His For Keeps: (50 Loving States, Tennessee) (8 page)

“You’re not a nice woman,” he tells me, snatching up another drumstick from the pan sitting between us.

“And you’re not a nice man,” I shoot right on back, without looking up from my journal.

I sense rather than feel him go still beside me. “What makes you think I’m not a nice guy?”

With a sinking feeling inside my chest, I belatedly remember the pre-concert montage, including a snapshot of Colin’s recent People Magazine cover feature, which had been titled, “The Nicest Bro in Country.” On the way over here, Ginny had gone on and on about how everybody liked Colin. His staff, his fans, reporters, even rappers cited him as one of the coolest, most laid back guys on the planet.

Colin, I re-realize way too late, still hasn’t recognized me as the girl from that long ago night at the Lancer mansion. But other than what had happened between him, Mike, and me, I have nothing to base what I just said on.

“I dunno,” I answer, carefully closing my journal and replacing the elastic band around its cover. “Just a guess.”

“Just a guess,” he repeats. His voice is a little harder now. Not so easygoing. It sends a chill up my back. No, not a chill. That’s the wrong word.

His voice sends a strange, hot heat through me. One that makes it hard not to shift nervously under his blue gaze, much less meet it.

“Is ‘just a guess’ why you’re blushing now, Red?” I hear him ask beside me.

Ugh, stupid nervous tic! I’ve never been one of those light-skinned girls who went around wishing she looked more black, but this blushing situation is making me incredibly jealous of Josie’s nut brown skin.

Another possibly good lyric, but this time instead of writing it down, I desperately try to relieve the tension with a joke grenade. “Alright, alright, if you want to watch
Star Wars
so bad, you can have the couch and I’ll take your big ol’ bedroom tonight. Seriously, I don’t mind.”

Colin chuckles, and to my great relief, the sexual tension goes down a few notches.

“Nah, I’ll watch
Star Trek
. I like this one anyway. Not as much as I like
Star Wars
, but it’ll do.”

It’ll do
. I slide a quick look over at him, wondering if that’s how he feels about my company tonight. The original plan was that he was supposed to be going out for a fancy dinner with Josie, after I conveniently left with an excuse about having to catch a flight back to Nashville for a label meeting.

I take another drumstick, thinking this meal’s not the only thing serving as a replacement for something much better tonight. The cold chicken is definitely not dinner at a five star restaurant and I’m definitely not Josie. But I guess Ginny was right about what Colin was willing to put up with. Cold chicken and watching
Star Trek
with me will do for him, at least for tonight.

Now why that makes me feel so bad inside, I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I take another bite of chicken and watch the movie, trying my hardest not to think about it.

7

That Other Night

“Honey, pumpkin, sweetie pie, c'mon. Don't do this to me! I need you!”

“No!” I answer, crossing my arms. I don't let myself look at my mother as I say this. She doesn't often use terms of endearment on me. So when she does, it makes it hard to deny her a thing. Especially when her large brown eyes are set on beg, like they are now.

But I try to stand firm this time. I tell her, “I'm not going out there with you.”

“You have to, pumpkin. Chances like this don't just come along every day, and you know how hard I had to work to get this one. How's it going to look if I've got to go out there without a guitar player, cuz you a trifle scared?”

It's true. We're at The Rusty Roof, and the head of Big Hill Records is out in the audience. Valerie's right. Opportunities like this didn't come along often.

But I'm not just a trifle scared. I know deep down to my bones that going out on that stage tonight isn't a good idea.

“How about that white girl who tried to go on earlier?” I ask my mother. “She didn't even make it through her whole song, them men out there were riding her so bad.”

The petite blond had come off the stage in tears, because some the male audience members in the front had gotten so loud and lewd with their catcalling.

“Two minutes,” the stage manager calls out from the stage entrance.

My mother grabs me by the arm. “You think I'm some scared little white girl?” she asks me, like I've insulted her beyond all get-out. “Those men out there ain't nothing I ain't dealt with before. Now come on!”

All traces of sweetness are gone from my mother's voice now, replaced by the stubborn fierceness she carries around, hidden like a knife under her cute-as-a-button surface.

I know if I don't go out there on that stage with her, she'll never let me forget it. Will probably go right on ahead and dump me at my grandparents' house, like she's always threatening to do if I even hint I have something I'd rather be doing on a Friday or Saturday than performing with her.

I can already hear her telling folks all about it. “I almost got in with Big Hill, but Kyra flaked on me for no good reason, and made me go out there and do a less than professional showing.”

Valerie must see the crack in my resolve because she pounces on it with some more honey.

“Baby, I know you're scared, but you've got to be brave for me now, because I can't do this without you.”

Valerie's right, I decide, my heart softening as I push aside my fears of those drunk fools in the audience. My father abandoned her. My grandparents don't hardly speak to her anymore. I'm all she has. Not just her backup guitar and backup singer, but all the real backup she has in the world, period. I can't let her go out there alone…

Still I eye the burly men in the front row nervously as I walk on stage behind my mother.

I'm used to folks double taking when we come onstage. My mama in her cowboy hat, cut-off jean shorts, and flannel shirt tied bikini style at her breast like a Daisy Duke poster. Me in a little cowgirl outfit that I really need to start thinking about changing. It's not so cute anymore now I got all these new curves.

But the guys up front more than double take when we come out. Their mouths drop open, and then the F-bombs start flying. “What the fuck…? Who the fuck…? Why the fuck…?”

I decide not to get all the way up on the stool they set out for me. Instead I kind of perch on it, so I'll be ready, just in case we've gotta run.

“Oh, calm down, ya'll” my mother calls out to the men with one of her thousand watt smiles. “You'll understand soon enough once I get to singing.”

Like the ambitious country artist she is, she finds the Big Hill head in the audience and throws him a big fake-eyelashed wink. Then she gives me the cue to start before the men have a chance to respond.

I do, and the men quiet down. My mother might be a little crazy for trying to make it as a country singer in Alabama, I think to myself, but at least she's got the voice to back up all that crazy.

For a whole verse the quality of my mother's voice, singing one of my songs, is enough to hold the men in thrall. For a whole verse, I get to thinking maybe coming out here on stage wasn't such a bad idea. For a whole verse, I think maybe my mother really will get her meeting with the Big Hill exec, and maybe he'll actually give her a record deal.

Then I see one of the men sneer, and raise his arm. He's got an empty beer bottle in his hand, and I know what's going to happen next, even before it leaves his hand.

I stop playing and singing and scream. “Mama!” even though I'm never supposed to call her that. Especially when we're out singing in public. When we're on stage, I'm supposed to call her Val so nobody guesses she's old enough to have a kid.

My mother turns, probably to hush me, and her turning to scold me is what takes her out of the thrown bottle's range before it can hit her square in the chest.

Instead it hits me. Smacking sharp into my face. I hear the sound of glass breaking, and then I feel something warm rushing down my face, followed by a much hotter pain.

Then I hear my mother scream, “Oh my God!” as I tumble from the stool.

“What is wrong with you?” I hear her yell at the guy who threw the bottle. “She's only a child!”

“Red.”

“She's only a child!”

“Red.”

The one word pulls me out of the dream. Makes me open my eyes to find for countless time in fifteen years that this is a memory, not something happening to me right now.

Right now, I'm not in some honkytonk bar, but on a couch, my flushed face pressed against someone's chest. That same someone's fingers on my old beer bottle scar.

I jerk back into a sitting position, my wide eyes landing on Colin, who's also in the process of sitting up. But much slower with his hands in the air like someone who knows he's been caught doing something he shouldn't have.

“What were you doing?” I ask him, even though my frantic mind is easily putting together what happened.

I'm still in the purple lace dress I was wearing last night, and the couch isn't folded out. We must have fallen asleep while watching the movie, with me somehow ending up all the way in Colin's arms.

It's morning now, with soft rays of light illuminating everything in the room. I can easily imagine what Colin saw when he woke up. My puckered scar in the full morning light with no makeup to mask its appearance. And now my scar is once again throbbing. Because of the nightmare, because of Colin's touch…

“Why were you touching me?” I ask him, breathlessly.

“I was curious about your scar, so I touched it,” he tells me, lowering his hands.

“Why would you do that?” I ask, coming to my feet. “Seriously, what the hell?”

“Sorry,” he mumbles. He comes to his feet, too, and for a moment his eyes cut away from mine… but then they come right back to my face. Right back to my scar.

“How did you get it?” he asks, the old confidence creeping back into his voice.

“That's none of your business,” I tell him. “You bought my time this weekend. You didn't buy my back story.”

His eyes narrow and the silence stretches out real thick between us.

But then he reaches into his back pocket, and takes out a thin leather wallet.

“Beggin' your pardon, Red,” he says with a lazy Alabama drawl. “I didn't realize I hadn't paid you enough. How much do you want for your back story?”

I stare at him for a long, hot angry moment. Then I say, “I don't know. How much do you think it will cost me in legal fees when you sue me for punching you right the hell out for asking me that? Cuz that's how much it's going to cost.” I pretend to ponder this idea some more. “Course then you'd have to wait until I take the stand to hear the whole story, so maybe it's not worth it for you to find out.”

Colin puts his wallet away with a grin. “You're a funny one, Red. Let me tell you, I'm looking forward to hearing what you come up with for this demo.”

The mention of the demo takes near all the pride right out of me. Makes me remember Colin holds my future in my hands.

Now I'm the one cutting my eyes away. Looking out the window, where the sun is sitting pretty high in the sky. Josie will be here soon. Sweet, charitable, flawless Josie, who wears a pair of cat eyeglasses on her face as opposed to a beer bottle scar.

“You're right,” I say, fully deflated. “I better start getting ready. Ginny will be here with my dress any minute now.”

Then I rush away to the half bathroom where I left my toiletry bag before Colin can answer.

8

I’m right about Ginny getting there soon. I’m barely out of the shower, and putting concealer over the scar, when I hear her sharp knock on the door.

“Hi again,” she says after she squeezes into the bathroom with me, a cup of coffee in one hand and a dress bag in the other.

She sets the coffee down, hangs the bag on the door, reaches into her purse, and the next thing I know, she’s squirting me with what smells like a very expensive scent. Like a pile of sapphires and a field of orchids had decided to have a perfume baby. A perfect match for Colin’s cologne, I think to myself, sniffing at the air.

“Sorry, just had to get it out of the way,” Ginny explains. “It’s the standard scent for Colin’s women.”

I raise my eyebrows at that. “The women Colin dates all wear the same perfume?”

Ginny unzips the dress bag. “Colin’s very discreet about who he chooses to spend his intimate time with. He doesn’t talk to anyone about who he’s dating. No press, no events—he doesn’t even tell me. The only instruction I’ve ever been given in regards to his personal life was to buy a certain person this perfume, which is his way of saying he’s spending time with her , and he’d prefer she’d smell a certain way.”

“So Colin asked you to make sure I smell like his … other women?” I ask.

“No,” Ginny says. “He hasn’t said anything about you, other than you’re a songwriter who has agreed to help him out seal this deal with his friend, Josie. In this case, I made what you might call an artistic choice. To better help sell the story he’s pitching.”

I don’t love how she’s talking about the woman, who spent near all of Colin’s concert texting with her shelter, because she cares about her do-gooding that much, like she’s an open business deal that needs to be closed. And I really don’t like that I now smell just like every other side piece Colin’s kept
discreetly.

Why?
a nasty voice asks inside of me.
Because you’re special?

I’m not, I remind myself after Ginny’s leaves me alone in the bathroom to get dressed in the dress she’s picked out for me. I’m a prop, in this case, a stand in for the girl Colin really wants. No matter how good I look in the little white dress, Ginny picked out, I think as I look at myself in the bathroom’s full length mirror. It’s one of those special effects dresses that lifts up your chest and butt while corseting in your waist and thighs. And even though Ginny tore off the price tag, I know the dress must have cost a bundle, because the curly cherry red image in the mirror when I’ve got it on looks like the Photoshop version of me. Sexy, curvy, and a little bit wild, even though I’m mostly covered up.