19. A Day in the Life
19
A DAY IN THE LIFE
O’CONNOR
After effortlessly hijacking my podcast, Archer blessed me with the glory of his triangular grin. He acted as if nothing had happened.
My only recourse was to pack up my camera gear, lock it away in the BFT, grab my duffel, and hide in the bathrooms for a foolishly long time.
I washed and conditioned my hair. I dried every strand from root to tip. I did some deep moisturizing. I used a buffer on my feet. I stripped off my nail polish and reapplied. Two coats plus a top coat.
All the while, I was reeling from his philosophy. Somehow, Archer had turned vanity into a virtue, and that just wasn’t right. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but he was wrong. He had to be wrong. Because vanity was—was weak. It showed bad character. It was selfish, and petty, and?—
I couldn’t figure it out. Plus, there was no denying that his rant was unquestionably going to get millions of views .
Damn. How had I lost control?
The more immediate problem was that I wasn’t witnessing a Casanova running through women like Jack the Ripper. I’d pitched my book to my agent—and he was pitching the book to publishers—as the story of an alley cat using his physical beauty to fuck his way across the country. I couldn’t use a celibate Archer. I needed Archer up and screwing.
Grr.
When I couldn’t think of a single additional grooming detail to attend to, I packed my gear up with a sigh and made my way back to the tent, wishing I’d brought long johns and flannels to sleep in instead of yoga pants and a tee.
The man was sound asleep. Burrowed into a sleeping bag until just the crown of his golden head was visible. How flattering. Definitely not attempting to get laid at any cost.
Even more insulting? He’d gotten the dog to sprawl on the middle mattress. Like a big, slobbery wall between us.
I stepped out of my sneakers and struggled with the awkwardness of getting into a nylon sleeping bag the shape of a mummy in a tomb. Honestly, this was ridiculous. I’d done podcasts entirely on mattress density. I had two very popular YouTube videos that focused exclusively on thread count. I’d been offered (and refused) a hundred thousand dollars to endorse a pillow that didn’t meet my standards.
And here I was, in a tent in the middle of nowhere, lying on a balloon. Christ.
I huffed and grimaced and decided that it might be tolerable if I’d hiked a mountain range all day and was thus physically exhausted, but as it stood, I was never going to get to sleep.
And then I fell asleep.
Charlotte’s whine woke me. I had no idea what time it was. Daylight was filtering through the red walls of the tent, and the huge, gray dog beside me had her head raised on alert .
Which brought me to alert too. What was it?
A bear?
A mountain lion? These wild places in the middle of nowhere had big wildlife, didn’t they? Big, hungry wildlife?
I rose on one elbow. Charlotte and I were ready for action.
A hand reached out and soothed the fur on the back of the dog’s neck. “It’s the guy from the gate,” Archer said sleepily. “He’s doing the garbage. Lie down, baby. Lie down, Char. It’s okay, girl.”
Once he spoke, I could hear the sound of a cart rumbling over rough road. Not the roar of the wild after all. I lay down again, but Charlotte was not convinced.
“Happens every day,” Archer murmured. “You’d think she’d figure it out, huh?”
My own adrenaline rush was subsiding. I could smile at the silliness of a potential bear attack. “She’s ready to defend you.”
“She’s ready to see what’s in the garbage,” he corrected. “Come on, girl. Lie down.”
I fought to get a hand out of my sleeping bag and reached out to pet her too. “Good girl, Charlotte. You save us from those pumas.”
“Pumas.” Archer chuckled. “Those famous Tennessee pumas.”
“I bet there are mountain lions in Tennessee.”
“Hm.” His response said he was too sleepy to pursue the point.
My fingers grazed against his. I inhaled, startled by the warmth, the firmness of his skin against mine. I froze.
But his hand kept moving until it slid over mine, adding me into the caress.
And then he stopped moving, too, his fingers curling around mine.
I was caught in a startling moment of intimacy. What did this mean? What was he thinking? What did I want? What should I do?
And what did it mean that I curled my little finger out just far enough to interlace with his?
I was holding hands with Archer Armstrong. And I didn’t know what to make of that.
The strange, confusing moment of still warmth was broken when Charlotte gave up her watch. Heaving a massive doggy sigh, she rolled onto her shoulder, breaking the connection, and landed with her head heavy on my stomach.
“Oof!” I laughed. “Your girlfriend is jealous, I think.”
I could see him now that her head was no longer between us. He curled onto his side and smiled drowsily as he tucked his hand back into the sleeping bag. “Looks to me like she’s claimed you for herself. Not the kind of jealousy you were expecting, huh?”
Lids fell over those dazzling blue eyes like a curtain falling at the end of an act. He was asleep again.
But I lay awake a while longer, absently fondling Charlotte’s silky ears as I thought about my reaction to Archer.
By now, I knew he was spectacular onstage—that his ability to be charming in front of an audience was part of his success. But there was no denying that the guy also had it in him to be charming one on one, even while maintaining his belief that he was God’s gift to women.
So, what did that mean? Was I succumbing to this rock-star Romeo? And what would that do for my publishing career?
If I wanted to write a blistering tell-all, then I needed Archer Armstrong to tell me all.
And I needed that to start happening pretty damned soon.
Charlotte woke us up for what Archer called a sniff-and-poop just as the sun was setting.
“This vampire lifestyle,” I said when the three of us regrouped after our visits to various bathrooms or bushes. “It’s a little strange, I have to say.”
“I know,” Archer said. “Sorry. Can you stand a little trip to the dog park before we have breakfast? Or dinner? Or whatever you want to call the next meal?”
We packed up, waved to the campground guy, and headed back to the same dog run where Charlotte could lope about and stretch her long puppy legs. Archer stood behind a bench in the fading light and looked at me. “You should feel free to mock me, but I’m going to do a little workout now.”
Shrugging, I joined him. Some of his routine was reasonable, and I could keep up. Fifty push-ups off the back of the bench? I was there. Fifty off the seat? Harder. Fifty on the ground? No, thanks.
Fifty squats. Fifty lunges across the dog park, which made plenty of bundled-up dog owners grin or shake their heads at us. Fifty jumping jacks, only slightly complicated by the number of dogs who gathered around to bark joyfully at us.
Fifty horrible repetitions of some knee-out-to-the-side-and-up-with-lat-pulldown that I hated. Fifty bicycle crunches on the tarmac of the parking lot, which I refused to do. Fifty V-sits, during which I leaned on the bumper of the truck and watched. Fifty complaints that there wasn’t a good place to do chin-ups.
“Jeez,” I said when he finished. “Are you done?”
“That’s one,” he said happily. “Just two more sets.”
“Oh, come on! You’re going to do all that twice more?”
“Well, yeah. I mean . . .” He gestured vaguely down his body and then shook his head at me in confusion.
I threw my hands in the air. “Go ahead. Say it. This body doesn’t exist by accident.”
“Well, it doesn’t.” He began with the push-ups on the back of the bench again.
“Next time, let’s try a little yoga.” I sat on the bench .
He stopped. “You do yoga? I hear that’s really good for the body.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Show me.”
‘Um, now?” It was fully dark and the sodium-vapor lights had come on, casting the dog park in unnatural shadows.
“Why not? Come on, here’s a place with no dog poo. Show me something.”
“Oh, sheesh. Well, I guess we could try a Sun Salutation.”
It was very wrong of me to be secretly pleased that the mighty Archer Armstrong was so inflexible. He muttered at attempting to touch the ground with straight legs, he thought the Runner’s Lunge was impossible, he almost fell over from laughing when various dogs licked his face during the Downward-Facing Dog, and I could almost hear his vertebrae creak during the Cobra. But he kept up and demanded we do it twice more. Two women and one guy joined us. We had a whole yoga studio going on outside in early November in the darkness.
“Better,” Archer said with satisfaction. “I got much closer to the ground that time. That really stretches out the hamstrings, huh?”
He had to run after Charlotte to corral her, which she enjoyed, but at last he clipped her leash to her collar.
“Your dog is not well-behaved,” I noted.
“She’s brilliant onstage. That’s all that matters.”
Charlotte collapsed happily in the back-seat area. She was sound asleep by the time Archer found us a diner. He parked where we could keep an eye on the dog from inside, and then we faced each other across a booth.
He ordered an egg-white omelet and a green salad from a waitress who couldn’t take her eyes off him. I was eyeing the chili, but his good example forced me to go with the broiled cod and steamed vegetables. Sigh.
Time to get organized .
“So, Archer. Tell me about your first kiss.”
He leaned back in the booth and grinned at me. “Trying to track down the origin of all those teeth, huh?”
I smiled. “Just curious. I’ll bet you started early.”
“Early? You could say that. I think I was five.”
I shook my head. “I’m not talking about kissing your mother.”
“Please.” He pretended offense. “I’m talking about my fiancée.”
He made me chuckle. “You were engaged at the age of five?”
“Might have been four. I can’t quite remember.”
“I’m sure. What was her name?”
He paused, his gaze going distant. He snapped back to focused and regarded me. “You know, I can’t remember.”
“You can’t remember the name of your fiancée? You are an inconsistent lover, Archer.”
“That may be true. But she and I were definitely getting married, and we kissed. Often.” He waggled his eyebrows at me.
“That’s . . . a little gross, Archer.”
“I happen to be a great kisser. Your experience notwithstanding. These were great kisses in which we would fling our arms around each other like grappling hooks.”
“Like—like what?”
“You know. Like there was no thought of holding someone. This was just flinging. Like this.”
Graceful as a willow in the breeze, he shifted his ass up and around the table, and then he was in the booth next to me. I turned, surprised, and his arms swung wide, wrapping me in an awkward embrace that left my shoulder in his armpit and my laughing face mashed against his neck.
“Very tender,” I gasped.
“Very tender,” he agreed. “And then the kiss?— ”
He pulled back from me just enough to find my mouth. Close-lipped, he bumped into my face and bounced off again.
My laughter was helpless. My amusement burbled out of me. He let go of me and swung back to his seat across from me.
“It was just mashing our mouths together,” he said, rubbing his lower lip with one finger. “Although now that I think of it, there really was kind of a lot of teeth in that, huh? Think that’s where it started?”
“Banging your skull against someone else’s? Yeah, maybe.” I found that I was sorry he’d moved back to his seat.
“Anyway, I hope you think my technique has improved a little since then.”
“Not nearly as violent,” I agreed. “You’re to be commended.”
“Thank you. Now, what was your first kiss?”
I shied away from the thought. “No, come on. I want the first real kiss. Not with the unnamed fiancée at five.”
“Maybe four.”
“Maybe four. What was the first kiss when you figured out that you liked women? Or girls? Were you, what, six?”
He chuckled. “All right. Let’s see. Okay, that would be Katie Nimmick. I was in sixth grade, and she was an older woman. Seventh grade.” He waggled his eyebrows at me, and I chuffed a laugh.
“Such a scandal,” I said.
“Oh, you know it. We were in shop class, and there was this big door that led out to the yard. I was outside clapping erasers against the wall, you know? It was a privilege to do it because you could make patterns on the brick. It was cool.”
“Chalk erasers? You didn’t have whiteboards?”
“Not in shop class. Mr. Wise was old-school. Anyway, I was clapping erasers, and Katie comes storming out the door like she’s on a mission. She backs me up against the wall and says, ‘I’m going to show you something.’ And then she kisses me. I’ve liked strong women ever since.” He grinned at me, looking entirely too satisfied with himself.
“And what,” I queried, “was the ratio of lips to teeth in that kiss?”
“Want me to show you?”
The waitress arrived with our food. Overhearing his remark, she staggered slightly but managed to provide our meal without actually spilling anything. He rocked her world with the unconscious beauty of his smile, and she wandered off in a daze.
“So, you got your start in sixth grade, then. Did you pass on her demonstration to others?”
“I absolutely did.” Archer might have been vain, but he had good table manners. He managed to fork in his omelet, grin, and answer me, all without showing me the contents of his mouth. “Literally. I tried the ‘I’m going to show you something’ on some of the more willing members of my class until I refined my technique and got a bit more innovative.”
“Really. What other lines did you use?”
His throaty giggle was endearing. “Well, I’ll tell you, but you have to understand that everyone needs some fails to make any progress.”
“I’m prepared. Tell me a fail.”
He dropped his fork, startling me. His hand darted forward, capturing mine, and he leaned in, gazing at me with blue-eyed intensity. “I would really like . . . to be your first kiss.”
His focus held as my eyebrows went up. Then he shot that glorious grin at me and sat back.
“You did not say that to someone,” I said, shaking myself from the daze.
“Several someones. I mean, there’s only so long a guy can use the line, right? Once you get past, oh, eighth grade? Then you’re some scary pedophile lecher. Strike while the iron is hot, you know? ”
“And was the iron hot?” His exceptionally cheesy line was requiring me to swallow some giggles.
“Hot enough. Until I stupidly used it on Cassie Burton.”
“Why was that stupid? Had Cassie Burton already shared her first kiss with someone else?”
“No, I was the first.”
“At least you remember that one’s name.”
“And we weren’t even engaged.” He ate his salad, disinterested in my amusement. “But she was the sister of Elizabeth Burton, who was my sister Tina’s best friend, and that’s when that line had to be retired.”
“Why? Your sister found out?”
“Oh yeah. And teased me about it for years. She still teases me about it when she remembers. All her friends do.”
He was relaxed and happy in the memory—a memory that would have made me writhe in embarrassment. “That didn’t bother you?”
“It would bother me more if I didn’t know how many of my sister’s friends I’ve kissed.” He was smug. “And unless I miss my guess, in a lot of cases I was their first kiss.”
I shook my head. “You are arrogant.”
“Better honest arrogance?—”
“Oh, I’m really glad I shared that quote with you.”
“I love that quote. It’s my new motto.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“Now tell me about your first kiss, O’Connor.”
I shook my head, and he was distracted by the waitress, who had regrouped enough to return with offers of pie. The way she said it clearly meant something else.
She blushed when he refused, and while I might have liked a slice of pie, I didn’t want to encourage her lingering. I had asked for the check when Archer’s phone rang.
“Brother Ianacus! What’s the good word, man?”
Archer tried to pick up the check as he stood to take his call outside, but I waved him off. I paid (making sure to tip generously, Archer’s words ringing in my head), and joined him and the sleeping Charlotte in the BFT.
He was grinning as he started the truck.
“What?” I asked. “Did Cassie Burton ask for a date?”
“ ‘Street Dancing’ is going into heavy rotation on Hits 1 . That’s SiriusXM,” he explained unnecessarily. “Nationwide.”
“And ‘Street Dancing’ is your first song on SiriusXM?”
“Second. ‘The Salesman’ was in heavy rotation nine months ago. That’s how Sheree heard us and asked us to be her opener on the North American tour.”
“And ‘The Salesman’ was your song, right? I mean, you wrote it?”
“Well.” He shrugged, following the GPS to the next destination. “We all pretty much wrote it together.”
“But it’s about your experiences as a salesman, though, right?”
“Yeah. I wrote the words, and the guys helped me with the music. They’re much more musical than I am.”
“That doesn’t seem right. Not if your song was the first to make it to heavy rotation.”
“First, but it won’t be the last.”
I’d forgotten that Archer was a musician as well as a front man. “Are you writing anything now?”
He ducked his head. “Um.” Archer Armstrong, unsure of himself? This required immediate follow-up.
“You are working on something! A love song to Cassie Burton?”
He laughed. “You’ll think it’s funny. And I guess it is.”
“What? Tell me.”
“I’m writing a song about . . . uh, my truck.”
I burst out laughing. “How very ‘guy’ of you. Are you really? Is it called ‘The BFT?’ ”
“It’s called ‘Freedom,’ ” he said, “which is the most overused name in music, but that’s what it’s called. And the first three lines of the chorus? The starting letters? They begin with B , F , and T . So the people who know? They’ll get it.”
“Sing it for me,” I demanded.
He’d gotten us to the highway. Traffic was light, and we’d moved past street lighting. Maybe the darkness gave him courage, for he began to sing in the voice that had held thousands transfixed.
Built to soar over bumps in the road
Fueled by dreams and the need to just go
Taillights not needed, not gonna brake
Freedom
Everywhere goes to everywhere
And you don’t have to know where you’re going
It’s enough to be behind the wheel, keeping time
Chasing the headlights, eating up miles
They say all roads lead to Rome
I say they lead to freedom
What’s around that curve?
Let’s go see
Built to soar over bumps in the road
Fueled by dreams and the need to just go
Taillights not needed, not gonna brake
Freedom
Summer air through the window, winter ice on defrost
Apple-blossom blizzard, fall leaves caught in a fantail
Silence descends once I’m gone. Still. Empty. Flat .
Every leaf longing for the next chance
To be picked up, tossed, carried on the current,
Dizzy with the rush of adrenaline
Built to soar over bumps in the road
Fueled by dreams and the need to just go
Taillights not needed, not gonna brake
Freedom
“Shit,” I breathed once he’d finished the final chorus. “That’s—that’s so good, Archer.”
“Yeah? I don’t know. Ian and Mal—all their stuff rhymes, you know?”
“It doesn’t need to rhyme. It’s really . . . shit, Archer. Sing it again.”
He chuckled. I made him sing it twice more.
“All right,” I said. “I have thoughts.”