His For Keeps: (50 Loving States, Tennessee) (23 page)

I think about his hotel room threat the day I chose Beau over him. He isn’t the kind of guy who makes threats like that lightly. And now, I’ve refused to be his secret girlfriend. There is no way he’s going to let me get anywhere near a country label exec, especially with a song about missing him. When I really shouldn’t.

Sighing I set aside the guitar and walk downstairs. Josie and Beau are in the living room, curled up on the couch in front of the fire, listening to an audiobook. They’re such a good-looking couple. Like looking at an ad for high-end sweaters that only beautiful rich people can pull off.

“I’m going out,” I tell them, trying to tamp down my jealousy, because neither of them deserve anything less than the perfect love they’ve found. “Can I bring you back anything?”

“I’m good,” Beau calls back.

Josie throws me a worried look from her position in Beau’s lap and asks, “Where are you going?”

“Just to the twenty-four hour drugstore for some snacks,” I answer. I know she’s worried about me going out this late at night with Mike Lancer still posing a threat.

“In that case, I could use some ice cream and maybe a jar of green olives if they have them,” she tells me. “If you don’t mind…”

“I don’t,” I assure her, and then I turn to get out of there because I’m technically off the clock, and the last thing I want to do is spend my personal time with a couple who are not only best friends, but also a walking reminder of what most guys want at the end of the day. Someone kind and beautiful. Someone with flawless skin and no visible scars. The kind of girl you’re proud to call your wife.

Colin wanted Josie, so he could be normal. He settled for me.

And that’s what I really need to remember about Colin, I think to myself as shame and regret wrestle inside my head. Instead of writing songs about how much I miss him, I have to remember why he chose me. Because I’m dirty. Because he knew he could be as messed up as he wanted to be with me.

I pause at the front door, a decision suddenly becoming clear inside my mind.

“Hey, Josie,” I say, coming back to the open archway that separates the front room from the front entrance. “What color do you think I should dye my hair this time? Blue or green?”

27

After the night I dye my hair blue, I decide to leave my guitar alone for a while. I know one day I’ll be able to pick it up again without inviting Colin right back into my head, but that day isn’t any of the ones that have come so far. And I have a feeling it won’t be coming for quite some time.

I keep myself busy, running errands for Beau. And Josie now, too, because she’s not only pregnant, but busier than she’s ever been, running the Ruth’s House Alabama location by herself.

Colin, to my great relief, doesn’t call. Then eventually the weekend before Columbus Day rolls around, and Colin continues not to call, so hooray, I guess. We’re on the same page. I don’t want to be his secret plaything, and he’s accepting no for an answer.

Instead of moping around, I spend all Saturday and then Sunday morning, too, helping Josie register for both her wedding and baby showers. I’m supposed to be off weekends, but it’s not like I have anything better to do, especially now Colin’s temporarily possessed my guitar like a poltergeist.

“I don’t understand why we have to do a combined wedding and baby shower next weekend. It feels like Mrs. Prescott is just being mean with that call,” Josie complains as we scan items onto her shower registry at the closest big box baby store.

She then waves her hand at the five-page long list we downloaded from the internet earlier in the morning.

“And I really don’t understand why we need all this stuff to keep a baby alive. I mean we set up a Diaper Genie and a changing table at Ruth’s House, scattered a few toys on the floor, and we were good to go!”

I laugh as I pick up a baby floor gym and register it with one of the scan guns a clerk from the baby registry department gave us.

“You need to just be happy Beau’s mama agreed to scale down the wedding enough so you’d still fit in a wedding gown by the time you walk down the aisle.”

Scaled down wasn’t really a good word, though. Now instead of the four-hundred person summer wedding Mrs. Prescott had been envisioning, Josie and Beau will be having a two-hundred person Christmas weekend wedding, complete with fake snow, a full orchestra, and a gown that looks like it was straight out of a production of
The Snow Queen.

There had even been some talk about dressing the security guards as nutcrackers, but Beau had squashed that, explaining to his mother that no security team worth its salt would agree to do their job while dressed in fake white beards, red short coats, and beefeater hats.

Still, I could tell all the wedding preparations, along with taking over Ruth’s House, were wearing on Josie. So I’d stayed in Alabama for most of the weekend. Going around with Josie to different shops and vendors and helping her take care of the mountain of little things you had to take care of before a wedding and the arrival of a baby.

However, I can only be so much help, and I don’t love the dark circles under Josie’s eyes. Especially since I know one of the things she’s worrying about is finding a nanny.

“Why don’t you go test out the gliders,” I say, nodding my head toward the nearby section of rocking chairs. “I can take care of this.”

Josie hesitates. “But you have to get on the road soon to drive to Tennessee for your grandmother’s Sunday Dinner. I don’t want to…”

“I’ve got about two more hours until I’m in the danger zone,” I tell her. “Besides, I don’t know where you come from, but I’m black. You know Sunday Dinner isn’t going to start exactly on time.”

Josie laughs. “You’re so good to me,” she says, squeezing my shoulder. “I must have been a saint in a past life, because that’s the only way to explain how I got lucky enough to deserve you.”

A wave of guilt passes over me as I think about all the things I’m keeping from her. And that she really has no idea who exactly she invited into her life.

The ringtone version of “9 to 5” saves me from having to answer, and I pull out my phone like a drowning man reaching for a buoy.

I’m so surprised when I see the name flashing across the scene that I let it show on my face.

“Who is it?” Josie asks beside me. “Is everything okay?”

I school my face to something just about neutral.

“Um, it’s Colin,” I tell her.

And Josie smiles.

“Ooh, he hasn’t called in a while. I was afraid to ask how the friendship project was going. But don’t let it go to voicemail. Answer it! The CMAs are coming up. He might need to talk.”

I do as she says, wondering if there will ever be a guilt plateau to all the stuff I’m keeping from Josie.

“Hi,” I say, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible.

St. Josie gives me a thumbs up and goes over to the glider section as Colin says, “I was wondering if you’d make me borrow Keith’s phone again.”

“Why are you calling me?” I ask him. “I thought I made myself clear the last time we talked.”

“Tell me something, Purple. When’s the last time you Googled yourself?”

I blink, thrown off by the question. “I’ve never Googled myself,” I answer.

“Why is that?”

“I dunno. I guess because I haven’t done anything that would really get me an electronic footprint.”

“Hmm.” The sound is little more than a grunt coming out of Colin’s mouth. “Well, I guess I can wait.”

I look to both sides. “Wait for what?”

“For you to Google yourself. Go’on ahead. I’ll still be here when you’re done.”

With a mixture of dread and curiosity, I lower my smartphone, open up its browser, and type in my own name, first and last. This is silly, I think to myself as I do it. It’s not like my name is all that uncommon. Most likely I’ll have to scroll through a few pages before I even get any real hits…

The results immediately begin to flood the screen preceded by headlines like: “Colin Fairgood Reveals New Relationship” and “Country Singer Colin Fairgood Finally Admits to Being In a Relationship.”

The preview copy in a few of the links reads, “Colin Fairgood, who has always been notoriously secretive about his love life, was surprisingly candid about his new girlfriend in an interview with Canadian talk show host, Oliver Morgan…”

My eyes go wide as I scroll through the results. There’s even a video clip. I click on it, somehow thinking this is a joke, that it all must be a joke, even as Colin appears on my screen, seated on a couch next to the desk of a pudgy man with a thick Canadian accent.

“So you’ve been on the program a few times and I always tell my producers not to bother asking aboot your personal life in the pre-interview. But this time, my producer comes running into my office and says, ‘Colin Fairgood’s got a girl and he’s giving us the exclusive!’ Of course my first response is,
Why the hell would he do that
?”

Both the audience and Colin fall out laughing on my phone’s small screen as Oliver Morgan insists, “We’re a small show. We’re nothing, for Chrissake’s! On late at night with an audience share so small, we’ve started counting the moose hanging aboot outside as part of our viewership. I’m serious man, our audience is so small, we’ve been reduced to having American country music stars as guests.”

Colin responds with a good-natured chuckle. “Well, maybe this will help your ratings.”

“In America maybe, yes.” Oliver Morgan agrees. He then calls over his shoulder to his unseen crew. “Are we even on in America?”

A few helpful crew members call back, “In Puerto Rico!”

“Puerto Rico doesn’t count. Nobody cares about Puerto Rico,” Oliver answers.

“On the internet!” another voice calls out.

Oliver Morgan’s eyes widen comically. “Ooh, he’s right! This might get us more YouTube hits. So for the love of ad dollars, tell us, Colin. Tell us who you’re dating.”

Colin laughs but the look on his face becomes thoughtful when he answers, “Her name is Kyra. Kyra Goode—that last name is spelled G-O-O-D-E. And I’m not sure she’d take too kindly to me saying much more than that about her. But she’s a cool girl and a great little songwriter, and I’m really into her.”

The audience gives a collective “aw!” but Oliver Morgan lets a reflective beat pass before saying, “Is that all? I mean she sounds nice and all that but we’d certainly get more hits if she were say, a stripper. Does she have any pole dancing in her background? Because the show could really use the hits…”

The clip ends on Colin laughing and shaking his head.

After a few moments, I put the phone back to my ear, but my heart is beating so hard in my throat, I can’t speak.

“You still there, Purple?” His voice is quiet, somber. A far cry from the Colin I just watched on my phone.

I nod, even though I know he can’t see me.

Colin chuckles quietly. “Guess I finally found a way to shut that smart mouth of yours.”

“I… I...” I reset and say, “I’m not sure why you did that.”

“I’ll show you exactly why tonight.”

A voice says something in the background, and Colin lowers the phone to say, “Yep, I’ll tell her. Thanks.” When he comes back to the phone, he says, “Ginny wants to make sure you know to take a day off over the next two weeks to come shopping with her. She says you two have got to figure out a dress for the CMAs. Also, she’s got to schedule hair and makeup.”

My head is spinning, trying to process all of this. “Colin, I don’t understand…”

“You’ll understand tonight,” he says, cutting me off with a savage fervor that doesn’t match the casual tone he’s been using up until now.

“But…”

“I’ve got to go,” he says, cutting me off once again. “But I’ll see you at dinner.”

No, he definitely won’t be seeing me at dinner. I’m about to tell him I’m supposed to be helping out with my grandmother’s Sunday Dinner, when he says, “Tell your grandma to make sure she has enough chicken, because if it’s as good as you say it is, I’m not sure how much I’ll be leaving for the rest of your family. Eight hours from Vancouver to Nashville has got me about ready to kill a plate of good chicken.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” I say. “You are not coming to my grandmother’s house!”

“See you there, Purple.”

“Colin, no. Colin, wait—”

And that’s when
he
hangs up on
me
.

28

“So let me get this straight, you’re bringing a white boy round here to meet Grandma?” my cousin, LaTrelle, asks after I finish telling the group of cousins gathered on Grandma’s front porch about our unexpected guest.

“He’s not just any ol’ white boy,” my cousin, Bernice, explains to the group. “He’s that one white boy who sang that song with Roxxy RoxX that one time.”

“Ooh, I liked that song,” LaTrelle says, her eyes lighting up. “And he cute! You go’on head with your bad self, KiKi!”

“I’d let him get it,” another of my cousins calls out.

“You’d let anybody get it, Rhonda,” Bernice answers with the no-holds-barred harshness only family can get away with.

“Yeah,” LaTrelle agrees, backing up Bernice. “But you bet keep your fast ass away from him. That white boy belong to KiKi, and you just jealous because she the only one Grandma let help with Sunday Dinner.”

“Why would anybody be jealous of that?” Rhonda asks, like she honestly wants to know who in their right mind would covet spending hours of their time in a hot kitchen with Grandma.

I raise my hands to stop the argument. “Um, can we all agree to not refer to him as ‘the white boy’ while he’s here?” I ask them.

LaTrelle’s brother, Tyrone, immediately raises his own hands up and says in an overly exaggerated imitation of my voice, “Um… can we all agree to not refer to the first white boy anybody’s ever brought around to meet our grandma as a white boy? Can we call him “Kumbaya” or “One Race” or whatever it is sensitive white folks want to be called these days?”

Everybody but me and Bernice falls out laughing.

So I guess that’s a no.

“THE WHITE BOY’S HERE!” I hear one of my little cousin’s yell outside Grandma’s kitchen window.