Everything You Are (Jukebox Heroes 3) Read online

  Chris looked thoughtful but said nothing. Half a minute later, he gestured to Michael and then bounded up on the stage. Like before, he readjusted the mic stand while Michael hooked up his guitar. They exchanged a few words, and then Michael launched into a song I knew well, an album track by a band called Tangled Web. I was still staring in shock when Chris’s voice joined the guitar, carrying the melody with a graceful lack of effort.

  I shook off my surprise enough to sing along. When Chris noticed, his face lit up. He looked at me, and I looked back, right into his eyes, and for the first time in a long time I felt good. Better than good. I felt alive and whole.

  And I hated myself for feeling that way, there, in that moment, because the wrong guy was at the root of it all.

  My emotions were a tangled-up jumble, and I wanted to go curl up in bed with my teddy bear and cry myself to sleep. I made myself stay put, though, and tried to recapture that split-second of sheer joy I’d experienced. It didn’t happen.

  An hour or so later, I’d had as much as I could take of pretending to not be a hot mess. I leaned in toward Chris and told him I was going to go. He nodded and stood up, holding his hand out to me. I took it and let him help me to my feet, even though it wasn’t necessary. I let him walk me out of the club, too.

  “Where you parked?” he asked once we were outside.

  “Um. That way,” I said, pointing in what I hoped was the right direction.

  Chris must have sensed my uncertainty because he asked, “What’s near the parking lot?”

  I thought for a moment and then named off a couple of the businesses I’d seen near the lot. He nodded and pointed down the street – the opposite way from where I’d pointed.

  “That way.”

  “Oh. Thanks,” I said, shoving my hands into my jacket pockets to hunt for my keys.

  “I’ll walk you.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  Chris tucked his hands, or what would fit of them, into his front pockets and leaned back to look up at the sky. He took a deep breath and then looked at me.

  “Just let me walk you to your car.”

  I shrugged. “Free country, and all that jazz.”

  He made an ‘after you’ gesture and then fell into step beside me, matching his much longer strides to my short ones. We didn’t talk for a block or two, letting the sounds of the city fill in the space between us.

  “I was surprised you knew that song,” I said.

  “What song? ‘Defenseless’?”

  “Yeah. I’ve loved it from the first time Seth played it for me, but it seems like not that many people know it.”

  “Wait, what?” Chris said, stopping and turning to look at me. “Seth played it for you? Seth Webber?”

  I rolled my eyes as I turned to face him. “Yes, Seth Webber. Yes, I met him. No, I didn’t sleep with him. I’m not a groupie.”

  “I bet he wished you were,” Chris said. “Shit. That wasn’t meant to sound like a bad pickup line, either.”

  “Then what did you mean?”

  He shrugged. “You’re his kind of girl. Cute. Petite.” He grinned. “Fiesty.”

  “And you’d know this because...?”

  “We went to high school together. College, too, before we both dropped out.”

  I crossed my arms across my chest and glared up at him. “You did not. No way the world is that freakin’ small.”

  He shrugged and pulled his cell phone out of his jacket pocket. He punched a few buttons on the touch-screen and handed it to me. “Ask him if you want to.”

  He’d hadn’t dialed Seth’s number, but it was up on the screen. I recognized it, even though we’d only exchanged a couple of phone calls. I found it hard to believe it had been just a year ago that I’d met him – and Brian. So much had happened since then. It seemed like a lifetime ago.

  “He probably wouldn’t answer anyway,” I said, handing the phone back to Chris. “It really is a small world, I guess.”

  I wondered if Chris knew Brian, or any of Seth’s other musician friends. I figured it wasn’t any of my business and decided to keep my curiosity in check, choosing to walk rather than ask questions.

  “So how do you know Seth?”

  I smiled to myself. Of course the one time I decided to mind my own business, I’d end up on the other side of the equation.

  “I met him on a cruise,” I said.

  “Last year? I was supposed to be on that cruise with him and his friend Brian. I had to cancel. Family stuff.”

  “You don’t know Brian, then?”

  “I’ve heard a lot about him, but no, haven’t met him yet.”

  “He’s practically married to my best friend.”

  We paused at an intersection, waiting for the crosswalk light to change.

  “So, yeah,” I said. “Seth played ‘Defenseless’ for me on the cruise. It hadn’t even been recorded yet.”

  “It woulda been brand new. We just wrote it, like, a week or two before he went on that cruise.”

  The light changed and Chris headed across the street, but I stood staring for a moment before racing to catch up with him.

  “You wrote ‘Defenseless’.” It wasn’t a question so much as an incredulous statement.

  “Co-wrote it. Well, co-wrote the lyrics. The music was all Seth.”

  “If you sing like you do and write songs like that, then what the hell are you doing working in a bar? Why aren’t you out there,” I fluttered my hand at the world in general, “being a rock star?”

  “I don’t write too many songs. I like singing. Performing. This works for me.”

  I thought about that as we neared the parking lot where I’d left my car. It made sense to me. Not everyone wants to be a star – or a CEO or President or whatever. Some of us prefer the comfortable middle ground.

  “This is me,” I said, stopping by my aging P.O.S. “Thanks for making sure I got here okay.”

  Chris smiled at me. “Glad I could be of service.”

  For a moment, we just stood looking at each other. Maybe neither of us knew what to say, or maybe neither of us wanted to say goodnight. But we couldn’t stand there forever, and my bed was calling my name.

  “It was nice meeting you, Chris,” I said, unlocking my door.

  “Nice meeting you, too, Elizabeth. See you around?”

  “Sure,” I said. I think he knew I didn’t mean it.

  Chapter Three

  I was fumbling for the key to my front door when my cell started jiving and wailing in my jeans pocket. Startled, as always, by the bizarre feeling of my phone vibrating against my hipbone, I jerked a little and dropped the keys. Cursing under my breath, I dragged the phone out of my pocket and checked the caller ID. And just like that, my impending bad mood went away.

  “Hey you,” I said, answering the call just before it went to voicemail. “How was the show?”

  “Hey yourself,” London replied. “The show was really good. It was a lot of fun. I wish you could have been there. And Brian and Dylan, too.”

  I managed to retrieve my keys and get through the door without dropping the phone, which was kind of a miracle. “Yeah, I wish we could have been there, too.”

  As London filled me in on the details of the charity event, I locked the front door, kicked off my shoes, and crossed my tiny apartment to curl up on the sofa. I hadn’t been sure he’d call me back tonight. Even as tired as I felt, I was happy to hear his voice. We hadn’t talked in a few days, and text messages just aren’t the same.

  After he filled me in on the gig, I told him a couple of funny little stories from work. Then the conversation turned, as it always did, to how much we missed each other.

  “I know this is gonna sound crazy,” London said, “but is there any way you could maybe get a couple days off from work this weekend? Like maybe Saturday, Sunday, and Monday?”

  “I’m off on Saturday. I might be able to get someone to switch with me for the other days. Why? What’s up?”

&n
bsp; “I was thinking maybe you could fly up to Nashville. We have a show on Saturday, and we’ll be there for another couple of days for promos and stuff. It looks like the best shot we’re gonna have for a while.”

  I sat there in stunned silence for a moment. Somehow, I hadn’t expected him to ask me to fly out to meet him on the road.

  “Em? Are you there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “I know it’s short notice, but things just got changed around today. And I know you hate flying, but....”

  “No, it’s okay,” I said. “Flying sucks, but you’re worth it. I’ll make this work. Somehow.”

  It was London’s turn to be quiet for a moment before he asked, “You sure?”

  “Yeah.” I thought about the whole scenario – from talking a coworker into switching shifts to flinging myself in London’s arms in the airport in Nashville – and I started to smile. “I can hardly wait.”

  We talked for a little while longer, and then said our goodnights. I couldn’t stop smiling as I got ready for bed and crawled under the blankets, turned out the lights, and said my bedtime prayers. I would see London again in less than a week. Life was suddenly looking a whole lot rosier, and my weird meeting with Mr. Tall, Dark, and Drop-Dead Sexy was forgotten.

  Finding someone to cover my shifts at work turned out to be far easier than I ever could have imagined. All I had to say was, “London wants me to fly out to see him.” Even in this cynical day and age, people are moved by romance. Lucky for me.

  After that, the days whizzed by in a blur of work, packing, and finalizing plans for the trip. Friday night brought insomnia born of anticipation and anxiety – worry about sleeping through my alarm and missing my flight, my old fear of flying, and concern about seeing London again after so long, along with the giddy eagerness to be in his arms again. I managed to doze for a couple of hours before the alarm on my phone jarred me awake to race through last minute preparations and scurry out the door way ahead of schedule.

  Time always seems to stretch out in airports, unless you get lost and end up racing through the terminals hoping to catch your plane before it backs away from the gate. I’d lived the whole dashing through the airport scenario. I tried to avoid thinking about the circumstances, since they’d been unpleasant ones and remembering would only give me something else to worry about. This time, I arrived way too early and spent a couple of hours twitching back and forth between reading a book and fiddling with the apps on my new smart phone.

  The boarding call came at last, and I sent messages to London, Dylan, and my brother letting them know I was boarding the plane. Filling the whole world in on my every move might seem a little odd to most people, but it hadn’t been long since we’d all endured the hell of Dylan’s kidnapping. We were all used to keeping each other in the loop when we were doing anything out of the ordinary – like taking impromptu weekend trips to Tennessee.

  Nothing cataclysmic or even interesting happened during my flight, and soon enough I was peering past the other passengers on my row for my first glimpse of Nashville. I didn’t see anything I recognized, but that didn’t surprise me much. I knew very little about the city outside its being the seat of country music and home to the Grand Ole Opry. I wondered if I’d see any of the sites over the weekend or if I’d end up spending most of my time in London’s hotel room. The way I saw it, I was a winner either way.

  Once we’d been cleared to use electronic devices, I switched on my phone and texted London to let him know I was on the ground. He messaged me back right away, saying that he was waiting for me in the passenger pick-up area. Fifteen minutes later, I dropped my bags right in the middle of the walkway and threw myself into London’s waiting arms.

  “God, I missed you,” he told me. I didn’t need to hear the words to know that; I could tell from the way he held me against him like he had no intention of ever letting go.

  “Me, too,” I mumbled against his leather jacket.

  I don’t know how long we stood there, clinging to each other, but after a while propriety and common sense took over. We gathered up my bags and headed outside. London found us a cab, and we climbed inside.

  “I could have just met you at your hotel,” I told him.

  “I didn’t really want to take any chances, you know?”

  I did know. It was another example of the cautious vigilance my friends and I had been exercising since Dylan’s kidnapping. Maybe we were being a little paranoid, but as the saying goes, just because you’re paranoid that doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you. The truth was that there might very well be metaphysical terrorists gunning for any or all of us. There’d been nothing to indicate that we were being watched in any way, but better cautious than kidnapped, tortured, used against your loved ones, and put to death.

  I pushed away those morbid thoughts.

  “Was your flight okay?”

  “It was fine. No screaming kids, no turbulence. No bouncing off the runway.” London laughed, and I bumped him with my shoulder. “Don’t laugh. That shit ain’t funny.”

  He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me close. “Sorry,” he murmured against my hair. He didn’t sound like he meant it, but tucked in against his side like I was, I couldn’t be bothered to care.

  Chapter Four

  As usual, I had worried for nothing. I hadn’t slept through my alarm or missed my flight, and the trip to Nashville had been unremarkable. Now that we were together again, I no longer felt any concern that my relationship with London might have cooled during the weeks we’d been apart. I’d had similar concerns the last time we’d spent a few days together. And the time before that. So far, those fears had proved groundless.

  During the cab ride back to the hotel, we cuddled and made small talk about my job, our friends. When we arrived, London paid the driver and took my bags, slinging my backpack over one shoulder and grabbing the handle of my rolling case with the same hand. His free hand found mine and he led me through the lobby and up the elevator to his room.

  The second the door closed behind us, London dropped my bags and dragged me toward the bed. He didn’t bother to kick off his shoes or give me time to get rid of mine before pulling me down to lie beside him. He kissed me, then, long and slow and deep, but he didn’t try to move things along. We’d discovered a long time ago that the differences in our heights made it hard as hell to kiss while we were standing.

  A minute or two later, our kissing was interrupted by some obnoxious song I didn’t recognize blaring from London’s pocket. He scooted away with a sigh and fished his phone out of his pocket.

  “Yeah, I know,” he said by way of greeting. “Be there in a minute.”

  “Soundcheck?” I guessed as he disconnected the call.

  “Yup. You coming?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “I want to, but I also want to get a shower and maybe a nap.”

  London leaned in to kiss my forehead. “Stay. Rest. It’s not like you’ll be missing anything.”

  “Except getting to watch you work.”

  He beamed at me. “You’ll get your chance at the show tonight.”

  “True enough.” I pressed my lips to his one more time. “Go, before Adrian has a fit.”

  London returned my kiss and then went to join his band mates. I took advantage of the alone time to do just what I said I would – shower and sleep. I wanted to be rested for the concert.

  Later, I was glad I’d gotten sleep while I had the chance. By the time the concert was over and London was done signing autographs and whatnot, it was Sunday. Then there was a late night dinner, the ride back to the hotel, and a hot, steamy shower with London followed by hot, steamy sex with London. By the time I fell asleep with his arms around me, the sun had begun to peek in around the curtains.

  The next two days involved a lot of music and a lot of sex. We wandered around hand-in-hand, exploring the downtown area where most of the bars and clubs are located. We talked while we wandered, which I figured made up
for the fact that we did more kissing than talking when we were alone in London’s hotel room.

  Downtown Nashville –filled as it was with neon, music, and people- reminded me of Sixth Street and the Warehouse District in Austin, though it had a different feel to it. I couldn’t put a name to the difference between the two, but I could feel it, nonetheless. Both places have a sort of magic to them, in the figurative since at least. Or perhaps in the literal sense. I didn’t know enough about magic to know if certain cities, like certain people, are imbued with metaphysical power. When I asked that night as we lay in bed, London said he didn’t know, either.

  “I’ll ask Ashe the next time I talk to him, if I don’t forget,” he told me. “We’re supposed to be meeting up again soon, to work on my ‘skills’.”

  “He’s spending a lot of time on the mainland these days,” I remarked.

  “Yup. And I always feel the need to apologize for that. I know how much he hates leaving the Keys.”

  “I wonder if they’re magical,” I mused. “It felt like it. Well, the first time I was there, anyway. Kind of the same way this feels magical.” I thought about it for a second. “Maybe it’s just because I’m ridiculously happy,” I added, scooting over to rest my head on London’s shoulder.

  “Maybe so.” He smiled at me and pulled me closer, and I forgot all about magic as I snuggled against the warmth of his body.

  For two days, I felt like I was in a modern-day fairytale, only without a wicked stepmother fouling things up. Plans fell into place in a way that they never did in my everyday life. I got to do whatever I wanted to do – and only what I wanted to do – and I got to do it with a guy who made my heart dance a little jig every time I looked at him. Even the weather seemed to be on my side.

  Two days of perfection, and then I was scrambling out of bed before daylight to head to the Nashville airport and back to my dreary life in Texas. London rode with me to the airport, even though I told him it wasn’t necessary.

  “I want every second with you that I can get,” he said.