Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
There are so many songs about lost love. Do people really FUBAR that much?
—@PRyanPOfficial
You’re one to ask?
—@CuTEandRich3
As she sips a cup of decaffeinated chai from a wine glass, Austyn asks, “How did you find this place?”
“I work downstairs.”
“Galileo’s? The infamous Galileo’s is right downstairs?”
I wink. “Makes for a rough commute on those nights when I don’t finish until close to three.”
“Was it always a rental?”
I nod. “Caroline, a knockout redhead and our lead bartender, was the previous tenant. She moved out after taunting Levi?—”
“That’s the owner?” Austyn interrupts.
“Yep.” I wait for Austyn to sort out all the players she’ll meet tomorrow.
“And this Levi doesn’t do it for you on your ‘bang a hot older guy’ radar?” Austyn eyes me over the rim of her glass.
I snort. “He’s one of the most gorgeous men I’ve ever met.”
“Yet, you told me there wasn’t a man in Seven Virtues you’d bang?”
“Still true.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“If I had a choice of doing a boy who couldn’t find my clit or doing Levi, I’d do the boy every time and twice on Sunday.”
At that, Austyn does a spit take into her glass. “Oh, crap. That says a lot about him. What makes him such a douche?”
I place my glass on the table. “He interrogates women like they’re going to rob him blind or he’s slotting them into his calendar for their assigned fucking. He has no business sense and demeans everyone who works for him. He?—”
She lifts her hand. “I get the point. Has he ever tried to hit on you?”
“He might have tried if I didn’t put him in place the day I interviewed.” I explain to her the tradition of the Indigo Girl’s song.
Austyn’s interest latches onto what I noticed immediately. “There seems to be something between him and this Caroline.”
“Like bad Nickelodeon slime. It’s front and present, and you can’t get away from it,” I agree.
She grins and every time it happens, something inside me relaxes infinitesimally. This is what we both need—each other. “Have you ever asked her about it?”
“I hinted once.”
“When?”
“When I asked her why she was moving out.”
“To which she said?”
“‘I don’t need my ‘landlord’ to be close enough to screen my dates.’”
Austyn’s face turns thoughtful. “Does he interrogate yours?”
“If it wasn’t for the fact he deducts my rent from my tips, I’m not certain he’d care if I lived here.”
She purrs, “Oh, this I can’t wait to see. I sense musical inspiration coming on.”
“So, you’re for certain coming with me to work tomorrow night?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
I tell her more stories since I started spending every available spare minute working at Galileo’s. She’s enthralled about the idea of the toast. “I’d swear, the big bad boy of Seven Virtues pouted every day no one sang his infamous bar song.”
Austyn clucks, “Poor baby. What did you do to soften the blow to his male ego?”
I explain. “After a month, Caroline shoved me up on stage at forty-one minutes past the hour with a Coke in hand. One minute later—in honor of the year Galileo died: 1642—I was singing Galileo’s theme song a cappella .”
The crowd joined in—lifting their glasses as well. The commotion dragged Levi from his office. His eyes bugged out. Caroline merely walked by and slapped him upside the head before she taunted, “Now, maybe listening to a woman will cause something to penetrate other than your dick.”
Austyn’s leaning forward like we’re watching a Turkish drama through our chai. “He must have been ready to have clubbed her and dragged her off by her hair.”
“The sexual tension is ridiculous between those two.”
“I can’t wait to see this myself.”
“In the time I’ve worked here, I still haven’t figured out how he can ignore what’s right in front of his face.”
“Maybe he’s deliberately choosing to ignore it,” Austyn remarks. Her voice cracks when she says wisely, “Caroline has the right idea, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you’re waiting for a man to make you feel like enough, you’ll wait forever. They may be the hunters, but only in their own sweet time. Otherwise they can’t be bothered putting in the effort to maintain a relationship.”
Later, as I lie in bed, Austyn’s words run through my head. As much as I hate it, she’s right. Still, I can’t help but reach for my phone.
Fallon:
I’ve got eyes on our girl tonight.
I wait for a few minutes before giving up on him. It comes to me that Caroline and Austyn have the right idea. I’ve worked hard to have a beautiful life and I’ve done it without a man at my side. I’m done trying to hold on to the threads of what may be and am ready to grab onto the fabric of what is—possibilities.
I lay my chin on Austyn’s shoulder as we wait alongside the stage the next evening. “Last chance to maintain your anonymity.”
She leans her head back and gives me a play on the words she said earlier to convince me, “You and me together, Fal. Let’s show Galileo’s what we’re made of tonight.”
Levi weaves through the crowd and Austyn murmurs, “Yeah, I’m definitely getting hot but you totally nailed the slime vibes. Except when he looks at Caroline.”
“When she’s not looking.”
“Pfft. Of course.”
I throw my head back and laugh just as he reaches us. His lips part at the way we’re snuggled together in the wings of the stage. Levi James at a loss for words is something I’ll cherish for some time when he stammers, “Ms. Kensington…”
Austyn holds up her hand. “It’s just Kensington. Or DJ Kensington, if you must.”
I bury my head into the crook of Austyn’s shoulder, trying to hide my ear-to-ear grin. I think I have it locked down, but when I raise my eyes, I meet Levi’s and know I’ve completely failed. Shrugging, I beam at him. “What can I say, Levi? My girl is a badass.”
He might require a trip to the dentist by the time he walks out to introduce us. He looks like a barracuda whose teeth have been wired shut, trying to not piss off the hottest star to hit the planet since, well, her father hit the music scene almost twenty years ago. “Right. Thanks, Fallon. As I was saying, I’ll introduce you both. Play for as long as you like.”
Austyn drawls, “Oh, I only plan on stopping when I have to leave. You, Fal?”
“I can keep up.” I run my hands over her hair before I purr, “I always could.”
Levi’s eying me like I’m some two headed creature who just escaped from an alien spaceship before he spins on a heel. Austyn waits until he’s out of earshot before she wonders, “Do you think he wonders if we’re together?”
“Nope.” I smack the “P.”
Her brow furrows. “You don’t think so?”
Levi begins our introduction as “two long-time friends who have decided to avail us with the gift of their music tonight. We’d like to welcome one of our own, Fallon Brookes and…”
Just before he announces Austyn’s name, I mutter directly in her ear, “He’s trying to figure out a way to get in between us in bed.”
Austyn almost falls flat on her face due to laughing while walking out on stage in her Louboutin heels to the screams of the crowd as Levi barely gets her name out. We’re both holding our guitars aloft as we stride toward the microphones set up in front of bar stools center stage.
I catch her eye and we immediately launch into one of our favorite song—Alanis Morissette’s “Hands Clean,” alternating verses back and forth and coming together for the chorus.
Hours. We sing together for hours. But knowing what I do about Austyn being pregnant, I don’t know how she’s enduring the spotlight beaming down on us. Sweat beads along my hairline as we keep the crowd on their feet, singing along with us. When Austyn takes a long drink of water, I tell the crowd, “I think y’all are the first crowd we’ve sung live for since high school.”
Austyn grins before reminiscing while I take a slug of my own drink. “It was a father-daughter dance neither of us wanted to go to.”
Someone shouts from the crowd, “Why not?”
I twist my head ready to give up the information about my own life to protect her, but Austyn replies, “At that time in my life, I wanted to make music more than I wanted to dance to it.”
Good one , I think. Knowing everything about her life is subject to media exploitation, and who her father is, I think her answer is the truth but won’t hurt the people who love her. I, however, give a straight up answer. I have no one to hurt. “My father died when I was very young. Events like that weren’t easy for me. Austyn—her family—made them easier.”
With that, I strum the opening notes of “Fugitive” and my thoughts turn to Ethan and the message I received from him before we climbed down the stairs.
Ethan:
I wish I was there with you both, witch.
Ethan:
You’re going to knock ‘em dead.
Since I broke my silence with him weeks ago when I texted him on Austyn’s behalf due to an issue her parents were having, I’ve been keeping it light.
Fallon:
Thanks.
Fallon:
Austyn mentioned it’s been a while since she’s seen you. I know she misses her Uncle E.
Ethan:
And you? Do you miss seeing me?
Fallon:
It’s always great to see friends.
Ethan:
Right. Friends.
The crowd who has made it behind the medieval-type doors painted with Galileo Galilei’s crest are rightfully going insane between getting an inside scoop on the music world’s newest wunderkind and an unprecedented live performance.
I step up to the microphone and harmonize to her melody, my fingers strumming over the guitar as fast as hers are. Unlike my best friend, I’m no music prodigy, though I do come by my talent as naturally as she does. My ability to play the guitar is something special—a gift from my deceased father. The one I’m jamming on right now was one of the few my mother kept so I could have something of his yet still have the money to feed his child.
I manage to pick my mother out of the patrons in the crowd and spy the tears in her eyes. It might well have been a night like this when they met. A night when my father was singing on stage and my mother stared up at him with the same awe on her face that is now shining up at his only child who was conceived years later—not in the heat of rock ’n roll passion, but long after my father traded in his music career for that of a trucker. Long before he was involved in a massive pileup on I-95 that ended up destroying my mother’s world and upending her future.
I wink at her and watch her smile—a smile she passed along to me—spread across her face as she watches me and my best friend tear up the stage in a manner that must bring back memories of heartbreak as well as incredible joy.
If only heartbreak decided it had taken enough bites out of us and stayed where it belonged—in the past.