Chapter 3
THREE
ABBEY
A night at The Golden is exactly what I need.
I love seeing concerts here. I love HollowPoint.
I love music. If I could see a live show every night of the week, I would.
Tonight, I’m going to splurge on a couple of drinks and enjoy myself and pretend that everything’s okay.
I’m going to stand tall and smile and enjoy myself.
Tomorrow, I’ll face the reality of what happened.
When HollowPoint plays “Back to Baltimore,” my least favorite of their hits, I weave through the crowd and up the stairs to the restroom.
I take care of business, swipe at a smudge of mascara, and reapply my favorite lipstick, Comfortably Plum.
My hair—loose chestnut curls with a hint of auburn—looks damn good, and my face is still sun-kissed and rosy from summer weekends at the lake and pool.
You’d never guess what I’d lived through this morning.
I get in line at the bar and order another cocktail.
One more can’t hurt, right, and these are definitely more cranberry than vodka, anyway.
As I walk down the stairs, I stop short when my gaze lands on a guy who stands facing the stairs and not the stage, looking at me.
He’s taller than anyone else around him, and from what I can tell, the hair under his Minnesota Twins ball cap is dark, with curls at his neck.
He’s wearing a Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon T-shirt.
His pale, clean-shaven skin is half bathed in blue light.
One corner of his mouth tilts up when he notices me noticing him, and he tips his beer bottle toward me before bringing it to his mouth.
I smile. He lowers the bottle and smirks.
The way he’s looking at me, the feeling deep in my belly, the sense that I’ve got to meet him, talk to him—it’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before. There’s something about him that draws me in, urges me forward.
“Wait there,” I say, and even though there’s no way he could hear me over the music and the crowd, he gives a small nod, and that strange, wonderful sensation washes over me again. I start back down the stairs.
Everything’s always working out for me.
I really, really need something to go my way today, and it might as well be the guy in the Pink Floyd T-shirt.
When I reach the bottom step, however, a stocky man with a goatee and a red, blotchy face in a Gophers football T-shirt plows into me and knocks my drink into my chest. The icy liquid soaks through my shirt and trickles down my stomach.
“Watch it!” he yells.
Excuse me? He bumped into me! He spilled my drink all over me! I open my mouth to say as much, but he scowls and moves away before I get the chance.
I’m about to meet a man who is quite possibly the love of my life covered in cranberry juice and vodka. I swipe at the drops on my neck, wipe my hands on my jeans, and look up to meet the most beautiful, enticing icy blue eyes, framed by thick, dark lashes. My stomach swoops.
“Hey,” he says.
Even over the din of the club, even with only one syllable, his voice is exactly as I imagined—low and gravelly—and I go weak in the knees. Up close, he’s even better looking. He smirks again, that one corner of his luscious mouth tilting up.
“Hey,” I manage.
“That guy’s a meathead,” he says.
“Friend of yours?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “So… are you a big HollowPoint fan?”
“The biggest,” I reply. I have to shout for him to hear me over the music. “I’m Abbey.”
“Abby like Abigail?”
I shake my head. “Abbey like Abbey Road. The Beatles album.”
I swear his eyes light up at this and he leans in close. “The best Beatles album.”
“Are you a Beatles fan?”
He grins. “The biggest.”
Gorgeous and a Beatles fan. Yes. This day is finally looking up.
And it’s official—I’m going to marry this man.
I don’t think a single one of my previous love interests could name any Beatles album.
Even worse, my college boyfriend Tucker’s favorite musician was Garth Brooks.
I’m not a country fan, so that fact alone should have warned me that Tucker and I weren’t going to make it.
“Do you come here a lot?” I ask and nearly roll my eyes at myself. It’s been a long time since I’ve tried to flirt with someone. Clearly, my skills have not improved.
He huffs out a laugh. “Yeah. You?” At my nod, he continues. “I’m surprised I’ve never seen you before.”
“Oh, I’ve been here. Were you at the Five Buck Cluck show when Dan—”
“—Fell off the stage and some random guy helped him back up and then finished the guitar solo for him?” He grins.
I grin, too. I can’t seem to stop smiling around this guy. “Unforgettable night.”
“I don’t know,” he says. “This one’s turning out to be pretty unforgettable, too.”
It sure is. I lean in, close, and his scent washes over me: crisp, woodsy, clean.
He puts a hand around my waist and… whoa.
Did he feel it, too? That… that swizzle?
Swizzle. It’s the only word I can think of to describe it, like the fizz of a bath bomb or a sparkler against the dark of the night sky that burns all the way down and singes your fingers.
“Oh,” I breathe out. I have to know his name. I have to know him.
But before I can ask, a tall white guy with a sandy brown buzz cut comes up behind us and cut taps him on the shoulder. “Hey, Jaws, we gotta go. Baby’s sick.”
My future husband—Jaws, apparently—frowns and releases me from his hold and the swizzle dissipates.
“She okay?” he asks.
“She’s running a high temp and Adriana wants to take her to the ER. Let’s go.”
Jaws moves to follow his friend but turns back as though he’s only now remembering I’m still here. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m—”
But I’ll never know what he was about to say because his friend tugs him through the crowd. That delicious feeling inside of me deflates. We were so close to something. I could feel it.
But now he’s gone.
And that’s the icing on the cake of this shitty day.
Much later, after I’ve taken a shower to wash off the last of the spilled cocktail, I lie in bed, dressed only in a pair of underwear and an oversized HollowPoint T-shirt, our lovable yet evil cat Moses stretched out across my feet.
The monster in the sand pit of my stomach was calm at the club but now, in the quiet of my bedroom, has stirred, awakening with it the memory of Ryan’s fingers pressing into my skin, the leering look on his face, an echo of his words: You either come back over here and show me what else you can do with that smart mouth of yours, or you’re done.
I imagine the scene as a photograph that I fold in half, and in half again, again and again until it’s a tiny square like the check in the ashtray, and I tuck that square into the farthest corner of my mind and slam the door shut.
Tomorrow, I’ll move forward.
Tonight, I commit to memory what I know about Jaws. Beatles fan. Twins cap. The Dark Side of the Moon prism. The smirk and the half-smile and that swizzle.
Jaws was the best part of my day.
I close my eyes and beg the monster to stop clawing at my insides. Eventually, it does. Eventually, the image of Jaws—half-bathed in blue light—fades, and I fall asleep.
No surprise: I don’t sleep well. I get up at my regular time, shower and style my hair like I have somewhere to go, and take my time with a full face of makeup.
I pull on a pair of black bootcut jeans and a baby blue sweater set.
I even find the missing earring to my set of (imitation) Tahitian pearl studs and matching necklace, a lovely metallic gray.
I make a pot of coffee and turn on the Today show.
Moses curls up beside me until he gets annoyed with my leg bouncing with nerves and jumps down to lie in a sunbeam.
It’s not long before I need to get out of this apartment—too quiet, too still, too empty. I get in the car, turn on the radio, and hop on the freeway. I don’t have a particular destination. I only know that I need to go. Somewhere. Anywhere.
I’m not going to think about how my future at TC Weekly went up in flames yesterday.
Instead, I’ll think about last night and how I might find Jaws.
He said he’s a regular at The Golden, and we seem to have similar taste in music, so I’ll start there.
Not that I’ll be able to go to any shows anytime soon now that I’m unemployed.
I try to calculate how far I can stretch my last paycheck—maybe two months unless I defer my student loan—and then I remember the second check, mocking me from the ashtray.
I should have torn it up. I’ll do it when I get home.
The new single from John Mellencamp comes on the radio: “Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First),” a song that has stuck with me since the first time I heard it.
The drumbeats, the guitar riff, the lyrics, the yearning in John’s gruff voice.
I’ve been a Mellencamp fan since my brother Scout had an extra ticket to see him during the Scarecrow tour and my parents let me go on a school night, my first concert. I was thirteen.
Before I know it, I’m pulling off the freeway at the Woodlake Avenue exit and in less than two minutes, I’m at my favorite place to buy music.
This location of Hometown Electronics has the biggest CD department, so they’re sure to have the new Mellencamp, Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky.
I’ll have to buy it with my emergency credit card, but the need for new music is always an emergency.
The automatic doors swoosh open and the employee at the door welcomes me.
He wears the standard Hometown Electronics uniform—a white, button-up baseball jersey with green pinstripes and the number 70 on the back.
The artificially cool air feels refreshing against my sticky, sweaty skin. It’s still so hot for early September.