contorts as her wet backside hits the seat.
Without thinking, I fold my coat into an absorbent cushion. “Here.”
She takes it with a nod of thanks and shoves it between her fabulous arse and the seat.
As I slide in beside her, I hold out my hand. “Who’s next?”
She reaches into her bag and, with a smile that lights up the damp night and a corner of my heart that’s been dark for a very long time, pulls out a folder marked “Divine Justice.”