Easy Little Lick (Copperline #3) (3 page)

BOOK: Easy Little Lick (Copperline #3)
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Yet, she seemed to appreciate their lack of interest. She mechanically went about her business, clearing tables and taking orders, showing as little of her true self as she could. She was remote. Watchful and wary, avoiding interaction whenever possible. If someone tried to pull her into conversation, she quickly shut it down. She was just shy of rude, carefully making herself seem almost flat and boring, and that interest would fizzle and quickly fade away.

Except in me.

There was just
something
about her. She was just unlike anyone else I’d ever known. A mystery.

Every night when the bar closed, she quietly slipped out to her car and drove away… towards Butte, I noticed one night as I watched her leave.

After a couple weeks of zero interaction, I started putting myself in her path as she worked, trying to catch her eyes as she moved around me. Most often, she evaded me, thwarting my attempts to be social. Every now and then, though, I managed to catch her eye. Little things I did to make it difficult for her to ignore me. Using my body to block her path until she had no choice but to tap me on the shoulder and murmur a quiet ‘
excuse me
’ to get me to move. Handing her something to hear a quiet ‘
thank you
’ accompanied by the slightest of shy smiles.

My tactics didn’t always work, but sometimes they did.

It was crazy, really.
I
was crazy. I could have had my pick of the bar on any given night. The Bangin’ Mofos were practically celebrities in the area, and I had been pegged as the one with massive relationship potential. A big fuckable teddy bear.

But when I could get her to actually look up and focus on me, her eyes said more than her words and her motions.

I saw sadness, loneliness, and a little fear. I saw a fragile soul who appeared alive, but not really living.

It was the strangest feeling. I wanted to hold her. To comfort her. To protect her. To take the sadness inside her and replace it with something beautiful. Those moments between us, rare and short as they were, made me want to know more about her. They made me feel like maybe I did know her a little, like I was privy to some kind of secret.

Most often, she would shutter the emotion behind thick lashes. Every now and then, though, I managed to say something just right, something that made her eyes sparkle with a faint glimmer of amusement.

And then she’d duck her head and turn away.

I had seen something there, though. I zoomed in, focusing on those little moments because I knew that, in spite of her obvious desire not to, she liked me back… if only just a little bit.

A couple weeks became a month and then two. The longer I knew her, the more I became truly fixated on this one girl I’d barely even spoken to.

I wanted to talk to her.

I wanted to make her smile. To make her laugh.

To make her moan.

I just
wanted
her.

 

 

 

 

 

The Bangin’ Mofos were like brothers, and I was constantly treated as the
little brother
of the group.

The other guys gave me shit all the time about my age. I was almost twenty-four, but a good year younger than any of them. This constant ribbing had gone on since we’d gotten together a few years before, especially when they all reached the legal drinking age of twenty-one and I hadn’t.

I had also been labeled as the big, dumb one, a part I actually played to perfection. Not that it was really the case, but drummers tend to get the dense-guy image. I didn’t do a lot to alter their perception, either, even if school had been a breeze. I had excelled in math as a kid. Same with welding and auto shop when I got to high school.

More than anything, though, I was a machine on the drums. If anything in life came easy to me, it was that. The rhythm seemed to flow from the world around me into my soul and out through my hands. I was far from the best drummer ever, not even comparable to my idols, guys like Shannon Leto and Dave Grohl, who could shred like nothing I could even hope to come near.

But I had been beating the shit out of everything I could get my hands on since I was a toddler. Since I laid out my mom’s pots and pans and beat on them with spoons. I had a constant tempo in my head, a perpetual rhythm that made my fingers tap unthinkingly. It made me bounce my leg almost nonstop. My parents had me tested for ADHD as a kid because my third-grade teacher complained that I just could
not
sit still. The doctor examined me and talked to me. He watched me for a few minutes and turned to my mother.

“This kid needs an outlet for his beat. Get him a set of drums.”

So she did. A piss-poor cheap set because she thought I’d never stick with it. I was only eight years old, after all. I started in my bedroom. After a year of constant cacophony, my folks moved it out to the garage.

My older brother had gotten a guitar around the same time. A few years later, he formed a garage band with some friends, but felt I wasn’t cool enough to play with them. They’d lure me sometimes, telling me they
might
let me play with them if I helped haul equipment when they had a gig, but the fuckers never did follow through.

Their promises had me practicing like a motherfucker, though. I spent every spare minute trying to prove myself. Before long, I didn’t want to be
good enough
to play with them. I wanted to be
better
than them. I wanted them to wish they could play like me.

If I wasn’t practicing, I was watching greats like Don Henley or Peter Chris. Studying their movements to see how they pulled off their amazing licks.

I soaked up everything I could find and listened over and over to the same songs until the beat echoed in my dreams. Until I could mimic every
bark
and
scoop
. I wanted more. I thirsted for it.

I’d known Brannon for years since we both grew up in the same small Montana town of Ophir. He was a couple years older than me, though, and didn’t hang out much until we were in the Automotive Technology program together.

At the time, his grampa was on his case to be a little more responsible. Brannon had taken some time after high school to coast through life, but the old man had been pretty insistent. A little over a year later, we realized why when his health started to fail. He managed to hang on long enough to watch Brannon graduate, then left him his auto shop in Ophir. Shortly thereafter, Brannon hired me on.

The whole time we’d been in college, I’d hung out with Brannon and had gotten to know his friend Denny, a crazy Irish fucker who somehow had decided he wanted to settle in Montana. Denny could play a little guitar and had a hell of a singing voice. His roommates, Justin and Drew, were also musicians and had a radio show on the campus station. We fucked around a lot on it, making up songs, playing instruments… and developing a following.

We never really
formed
a band.

We just
were
a band.

Pretty soon, we started getting gigs, and that was an awesome ‘
fuck you
’ to my brother and his friends who were, by that point, realizing I actually had some talent. When we started getting chosen for shows over their band, I asked if they wanted to help haul our equipment. My brother looked like he wanted to kick my ass, but I’d gotten a lot bigger than him over the years, so he just made some bitch-ass remark and sulked away.

I was a lot bigger than most guys I came across, really, taller than all my friends and built like a fucking linebacker. I ate damn near anything and everything I could get my hands on, but as much as I played, all those calories turned to muscle. I could have been kind of scary if I’d been a dickhead, I guess. If I was a mean fucker, always looking for a fight.

Instead, I sorta went with the big nice, dumb guy approach and played the part very well.

So well that even my buddies bought it.

“Hey, Drew,” Justin called out one night as he tightened a new string on his bass. “What do you call a drummer with half a brain?”

Drew grinned and I gave a good-natured sigh.
These fuckers and their drummer jokes.

“Dunno, Justin, what?”

“Gifted,” Justin replied, and the two of them laughed and laughed.

And laughed.

They thought they were so clever.

Ilsa had come to the top of the stairs, some bottles of beer on her tray, just as Justin had started the joke. When she heard the punchline, she scowled at him. He hadn’t even noticed she was there.

She seemed rather invisible to him, which baffled me. Denny often said that Justin would ‘
shag a crack in a plate
.’ The dude did damn near every girl he set his eyes on. He was even one of the few guys I knew who was completely comfortable doing a male-female-male threesome… without a referee.

Me?
Not so much.

“How about this one?” Drew chuckled, “What’s the best way to confuse a drummer?”

“What?” Justin snorted.

“Put sheet music in front of him.”

Justin wrapped his arm around his gut as he practically rolled on the floor.

Hilarious.

Ilsa, however, was not amused.

Having handed a beer to Denny, she turned to hand one to me as well, her brows drawn in irritation.

“They’re just giving me shit, Ilsa,” I smiled, talking in a low voice. “It’s not a biggie.”

She didn’t seem convinced. “It doesn’t bother you?”

Shit! She talked to me.

Finally!

Be cool, Cody… be cool.

I shrugged one shoulder, like I wasn’t totally jazzed. I’d only been trying to get her attention for
ever
.

“We’re dudes. That’s kinda how we show we care. I’d worry if they got all mushy and shit… especially Justin.” I raised an eyebrow and gave her an easy grin. “He’s really not very in touch with his feminine side.”

This brought a sweet smile to her lips and for a second, I almost thought she’d stay for a moment. Talk to me a little longer.

Wishful thinking.

Instead, she lowered her eyes, almost seeming to remember something. Looking back up at me as she began to turn towards the stairs, she gave me a hint of a feisty little grin.

“Tell them they can get their own damn beer,” she shot back at me as she headed off stage with two beers still on her tray.

That little bit of spark in her eyes smoldered in my chest, making me care even less what kind of jokes those dickheads came up with.

I was used to them anyway. I was used to the razzing and teasing. I took their good-natured quips without batting an eye. It was just how we all were with each other. I let it roll off my back. I blew it off. Sometimes I acted like I didn’t even get the jokes, or I pretended I hadn’t heard them.

My feigned ignorance was bliss.

I noticed from then on that, when Ilsa was in earshot of their teasing, she’d frown. In spite of my attempt to alleviate her concern, she still didn’t like it. After a couple weeks of it, she came to my rescue.

No shit.
Blew me away.

Justin, as usual, was giving me crap about my lack of pussy-mongering. Drew had been totally whipped by Maggie for some time. We all figured (and dreaded) they might get married eventually. So, now that Denny had shacked up with Felicity and Brannon had fallen head over heels for a local princess, Justin was the total manwhore of the group. A title he reveled in. Unfortunately, the fact that I, with no girlfriend to tie me down, wasn’t constantly banging everything in sight meant I was practically a chick in his eyes.

“Hey, Justin,” Drew joked, “what do you call a drummer who breaks up with his girlfriend?”

BOOK: Easy Little Lick (Copperline #3)
3Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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