Chapter 4 #2
She feeds me another laugh. It’s flattering.
Her hands plant at her hips. They rubber-band her shirt to her narrow torso, leaving far less to the imagination than before.
Attraction, that’s all this is. I try to recall the last time I felt it.
It’s been a while. I always thought El was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
Dark curly hair, chocolate brown eyes, high cheekbones, and she liked a man in a cowboy hat.
It worked in my favor. But our connection was never this visceral.
I don’t know what to do with my hands, my eyes, my anything.
“Well, what kind of crew are you running around here, Rhett Dawson? What did you do?” she teases.
Ran out on them. That’s the truth. Hundreds of good, hard-working people who I couldn’t do this production without. I let them all down tonight. It’s why I feel so guilty.
A siren breaks the tension that’s building between us with her unanswered question. We both let it capitalize our attention. The ambulance blazes down the street and then disappears.
“Do you mind?” she asks, gesturing to the spot beside me on the ground.
Even though I came out here to be alone, I’m not ready to watch her walk away yet.
I want to hear what else she has to say, which is new for me.
I happen to like being alone. I’ve made it so I never need anyone in my life.
But then she came charging down that pavement and distracted me from an earth-shattering moment, and without even knowing it, defused the situation.
Made me feel better. I owe her. The least I could do is let her sit.
“Sure.”
Her shirt—my face—drapes over her bent knees when she tucks them against her chest.
“Was the door really going to work if I pushed on the left side?” she asks.
I stare at the metal rectangle—the only barrier between me and the mess I made. I’m glad she didn’t get it open. Thankful she seems to have given up on her reason for trying in the first place.
“It looks like you’ll never know.”
She sighs at the door. “I guess not. Who needs a hat with a mediocre singer on it when I can buy a Chris Stapleton one online instead.”
A smirk plays on her lips.
She’s witty. I’ve always liked that in a woman.
El appreciated my humor but rarely made me laugh.
Which isn’t a fair comparison given the mother she has.
There was no room for joking around in the Blackwood household when everyone was always buried under a mountain of expectations.
Comparisons are also why I haven’t paid any attention to the opposite sex since El died.
No one can hold a candle to the mother of my child.
But I suddenly have a strong urge to see what this woman looks like in my hat, even if she’ll never know how much she saved me tonight. Call it my way of paying her back.
I scan the area until I spot it not far away.
The large brim managed to ring itself around the tour bus’s side mirror when I threw it.
I push off the ground and unhook it, then squat down in front of her, caging her in with my forearm pressed to the bus behind her.
I attempt to fit the cowboy hat on her head.
It gets caught on the clip in her hair. She laughs and slides the prongs from her silky strands.
They fan around her shoulders, and my nose fills with the scent of lemon as my hat sinks on her crown.
She tips her chin back, the brim falling with it, and the moon reflects a milky orb in the deepest blue of her eyes.
“I take it back,” she says as they fall to my mouth, sending an electric current flowing between us like two magnets trying their best to stay apart.
My body is begging me to close the gap—toss off that hat just so I can kiss her.
But then she finishes her thought. “I bet you run a great crew. They’re lucky to have you. ”
The balloon around this suspended moment pops.
I wasn’t expecting her to say that. I’m at a loss for words, actually.
It’s a compliment I don’t deserve right now.
Maybe ever, when I consider how many times I’ve lied to my crew over the years.
Let them believe they’re supporting a person who isn’t entirely truthful about who they say they are.
I have two names. They only know one of them.
I sit down next to her.
“I’m not sure I’ll ever be enough.”
That’s more than I’ve admitted to anyone before.
Maybe it’s the fact that I know she tried breaking into the building.
I have something to hold her accountable for if she tries to share this information with anyone else.
Maybe the promise of me not seeing her again after tonight makes it feel easier to let my walls down.
It’s dangerous what I’m doing, choosing to open up to her, though.
But it’s what she says next that leads me to believe I made the right decision.
“I willingly gave up my decision-making power to my best friend tonight, if that says anything about me. I’m not sure I’m the person to be doling out advice.”
“Why?” I ask.
With her gumption to get into a locked building, I didn’t peg her as the indecisive type.
“Because I make commitments I can’t keep. I eat leftovers after they’ve been sitting out all night on the counter. I drive my car until the red gas light comes on. I bring home stray cats from the foothills. I buy shirts with mediocre singers on them.”
I snort. She’s listing off all of these things as if they should be repulsive to me. They’re not. At least she’s honest about who she is.
“Well, I know a certain three-year-old who would be thrilled if I brought home a stray cat from the foothills.”
She smiles. Somehow this conversation took a very personal turn and for the first time, I’m not mad about it.
“I wish I could say the same.” Her smile falters, and I don’t miss it. Don’t miss the glint of gold around her ring finger either.
She’s married?
I almost kissed her.
“Are you trying to get laid?”
My attention cuts to my manager descending the nearest ramp. He’s stomping—rightfully so—and taking notes with his eyes on the woman sitting next to me. Gathering evidence in the event this is a crazed fan that needs to be turned in. It’s happened before.
“You could have at least waited until after the show! That would have been really stupendous for me rather than the landmine I’ll be facing for the foreseeable future,” Todd says.
She stumbles to her feet.
Is that what she thinks? That I was talking to her because I’m trying to sleep with her?
I stand too, turn toward her to defend myself, but she’s already backing up. Rather quickly, I might add, and I try to stop her but her spine rams into the metal poll of the streetlamp.
“Are you okay?” I ask right away this time. Not because I’m worried about some lawsuit, but because I don’t want her to think that’s what this was. I was spiraling on my way out that door tonight, and for whatever reason, she was able to bring me back down to earth. I never thanked her for that.
“Yep. All good! See?” She swings her arms wide.
One slaps against the side of another parked car.
She clutches her crumpled palm to her chest. “Okay. I’m gonna go now.
Good night!” she squeaks, taking off in a jog this time.
I watch her disappear around the side of the arena. I never even asked her name.
“What happened out there?” Todd interrupts my staring.
I know by out there he means on the stage, but I’m still trying to figure out what happened out here, where my world tipped on its axis.
“Rhett.”
I jerk my attention back to him. I’ve gotten so good at lying when it comes to this area of my life that I don’t even have to think about it. It slips from my lips.
“It was Eliza. That next song on the set… I wrote it about her. I thought I was ready to play it, but I wasn’t.”
It’s not a total lie, at least not the first part, and he believes it without a second thought.
“That’s understandable, man.” He steps off the ramp and closes the distance between us, placing a palm on my shoulder.
“Listen, I know you’ve been through the ringer, and I’m sorry if you weren’t ready for this.
We’ve already sent everyone home, okay? We’re issuing refunds.
The label and the media might have a field day, but I’ll figure it out. ”
“I’m sorry too,” I say. But deep down, all I feel is relieved. Maybe there’s a way of coming back from this after all.
He squeezes my shoulder and pulls me in for a hug. “Don’t worry about it. This is what best friends are for.”
But all I can think about is that we aren’t best friends. How he’ll never be my best friend. I can’t have one of those. Because then I’d have to tell him why I really left that stage. And it has nothing to do with the last six months of my life and everything to do with the beginning of it.