Chapter 2
Andi
July’s is hopping, as always. I was planning to order carryout, but Rose and Angus wave me over to their booth.
“Sit with us!” Rose nods to the empty bench seat across from them. They always sit on the same side, holding hands or playing footsie or god knows what under the table. It would be sickening if it weren’t so fascinating.
I’ve known Angus forever, but Rose has only been in town for a year or so. I’ve only gotten to know her well these past few months. When I’m with them, I have trouble noticing anything but their interactions. The scary-looking wall of a man and the short, smiling bouncy ball of a woman, the way they tease and pretend-gripe at each other, the naked adoration in their eyes when they look at each other. His big, scarred thumb so gentle, rubbing the nape of her neck. The way she’ll put a hand on his chest and pretend to push him away…but then just let it linger there over his heart.
I watch them and wonder how they’re different when they’re alone rather than in public. For the life of me, I can’t picture them changing. There is absolutely nothing in their gaze suggesting broken trust or fear or pretense…just warmth and contentment and delight in each other.
Hard to believe. Hard to even imagine.
“I can’t stay. I’m just ordering carryout. What’re y’all up to tonight?” I perch on the edge of the bench and give Sonya my order while Rose makes up some ridiculous story about Angus needing to get to bed early because “he hasn’t slept well the past few nights.”
“I’m okay,” he protests. “I think we should go hear Lenny and the guys.”
“We can do that tomorrow night. Tonight you need your sleep .” She turns the full force of her big brown eyes on him and he visibly melts.
“ Oh. Okay.” Dude’s finally figured out he’s about to have a very, very good night at home.
Whew. I am not up to explaining to Rose my occasional—and, from what I hear, shocking—transformation into someone who wears sexy clothes and knows her way around an eyeliner pencil and a pair of stilettos. She probably doesn’t even know I sing.
***
“Damn, Andi!” Lenny pretends to stagger back when I walk into the practice room.
Not entirely unexpected; when I’d first modeled this dress with its built-in push-up bra for July, she’d said, “Damn, Andi! You’re gonna put somebody’s eyes out with those things!” And then when I’d turned to show her the rear view, she’d actually whistled.
Chris laughs. “Watch out, Andi, you’re gonna make David jealous. He’s not gonna be the prettiest one onstage tonight.” He’s raspy, barely louder than a whisper.
David rolls his eyes and shakes his head in good-natured disgust. “Lookin’ good, Andi.”
“Thank you, David. The rest of y’all act like you’ve never seen cleavage before.” I give them the evil eye, although I’ve gotta admit, the new dress is magnificent. And so are my boobs.
“Gonna teach those white boys to appreciate a thicc woman.” James plays a funky bass line and Chris follows with a rim shot on drums.
Lenny whips out a pencil for the set list. “Whatcha wanna sing tonight? Bonnie? Etta? Nina?”
“Yeah, and how ’bout that Hannah Williams one we practiced last time?”
He nods, his pencil flying over the page. “Nice. You’ll bring down the house.”
Next best thing to good sex is bringing down the house.
I wish Gram could hear me sing tonight. Even though it would scare her to see me dressed up like this, she’d be proud.
At home, before I got ready, I’d stood in the living room staring at the pictures on the mantel. Gram with my mom in Asheville when Mom was little. My mom with my sister, Lola, in Charlotte. All three generations together: Gram, Lola, Mom with me in a baby snuggle carrier, at Biltmore.
Nothing with the sperm donor, of course.
Gram was a small and beautiful woman. Mom was medium-sized and beautiful. I’m big and usually I do my best to be plain, thanks to a few decades of Gram’s tutoring. If they don’t notice you, they won’t try to hurt you, Andi. You can live your life better if you don’t let them see you.
I’ve never doubted her love or her desire to protect me. Haven’t had much reason to doubt her advice either, what with my line of work, until recently after watching my friends in their new relationships.
Well, July and Joe aren’t exactly new to each other, but they were apart most of the time since they met. Watching them find their way back to each other these past few months has been touching. Mesmerizing. For the first time in my life, I found myself wanting to cheer on a romantic couple. Wanting to say to July, “What’s wrong with you—can’t you see how great this guy is? He obviously loves you and you love him! What’s holding you back?”
The man would quietly move mountains for her and smile at her while he did it.
Even so, given family history and all the proof I’ve had for all these years that Gram was right, it doesn’t seem right to be doubting her now.
***
Kevin
July’s restaurant gets a definite “like very much” on my new List of Things I Have Opinions About. The food is wonderful, the portions generous, and I get to try something new: beets. Not my favorite, but not bad, especially roasted with sweet potatoes and chicken.
I’d like to have sat at one of the sidewalk patio tables to see what goes on in the square, but even with the heat, they were all full. We were lucky, coming inside just as a big family was leaving, or we would never have gotten to sit together.
The atmosphere’s great, everybody talking and laughing and calling out to people at other tables. If this were my hometown and I knew everyone, coming to July’s would be like sliding into a warm bath on a cold night.
There’s funky, bluesy music playing—“That’s the Blue Shoes. That’s the band we’re going to hear later,” Steve tells me—and July herself takes time to circulate between tables. She’s a big, sunny blond who looks like she could give me some pointers in the weight room. A guy is with her some of the time, lean and sun-browned and mostly quiet, with a quick half grin and a glow in his eyes whenever he looks at July.
My group is made up of other teachers from Galway High, some with their significant others. I’d met most of them before and am learning names as fast as I can. I recognize Arlene, the cute little French teacher, and meet her wife, Hazel. The civics/government guy, Henry, is one of the football coaches. I’ve already had a few conversations with him. Pat, who teaches the honors and AP literature classes, is with their partner, Diego.
“Tisha comes sometimes too. She’s a hoot. Her husband’s in the band,” Steve says after pointing everyone out to me. Tisha is the vice principal, the one who seems to run things at Galway High. Energetic, sharp as a tack, her all-seeing dark eyes and no-nonsense manner balanced by a dry sense of humor. I look forward to knowing her better.
Someone asks what I think of Galway so far. Others chime in with have I been to the lake, and have I tried this or that restaurant, and I should go out to the roadhouse one night, and the best auto mechanic in town is …
We take our time eating, laughing, talking, and I’m feeling good—hopeful again—by the time we stroll across the square and up a couple more blocks to the bar to hear the band. Galway is a nice town. I can make a home here. Just have to be patient, push past this first lonely, outsider spell.
I can do this.
Lindon’s is just what I expected: narrow, old, with faded brick and a tinted window that stretches most of the width of the place. Inside, dark, with a little stage up front and a long bar down the left side, beer mirrors and neon signs and rows of bottles on shelves behind it. Scuffed wooden floors, well-worn furniture and the smells of beer and popcorn in the air.
We manage to snag the last few tables near the stage and push them together. A server takes our drink orders and Steve tells me about the Blue Shoes. “Three of them went to high school just a couple of years ahead of me, and they all played football. Lenny and James—that’s Tisha’s husband, he’s the bass player—and Rashad. They had a band in high school too, in the off-season. Got serious with it later. The other two guys are newer. Drummer’s a couple of years younger than me and I think the other guitarist is too. David. He’s a songwriter—they do some of his stuff along with blues and crossover. Trade off on vocals. Every damn one of them can sing.”
Okay, I guess tonight I’ll find out what I think about blues and crossover music. And about the Blue Shoes. And this bar. I’ll develop firm opinions. Some of them maybe even negative. See, Cheryl? I can judge too.
Steve and Henry and some of the others drift into a conversation about the upcoming season opener against Brevard, Galway High’s arch-rival. I listen with one ear as I watch the band members trickle onto the stage, greeting people they pass, picking up their instruments, checking and fiddling with equipment in that mysterious way of musicians. The keyboard player is a big white guy with a wild cloud of red hair. The drummer is shorter, stocky, with sandy hair. Looks like he was born with a set of drumsticks in his hands. There’s another big guy messing with a bass, his Afro even bigger than the keyboard player’s mass of curls. Tisha’s James, I guess. Another smaller guy has a guitar. He’s maybe Latino?—with the kind of brilliant smile people always comment on. He mostly trains it on his bandmates.
The keyboardist seems to be the leader, the one making soft last-minute comments to the others, the one they turn to with questions.
There are only four guys, though. I thought Steve mentioned five. I’m trying to figure out who’s missing when a woman steps up onstage, her thick, curvy legs long and tanned and bare. Stiletto heels. Her hair’s a silky dark sweep almost to her waist. I can’t see her face but something about her sucks the air from the room. From my lungs.
And then she turns and shrugs out of the long loose shirt she’s wearing and I see red. A long streak of it in her hair. A gleaming swipe of it across her full, lovely lips. Fringed rows of it around the snug fabric hugging her astounding curves. Red filling the back of my vision and my brain like a tide of wet heat. A red you want to dive into. Drive into, again and again. My hands clench at my sides and my heartbeat thumps in my ears.
She murmurs something to the guys of the band and they all laugh, her wide smile gleaming brightest of all, her eyes flashing even darker than those of the guitarist.
Every last bit of me is suddenly standing at attention.
Beside me, Steve snickers. “Pull your tongue back in before you close your mouth, Farm Boy. Don’t want you to have to get stitches.”
I can’t muster a comeback or any coherent thought at all. I’m busy trying to make sense of my response to this woman. I’ve never… Criminy.
The women I’ve dated have all been pretty. Many have been athletes. All smallish and slim and…pretty.
The woman onstage makes “pretty” seem like an insult and “slim” seem like “not enough.” She is vibrant. Full. Vivid. Gorgeous. Larger than life, with warm glowing skin over generous, ripe curves.
She’s dangerous, with long crimson fingernails and an edge to her brilliant smile. Mysterious, with tattooed vines and feathers and curling leaves peeping out from under the fabric of her dress on her rounded thigh and the full inner curve of her right breast. I want to hike up that dress. Trace those patterns with my tongue, see where they lead and what picture they form. I imagine her splayed, her smooth skin the canvas for some lucky tattoo artist’s masterpiece.
I’m still not breathing. Nice Guy Kevin be damned; this woman makes me want to lick and bite and squeeze and grind into her. All of the blood in my body has gathered in my groin. My dick suddenly has Very Firm Opinions.
Steve pokes me with an elbow. Pretends concern. “You okay, Farm Boy?”
“You didn’t, uh, mention—” My voice is raspy.
“Yeah, I didn’t know Andrea was going to be here. She fills in every now and then. I don’t see Rashad. He must be out tonight.” He laughs again. “You look like you need to get you some.” He glances from me to the stage, shaking his head. “Just not Andrea.”
“Why—” If I can’t have her, I don’t want anybody. That ridiculous thought shocks me as much as if I’d said it out loud. I’m not sure I could even handle a woman like this, me being so vanilla and all. But every single part of me wants to try.
Steve shrugs, hands open. “She doesn’t usually sing with them. Only shows up when they need someone to fill in. Steams up the whole place, then disappears into the night.” He eyes the woman onstage. “You can look but you can’t touch. I mean, you can dream, but that woman never goes home with anybody.” He shakes his head regretfully. “Many have tried.”
Up onstage, the band members step into position. The keyboard player—Lenny, Steve had said—swirls his hands over the keys and pulls the mic close. “Good evenin’, Galway! How’s everybody doin’ tonight?”
If the answering roar is any indication, this place is full of fans and they’re all doing fine.
Lenny smiles. “Good to be back with our favorite hometown crowd. If you see Rashad tomorrow, you tell him not to eat old shrimp, okay? But tonight our loss is also our gain, because we have the lovely Andrea joinin’ us…” Another roar from the packed bar, with a fair number of whistles thrown in. The bandmates grin. Andrea drops a slow wink and a shimmy, setting all that fringe shaking, right along with my pulse. Lenny nods at her. “And she’s leading us off with some Southside Johnny…” And the band rolls into a slow strut of a song with Andrea crooning about having a fever, her voice low and sultry, by turns velvet-smooth and sexy rough.
I’m melting in my chair even before she starts addressing each new line to a different audience member. And when her eyes land on me and she sings that when she thinks about me she feels all right, the fingers of her right hand just barely skim over the smooth, plump, top curve of her breast, and all that fringe quivers below, and I. Am. Lost.