6. Rickie #2
Daphne crosses her arms and gives me the fierce, laser-beam glare that always gets me hot. “I’m not much of a drinker. Do you have a problem with that?”
“No, no,” I say quickly. “Besides, it looks like Dylan is drinking for both of you.” I point at her twin, who is holding a drink in each hand and dancing to the fiddle music. He’s in pig heaven right now.
"This is amazing," Dylan crows. "I can't believe you got Skunky Town to play at my birthday party."
"You only turn twenty-one once," May yells over the banjos.
"You’re my favorite sister ever. They’re not even from around here," Dylan says, his eyes following every move the fiddle player makes.
"Massachusetts," May's boyfriend, Alec, says. “I’m putting them up at the motor lodge. It wasn’t outrageous.”
Dylan grins, his attention still glued to the band, as it should be. He’s a party boy just like me. Living in the moment is a skill we share.
"Thank you," the guitar player says when the song ends. "And now we'd like to invite Dylan Shipley to the stage to play a song with us. Where's the birthday boy?"
"Holy shit." Dylan's grin is as wide as his whole face. “I don’t have my fiddle.”
"It's right here!" his mother says, holding up the instrument. Clearly the fix was in.
“This is crazy,” Dylan says, trading two beers for the violin. "Hope I don't humiliate myself."
That's unlikely, since he's an accomplished musician. But also, he wouldn’t care that much if he did screw it up.
"What do you want to play with us?" the front man asks.
"Uh,” Dylan chuckles again. “How about ‘Billy in the Lowground.’”
That song title means nothing to me, but the band just nods. They let Dylan take the lead, and after he tunes up, he tears into a fast-moving fiddle tune. And then they all join in.
The Shipley clan hollers their approval.
This is a killer party by any standard. The patio is decked out with strings of tiny lights that are reflected in the river flowing past us. The place is packed with well-wishers of all ages. In the center of all this mayhem, I feel serene. I've got a cold beer and a belly full of party food.
"My babies are all grown up," Ruth Shipley says, watching her son rock out on the fiddle.
“So grown up," Daphne mutters beside me. “I found his underwear in the hayloft yesterday.”
“So grown up that he can throw his ragers in the meadow legally now,” Griffin adds.
“Oh, hush,” his wife says. “But who is that? Check out your grandpa.”
We all turn to spot Grandpa Shipley right in front of the stage, swing-dancing with a gray-haired woman in a polka-dot dress.
“I don’t recognize her,” Daphne says.
“That's Mabel,” Griffin says. “They met at a poker party last month. This is their third date.”
“Go Grandpa,” I say. “You know what they say about third dates.”
“Oh, stop.” Daphne knocks my arm with her own. “Is your mind always in the gutter?”
“Pretty much.” I don’t add that it’s a recent development for me.
And that she’s the one who puts it there.
“All right, I’m hitting the bar.” I didn’t drive here, so it doesn’t matter how much I drink.
The Shipleys hired a school bus to ferry eight of us from the farm to the Gin Mill just for this special occasion. “One Coke coming up.”
“Thanks.” She nods her exquisite face, and I’m mentally kissing the rise of her cheekbone.
It’ll happen. I’m a patient man.
I head indoors to the bar to pick up two drinks from a friendly Scot named Connor. And when I go back outside, Daphne waves me over to a set of wooden stairs that I hadn’t noticed before. They lead down to the riverbank. But after walking down halfway, Daphne sits down on the stairs. “Have a seat.”
“Yes ma’am .” I follow her to the relative quiet and privacy of this hiding place. We can see moonlight glinting on the surface of the river. It’s very romantic.
“Now I have some more questions,” she says.
Of course she does.
“Did you have a roommate?”
“Your brother is my roommate.”
She rolls her eyes. “I mean before . At macho military college.”
I snort. “There are women there too, you know.” And I guess I should have seen this coming. Daphne is hard on a guy’s ego. People used to compete for a ride on the R-train. Now they just want to hear the morbid details of my head injury.
“But did you? Does your roommate know what happened to you? You must have somebody’s contact information. Was he there? Isn’t your phone full of messages asking you how you’re doing?”
These are all good points. And I probably had plenty of friends at USTSA, because I tend to make friends easily. There’s just one problem. “The rule was that you had to communicate inside the Academy’s own app. It was like WhatsApp, but a private version.”
“Why?” Her forehead gets that crinkle again.
“Security, I think. I still have the email that sent me the link to the app, and my login instructions. They were very clear that it had to be used at all times. And apparently I was a very well-behaved cadet, because all the messages on my phone during that time period are to people I knew outside of school.”
“But it’s still there, right?” she presses. “On the secure app on your phone?”
“It would be. But after I got out of the hospital, I couldn’t log back in again. Once I left school, it was like they slammed the door shut on me.” And that was even before I lawyered up, when my texts were shut off.
“Doesn’t that seem freaky to you?”
“Sure. Although I’d prefer to get our freak on another way.”
She rolls her eyes.
“To answer your question, all I’ve got is my roommate’s name, and an email address for him.” The school had sent it out during the summer, inviting us to contact one another. “His name is Paul Smith.”
She brightens. “Have you called him?”
“Baby girl, I’ve tried . His voicemail says, Mailbox full . And he doesn’t answer his emails. Some of them even bounced.”
“Really?” She sets her Coke down on the stair step. “Isn’t that kind of creepy? Did the zombies get him?”
I shrug, but it’s creepy as fuck. My mother agreed, back when we were all more comfortable talking about it.
Lenore thinks so, too. “That’s really just one flower in a big bouquet of creepy.
You know what’s also creepy? Hearing that you and I spent six hours in a car together, and not remembering it at all. ”
She tilts her head and gives me a look that’s uncharacteristically soft. “I’m sorry if I was bitchy about it.”
“You weren’t. I promise. In fact, go ahead and yell at me some more, so that I have an excuse to distract you with my mouth.”
Her eyes widen. And although it’s fairly dark out here, I swear she’s blushing. At least I hope she is. This is the first time I’ve brought up that kiss.
“Or better yet—I can just kiss you again for funzies.”
She tilts her head back, leaning it against the railing. And I swear she’s giving this thought some serious consideration. “It’s a bad idea, McFly.”
I love the new nickname she’s given me. “How bad?” I have to ask. “Kind of a fan of bad ideas.”
She smiles and shakes her head.
And then we’re interrupted. Because of course we are.
“Daphne,” her sister May says, leaning down to address us in our private little hideout. “Can I see you a moment?”
Daphne actually looks put out by this request, so at least I’m making a little headway.
It’s something. I’ll take it.